full.circle.

3 years ago, on June 16th 2006, I drove to Tennessee with some friends to go to Bonnaroo, an annual music festival that I’d been to for the 2 years prior. The festival was always a crazy (but fun) time for me, filled with friends, amazing music and way too much alcohol and sun. But that year was different. In 2006, it was a trip filled with dangerous amounts of alcohol, drugs that I hadn’t touched in years, and more regrets than I care to remember. It was a a trip that made me realize that the person I’d thought I’d buried after college was still alive and well in me, something that terrified me. It was a trip that would ultimately change my life.

A few weeks after that trip, one of my coworkers invited me to his father’s church. I was intrigued, and I went.  A few months later I started to believe.  And a year later, that coworker became my husband.

Tonight, 3 years later almost to the day, I”ll once again be driving to Tennessee with some friends. Only this time, I’m going to an Christian youth conference…as a chaperon.

It’s beyond incredible how much my life has changed in 3 years. Sometimes it almost doesn’t seem real. Sometimes I think about how great my life is now and I just cry because at one point, I had stopped believing that I could have a good life. I was convinced that I didn’t deserve it, and sometimes I still think that.

I wish I could sit here and write that I’d done it all myself. I wish that I’d finally had enough after that trip 3 years ago, that I’d figured it all out after that week and gotten myself straightened out. I wish I could take credit for the changes in my life that made me the type of woman that a church leader would ask to chaperon their youth group.

But I can’t take credit for it.

God did it all.

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