College Admissions Essay: The Person I Am Today

What makes me the person I am you ask? My family and ministers are the people who have helped me become the person I am today. Without ministers or more specifically my parents I would not be where I am today. One question people always ask is “How do you manage to do it? Or “How do you just let go of the past like that and move on so easy” My answer simply is “I just do.” Life is not always an easy ride, it comes with a lot of failure, successes and even lessons that are to be learned. During my nineteen years of life my parents have taught me how to care, how to love and most importantly how to be a godly woman. A woman who helps other people in need, but also a woman who has daily struggles just like everyone else. The real question is how did I become the woman I am today? Some things that have helped shape me along the way would be letting go of the past, knowing my worth, and most importantly prayer.

Throughout my years of life, I have always been told that I would do great things with the faith and personality that I have.

I have always grown up in a Pentecostal church since I born so I knew roughly how everything worked. My parents are very involved in church from being youth pastors to church board members so I grew up beyond blessed. Every year, they would send me to youth camp along with other teens in our church, in which I absolutely loved to go. I learned so much during the weeks I was there and it really taught me how I wanted to live for Christ and how I wanted others to see who I really was. While it was still hard for me to bear with the fact that I knew I had a calling on my life, but I didn’t know when, where, why and how it would all conspire and happen at that moment. But, a year ago youth camp changed everything for

me.
Normally the week at youth camp we are assigned to do basically “chores” in our cabin so that we can win money at the end of the week for the cleanest cabin. I woke up one morning at youth camp and did what we were assigned to do whether it was to clean the room, clean the countertops or clean the bathrooms. I got assigned to clean the showers in our room that morning and immediately when I stepped foot into the bathroom something just didn’t feel right. I kept feelings like I was being pulled down by something but I didn’t know what it was. I had been struggling for a while to find my true self and my worth, it seemed like every time I tried to change myself for someone, whether to “fit in or be cool” it seemed like I kept getting knocked down and pushed back even further into guilt. I knew I was going down the wrong path for people who had no intentions on building me up as a godly person, but I didn’t know how to let go and move forward with the life that I was particularly living. After cleaning showers, we all went and ate breakfast in the tabernacle where the director came up to me and asked was everything okay with me and I proceeded to say “Yes ma’am everything is just fine just going through some things,” when really, I just wanted to sit down and tell her everything that I was going through and dealing with. During the whole day after breakfast, I was too busy to even think about what was actually going on in my life but I felt so convicted on the fact that I lied straight to the director’s face saying everything was okay with me. I still went on with my day like it did not matter to me at that point until the night service.
That night, the minister at youth camp taught a sermon on “Let go and move forward to your calling.” It’s almost like I felt this strong presence behind me pressing heavy weight on my shoulders that I could not get off to save my life. I just felt so guilty for no reason that I could not explain. I didn’t know what was happening and what I did to feel this way. I was confused, but I did what I had to do. I sat there and started thinking what if I actually do this. What if I learn that nothing in the past matters anymore, what matters is what happens in the future. The future that I want to be changed. All around me I begin noticing that people were crying while the sermon was being preached. He said “Just because life doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to, doesn’t mean that you let situations stop you from having great expectations for your life.” The preacher called for an alter call at the end and I and other people went up to be prayed for. I thought to myself this is it Lord, I want to be changed and change the lives of other people around me. I want to know my worth and I want to know that I was called on this earth for a purpose. A purpose that only you can fulfil. For years I had been praying that God would lead me in the right direction in his timing and only his timing. Right then and there I felt that heavy lift off my shoulder and felt the presence of God surrounding us in the tabernacle. I begin praying for myself and other people to be set free. After the service was over, I walked up to the preacher and thanked him for the amazing sermon that he preached. I had finally felt like I had been set free from all the bondage and fear that was in my life. I became the best and the godliest influential person I could possibly be to the people who surrounded me. I began seeing a different aspect of life that night. A life that I had always longed for myself to be.
I was changed for the good that night and now I know why life gives us ups and downs. So, when people ask “how do you do it” I just simply do to the best of my ability. I try my very best at whatever I can possibly do to be a leader, to be a teacher and to share Gods word with others. I look at myself every single day and see myself shaping into the person that I know I was called to be all along for all these years. To this day because of that simple sermon and them three simple things that I learned, I occasionally minister to the teens and children on Wednesday nights. I see how much I have impacted their lives on a daily basis and now I can finally say to myself that every failure that knocked me down was worth it.