Christy - United States Of America

Nickname: Cree

I grew up in a family of strong faith. My parents were missionaries in West Africa, where I spent my childhood. We moved to the U.S. when I was in the 8th grade, and I entered a long struggle with my identity and fitting in. I became focused on success in school and sports as a way to find acceptance. My identity as a child of God lost priority until some difficult events in my junior year of college. I realized then that while I tried all my life to be "good" and had prayed to accept Christ as a child, I was not relying on Christ as my Savior or as my source of strength. I was trying still to gain acceptance by others and by God through good behavior and success.

Since that time, God has continued to show me, mostly through friends, how much I am loved by Him unconditionally and accepted by Him even when I mess up - in big or little ways.

Learning to feel "normal" in U.S. culture has coincided with learning to trust God's amazing work to redeem me and all His children. He is helping me build my identity in Him, not in any one culture, or in my success, or failures.

My family is filled with artists, so I've enjoyed drawing and painting as a hobby. In the past four years, I've begun to use photography as an art to capture beauty in nature. I enjoy sharing my photographs with others as a way of helping them see God's creation which He uses to encourage me.