Life With Jenny: Merry Christmas!!

What is your favorite thing about this time of year? I love so much about it, I don't think I can pick just one. I love the decorations, music, food - oh my goodness the food! I love the different festivities that go on around town, I love that families are spending more time together, oh and the lights - the lights are great! I think the BEST thing about Christmas is that we're celebrating the birth of Jesus. Jesus is the reason for the season - I know that's a phrase that many say a lot, however, I truly believe we wouldn't have this special time of year without Jesus.

I'd like to take a moment to share a little bit about how I grew up and how at 34 years old, I came to know Jesus as Lord of my life. Stick around because I've got a pretty good story!

Growing up, my life wasn't all unicorns and rainbows and gummy bears. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when I was 6 years old, almost lost my life to it. When I was around 8 years old, I had witnessed physical abuse in my home, my parents divorced when I was 9 and my brother was 1. When I was 9, I also fell straight onto my head from a swing set that only by the grace of God didn't injure me more than it did. When I was 11, my mom, her fiancé, and I moved to Orlando, FL. While we lived in Florida, I don't know what exactly happened during that time but, there were more evictions than I think I can remember, my mom had also gotten really sick because her appendix had burst, I started working at a young age so I could have money to buy things, sometimes those things were food or my insulin and syringes, these years weren't the easiest, but they definitely made me stronger. I learned how to take care of myself.

Growing up, we didn't talk about God. I didn't know about Him. One day in high school, my friend group was talking about religion. A friend asked me what my religion was and I couldn't answer. I had no idea. She asked if I believed in God. I thought about it for a second and I was like yeah, I think so? I went home that day and asked my mom and Bob about it. What religion are we? Do we believe in God? They said yes, and that we were Protestant. Protestant? I asked what that meant. They explained that it basically meant that we believed in God but we didn't believe that you had to go to church to pray to him. Okay...I didn't question that much, I felt like that was a reasonable explanation and not a bad way to believe in something. We'd never gone to church before; there was a time I'd gone to a Catholic church with my grandma, but I did not understand anything that was being said. I went back to school the next day and told my friend, I'm protestant, feeling like I had made a great discovery about my family.

My dad passed away when I was 18, unexpectedly. He was 41 years old. He didn't have a will when he passed away so being his oldest child, I had to handle everything. I was executor of his estate. I had no idea what I was doing. Dealing with his death was not something I was ready to handle, but I had no choice. Right before I turned 19, I was pregnant with Ryann. Ryann's birth was traumatic, I developed an eating disorder after that. I found out I was pregnant with Erica and then Steven deployed to Iraq, then I had another, kind of traumatic birth, then I found out I had another disease that was lifelong, then I had to have surgery to take my gallbladder out. My life has been one thing after another, constantly. While dealing with all the things life has thrown at me, diabetes didn't stop. I still had to handle that. I still had to do multiple daily injections and poke my finger all the time. I still had to deal with the highs and lows.

My point in sharing these snippets from my life growing up, not knowing God, is to show you that even then, He still took care of me. Even before He and I had a relationship, He got me through all these things. He helped me along the way. I definitely made mistakes along the way but sometimes God lets us make mistakes so He can teach us something. There are multiple things that happened to me that I should not have survived. I've tried to take my own life, I've self harmed and did it for years with nobody knowing. God brought me through these things so I could be a shining light for His grace and His mercy and share Him with you!

God sent his only son, Jesus to earth for us. Jesus on earth was the physical form of the Father. He was born of the virgin Mary in Bethlehem, in a manger. Jesus grew up and lived a perfect, sinless life. God did this so that we, humans, would see how wonderful our God is. Jesus's mission was to preach the gospel, to share the good news. At the end of His mission, Jesus was persecuted because the Pharisees did not believe He was the Messiah. Jesus was tortured. He was whipped, beaten, kicked, spit on, had rocks thrown at him, had a crown made of thorns pressed into his head, forced to carry his own wooden cross about 600 meters to the crucifixion place and being beaten along the way. Jesus was nailed to this cross - large, thick nails were driven through his hands and feet and he was hung from the this cross. Jesus died on the cross for US. His blood was shed to save us from sin. This sacrifice that our God made for us is incredible, and all we have to do is believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and make Him Lord of our life and we are saved from sin, we are given the eternal gift of life in the Kingdom of Heaven. John 3:16 is the most well known bible verse: For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

Believing in Jesus in your heart and confessing with your mouth that He is Lord and you are not is the first step in making Him Lord of your life. Walking with Jesus isn't easy but, it is absolutely amazing and completely life changing! Walking with Jesus doesn't mean your life will be perfect, that's not the kind of Father God is. God does do miraculous things though. For example, after Erica and I both accepted Christ into our hearts, we were in a terrifying car accident. March 27, 2022. I will never forget this day. It was a Sunday. Erica and I were serving in the nursery at church that morning so we left the house before Steven and Ryann. We went the same way we always did, went to the light we always go to. The light was green when we approached it, so as any person would, I kept going, because logically, if my light to turn left is green, the traffic coming from the left or right, would have a solid red light, right? True. However, red lights don't necessarily stop someone from not paying attention and running a light. Which is what happened. A driver coming straight on from the left side of me, was not paying attention and was travelling well over the posted 45MPH speed limit. His Kia Optima ran straight into the front left side of my Jeep Wrangler. It was a HARD hit, my Jeep flipped, the car went under my Jeep as it flipped and ran into a fence nearby on the opposite side of the intersection.

It felt like Erica and I were rolling in air for the longest time, I'm sure it was just seconds but it felt so long. We landed on the driver side of the vehicle. Erica was suspended above me by her seatbelt. I panicked and couldn't think of what to do except call my husband. My phone, amazingly was still connected to my Jeep so when my husband answered the phone, I could hear him through the radio in the Jeep. I was crying and scared. My chest hurt because the airbags had gone off and the chemicals they're filled with burn your lungs. I told my husband we'd been in an accident and he kind of chuckled saying call 911, not me! I hung up with him and called 911. While I was on the phone with 911, amazing people stopped and got Erica out of the Jeep and got her to the side of the road safely. I stayed on the phone with 911 and more people came to help me get out of the Jeep. EMS showed up, bystanders got me out of the Jeep, my husband showed up and got me across the street. Later when we talked about me calling him, he said he just thought it was a fender bender but hearing Erica scream registered so he jumped in his Jeep and used the Find My app on the phone to find us. We were just 2 minutes from the house. Erica and I got checked out by EMS and then Steven took us to the emergency room. Erica and I got checked out, x-rays, the whole bit and amazingly, we were both pretty much fine. Bumps and bruises, emotional/mental trauma, but we were alive! We walked away from that accident. (The other driver did too!) None of the glass in my Jeep even cracked.

Now, there was definitely a reason for this accident and I don't think it was to cause PTSD (which it did, but I'm working through it). It was for it to be part of my testimony! God knows everything that is going to happen in your life and in this instance, God sent his Angels to protect us. My Jeep was surrounded by Angels because this accident should have ended differently. Erica and I should have been injured more. We shouldn't have been able to walk away from that accident on our own 2 feet. But we did and I know without a shadow of a doubt, that was because of God and His love for us.

God is good and your life will be better with Him as the center of it! Accept the wonderful gift from Him! If you want to talk about Jesus and what getting saved means or looks like and the what's and how's and all the questions, email me, message me on social media, reach out! I would love to talk to you about Jesus, it's one of my favorite things!

Merry Christmas Everyone! I love you, Jesus loves you, and I'm so glad you're here! Thank you for being on this journey with me! God is using me to do great things and I'm so excited!

xoxo - Jenny