Testimony: Kiara Franz

by Kiara Franz

I want to start my testimony with a disclaimer: if at any point I say that I did something to get myself out of the bad place I was in, then that’s wrong. What I really mean is GOD took me out of that state and brought me to glory. Instead of me accidentally stating that I met him where he was, in reality, he met ME where I was. And I believe that’s true for all of us.

There was never a time in my life were I wasn’t going to church. I’ve always woken once a week to go glorify myself by showing up. I never thought too deeply about what going to church means for me or my soul because I knew for a “fact” if I was a good person I was going to heaven - that if I was nice, that would pay the price for my sins. I thought I had the whole spiritual thing down by the age of 9. So I wasn’t exactly prepared or ready when God decided to put my faith to the test and everything fell apart. Lockdown happened when I was 13 and, all of the sudden, I no longer had that weekly reminder of God. All those sermons put together to show me his wonder, that I chose to ignore every single week without fail, were gone. And I thought that I was too. I saw lockdown as the perfect time to figure out who I was and my identity in myself.

I started trying all these new things like makeup, fashion, zodiac signs and the worst of all - fitness. I dug myself into this hole of not allowing myself eat until I worked out but not being able to workout because I didn’t have enough energy and was too hungry. I was sure that if found my identity in who I am: I was skinny and I was gonna be skinnier. Fun fact: being skinny does not carry you all the way to heaven. About 6 months into 2020, I had developed anorexia athletica, which, for clarification, is an eating disorder where you make yourself workout to the point of malnourishment and/or injury. Beyond that, I started looking into zodiac signs, and I found it was really easy to “know” my identity if someone was literally telling me what it was based on the month I was born.

So among all this, if you hadn’t guessed already, I was not happy or joyful. And I was pretty dead set on the fact that I just wasn’t a joyful person. That I simply hadn’t been created by whatever created me to be happy.

I made no effort through any of this to find God. I wasn’t happy, but remember, I “found my identity” so it didn’t matter. I also began to justify my actions by saying “oh it’s ok that I did that because I’m an Aquarius” or whatever the excuse might be. Which makes absolutely no sense. God on the other hand was not ok with me spending the rest of my life not eating and finding who I was in a symbol attached to my birth month.

I don’t even recall what called me back to church. It very well could’ve been the grace of God himself I started coming back to youth group. And the first week I showed up in over a year of being gone, I found out the high school winter retreat was that upcoming Friday. And miss Makayla asked me if I was going. Since I wasn’t signed up and it was 3 days away, I thought there was no chance. But Makayla goes (*insert little shoulder shrug here;) I received that message and some how, I’m assuming God, my parents also said yes.

Next thing I knew, I was at the 2022 high school winter retreat where I got a full and honest reminder that Jesus is my Lord and savior. That was the moment I put my faith in Jesus, when we took communion and for the first time I understood that the bread was his body and the wine (grape juice) was his blood. I understood that his death meant my life. At which point, he lit a fire inside of me.

It wasn’t more than months later when Easter rolled around and God lead me to read his death and defeat of sin for the first time on my own, his crucifixion. Even though I had nothing to give, he still took me in. I cried for over 12 hours straight, absolutely beside myself that this God I didn’t care much about before sent his son to die for me. I could not pinpoint what changed in that very short time or explain how it happened, other than the words “God met me where I was”. I thought I was beyond redemption especially because you don’t hear people talk about body image and what that has to do with the Bible very much. But God showed me that he can glorify anything, whether it’s talked about commonly or not. And he also showed me that my identity never was, isn’t now, and never will be who I am in myself. It was then, is now, and always will be who I am in God.

I can confidently say that my relationship with food has been more restored than I ever thought it could be, and that goes for my relationship with the gym too. He showed me that he not only gave me life after death, but life before death too. And I can’t explain how much joy he’s given me. And that brings me to where I am now. In the time between last year and now, God has done so many wonderful things in my life. He’s opened doors for me to help out at church, he’s shown me good Christian friendships, and shown me what a godly community looks like.