Renata's Graduation Speech 2010

Have you ever felt the pain of being lost and completely in despair? Have you ever had a time in your life when you had nobody to look to when lost and utterly helpless? Have you ever had an empty heart that left you with a sense of complete helplessness? When I stop and reflect on my childhood, feelings and sensations like these swarm my thoughts and fall like a darkness that seems to envelope every part of me.

As a young girl I hadn't the slightest idea about life. I had a mother who claimed she loved me, but the bond between her and her five children was so weak that she ended up allowing them all to slip away from her home, and it seems, from her heart. She lived as if everything mattered to her more than the care and nurturing of her children. Whether it was the pursuit of pleasing others, or of drinking the next bottle of alcohol or of having her next drug-induced "high", her children were always receiving the leftovers. In her home, that's all I was: something left over.

After being passed through foster homes for quite some time, Christ began the process of healing in the life of a little 10 year-old girl. He placed me in the home of Lynn and Paul Rorberg, who already had three young boys, all under the age of four! I still remember my initial gaze at those three faces; it was love at first sight! And while stepping into an unfamiliar home was certainly not new to me, I was about to discover that being part of this household would change my life forever - quite truly into eternity.

My entrance into the Kingdom of God did not occur in one heart-stopping moment or by some pivotal dramatic event. However, it was sudden, for there came a day when I could, with real sincerity, say that I loved Christ and that I trusted Him as the One Who had died for my sins and had snatched my soul out of the fires of eternal damnation.

It seems now, looking back on the course my life has taken, that God's hand was guiding me home - not just to an earthly home - but to an eternal home as well. My first introduction to Christ as the Living, Ruling, Redeeming God of heaven, was in the household of the family where I stayed just prior to going to the Rorbergs; but I did not begin to grasp the love of God or to have a change in my own heart until I entered my parents' home. It was readily obvious that this family was different from the other families I had lived with. They loved the Lord as a family, and as a family they chose to honor and follow Him. This meant that if I was going to be a part of this family, I, too, needed to be acquainted with Christ. As my parents spent year upon year discipling me and teaching me how to live as a Christian and be the one who stood out as a young, faithful woman who could be an example and sweet aroma to my biological family, I grew fonder and closer to God and His Word.

As the Holy Spirit began to work in my life, I found that my outlook was radically different from that of my biological family. When I made choices to refrain from things they might want me to do, I disappointed them. As I moved closer to Christ, they seem to run the other way. As I tried to understand all of this, my mother would comfort me reminding me that God had chosen me as His particular child. She said that my family was like a fruit tree, and that most of the fruit had been left to itself on the vine, but that God had spared me from falling to the ground: that I was God's picked apple.

Thus, living in the Rorberg home was God's necessary building block that helped faith come to life, and which continues to nurture faith so that it might grow.

As a result of moving from home to home, I also moved from school to school.
School was never my strong point, and even when I would catch a glimpse of what learning could mean to me and how it could shape and help me, I found it was time to move on again, and thus I would confront another new set of teachers, a new set of classmates, a new set of rules and jargon with which I was unfamiliar. School presented a dilemma in diminishing returns, and therefore, I felt hopeless in the face of it. I truly never caught the necessity of faithful studying, keeping up on daily assignments, or staying on task; these never ran through my head as things that were a must for a student. In order for me to be able to stick to something, I needed absolutely no distractions. In such moments, success followed, but such moments were rare, and the exception to the rule. Usually, because I had no confidence in myself or my capabilities, I depended on others for the work, for the outcome, even for the confidence. People around me would encourage me by pointing out those things that I could do if I put my mind to it and worked hard, but I blew all that off, and remained swamped in an academic sea.

It was not until the Lord began to change my heart that I began to reconsider my studies at school. In small steps, God began to show me that if I would humble myself and quit thinking so much about me in the process of learning but rather think about obedience and apply it to the topic at hand, I could make progress. I am still in this process, for this change has not come quickly, but I can say that today at eighteen, I am more of a student than I have ever been because the Lord has been faithful and He has placed encouraging family members and friends and teachers in my life.

So now, feeling more ready for the future than I could ever have dreamed, I am looking down the road ahead. The humorous part of this, is that to look ahead, I need to look very far back. Do you remember when you were a small child and you pictured yourself as you would someday be? Maybe for you it was the glory of being a soldier or a nurse or the first woman president; or the hope of being a great inventor, missionary or doctor or the thrill of being a famous designer or super star with your name in lights. For most of us, we dream of being someone's husband or wife. And while I am sure some of these thoughts have gone through my mind, from as far back as I can remember, I have wanted to be a hairstylist. I could lose track of time as a child playing with my dolls' hair - it was a slice of paradise for me! Now I like to style the hair of living dolls - my mother, my friends - for anyone who has the time (and courage!) to let me at their head! I find real joy in this; and I am so very glad that God seems to be guiding my footsteps towards a career doing what I enjoy most. I have applied and have been accepted at a local school of cosmetology. I begin my course of studies this summer. It is a little girl's dream come true. With humility and thanksgiving I recognize that God has given me the desires of my heart. We serve a kind and generous God. Having seen that I can fully depend on Him in the past gives me the assurance that He will ably guide my future.

The Lord in His Holy Word has declared this to be true. Ephesians 2:10 states:
"We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." God has, from before time began, numbered my days and plotted my footsteps. He has given me loving parents, a good home, a new family, a good church and good schools. Once I felt like leftovers, a child who was overlooked; now I know I have been picked by God to be His workmanship, His instrument. With faith in the God Who has so ably guided my past, I am now prepared to walk humbly in the knowledge that I am His and He is mine as I step out into the world under the direction of His ever-continuing guiding hand.