Dana’s Story
I was recently asked what my life would be like without my relationship with God? 2 Timothy 3:2-5 sums it up for me. “For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. Avoid such people.”
This is me. This is all of us. But when I met Jesus everything changed.
I began dancing when I was three years old and from a young age fell in love with performance. Having a great recital with a big smile on my face and way too much blue eye shadow and red lipstick was absolute joy for me. I found great significance in dancing. I found my best friend Emily too!
Emily brought me to Pioneer Clubs at her church when we were 7 and eventually to Camp Forest Springs, a week long Christian camp in northern Wisconsin. I absolutely loved it. After attending a few years I had gathered the knowledge that God had sent his only Son Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. Romans 6:8 says “For the wages of sin is death.” He had died for my sins and there was a reason he had to die. Because of my sin I earned death but Jesus was offering to take my place and I accepted. I asked him to forgive me and thanked him for dying for me one night my second year at camp on the top bunk praying with my counselor.
From the age of 12 on the knowledge of Jesus would slowly shift from my head to my heart. At that point I didn’t experience a radical change in my lifestyle because I was a 12 year old girl with wonderful loving parents, an older brother who treated me way too well, got good grades and danced. The years to come would be the trials that would test my heart and allegiance to Jesus Christ as my Savior and bring into question where I received my validation.
High school was a fantastic breeding ground for my love of performance. I could be involved in anything and everything from dance team to musicals, yearbook staff, student council, plays, class president and of course to complete the picture of my “perfect” life, youth group. I truly found joy and happiness and had a lot of fun dancing and singing and organizing events and traveling on mission trips to help others and being around a lot of people all the time, but I was doing it for myself. I was, as Timothy said, a lover of myself and a lover of pleasure. I wanted to follow God and to an extent I thought I was. I was happy and having fun and figured God wanted those good things for me too. But here was the problem: My significance was found in all of those things and not at all in simply knowing Jesus Christ.
Senior year things began to crumble whether it was with my dance team, my relationships, musicals, and what have you and I became confused. I began to believe God was punishing me for sin: depending and investing all of myself in a relationship with a guy, occasional drinking or swearing and the all too common disobedience to my parents and completely lost sight of the fact that the Jesus I had asked to come into my life had already paid the penalty for all those imperfections. My view of God was skewed by my pride, conceit and selfishness.
I did not consult God on college decisions, obviously because I ended up at the University of Minnesota J It was in that first semester of freshman year that I broke. Everything I had built up my significance around was gone: my boyfriend of 3 years was 5 hours away, my best friends , my family and all the activities that made me so happy were gone. What I found when I was stripped of myself was Jesus, the same Jesus that had promised me eternal life only through him.
I broke up with my boyfriend which tail spinned into the brokenness and humility needed be left on my knees, face down before the Lord. I moved home second semester to get away from the pain and sadness I associated with Minnesota and went to a UW close to home so I could start to put myself back together again. It was there that I found a small group of Christians with two faithful Campus Crusade for Christ staff members from neighboring UW Stevens Point trying to start a Crusade movement. Becca took me under her wing, helped me see I could be whole again through the same Jesus I had asked to save me when I was 12. Early in that semester life changed. I made the decision that Paul talks about in Philippians 3:8 “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-that I may know him…”
If I didn’t have my relationship with God I would still be living in extreme pride striving for the temporary joy of a perfect performance which will quickly fade. Instead, I now live in grace and mercy. I live to know the unsurpassing joy of knowing Jesus. I live for that which is unseen and eternal rather than that which is seen and temporary.
My significance is found in Christ Jesus. I have to remind myself of that everyday of course but when I let Christ live through me the performance is perfect every time. I am amazed that the God, the Creator of the Universe looks and me and sees Christ and I did absolutely nothing to deserve that. I simply thanked and asked him for forgiveness from my foolish ways, asked him to take control. I vow to never get over the gospel. He redeemed me and forgave me of my pride. Now I strive for godly pride described by Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa “ Pride is faith in the idea that God had when he made me. A proud man is conscious of the idea and aspires to realize it. He does not strive towards happiness or comfort, which may be irrevlevant to Gods idea of him. His success is the idea of God, successfully carried through, he is in love with his destiny.
Dana Schleif
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Long live king Jesus