Member Stories

Curiosity has always and will always be my compass.

I always asked big questions when I was growing up. Why is the sky blue? What is the meaning of life? Does God exist? What happens when we die? Being raised in an agnostic household with intellectually gifted parents, the answers they provided taught me that belief in God was incompatible with science.

My skepticism and hostility towards Christianity surged when I was 18 years old. I volunteered with Make-a-Wish. I constantly asked myself, “if God did exist, why would He allow children to suffer and die?” I was positive there was no God and I thought I had it all figured out as I entered adulthood.   

When I was in college, I took a quantum physics class and I learned about the double-slit experiment. Science created my atheism and science shattered my atheism. I won’t bore you with the details of the experiment, but it showed that particles of light behave different if it is being watched. In short: imagine if I told you that gravity acts differently if no one is around? At 20 years only, I realized God must exist.

In the following years, I buried both of my siblings. I went from a stay-at-home wife to a single mother standing on the edge of homelessness. All my children and I had were the clothes on my back and my car. My thoughts were full of rage. God exists, but where was He? I cursed Him in my grief. I raged at His silence. And I carried that hatred the way fire carries heat—quietly, dangerously, changing everything it touched.  

I fought to give my children and myself a better life after my divorce. In less than a year I went from not being able to tell car logos apart to becoming an ASE certified mechanic and running a shop with 18 employees. It was at the repair shop that I met my future husband - a devout Christian discerning the priesthood with the Episcopal Church. It is not my story to tell, but I can say my husband had a lot of discernment, prayer, and hard questioning about falling in love with a heathen. Unbeknownst to me, it was revealed to him that I was what God had in store for his life.   

Through our courtship, I started to ask my husband questions about Christianity. The most significant moment of my life was when I asked my husband, “can you read me your favorite passage in the Bible?” He read Beatitudes to me, and it was the first time I heard Him. I prayed for the first time at 28 years old. I then purchased my first Bible (a children’s bible with lots of pictures). I was struck by the way He treated people — the outcasts, the sinners, the broken. He wasn’t the distant, judgmental God I had imagined; He was compassionate, loving, and personal.

A few months later, our daughter Eden died. I was not angry at God. I needed Him. I did not come with polished prayers or certainty—I came empty-handed, undone, and trembling. And He met me there.  

In February of 2024, I was baptized in Resurrection Bay. Jesus truly changed my life, and I’m eternally grateful to be one of His children.

I am so honored to be the secretary of First Presbyterian. What a beautiful ministry I get to do everyday! I love serving as the first point of contact for people who are entering the building, providing a compassionate ear to those who call asking for prayers and help, creating beautiful bulletins to aid the congregation in worshipping Him, preserving the church’s history with digital archival, and even the mundane tasks that aid in the cause of Christ.

Outside of the church, I am a genealogist that helps adoptees find their biological parents and I aid law enforcement agencies in connecting Jane and John Does to missing persons cases. I volunteer with the Alaska State Chaplain’s Foundation, do complex photograph restoration,

and I am an avid rock hunter.

I give thanks to God each and every day for showing me that our ultimate happiness cannot be found on Earth.  I know my purpose is to stay behind. My devotion to my sister, my brother, my daughter, and all those who I have the honor of sitting vigil with is to simply say: “Go ahead—I’ll wait here.”  

I learned from all the suffering in my life. I learned courage, patience, compassion, selflessness, and humility.