About Me
Read my story that led me to become a Pastoral Counselor below
Education
I went to Centenary College of Louisiana as a pre-med student, and my goal was to become a medical doctor. During my sophomore year of college, I experienced one of the first times I can remember when God intervened in a major way. I was always fascinated by the mind, the brain, and all things psychology and neuroscience. Human behavior and the brain chemistry that motivates why people do what they do were compelling to me. I changed my major to psychology and immediately felt the grace and peace that are always present in God’s will. My plan was to earn a PhD in clinical psychology or behavioral neuroscience. My very wise college advisor encouraged me to pursue a master’s in experimental psychology so I could determine whether I truly wanted to commit seven years of my life to a PhD program. A master’s in experimental psychology offers a taste of a PhD program because you develop a thesis, design and execute a research plan, and analyze the results.
I applied to about five programs in the country and ultimately chose Central Washington University. My advisor was incredible, and I was deeply interested in the studies he was executing in his neuroscience lab. I packed up my Subaru Crosstrek and drove from the hot & humid flatlands of the south all the way to northern mountainous city of Ellensburg, Washington. I started the program in 2019, right before the world was about to undergo a major shift.
My research focused on right versus left alpha (brain) waves, which required the use of EEG equipment to measure brainwave activity. In order to put on an EEG cap, you have to be very hands on with participants. By the time I was ready to collect data, COVID restrictions were well underway. In order to continue the research, I had to develop a protocol that matched with governmental COVID regulations in place at the time. I proposed to the Institutional Review Board that I will only be in the presence of the participant for 15-minutes. This meant I would have to place the EEG cap on a participant rapidly and communicate to the participant through video and audio intercom. My protocol was approved and I was able to collect data.
Thesis title: Frontal Alpha Wave Asymmetry in regard to Affect
As my masters was wrapping up, I felt like I did not want to pursue my PhD right away. I craved a break from school and wanted to enter the workforce. I was a little perplexed because some people were pretty discouraging that I would not get a job quickly, and if I did, I probably would not make much money initially. I decided to not let these words have an influence on me and believed God for a job.
It was difficult to have faith in moments because there were voices trying to convince me to not dream big (no one in CWU faculty). To keep my mindset strong, I wrote “11 day journey” on my fridge, and occasionally even on myself, reminding me not to let a poor attitude, negative thinking, or lack of faith turn an 11-day journey into 40 years (as in Exodus).
One day, while stressed about finding both a job and a place to live in Seattle, I rested on my couch, fell asleep, and heard God clearly say, “It is well worked out.” I felt God tell me to stop applying to jobs and apartments. Though counterintuitive, I chose to believe.
Not long after, out of the blue, I got a call from a recruiter who found my profile on LinkedIn. She told me there was a position at Meta (formerly Facebook) in Seattle that matched my background and asked if I was interested. I told her I definitely was and the initial interview was scheduled the day after I defended my thesis. Only God. I felt so much grace throughout the process that I wasn’t worried, even during the interviews. If God was behind it, I knew I would get the job. After my second interview a few days later, I learned I had gotten it.
I worked at Meta for about one year when I started thinking existentially. I almost think that God gave me all of the things I thought I wanted to show me it would not fulfill that ache in my heart, the ache for the more of God and for others to know Him as well, the ache that we all have. If God was real, which I knew He was, my time on earth is so fleeting what I do in life matters. I could subscribe to the life of going through the motions but I had a unsettledness given to me by God that there is more, much more. I stopped being satisfied by the things that normally gave me satisfaction. The fire in my heart for God just kept growing and growing. I couldn’t be fed by surface level Christianity. In this time, one of my close friends sent me a sermon from Bethel Church by Kris Vallotton. The sermon was about the spiritual realm, specifically generational curses. I remember thinking, “I could decide this is crazy non-sense or believe it is real.” I had never been to a church that talked about these kinds of things, but in my spirit, I could feel something stirring. He talked about how you can see that family lines can carry the same things whether it is fear, offense, addiction, disunity, etc. and that you have to pray against it to break it. I could see in my family that there were patterns in multiple generations that were passed down generation after generation. Even the things that my family members would fight against, it would slowly have an influence on them and I even saw the influence on me. That night, I knelt by the side of my bed and said a simple prayer to break all generational curses from my mom and dad’s side. I went to bed that night not thinking much about anything, but my life took a radical shift that night.
I fell asleep that night and had a dream. It was as if I was awake, I was laying in my bed looking at my apartment. I looked at the foot of my bed on the right side and saw this void. It was completely black but more than just darkness, it was complete absence. It somehow grabbed me by the ankle and slowly started dragging me upside down. I could not move at all—I tried to say the name of Jesus but I was not able to move or speak. Eventually I was completely upside down and I could see my entire apartment from that viewpoint. I finally got out, “Jesus!” and immediately I woke up in shock and terror. I did not realize it at the time, but the void was the generational curse leaving and trying to take my spirit with it but it could not. From that night on, the spiritual realm became very real to me.
It was almost as if the fire and the ache for God grew stronger and stronger simultaneously. This sermon showed me a taste of the more I was searching for and so I started consuming Bethel Church sermons rapidly. They were revealing that the things in the Bible were actually true today. That signs, wonders, miracles, prophecies, healings, anointing, and more, were all for today as Jesus spoke. I could feel such a great stirring in my heart, that my cry for more was being answered. In a matter of months, I applied for Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.
In my three years at Bethel, my life dramatically changed. I received so much heart & soul healing, leadership equipping, and how to be loved in a deep way. I have always had a passion for psychology and counseling but my time at Bethel equipped me more for it than I could ever have imagined. I am a firm believer that you need to have heart and soul healing before you can step into your purpose and calling well. I walked through it, and I know you can too—I’ll help you do it :)
He restores my soul.
Psalm 23:3