I would have been perfect if I wasn’t so messed up.

Shanti’s Story

 

I am a product of the work of God. That statement is both exhilarating and humbling, and it’s true. Jesus has changed me. If you had known me eight or ten years ago, you would see someone very different.

I grew up in Illinois. My parents got divorced when I was three and I have grown up with my dad. I don’t remember ever having a good relationship with my mother. I was a great kid. I was sweet, funny, socially mature. I did very well in school and I loved to perform. I had it all together. Except for the fact that I was a mess. I lived in shame and performance. I was constantly put in the middle of my parents. My mother’s family knows how to give a mean guilt trip. I lived with emotional burdens that no child should ever shoulder, but I did. I shoved it all down and put on a smile for the world to see.

Around my junior high years, a whole bunch of things came to a head. As usual, I looked perfect, but I was actually caught in a vicious pattern of sin that was destroying me from the inside out. I still feel the ramifications every day. My mother was starting to act strangely and I had no idea what was going on. I remember one day in which I caught her talking to herself in the kitchen. As a person who talks to herself all the time, I didn’t think much of it, but things were getting weird and I almost didn’t know it.

At age 14, I left Illinois for boarding school at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut. I loved Choate. I still do. It’s the place that I call home. The faculty members are family. I made life-long relationships and was given opportunities beyond my dreams. At first, though, the transition was difficult. Choate was very challenging academically, and on top of that, my family troubles totally bubbled over. During my first weekend at Choate, I was brought into my advisor’s apartment and told that a woman had called Choate security and told them to look out for me because someone was trying to kill me. After a lot of tears and confusion, a phone call to my dad determined that the woman was probably my mother. From that point on, I started receiving strange phone calls from my mother every day in which she warned me that people were trying to hurt me. I received these calls daily and I felt scared and confused in a brand new place. I struggled to balance school, making new friends, and this new stress from my mother that was draining me emotionally.

However, the scariest time of my life is also marked as the most beautiful. Jesus drew me to himself during my freshman year. That September, I attended a weekend retreat with a ministry called FOCUS. Going on that retreat, I found myself in a new place, with new people, experiencing a new kind of faith.

I had considered myself a Christian for my whole life, but that weekend I realized that I didn’t know God at all. I had heard about him, but I never knew him. Through this retreat, I was able to learn about a God who created something glorious and then continued to pursue his creation even after it rebelled against him. A God who loved me so much that He would give up His son in order to give me life.

That’s such an incredible statement and it touched me in a way that it never had before. My heart is sinful so I was separated from God, but in order to get me back, God chose to pour his wrath on his son Jesus. My sin makes me owe God the death penalty, but Jesus, being fully God and fully man, is the only person who has ever walked the planet who never sinned so he didn’t owe God anything. By God allowing Jesus to die, he is able to pay my death penalty for me. I had never heard that before and I knew I had to respond. On the second day, I prayed a prayer and accepted God’s gift of love. I wasn’t really sure of what I was doing, but I knew that I wanted to know this God who wanted to know me so much that He died on a cross for me.

Today, I am trying to let Jesus live through me so that I may have abundant life and he may receive the most glory. I wish I could tell you all the incredible blessings that he has poured out on me in the past eight years. I want to tell you about the deep, abiding friendships that I have made. The freedom I have experienced. I want to tell you about how I’m learning about how big and holy and powerful God is. I want to tell you the stories of every conversation in which God has used me to speak truth about himself. I will tell you that I’m on the greatest adventure anyone could hope for because I’m living out my purpose. I’m designed to know the one, true Living God. I’m designed to delight in him and worship him. Make him known. I’m designed for giant risks and big adventures. I’m designed for a purpose that spans the entire nations and the whole course of history. I’m designed for a huge, life-sacrificing mission and tiny, whispers of intimacy with the Creator–the One who is just and who justifies. I’m not perfect, but I’m living my purpose. I’m living to worship Jesus and to see his worship increased throughout the nations.

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