This is my story

Or maybe a better way to put it is, God’s story in me.
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So I guess I'll start with where I'm from,
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Buxton, Australia, a small village town which has about 2000 people there, I grew up in Campbelltown which is slightly bigger and has around 170,000 living there. I'm the eldest of 2.
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I grew up in a Christian home and gave my heart to Jesus at around 6, at that age it didn't mean all that much to me so life continued on, the way I understood being a Christian was you have to be religious; behave, read the Bible, pray, go to church and show no one your bad side.
I think it's safe to say, I hadn't met Jesus yet, I'd read of him, heard that He loves me and I didn't want to go to hell so I thought ooh there's a big box I can tick and say that's done I'm set for life
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Growing up with that mindset, I still believed and agreed with everything I would hear in church or at youth or home, I called myself a Christian but it never fully clicked, then one day after crying myself to sleep for looking at that thousandth picture, I had this startling realization, I was a sinner! And I can't say there was specifically that kind of a moment where I hit rock bottom (I don't have that kind of story), it was rather through small moments like that where God began to show me that I need Him.
In saying that, I don't want to downplay things I went through, for years when I was young I struggled with pornography addiction, God delivered me from that, for years I struggled with unforgiveness, Jesus showed me the cross that He forgave me on, I've struggled with identity and knowing where I got in, still working with God on that one, for a very long time I could not trust, He revealed himself as the one who will never let me down (AND HE HASN'T!)
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Where the journey of hardships and finding God began for me was Boxing Day 2013, for context, I was very close with my cousin on my mum's side, She and I are a year apart and were like brother and sister, so, Boxing Day, the day after our family Christmas gathering, we were at home when all of a sudden my grandparents turned up unannounced, yelling and screaming all sorts of horrible obscenities toward my parents,
Now of course almost 14 year old me didn't understand what on earth was happening so I just hid in my room and waited it out.
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Skip ahead 1, maybe 2 months (I can't remember now), I was vacuuming the house minding my own business, when I heard knocking at the front door, I turned the vacuum cleaner off and opened the door to see 2 police detectives standing there, I was a little bit frightened and very confused, but I let them in, they talked with my mum in the loungeroom (living room if you prefer), and after they left, she came out crying.
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Now over time my mother explained to me what the police visit was about and why I wasn't allowed to go to my grandparents' house to see my cousin anymore...and that is because my cousin had gone to the police (with Papa) to accuse me of doing horrible things to her, God brought the truth out, He told my mother in a dream a year before all of this, but, police found it had been my grandfather (Papa) grooming and abusing her from the time she was really young.
Years later I found out she was going to tell the truth to the police but then Papa went with her so she got scared and picked me out of the lucky dip I guess.
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This obviously gave me a shock, not just because I was falsely accused, but because someone I thought I was really close with my whole life, would just accuse me of such things, and a family I thought I knew, could have been hiding such a dark secret for so long! And that everyone except the four of us believed lies over truth.
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Finding this out and then having to cut ourselves off with everybody from that side of the family just absolutely broke me, I couldn't understand why a GOOD and JUST God would allow this to happen, it didn't make sense to me, so I kinda decided to walk away from God for a bit, not too long but long enough.
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There was absolutely no forgiveness in my heart, as a result, I became very bitter, angry and depressed, I didn't trust anybody outside my immediate family, No One. It stayed like that for years. In between what God was bringing to the light, my parents bought a block of land in the country, we moved houses to get away and we spent the next 4 years building (but that's another story)
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All the meanwhile, God hadn't given up on me, see while I had it in my head that by not forgiving my extended family for their wrongdoings and siding with the wrong people that I was hurting them, God showed how much damage I'd done to myself, God showed me how the hate was eating at me like acid!
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My heart was hurting and Jesus wanted to heal it.
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In 2016 a new hunger to learn about and grow a relationship with Jesus came about in me, I repented of my sin and re-dedicated my life to God and was baptized that year! That's when I feel I met Jesus.
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Even though I had made this fresh commitment to follow Jesus I still couldn't let go of the bitterness until 2018 when I sought Jesus at a healing retreat by a wonderful ministry (Ellel Ministries) and that's really when the ball got rolling and I was set free from the bondage of unforgiveness, I was in a place where I could let go and I chose to forgive my family.
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I had never felt so free!
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God led me to a new youth group, new friends, a new church family at the start of 2019 which I quickly became involved in to the point of being asked to be a part of the youth leadership team which was an amazing 2 year journey!!
At the end of 2019 bushfires came and with that new ways of testing my faith and trust in Jesus, then covid hit in 2020 which brought challenges for the world at large of course, but which God used to bring undealt feelings in my family to the surface so that He could work on us, both as individuals and as a family.
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In 2021 I have travelled halfway across the world (during corona times!) to Norway to go more in-depth into my faith by doing a Discipleship Training School (DTS) with Youth With A Mision (YWAM) at Grimerud and let me tell you, God has revealed Himself in so many new ways to me I couldn’t even begin to try and describe it, even through everything I have been through already, through 3 months of intense lectures, looking into the Bible closer than I would have at home, building relationship with incredible, like-minded people from different backgrounds, different walks of life, different nations, different denominations, and 2 months of adventures during our outreach to the Faroe Islands.
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Jesus truly is ALIVE!!
That is my conclusion after experiencing what I have so far in my (21 year) lifetime.
Who knows where God will lead me next ;)
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So now you know me a little bit better, why don’t you follow me on social media to follow along on my journey?