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Once upon a time I was your stereotype Christian, homeschooled, sheltered, socially awkward, pastor's kid.

Fast forward to nearly age twenty one and I am still learning how to not let these labels define me...and it all began with me picking up a pen and writing.

I began writing before I could actually write. I loved holding up the globe as a young girl and spin it, closing my eyes and randomly stopping the globe with my finger. Wherever my finger landed I would pretend that is where I would go. I would make up stories about what I would do and who I would go with and who I would meet.

History and the world fascinated me, and my mind was fueled by long evenings with my mom, curled up on the couch reading The Chronicles of Narnia, A Tale of Two Cities, and my special favorite: an abridged version of Jane Eyre.

Books were my happy place, taking me away from my often-times deep loneliness I felt. I loved being homeschooled, but I am an extrovert by nature, and books took me to other worlds I could otherwise only dream and friends that I didn't have. I met brave people like Frodo and Lucy and Tris and Sydney Carton and Sherlock Holmes. Characters I wanted to be like. Characters I loved. Characters I wanted to meet.

And in all my free time after lunch and school, I would sit outside and pen stories. The characters were always geared towards the adventures in the books I read with my mom, filled with adventure and danger and....sometimes...a really cute boy.

I owe a lot to being homeschooled -- time and freedom for one thing as well as my deep love for classic lit. By High School, after all my classes, you could find me penning novels on my laptop. And I wasn't writing just because I was lonely and needed made-up friends, but because the stories kept coming and I so desperately wanted to make sense of all that I felt inside.

I honestly felt like I was drowning in High School and words helped me cope. They were my breath of fresh air when panic attacks and anxiety and darkness were all I felt. The characters I created mimicked my own very real struggles. Suddenly it just wasn't about the adventure, but who they were in the end.

I don't know how it all began. I don't remember plotting or planning or discovering anything special.

It was just something that...happened. I didn't plan to write a YA fantasy novel. In the beginning my prince Milosh was an old man and somehow ended up being a really hot, young prince with a temper and the weight of the world on his shoulders, suffocating from the labels slapped on him. Suddenly I realized that his dark struggles mirrored mine. He wasn't just some greedy villain with really no rhyme or reason to why the heck he was in the book...suddenly he had struggles and pain and sorrow.

And it wasn't just him.

My protagonist and heroine, Serena also felt defined by her labels. She felt forced to live a certain way, hiding who she really was. Her Gift of fire made her an outcast and friendless as she strove to keep her younger brother safe.

Suddenly these characters felt real because they mirrored me.

I honestly don't think I would have written if it hadn't been for my depression and anxiety. I just wouldn't have.

I wrote because I needed to, because it took me away to a place and out of the current mind-set I was in. I wrote and it forced me to ask questions I didn't know need asking. Like: What is stronger than darkness? What is stronger than the pain?

Milosh and Serena learned the answers.

And I learned with them.

I didn't write because I was some smart human with all the answers. I honestly didn't write because (as people love to point out the stereotype), I was homeschooled and a complete nerd.

I wrote because I didn't have all the answers, and for me that made all the difference.

And honestly as weird it sounds, I feel blessed to not have the answers. I feel blessed to have walked the walk that I did. My childhood was in many ways picture-perfect and naive innocence from an outsider's point of view, but also in a very real way I found myself in a living hell from many circumstances I could have never predicted.

And in the end...in the very end, I am blessed.

Because my past and present -- it has all given me a deep love for a God who has pursued me no matter what. My writing has grown with me. My writing has literally been with me through all my life, and God has literally taken my writing and spoken through it. When I ignored Him at every turn, when I threatened to leave my faith and turned my back on Him...He used what I loved most to show me His love.

I do not lie when I say He literally took Milosh and Serena's story and allowed it to speak to me. When in The Broken Prince the characters say, "love is stronger than any Gift," that is a realization I have needed along with my characters.

And it's true.

It's true today and it's true tomorrow...