MY STORY
Hey! I’m Lavinia and welcome to my little corner of cyberspace. This is the place where I dump all my life ideas, dramas and everything in between. I think it’s a hoot but I’ve been wrong about things before so if you get bored to death, I won’t take any offense.
I'm an Auckland girl born and bred but like most people have a never-ending desire to travel the world. I want to shuffle my surroundings; to wake up in cities I can get lost in and have conversations in languages I don't completely understand. I'll get there one day. Until then I’m stuck at Maccas doing whatever is needed at the time, whether that be making burgers or coffee or just having a good yarn with the customers, it just depends on the day. Outside of that I attend AUT where I’m studying Event Management and Marketing, so daily commutes to the city have become somewhat the norm. The rest of my life is spent at my church where I help with Girls Rally and the women’s ministry. Somewhere in the busyness of all that I have the time to sporadically post on this blog which I originally created in the vain hope that it would potentially help someone who was going through whatever I’m going through. Now however I see it as a way to keep myself accountable in my faith, my life lessons, and to just keep track of my crazy hijinks. So, welcome on the journey, it’s so incredibly great to have you with me. š
I'm an Auckland girl born and bred but like most people have a never-ending desire to travel the world. I want to shuffle my surroundings; to wake up in cities I can get lost in and have conversations in languages I don't completely understand. I'll get there one day. Until then I’m stuck at Maccas doing whatever is needed at the time, whether that be making burgers or coffee or just having a good yarn with the customers, it just depends on the day. Outside of that I attend AUT where I’m studying Event Management and Marketing, so daily commutes to the city have become somewhat the norm. The rest of my life is spent at my church where I help with Girls Rally and the women’s ministry. Somewhere in the busyness of all that I have the time to sporadically post on this blog which I originally created in the vain hope that it would potentially help someone who was going through whatever I’m going through. Now however I see it as a way to keep myself accountable in my faith, my life lessons, and to just keep track of my crazy hijinks. So, welcome on the journey, it’s so incredibly great to have you with me. š
Anyways so my testimony. I shared it over on my friends blog a couple of months ago but its something I feel has been placed on my heart to share on my blog too. The first time I ever shared my testimony was with my graduating classmates in 2016 but I really wasn’t happy with how that one turned out. So when I was asked to do a guest post sharing my testimony I was totally stuck. How was I meant to share my boring life in a way that would inspire others?? Because the thing about writing a story, even if it’s a seemingly true story, is that you can cut out the parts you don’t like, you can hide all the messy parts and instead portray to the world the image they thought they had all along. I could have done that. I would have done that. Except over the course of 2017 I’ve been really challenged to be real. See I had this friend who completely convinced himself that I was fake. At first, I was in complete denial. But as I started thinking about it more I realised that he was right in a sense. I wasn’t fake in the true sense of the word. But I was fake in the way that I hid parts of my life from people. I hid the nasty and the ugly so that people would like me better. So that I wouldn’t scare them away. But I always had this nervous feeling that they would find out and hate me forever once they did. So, with all that in mind when I sat down to write my testimony. I sat down to be real. I know some of you will have already read it so bear with... here it is... the un edited story of what Gods done and is doing in my life.
All my life I've been fully immersed in the Christian faith. I was blessed to grow up in a Christian home with Christian parents who enrolled me in Christian schools in the hope that I would make good Christian friends. I also attended Girls Rally and Sunday School so it was feasible for me to grow up thinking that I was a good little Christian girl. Like most children brought up in the same circumstances as me I accepted Jesus as my Saviour and Lord when I was four. Or that’s what my mother tells me. I don’t remember that but I remember not having a relationship with God for most my life up until now. Sure, some day’s I’d feel a twinge of guilt over how I acted and recommit, promise myself I’d stop acting as I did and try to follow Gods footsteps but after a few days the warm fuzzy feeling would wear off and I would continue with my life as it had always been.
When I was fifteen I was insanely in “love” with this guy. We were six days into our “official” relationship when he broke up with me for family reasons. Looking back that was the most 12v relationship of all time, probably belongs in the Guinness book of world records or something. But however stupid it seems now back then it absolutely crushed me. I kept running over those six days in my head trying to figure out what I could have done to change the mess I was in then. The friend and family dramas that followed in the weeks after that pushed me deeper and deeper into the web of depression I found myself entrapped in. About that time, I became obsessed with the song Human by Christina Perri. In that song, she sings the lyrics “I can force a smile, I can fake a laugh” those six words became my mantra throughout year 11. Force a smile, fake a laugh, and everything will be okay. I told myself that as long as everything looked okay on the outside the lost feeling I had inside would slowly disappear, that I would forget that every day on the way home from school I just wanted to run in front of a bus and die. That year was the year I felt the furthest from God, my friends, my family, anything really. I was too scared to tell anyone what I was going through and how messed up my mind had gotten that I tried my hardest to fake normality. I would stand up on stage in worship every couple of Sundays and force a smile, fake a laugh, anything to convince the world around me that I wasn’t living in the ashes of my self-implosion. With the help of a friend, I rebuilt my shallow polystyrene world. I got to the point where I could smile and it wouldn’t be forced, some days I felt happy and others I thought I was falling back into the dark hole I had only just started crawling out of. It was two steps forward one step back but thankfully by the grace of God I got out of that hole alive.
After that life continued as normally as it could, I worked my butt off to bring my grades back to where they should be, to be friends with my friends and not the random loser girl who sat with them but never said anything. I made amends with my past and slipped back a few times but never as deep as I had been and tried my hardest to move on into my future.
A year and a half of searching for a greater meaning for my life went by before I found myself at night church with a bunch of friends where the preacher was preaching a sermon from Matthew 6 focussing specifically on verse 33 where Jesus commands us to "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness,” He highlighted the fact that to seek God we have to come to him. He doesn't come to us. It literally hit me like a ton of bricks that for my whole life I had been rocking along identifying as a Christian but really, I had never sought out the kingdom of God for myself. So, on the 25th September 2016, I recommitted my life to the Lord.
Ever since my recommitment I've been constantly learning more about who God is and what it means to be a Christian surprisingly a lot of this was at uni. But that’s probably because I got involved in with a Christian group on campus. If that’s the reason it’s made a world of difference in my life. Because if I’m honest I think that without my action group to constantly keep me accountable about where I was at with my faith that recommitment in September would have just turned out like all the rest. I could spend all day telling you about all the stuff I’ve learnt through Student life and how I’ve had the opportunity to share with a couple of kids on campus but that would take a wee while so instead I just want to quickly share with you the biggest lesson I (finally) learned which was a couple of months ago when I was at work. As I was writing out this all I stumbled across this quote on Pinterest that says, “Sometimes it takes an overwhelming breakdown to have an undeniable breakthrough.” And I just think that sums up what I’m about to share next.
It was a Friday night and drive thru was packed! I was taking orders and cashing cars with one of the other girls when one of the managers (who might I add wasn't even running the shift) came in all high and mighty saying that we were so slow and that it was all our fault that drive was backed up and I was just standing there like ah buddy? We just got told by the actual manager of the shift that kitchen was slow. And she just looked at me and was like "No Lavinia this one's your fault." Then I got sent on a break and thought everything would work itself out while I was gone. It didn’t. The girl I was working with finished her shift so I was in the drive thru all by myself while it was still crazy busy and this manager just got stuck in my head. all I could hear as I took the orders was how bad I was and how I was letting down the whole team. In that moment, everything that had happened since the beginning of the year; all the failed friendships, the stuffed up life plans, the ridicule, the opinions and the disappointment all just piled up into one big tumbleweed of crap and I just melted down right there in front of some strange women who probably low key started freaking out. I mean what do you do when the cashier just starts bawling her eyes out for no apparent reason?? I guess that’s the great thing about life you can go from cloud nine to 55 feet under in 2 seconds flat. This wasn’t a new thing for me. Well, it kind of was. Normally people get into my head when I'm on my own and I break down there. Somehow that all seems more manageable than in public, in the middle of my shift, in front of some random lady. Anyways so I'm standing there sobbing my way through orders and this guy drives up to the window to pay for his food, sees that I'm resembling a human panda and asks me if I was okay? For some reason, I just told it to him straight, that I screwed up so bad, not just tonight, but my whole life and I genuinely had no clue of how I was ever going to get it back on track. He took a long look at me and just said "Jesus loves you. No matter what you’ve done he loves you." And it was like something finally clicked. I had been told this fact for so so so so soooooo long but I never really understood it until then. He loves me in spite of the fact that I failed high school. He loves me even though I can't do anything without second guessing and over analysing every little fact. He loves me when it feels like the whole worlds against me. HE LOVES ME.
So yes, I still get high and low sometimes but unlike the past eighteen years, I have someone who's with me where ever I am, however, I feel and loves me through all my insecurities and anxiety.
As I wrote all this out I was reminded of a verse in Philippians where Paul says that we should be confident in the fact that “he who begun a good work in us will carry It on to the day of completion”. The way I see it. God begun a good work in me way back in 2002 when I first accepted Jesus into my heart and looking back over my life I can see how he carried on that good work by placing certain people in my life at specific times when I needed them the most and I trust that he’ll keep doing that until the day he sees my life’s purpose complete.
If there’s one thing I could ask of you though, it would be to not stay silent. Don’t be that person who reads something that you agree/disagree with and move on with your day. I genuinely really want to hear your opinions/ideas so feel free to hit me up any time either through the contact form or on any of my social media accounts. It would really mean a lot to hear from you!!
