“Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” — James 1:4

That was the verse I chose to include in my high school graduation announcements. After my mother’s death and a year of living with a family from the church where I was baptized in Marietta, I graduated from a classical high school in Fayetteville.

I had only attended the school for two years and felt behind in many ways socially and personally. I did not yet have my driver’s license, had to repeat a subject in school, and felt like an outsider in a graduating class of 76 students, many of whom had known one another since middle school. There were signs of my future mental health issues and I had brain surgery during my senior year of high school. My literal first act a legal adult was to sign myself out of the hospital on my 18th birthday.

I learned later that doctors initially told my family that I wasn't doing to live to see 5, and when I did they said I wasn't going to live to see 15. My baptism was one week after I turned 15 and my mother passed away that April.

When I walked across that stage and accepted my high school diploma from Massey Hill Classical high school in 2003, "perseverance" was the theme of my life. I had fought to live in every sense of the word. I had been put into situations where I had literally no control and no other option but to pray and trust that God had a plan for my life. And I've been clinging to the fact that He is ultimately in control daily ever since.

And what that sweet woman meant years later in that adult Bible study is that God allowed me to be baptized when He did, not because He required it to accept me as His, but because I needed the baptism to be assured that I was walking in obedience to Him and saved before my mother passed away and my entire world shattered to pieces.

According to Answers in Genesis, the data widely shows a significant "youth exodus" after high school. Had I not been 1000% sure that God exists and loves me and that I belonged to Him, I might not have been mature enough in my faith to cling to Him and trust Him through that season of grief.