The following is a transcript of the testimony I shared before being baptized at Willowdale on December 5, 2021. While some details of my story have changed (ex. at the time of my baptism I was single, and now I’m engaged), the truths I share about God are — and always will be — unchanging.

“Jesus, please come into my heart.” These are the words I remember praying the day I accepted Christ as my Savior. While I don’t remember all the details leading to that moment, I do know that around that time I found out that my cousin was getting baptized, which sounded like the coolest thing in the world to me, and my parents explained to me that if I wanted to be baptized someday, I first had to have a personal relationship with Jesus. So I went up to my room, knelt by my bed like all the Precious Moments figurines did, and prayed the prayer. I was about four years old.

Even as a child, I understood that my relationship with God was personal – evidenced by the fact that I used to talk to Him aloud on the school bus when the girl I sat next to got off at her stop and I felt lonely, or pretend to push Him on the swing set at school. (Which sounds cute in theory, but in hindsight probably looked more like a scene out of a horror movie.) The point is, I knew Jesus was my friend. What I didn’t know was just how much I would need His friendship.

In the fall of 2008, I started my freshman year of high school. It was my first time going to a public school after growing up in a tiny Christian school where everyone knew me and I knew everyone. I had struggled with friendships in middle school, so I was excited to have a fresh start in a place where no one knew me. However, as someone who had never done well with change, I was also very anxious going into that year…and that anxiety ended up growing out of control, paralyzing me to the point that I could barely hold conversations with people. As a result, I made very few friends, I lost all sense of who I was, and I spiraled into a depression that lasted for most of that year. The only thing that got me through that time was clinging to Jesus like my life depended on it, even though there were times when – for the first time in my life – it felt like the God I’d known since childhood wasn’t there. 

The next few years felt like a slow and painful climb out of a deep, dark pit. The anxiety that took over my life as a freshman continued to follow me around, making me question every single interaction, every single conversation, and every single relationship in my life. The best analogy I have is like having your own personal marching band – except they all hate you, and instead of playing instruments, they’re constantly repeating all the awkward and embarrassing things you say or do and telling you all the reasons why the people around you shouldn’t like you. It was exhausting.

It wasn’t until I was in college that I began to understand that at the root of this anxiety was a fear of not being loved. In my mind, anyone in my life could decide at any moment that I wasn’t worth keeping around if I didn’t somehow earn the right to stay. Once I understood that and began to verbalize it and let others in, I began to experience some healing. But the damage from all those years of believing lies takes a long time to undo, and in 2016 I graduated from school, moved back home with no job prospects, and went through another transition that shook my sense of self again.

On July 16, 2018, I wrote the following words in my journal: “Will I ever stop feeling like there’s something inside of me that’s broken beyond repair?” At the time I wrote these words, I was 24 years old and living with my parents, working a part-time job and barely paying my student loans. I was single when most of my friends were getting married, and I was drowning in shame. I felt like a failure, and deep down I believed that’s how God – and the people around me – saw me too. At 24 years old, ten years after my freshman year of high school, I was convinced that I had ruined my life.           

The truth is, there’s not an “ah-ha” moment I can point to when things began to change. It was a series of small things over time, little ways that Jesus pursued my heart and showed me His love through His people and His word. It was joining a women’s Bible study at a new church and discovering that married women actually did want to be friends with me and that they had a lot to teach me. It was a close friend who knew I was struggling giving me the email of a Christian counselor and taking the leap of faith to send that email even though I had no idea how I was going to pay for therapy. (Which, for the record, is one of the best decisions I ever made.) It was finally getting serious about spending time with the Lord every day and letting Him speak His truth over my soul. I don’t know when it happened, but I do know that by the time I turned 25, something felt different. After over a decade of living like a slave to fear and shame, I was beginning to experience true freedom and healing in Christ.            

One of my favorite Bible verses is 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and the one who fears has not been made perfect in love.” Not only does this verse tell me that I don’t have to be afraid of not being loved by others because God’s love for me is enough, it also means that because of God’s love for me, I don’t have to be afraid of Him. And this is really good news – because in a way, I had it right when I wrote in my journal that something felt broken inside of me. That broken thing is sin, and it’s the whole reason Jesus had to die on the cross.          

But thankfully, His story didn’t end there and mine doesn’t either. Because Jesus didn’t just die on the cross, He rose again. And when He rose, He conquered sin and death and shame on my behalf. And because of that, my identity is no longer in my sin or in the things I have felt shame over.             

My identity is not in my relationship status, my anxiety, or my body image. My identity is not in the hurtful words that have been spoken to me or the ones I’ve spoken to others. My identity is not in the choices I made in college involving alcohol because I liked who I was when I was drinking better than when I was sober. My identity is not in my student loans, or my income, or my Instagram likes. My identity isn’t even in any of the good things about me.        

My identity is rooted in who my God says I am and what is written about me in His Word. Here are just a few of the things he calls me: He calls me his Child. He calls me Chosen. He calls me Forgiven. He calls me Redeemed. He calls me Beloved. He calls me Bride. And He calls me Friend.

From an outsider’s perspective, my life doesn’t look like anything special. I’m still single, and I still don’t really know what I’m doing. But for me, there are times when I’m just so overwhelmed with gratitude because today I’m living a life that, three years ago, I did not think was possible. When I look back over the past thirteen years, it is so clear to me that even in the moments when He felt far away, God was on a rescue mission for my heart all along. So I made the decision to get baptized today because, like my 4-year-old self, I still think it’s the coolest thing in the world. But unlike my 4-year-old self, I can now testify to the life-changing love of my friend Jesus, and I want to commit the rest of my life to Him. 

ABOUT OUR BLOGGER

Kati Lynn Davis grew up in Chester County. After a brief stay on the other side of Pennsylvania to earn a writing degree from the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to the area and got a job working for a local library. When she isn’t writing, Kati enjoys reading, drawing, watching movies (especially animated ones!), drinking bubble tea, hanging out with her family cat, and going for very slow runs. Kati is pretty sure she’s an Enneagram 4 but is constantly having an identity crisis over it, so thankfully she’s learning to root her sense of self in Jesus.