Learning to be the Light || A Walk of Faith

"Shout it. 

Go on and scream it from the mountains. 

Go on and tell it to the masses: that He is God."
- "All the Poor and Powerless," All Sons and Daughters

Well, I don't have any mountains, and my blog is the closest thing I can get to the masses, so here it is y'all: my walk of faith. The most beautiful, incredible thing that I have the privilege to call a part of my life.

Here goes!

My entire life, my faith has been an important part of my life.

I grew up in a Lutheran home with amazingly encouraging parents. We went to church every Sunday and they made sure I learned as much as I could while I was there. But while doing all this learning, I never really knew Jesus. I knew many of the Biblical facts, but I never saw Jesus for who He truly was.

That all changed during my junior year of high school. See, I have this fantastic friend named Jordan Rackley (aka Jords, Jordo, Jrack, etc) who just so happened on one Sunday to take me with her to a church service at Crosspoint church, a non-denominational church in St. Louis. It was that day that it hit me:

I need Jesus's love. Not just because I struggle with depression or because I have worldly troubles, but because His love is too big for me NOT to accept it. Jesus is not some fairy tale that I don't get to partake in. He is the ultimate savior. He died because He loves ME and YOU more than anything in the entire universe. Our small battles and struggles with life on earth don't even matter in the long run; He fought the war and WON. And the best part of it all? We get to live with Him eternally, and nothing in the world could bring us greater joy than that.

SO that was the day that I met Jesus.

From there, I began to truly walk with Christ. I learned much from Jords about what it means to be kind and love like Christ. (*SHOUT OUT* Jordan Rackley. Thank you for changing my life and bringing Christ into my heart. You have no idea what you've done for me.) I participated in youth group (during my senior year) and started to make Christ more of a priority in my life. But I still didn't quite get it all the way.

You see, there's a difference between being "religious" and living your life for Christ. I was religious in high school. I knew Christ in a textbook manner. I went to church and I started to let Christ have my heart, but I only let Him have parts of my life. I said to Him, "here Jesus, you can have my troubles and my fear, but I'm going to rejoice on my own. I'm going to have my relationships separate from you because they're mine, not yours."

Needless to say, that route wasn't my best bet.

What I truly needed was to take a step and free fall into His love.

So since I came to Dayton, the route to doing that has become all the more clear to me. All the things that people have always told me about living for Christ have become so profound and important to me. Past wisdom along with the love, guidance, and mentorship provided to me at UD through YoungLife (*SHOUT OUT* Emma Zack, thanks for introducing me to YoungLife. You have helped me see Christ in ways I've never seen Him before. Your joy is my joy dear. I love you. Also, all the rest of you YL kids. You guys don't know how much I look up to you.) has caused me to choose to dedicate my life to Christ. 

This, I can say, is the bottom line BEST decision I have ever made. I let Christ into my heart, and He has utterly transformed me. He has turned depression to joy, fear to peace, hatred of myself to acceptance of my beauty, and love to something beyond love that I will never understand. He walks for me when I cannot walk, sees for me when the tears are too heavy, and smiles for me when all else hurts. Overall, He is incredible.

So why am I telling you all this?

Well friends, first of all:

He is the creator of the universe and He deserves to be rightly praised.

But even more than that,

I want you all to know His love.

I want you to know that He loves you more than any love that you've ever known. His love cannot be broken, and He therefore will never desert you, no matter who deserts you on earth, no matter what sins you commit, no matter what you think of yourself. First and foremost, He just wants you to be His and His alone.

I want you all to know His heart.

He has changed my entire outlook on life. He has broken my heart over things that need calling to on earth. He rewards humility and love. He gives joy where it is scarce. He is amazing.

Last and most importantly, I want you all to know His message.

Christ died on the cross to save you. God, the most powerful in all the universe, gave His ONLY son, so that we may live in paradise with Him forever. And all you have to do is love and trust in Him.

So friends, I leave you with this:

Christ has won the war. All the pain and fear and struggle you're dealing with right now? Christ will bring you comfort, He will love you, and He will change your heart. All you must do is let Him in.

That's all for today.

I love you guys dearly!

- Nikki

"God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

15 Years Old || A Human Trafficking Poem

15 Years Old

Nikki Kamp

15 years old
Light in her eyes long gone
Passion and happiness moved on
Within her, destruction and trauma sing victory songs.

15 years old
With shackles on her wrists.
I'm not being figurative here, no, literal shackles on her wrists.
As she whimpers and cries out between impacts of tightly clenched fists,
She looks back on how this all started: her one single wish.
A wish to do, to be, to learn.
A wish to earn a name for herself
A wish to turn herself into something special.
A wish that was supposed to be a dream come true, but instead was torn, tortured, and turned into a nightmare.
A nightmare where she was deceived into thinking that the nice man was going to take her out of her home country to get a good American education.
A nightmare where she thought she could be something besides someone's rag doll.
But, as it is, man turned monster and nightmare reigned true, and now every time she wakes up in the morning, the monster is still there.
And so is the pain.
And the drugs.
And the abuse.
And the countless men.
And the constant internal fight
Not to give up.

15 years old
Innocence lost.
No, not simply lost. Innocence taken.
Ripped out from underneath her, just like the clothes that were ripped off her back by the men last night, and the night before, and all the nights more.

15 years old but 100 years scarred.
She had never expected to live through something so hard.
Never expected that this "opportunity" would go so far
From what she had expected it to be.

15 years old
But sadly not an exception.
She's one of millions who are in dire need of love, action, and protection.
One of millions deceived and misdirected,
Enslaved, Invisible and therefore undetected.

15 years old
We must work on her behalf.
Work to save her and others from their traffickers' wrath.
We must spread awareness,
And sit back no longer.
For the longer we wait,
The number of slaves grows stronger.
Yes, we must spread the word,
For the word holds great power.
If slavery is a day's dirt, awareness is a shower.
Awareness can open our eyes to situations previously unknown,
And in trafficking cases, the common man is often the hero, statistics have shown.
So with the power of knowledge, and with a simple call,
You could change someone's world,
You could change it all.

15 years old,
Essentially numb.
Functioning under her traffickers thumb.
She needs an everyday hero.
Will you be the one?

Hey guys. So I wrote this poem a while back, during this past semester while I was in a human trafficking class at UD. This is a social injustice that I cannot shake, and therefore I feel as though word needs to be spread about it, to make a change. 

SO here's the thing. I know we all have a lot of burdens to bear, but there are some who have an absolute world of burden to bear: human trafficking victims. Human Trafficking, aka the modern day slave trade, is the heinous crime of selling human beings for sexual exploitation, forced labor, and child sexual exploitation. There are over 27 MILLION trafficking victims in the world today, and the only way that number is going to get smaller is if WE take action. How, might you ask?
Start with educating yourself. Ask me your questions or check out websites likewww.slaveryfootprint.org to find out how many slaves work for you, and how you can decrease that number or http://www.polarisproject.org/human-trafficking/overview just for general information.

Work for change.

Checked all this stuff out, and think you've seen an instance of human trafficking? Report it at 1-888-3737-888.

Thanks guys. Love y'all dearly.

- Nikki

"Love your body the way your mother loved your baby feet." || A Body Peace Blog

I am not a size two.
It's quite possible that I will never be a size two, and I'm starting to think that's okay... Which is kind of weird.
Why is that weird?
Well you see, I've grown up in a society that tells me that the higher the clothing size, the less that person is worth.
Now I'm not saying that this is every single person's opinion. I mean, obviously not.
But Hollywood, media, and high school seem to tell me that the ideal size is about a four, with a perfect rack and butt to match, and anything different than that is wrong.
To those girls that have that body: Rock the frick on! You keep working what you have. I think you all are gorgeous girls.
But what about the rest of us?
Is it fair that I regularly have thoughts like, "hey, if I dropped (more than) a few pounds, maybe I would be beautiful"?
Is it fair that I see so many girls who are absolutely stunning, looking at their bodies like these horrid, awful traps, rather than their homes?
I don't really think so.
I mean, yeah, I could lose some weight. The college diet is not necessarily the most picture-perfect health food diet, and my body is well aware of that. So I should eat my veggies, drop the Chinese food and work out a few times per week.
But just because I don't look like a celebrity, I enjoy an occasional crab rangoon, and I don't get around to doing squats every day of my life, I don't want to feel like I'm not beautiful or hot or whatever.
And I certainly don't want any other girls to think negatively about themselves.

Now don't get me wrong, I think being in good health is what we should work for, always.
But to be bigger (or even, to be smaller) than the "ideal size" does not, by any means, mean you are not beautiful! And it by NO means determines your worth.
To quote Mary Lambert,

You are no less valuable as a size 16 than a size 4.You are no less valuable as a 32A than a 36C.

In fact, right now it seems more than necessary to recommend listening to this spoken word poem. Like, now. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-gBH4sSLfA

Now that you've (hopefully) listened... 
Mary made it clear.
We as a society cannot continue to judge people simply by what size jeans they wear, or what their cup size is. We cannot judge ourselves this way anymore. I cannot continue to wake up in the morning and judge whether I deserve to be loved simply by looking in the mirror. That, quite frankly, is bull. 

I don't want to look around at the world anymore and have my heart broken over and over by seeing girls who don't love themselves because someone told them that they weren't beautiful... even if the source of that lie was their own mind.

It's got to end girls. We have to take control of our minds. I don't care what pants size you are, what the measurement is around your waist, if you're flat-chested or curvy. This is your time to embrace your body and love what you're working with. What some man says to you or thinks about you does not determine your worth. Your worth is determined by God, and He has made you beautifully. Something I've been thinking a lot about lately - if the creator of the universe thinks you're beautiful then who gives a flying flip what anyone else thinks.

I know it's so hard to go ahead and say, "I'm going to think of myself positively now." I am a girl as well, readers, so I KNOW how hard that is. But we've got to do it. We've got to stop those negative thoughts in their tracks, and turn them around into positive comments. Recognizing the positives is so key. Not just about ourselves, but about other girls too.
No more "ugly," no more "fat," no more hate. 
Be kind to yourselves and others, simply because you deserve it.

New Years Mantra: You are beautifully made, you are strong, you are worthy. Love yourself because you deserve it and love others because they deserve it. Be the woman you were made to be.

You are worth the love.

- Nikki

Afterthoughts:
Now I didn't even touch on boys, their self-images, or their feed into girls self-hatred. But guys, I'm calling out to you too. Please stop recognizing girls in these harsh terms, as well as yourselves. Everyone is beautifully and wonderfully made; treat them (including yourself) as such.