Atlanta Metro

Becca Gartrell

I was a history major at Vanderbilt, lived in East Asia for a year after graduation, came back to Atlanta (my hometown) and tried to figure out what I was doing with my life for about 2 years, and finally joined staff with Campus Crusade in 2004. I work at Georgia Tech and Agnes Scott, and I LOVE it!! Contact Author

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Becca's Interests

reading, playing guitar, singing

Becca Gartrell's Story

One Girl's Journey

Everyone's on a spiritual journey. We're all moving either towards or away from God.

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Everyone's on a spiritual journey. We're all moving either toward or away from God. My own journey started when I gave my life to Jesus as a little girl. Like most journeys, it's had its ups and downs, and most importantly, its mile-markers along the way where God showed a little more of Himself to me and helped me to know Him better.

Everyone also has a different starting place on this journey. My journey started out with me thinking I was a pretty good person who knew all the right answers. Confession is a big part of Christianity, but I never really felt like I had anything big to confess. Maybe some pride, but what was that compared to the major partying I saw all around me? Yet, every time I read in the Bible about how Jesus lambasted the religious leaders because they didn't love God or others, I felt a little uncomfortable. I mean, I was a good Christian girl who felt good about myself until I would read Jesus' words. Then I would feel guilty for a while, punish myself in my mind until the feeling went away, and continue on my journey.

One of my biggest mile markers in my spiritual journey came the year after I graduated from college. I was a missionary in Asia. I was doing something I'd never really done before, even though I knew I should. (My life was full of shoulds that I could never quite do.) I was telling people about Jesus. I'd never really done this before, primarily because I had a hard time actually believing a couple of the major points of Christianity: 1) That I was full of sin, and 2) that God - holy, perfect, glorious, majestic God - loved me ANYWAY.

But as I began to share this message with Asian students, I began to pray two things. 1) That God would make this message real to my own heart, and 2) that He would teach me how to love Him and other people. And my attitude began to change. I began to see that my pride, rather than being a little minor sin, was monstrous. It was keeping me from being the woman of character I'd been striving all my life to be. It was keeping me from love. I began to realize that unless God worked in a big way in my heart, I would remain a small-souled, self-centered person. I began to BELIEVE for the first time the truth that Jesus died on the cross to pay for MY sin... and that nothing I could do would make me right before God. Jesus did it all, because I was unable to do it myself.

I've been becoming a different person since that year of my life. My journey continues, and I'm still learning a lot. God is still teaching me to move toward Him, toward love. I've become less judgmental and more compassionate. I still have a long road ahead of me, but I know that one day I'll reach my journey's destination - living face-to-face with a God who loves me more than I could ever comprehend.