This essay started as an assignment for my college writing class, but it quickly turned into a passionate recollection of how Jesus has completely altered my life in the last year. If you take the time to read, I’d love to hear how our stories are similar, or even completely different. Peace and love <3
22 January 2026
Meeting the love of your life is like stepping into a world of color after living in greyscale. It'll probably be your parents who first notice, followed by your close friends and bosses; the brighter tone to your voice, the extra patience at traffic lights, and the unshakable ability to keep going. Acceptable normalcy has been replaced by exceptional devotion. The transition from spiritual necrosis to the surpassing joy of knowing my Savior was anything but quick and easy.
January frost draws itself across unsuspecting grass and discarded dog toys in the yard. The season’s frigid darkness is known for seeping into the very souls of those who do not safeguard against its icy grip. One Sunday morning, though, something will pull you to open YouTube, and sitting in the suggested tab will be a livestream from a church in Austin, Texas. You’ve never been to Texas, or heard of this church, but morbid curiosity means you watch the whole thing. Feeling inspired, you’ll search up churches near you and find one that starts in 30 minutes. You decide to go, even though you haven't stepped into a hallowed place for over a year.
Doc Marten’s laced tightly to your ankles, and a dusty bible clutched to your side, you'll step into the fluorescently lit sanctuary and find a place to sit in the red upholstered pews, despite the nervousness biting at your feet. Organ music fills the room, a hymn that strikes a chord of nostalgia within you. There isn't anything particularly special about the setting or the message, but when you pass out of those doors and into the rest of the sunny afternoon, the countenance of your heart has shifted.
Being a woman on dating apps the week before Valentine's Day in a college town feels like cracking open the door to an abandoned house to search for the least appalling roach to share an evening with. Despite the reality of almost certain disappointment, you’ll match with a curly-haired, brown-eyed boy whose profile reeks of collegiate swagger. “This seems promising,” you'll think to yourself after you hear the footnotes of his life story. You’ll call him again, and he will tell you about the church he’s been attending, and you decide to go, maybe surprise him at the end of the week.
He ghosts you, and it might as well have been spite in the gas tank that took you to the congregation 20 minutes and an entire town away from the place you call home. The intention was to show him what he was missing, win him back, or even just glare at him across the room.
Again, you are faced with the doors of a hallowed place, but this time pure adrenaline and the forming pools of anxious sweat almost prevent you from entering it at all. The tension is unmistakably pulling you with the same unyielding force as gravity; obedience becomes compulsory.
Striding into the unknown is now somehow clothed in its own odd sense of familiarity. The meeting place is crowded with new faces, but unlike every other strange room you’ve stepped into since moving to school, they see you, and they all smile. A group of young women beckons you inward. “Hi! I’m Elli, What's your name?” chirruped a tall girl with straight, sandy hair. You introduce yourself in the typical fashion. “What's your major?” “Where are you from?” “Are you going to OSU?” The well-known barrage of questions hangs freshly in the air this time; the tone of legitimate curiosity is almost shocking.
Elli invites you to sit with her in the sanctuary. The small room is darkened, the corners punctuated by LEDs and dark curtains. You stand for worship as the band takes the stage; you've been in this position the majority of the Sundays in your lifetime. In this place, the waves of submission to divinity wash off the strangers nearby with such force that its vastness seems like it could swallow you whole. You’ll be so desperate to sing the words, but the song is mournfully unfamiliar.
When the last prayer is murmured, and the lights come up, you have to reckon with the mordant tears running down your face and quickly wipe them away with a conveniently absorbent sleeve. Incipience bleeds hotly in your chest, the new sense of purpose rupturing into a long-desired personal reality.
The sound of a melodic voice snaps you back to the present. You recognize the woman with the silk headscarf as one of the worship leaders. “Hey, I haven't seen you here before. I’m Maria. What's your name?” The questions poured out of her, with genuine wonder behind each inquiry.
She invited you to a Wednesday night gathering with the promise of free dinner and discussion.
Before you leave, she puts her contact information in your phone. Her inviting radiance made it easy to make the choice to show up to the mid-week gathering.
Winter drags into March, but even early sunsets and overcast afternoons cannot overshadow the budding purpose within you. The once dusty bible has now been fervently highlighted and underlined, pages bent from quick references, and haphazardly tossed into whatever bag leaves the house with you that day. You’ll find yourself weeping in the kitchen when the lines of Luke convey the suffering of Jesus, and how His great love for you is what kept the Son of God from saving himself, and instead, enduring the very punishment that you deserved.
Two solstices pass, and it's the winter term of your sophomore year. You still have the same job, attend classes at the same community college, and still show up faithfully to church every week. Your life is practically the same, but the illumination of your soul is wholly undeniable. Any personal gain might as well be a loss, relative to the delight of knowing your heavenly father.
In between the pain of quitting addictions, losing friends, and being devoured by loneliness, you learned how to live a life worth dying for.
I genuinely enjoyed reading this. I’ve been in a similar headspace and have felt an increasing desire to go back to a simpler way to use tech. are there any other ways in your life you are trying to resist AI?