Aged 15, I was super shy, and super unhappy at school. I was really lacking in confidence and found myself on the fringes of friendship groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Practically that looked like not knowing where to go at lunchtime: sometimes I might go to the library and get work done, but sometimes I\u2019d spend the break just sitting in a toilet cubicle and hoping no-one would ask me afterwards where I'd been. I felt full of shame and thought I had nothing to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then I got involved with Onelife, and came to a national conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember the first session I heard was about vulnerability and leadership. I\u2019d never heard those two things linked before. I went into the conference thinking they were in opposition to one another. The thing I took away most from the Onelife conferences growing up was that feeling weak doesn't disqualify you as a leader. In fact, owning that weakness as part of your story makes you a better leader. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I left the Onelife conference realising my sphere of influence was much bigger than just my church youth group. It included my school where I didn\u2019t think I could have an impact. I felt like I was living somewhat of a double life: at church I was a leader, while at school, I was shy, I hid myself, I didn\u2019t think I really had anything to offer. The conference taught me that I didn't have to sit passively in the culture that was already there. I could introduce little things that could change the culture at school a little bit, such as consciously thinking about how I could be a really good friend to the people around me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew that there'd been a positive transformation within myself, because a year later I applied to be school captain \u2013 and got it. I remember thinking how a year before, I was the girl who sat in the toilets and didn't want anyone to see her! That girl would never have even applied, let alone get the position! So, I knew there'd been a transformation in the way I viewed myself and the way others viewed me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Onelife conference showed me that you don\u2019t have to be leading in church in order to be a Christian leader. I loved seeing people at the conference share their stories, the ways in which they were leading and seeing God\u2019s kingdom come in all different spheres of society. These were people doing big, really cool things \u2013 and I came away encouraged to dream a little bigger. I realised that, if God puts a big dream in your heart, you don\u2019t have to be scared by it! Being ambitious and having big dreams isn\u2019t necessarily a negative \u2013 it can be from God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t yet know what my \u2018big dream\u2019 is going to be, or what I\u2019m going to do after I leave university. I know often when people think about their future after university, they\u2019re filled with dread and fear \u2013 but remembering all those stories of people leading in their sphere of society, and how God was doing amazing things through them, makes me really excited for the future!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read Freya's Onelife Conference story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thirteencreative.co.uk\/onelife25\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}