More About Me

Growing up in a family of ALL boys until just last year wasn't easy, especially with an older brother. Brothers just have that way of making sure you will be a patient mama one day! :) But November 2012, after waiting and praying fervently since I was 3, God graced me with a beautiful little sister. Guess what? She's a ginger, just like me!! So, I am the second eldest of 9 children: 6 boys and my sister Gwen, and a new sister born October 2014!

Starting from left: CJ, holding Sam, Will, my mom Misty holding baby sister Gwen, Jesse (standing in front of Mama and Gwen), Phillip, my dad James, and Nicky. I'm in the middle wearing the tan cap. :) 

Here is a more recent photo, only missing my older brother CJ (away at bootcamp) and my dad (he's the man behind the camera haha!)

I honestly feel like my family is too small, and I constantly beg my parents for another sibling. In my opinion, though, when babies are in the picture, enough is never enough. I'm a 18-year-old high school graduate. I really want to spend some time with babies before possibly heading off to college next fall. And it really doesn't help knowing that #1, a lady in our little rural church JUST HAD A BABY, or #2, that a close friend of Mama's JUST HAD A BABY. Just saying. X)

Ok, so outta my Chronic Baby Deprivation Syndrome and into my life.

I was homsechooled. In fact, all of my siblings are homeschooled. Until I was 8 years old, I lived in the Tennessee Mountain area. An absolutely GORGEOUS work of God's art, and living proof that there MUST be a Creator. At the age of 8, just two months after hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, however, my family moved. Just like that. And to where did we move? The recently hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast. By this time I was wondering WHAT IN THE WORLD God was thinking to do this to me. Everything and everyone I had ever known where in Tennessee; I couldn't leave. But alas, God had better plans.In 2008, a BRIGHT Lights group was started in my area. (I've posted a link to the website if you want more information.) This amazing Bible study changed my life. For the moment. In May of 2009, God laid another heavy blow on my family: my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with brain cancer. She lived on the North Carolina coast, an almost 1,100-mile trip from my home. My mom and all of my siblings at the time (only 5 brothers) drove up to her tiny 2-bedroom 1-bathroom home, where we lived from late July to early October. God took my darling Gammy home on September 16, 2009. I was staying with another family the day she passed away, and it broke my heart. I still remember vividly her last words to me, and what I later learned were her last words period. She told me "I love you, Shelly Bug."

I only cried my anguish at night. My friend Hailey, whom I was staying with the day Gammy went Home, would sit with me on her trampoline and pat my back while I sat silent the first couple of days. She was such a face of God's grace to me during that time. It's crazy, but in your darkest days, in the times when you are most full of anguish and despair, God sends the perfect person to share your grief. Hailey and I are still very close to this day, even though we haven't seen each other in two years. 

I thank God every day for my family I still have, and although I still miss that sweet lady, my grandmother, so very much, I know that I will see her again. <3

After graduating high school May 2, 2014, I started searching for God's plan. In other words, what I wanted God to be leading me to do. Which is not the same as His plan haha!

I got a job at a Subway in town late August 2014, and started working almost full time. I could feel my relationship with God slipping as I walked into the world, and adopted little bits of worldly knowledge taht "wasn't too bad". Before long I only listened to secular music, I was pushing it with my language, and the sweet little church girl was starting to show her wild side.

I hated the person I was becoming. By April 2015, I couldn't even recognize myself from a year prior. Past depression issues resurfaced, and I became a gloomy, broken teenager once again. My older brother and best friend, CJ, left for bootcamp on 4/6/15, and I became even more reserved and depressed. I made many very bad choices that have hurt me, and will continue to hurt me as I get older.

Then came Mrs. Campbell's call for new young ladies to work in the Above Rubies office. I declined in mid-April, too afraid to go right after my older brother had left. But God wasn't finished with me yet. 

Mid June rolls around, and once again God is showing me Above Rubies. By this time, I was starting to step out of my depressive state slowly, and searching more for Christ, though I was still not fully handing my life over to Him. I wanted to go to college get a psychology degree and become a counselor, get married soon after, and have a family as well as a career at home.

But God has other plans. He put so many things in my path that I finally KNEW that Primm Springs Tennessee was where He was leading me.