Early in the summer, I put my heart and life back into the hands of God. Opening myself back up to him and my faith completely changed my life. Going back to church seemed like the scariest new step to take towards getting closer to God, but I could not see a better way to spend my Sunday mornings now. The atmosphere that surrounds you and the pure joy that radiates off everyone is the best feeling in the world. Getting involved with a church and meeting other Christians can help you get in touch with God better and introduce you to new friends and followers of Christ.

I find myself turning to God a lot more now than I ever had before. Dealing with mental health problems has not been an easy task, I have had a lot of setbacks, but I turned to God and let him show me the way and help me understand that I had a purpose in this life and to not give up.

I prayed to him to show me what I should do, how I should go about getting over this depression and darkness I felt trapped in. I began to go to therapy and talk about what I was feeling, it was a safe place for me to open up about everything that I was going through and feeling. Reaching out and getting professional help, especially doing it all alone seemed entirely impossible. God kept telling me and showing me signs that I needed this, I needed to talk to someone outside of my family and friends and boy was he right!

There have been many new opportunities that have come my way since I reached back out to God and renewed my faith. Every day I am blessed to wake up and be a part of something God has created and work towards making this world a better and safer place.

I am in awe that so many doors have been opened for me. For instance, being able to write all these articles for all of you. I have had a love and passion for writing and sharing my thoughts and experiences with others and I am so grateful that God has blessed me with this amazing opportunity.

When God calls me to follow my heart I am always met with anxiousness and nervousness as to how things will turn out. Following your heart is a scary thing to do, most of the time following your heart and not your head can get you into sticky situations. The best thing about when God tells me to follow my heart is that I trust that he will keep me and my heart safe in the end.

Following my heart about my passions and love for certain things in life has not always been easy. There have been failures and struggles to get where I am today. I have been shown many paths in which I should take over the past few years in regards to my career choice after college. God has shown me time and time again that my purpose in life is to help others and do that by going into a criminal justice career.

I recently have been having the job of a Youth Correctional Counselor weighing on my mind pretty heavily. I started doing research and figuring out what it would take in order to get into this certain job field. Left and right I keep seeing signs as to why I need to pursue this certain career, I believe this is truly God telling me this is my calling and this is what I am meant to do.

Even though many of these opportunities and doors that have been opened for me have been scary at first to pursue, I knew that with my faith in God and my trust in him that everything would work out the way it was intended to!