Nine years ago was my first year on the Texas State campus. I had just left everything I had known in the town I had lived in my whole life. I was searching for new friends while fully trying to fit the mold of the very typical college freshman girl. With my identity fully placed in the hands of whoever would give me attention, I thought things were going great. Little did I know life as I knew it would come crumbling down beside me as I was unexpectedly diagnosed with some medical complications.
I learned rather quickly that I was alone in a new place with no real community around me. I was isolated and soon fell deep into a hole of depression. I felt alone and unwanted by God and everyone else around me. One day, I was invited to a Community Group through Crosstalk, and in my desperation, I decided I would go.
While I was there, I met some wonderful girls who spoke life over me and prayed for me during one of the darkest times of my life. Through one specific girl who decided to meet up with me weekly, God breathed life back into my heart. He replaced my hopelessness with joy. He taught me through His word and the new community around me that my worth was found in Him. I felt loved fully for what felt like the first time. And as for the friends I met in that group, they became my new roommates, who I spent the rest of my college years alongside. They have become lifelong friends who still, to this day, speak life over me during hard times.
God spoke to me through these verses in Matthew 10 in more ways than once during that time. God knows me. He knows the very hairs on my head. I am worth more than many sparrows!