 Well hello my beautiful friends, I am faking not being super nervous right now because this next video, the one that you're about to watch and the one that I am currently editing I'm really nervous to put out there and I just want to give anyone watching this a quick trigger warning because there's content in here, it's not graphic, like don't worry about that but I am going to be covering subjects related to sexual assault and abusive relationships because the story of my faith, what exists of it is very interconnected, intertwined with some not so awesome stuff so if you're not in a place to hear that, skip this video and maybe watch cute puppy dog videos instead without further ado, here's kind of the story of the last few years of my life I'm just going to stop talking and let you guys watch it and go not throw up from nervousness good morning or afternoon or evening today we're going to talk about faith but please don't navigate away just yet because I'm not going to prosthelitize think that's the right word or evangelize, I just want to share my experience I don't have a super duper strong faith I used to, I used to be that super religious good homeschooled Christian kid that you've probably seen stereo types of and so I want to take a few minutes today to kind of share my story people have asked me if I'm like mad at God for taking away my leg which signed out he didn't I made the choice to get rid of it because it caused too much pain but I didn't want to talk about faith because I think faith and health just like faith and anything are often very interrelated, intertied in our lives and also while I'm doing that, remember the kind notes company they also have these cool mats and they sent me one for free which was super nice of them and I'm going to open it up and replace this rug with that rug the trick is going to be not getting crushed by the box as I put it down alright, well that was anti-climatic it's actually not that heavy I was homeschooled from the time that I was like pre-K up until I was 16 when I was 16 I started going to a charter school my parents had and have very strong Christian faith I wanted to share that with my brother and I and so we grew up in the church and I super adhered to that like I was hook, lion, sinker, you've got me I was full steam ahead I was probably more on board with Christianity than I would say like anyone in my family but I don't mean that in a bad way I just mean that I did the role really really well all throughout my high school years everything I did was about my faith everything I did was about God I went to a bunch of conferences I was always going to youth group I would start Bible studies at my school when I actually started going to a charter school and stuff like that and then I went away to a Christian college but only for a year oh come on success alright I did not think to bring scissors up here because I'm not that smart but that's okay that's what we have hands for ripping and tearing with that's probably a weird thing to say but why else are we here, right? success so I went away to Christian college had an amazing experience just for a year there because after a year, guess what my ankle died got very very painful and made it so that I couldn't walk like I couldn't walk around campus it just got really bad again I had a doctor there tell me that I was going to have to have another fusion which is a pretty severe surgery something that would be difficult to have when you're away at college so I had to move back home I started going to this house church run by a family that I had known and loved most of my life that's where things kind of took a weird turn in my life and this is where I get a little bit nervous talking to 65,000 of you or however many click to decide to see this video but hey I'm here to be honest and authentic with you guys and my assumption is that many of you have had similar experiences to what I'm about to share so I'm going to go ahead and share it I met a guy at that church he was serving in a position of leadership and essentially he was the world's biggest creep he was a lot older than I was I was 19 at the time and he was a very abusive, very manipulative person and we entered into a relationship kind of it was very secretive because no one could know because shocker he was doing this to other people for about 11 months things got very very bad very sexually abusive very mentally and emotionally and spiritually abusive which culminated in 2011 I was sexually assaulted repeatedly and was able to exit that relationship now the issue along with that being an incredibly traumatic experience that changed me on a permanent level was that he was a pastor and so much of the spiritual abusive manipulation tied in with how the church as a whole responded to me in the aftermath of that really messed me up and so everything that I had known about my faith just came into question and everything I believed for so long about humanity and people being good and like the world's a good place just crashed and burned and I question everything just everything the good little homeschool Christian girl was so gone and the next years were really really really dark I didn't like totally abandon my faith because I couldn't like I tried I was like peace out God I hate you but it just didn't work because I felt like he was still there like whoever God was I felt like he was still around me and so I basically stopped investing my faith until I met Brian who was super atheist at the time but he knew that there was like a piece of me that was missing because I talked about how important my faith used to be this is where Brian should get so many more points as a human being because he's just amazing because he did not care about like faith but he was like Joe like I know this really mattered to you I know this really hurt you but why don't we start going to church together like I know it's a scary place for you but like let's give it a shot together God he's so awesome guys Brian I mean like God's awesome too so we started going to church together we took a couple like basic Christianity classes because I was like ah maybe I just don't know anything that started like sowing little seedlings of faith where I'm like okay well maybe I can have a relationship with God it's not super scary because anything about God or Christianity was tied to like so much betrayal and so much trauma not just what not just what happened with this abusive man in my life but also what happened with the church as a whole and how they responded to me after I had been in that abusive relationship so almost two years ago now I found out something as I was like re-establishing my faith that kind of made it crash and burn again ah during the previous five years I had been meeting regularly with being mentored by being counseled by in survivor groups with actually this guy did Brian and my premarital counseling and he married us and he was a family friend for a very very very very very long time very integrated in my life I trusted this man he was like decades and decades older than me right also a pastor found out two years ago that he's actually a registered sex offender who had abused women in three different countries yeah so the little seedlings of faith I was talking about got stumped to the ground again by the fact that the person who was like nurturing my faith and who I trusted turned out to be yet another monster in my head weirdly enough though that experience of being like oh my god the person who I like trusted to be a good person and like the person who I really thought had his faith together and was like really living his life like Jesus lived his life or whatever was just this horrible person and that experience made me really realize that like oh I think I'm putting my faith in people a little bit too much and so the past two years have been a journey for me of really separating any faith I have I'm talking like spiritual faith from people and making that more of a personal journey between me and god and you know having conversations with people sharing experiences but leaving it that because trying to engage in any organized anything has always been a very traumatic experience for me in recent years and so I do have faith I absolutely do have faith and I think that god has helped me through quite a few things in my life and I've definitely felt a presence in a lot of really dark places in my life with that being said I struggle to like classify myself as Christian because I don't read the bible even though I think there is so much wisdom and so much love in that book it's just so triggering and so traumatic for me to open it back up because of all the bad memories there I'm not putting this together I need to pause actually put this rug out because I said I was going to do that oh no as one might expect it has like the the straps on it and they have no scissors or do I great success guys I'm really looking forward to when I don't have to crawl around the floor like a puppy dog but hey that day will come eventually this is actually pretty cool guys this is not a paid ad like I said they sent this to me for free because they're super super nice and I thought it actually might help I'll put the actual company down below and a link to this rug if anyone is interested in it it's made of like squishy foam I should stop brandishing weapons at you guys huh that would be that would be a nice thing here's the moment of truth guys legitimately a lot better it's very slippery though I hope that would look cool I'm guessing no it probably looked really cool I'm probably super awesome we're just gonna go with that theory also circling back to the idea of faith and health if you struggle with chronic pain with chronic illness with major life changing surgery and of course this extends to anything else as well but I think that faith often gets called into question a lot of you know why questions come up like why did this happen and I've had questions come up of like you know have I questioned God because of this major life change that I've just gone through and the answer to that is no not at all I've definitely had anger just like anger not directed at anyone at the way that life is gone sometimes because I would rather not have had all of this happen but I think it kind of circles back to my theory of life which is that things happen and we adapt human beings are incredibly adaptive and I think that is one of the coolest things about us we are so resilient you are so resilient I am very resilient and when bad things happen or things that we seem to think are bad or that are painful experiences or negative things they suck period and also we find a way to get through them if we determine that that's what we're going to do if we put our minds to it if we keep going to bed and getting up in the morning and finding a way through we'll find a way through and I think that if there is a God and if God did create people if that's the way things work that is how we created us to be so no I definitely don't have anger towards God for anything that happened or for how life is right now it's just how life is right now if that makes any sense I'm not sure if that's a satisfying answer but that's the answer that I have someone likes the box guys I would love to hear about what kind of faith you guys have are you religious do you adhere to a specific religion or do you just have faith in general I am really fascinated to have conversations about spirituality with people because it's an idea and it's a topic that fascinates me I've had so many negative experiences with organized religion but that does not mean that I am in any way against it I know that different things work for different people and everyone has a different belief system I would love to hear your thoughts also to the person who sent me the white throne of judgment which was a Christian tract if you know what those are I appreciate your concern for my soul and also if you want to send me a return address because it came without one I would love to write you back I would love to have a conversation with you by the way BL page 2 I got your package full of the 90 and the 92% dark chocolate bar I just wanted to say thank you and per your request I did like the darker one a little bit better the darker the chocolate the better like if I could just eat 100% dark chocolate I don't think that exists it probably does I would probably do that it's delightful it's very better but it's so good okay guys I need to find a home for that old rug now and I will see you later bye guys