My name in Bailey Admire. I am a devout Christian, musician, and lover of horror movies. I am also Native American, Muscogee (Creek), and am aromantic, asexual. If you don't know, this means, I do not feel romantic or sexual feelings toward anyone. I think the best way to get to know me would be to tell you my testimony.
On March 7, 2000, I was born in Oklahoma. My parents were never married and held vastly different views on religion. My godmother, who my mom and I lived with, also held a completely different view from either of my parents. My mom was Christian. She did not go to church, although my mom did try hard to make sure that I knew of who Jesus was. My dad held to the traditional Muscogee religion. Finally, my godmother was an athiest. This led to me to hearing vastly different opinions on what was true growing up.
However, when my mom wanted to put me in a Methodist daycare, surpisingly, neither my dad or godmother protested. Going to this daycare really helped to shape much of my life, as this would be the first place that would shape my views on God.
Growing up, I had a pretty good childhood. My family was not rich, there were many times when we did not have much food and struggled to make rent each week. However, I was a very happy child and learned how to have fun without having the newest toys or video game consoles. In fact, there were many times when we didn't get a new console until 2 or 3 years after they were released. Through this, I learned to appreciate what I had and not take any of it for granted.
With the few consoles that I did have, I fell in love with gaming, but never truly became a hardcore gamer. Rather, I enjoyed it more casually, and thus, appreciated games like Sonic, Mario, and especially Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero was the first time that I truly listened to music. I heard music, but I never really sat down and listend to the songs that were playing. Along side this, I fell in love with TV channels like Nickelodeon, Disney, and Cartoon Network, which were all new for me since we had just got cable.
Now while these channels were new for me, they did not have my favorite movie or TV show on them. At the time, my favorite movie would have had to have been Toy Story. However, this would soon change to School of Rock. When I first saw School of Rock, I fell in love with Jack Black and still hold him up as one of my favorite actors. As well, having just discovered Guitar Hero, the music really resonated with me and I started to dive more into the music that I was hearing. Now for my favorite show, I have been a die-hard fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I loved nearly every version of the turtles growing up and tried to get every action figure that I could. I still hold the turtles up as some of my favorite characters in any show. However, my love for them has faded over the years and I have disliked the new versions since Nickelodeon took them over.
With my interest in the turtles fading, I slowly became obsessed with music and really wanted to learn guitar. When I was 7, my mom and godmother gifted me my first real guitar. I had received guitars before this, but they were kid guitars that were meant as a toy and not to really learn how to play. When I received this guitar (an Epiphone Les Paul Jr.), I tried to learn how to play. However, my big problem was that I was overweight and used it as an excuse, though I did believe that my weight was the problem. Looking back on it, I really just didn't want to put in the work to learn. So, I ended up giving up and didn't go back to it for about a year. This year would change me and the trajectory of my life forever.
Leading up to this, my best friend had invited me to his church. His mom was also trying to get my mom to come. We were apprehensive about it and said no for a while. Then we finally gave in and decided to give it a shot. We really liked it! This church became our home church and we've been going ever since. This brings me to the year that changed my life.
This was when I was 8, almost 9. On New Years Eve of that year, I was hanging out with my best friend and his brother. We were playing the Wii and were having a great time when all of a sudden I became really sick. First, it was a pain in my stomach. Me and my family didn't think much of it since it seemed like a normal stomach ache. However, we would soon learn that this was not the case.
A few weeks after this, my mom and I had gone over to my dad's house for visitation. I got really tired and had to take a nap, which was not normal. I fell asleep for a few hours and woke up in debilitating pain and couldn't move. My mom rushed me to the nearest hospital. They told us that they couldn't help and had me taken to a bigger and better equiped hospital. While here, we found out that my appendix had burst and I needed it taken out. My white blood count was much too high though and so I had to wait over night in the hopes that it would lower.though, and so I had to wait overnight in the hopes that it would lower. In the middle of the night, I turned greenish yellow and had to be rushed into surgery. During surgery, I died and had the biggest life changing event in my life.
When I died, I saw complete darkness. Then a great light appeared in front of me. This light was the brightest light I've ever experienced and it brought with it a peace beyond understanding. I then felt like I was being spoken to but there were no words actually spoken. I felt as if I was being told that it wasn't my time. Everything then went black and I began to hear everything around me again. After this, I decided to give my life to Christ.
Having gone to church, I kind of understood what this meant, but never quite understood why you would do this. However, after my experience with dying, I now had a strong idea for why. This experience truly changed my life for the better, even though it was one of the worst experiences I've ever been through. After this, I was in and out of the hospital consistently for about 2 months. During this time, I had to have another surgery, since I had a bunch of abscesses, including one the size of a softball. Mind you, I am only 8 years old at this time and was heavier than any other kid the doctors had done this surgery on before. Because of this, they did not know exactly how I would react to going under again. Because of this, they had to do the surgery for my abscesses awake. While the appendix surgery was painful, this surgery was unbearable. I still remember the feeling of being stabbed by the scalpel. Once I was cleared to leave the hospital, it took a while for me to be able to go anywhere. Part of this was dealing with the pain but also going through the trauma. During that two months in and out of the hospital I had to deal with a drain for the abscesses. I still remember the joy the day it came out.
When I finally started to live a "normal" life, I went back to church. Church became my everything. Since I was homeschooled, I did not get a lot of interaction with other kids my age. As well, with the things that I had experienced, church became more important to me than anything else. As time went on, I felt like God was calling me to play guitar for Him, though I did not understand quite what this meant. So, I picked up the guitar and decided to teach myself how to play. My parents told me that this time they were not going to help me financially until I showed that I was committed to it, which is understandable. Soon, it became obvious to them that I was committed as I would spend nearly, if not all of my time playing. Guitar then became the most important thing to me, which in all honesty was not always the best thing since it would often take precedent over God.
This was most of my life, playing guitar for 8 hours a day, finishing school as early as possible, and going to church every Wednesday, until I turned 13. Looking back, this kind of high intensity practice was a way of coping with everything. I not only experienced dying but my dad had also gotten diagnosed with diabetes and my mom was dealing with seizures. This led to me becoming a recluse and developing selective mutism. With this, I would only speak to my family and teachers. Being undiagnosed autistic, I did not know exactly how to deal with all of my feelings, at times I didn't even know what my feelings were, so, not saying anything seemed like the best way, I would not recommend this by the way.
When I turned 13, my church moved me up to our youth group. Before I was in our little kids program, which was for kids in 1st grade to 4th. Then I was in what we called Fusion 56, which was for kids in 5th and 6th grade. Now the youth was for kids in 7th grade to graduation. This is where I kind of broke out of my shell that I had created for myself. Part of this was that my mom foraced me to meet other kids, as I had no consistent friends at the time. Another part was that the youth had a worship band. For me, this was the first time that I had made any progress to what I felt that God had called me to do. I had met the assisstant youth leader at the time during one of the a getaway called Back to Camp. During this, we would help out the camp that we were going to go to in the Summer and fix it up. During this, I had brought my guitar and he was leading worship for the week. Randomly, he asked me to join him one of the evenings and I got to play worship for the first time. Now this was my first experience with learning chords and it would be extremely helpful in the long run.
When we got back from this, Josh, the assisstant youth leader, asked me to tryout for the worship band. I ended up joining and it became the extremely important to me.
Until I turned 17, my life pretty much revoloved around the youth band. I had joined an after school program when I was 16 called School of Rock but eventually left when I was 17 because I felt like it was pulling me away from God. This descision was pretty significant for me because it meant stepping away from what I wanted to do with my life and deciding to follow what God wanted me to do. When I turned 17, I decided to make a commitment to God to follow what He wanted for my life. I felt like I was being called to lead the youth worship band. When I graduated a year early, I felt like I had nothing holding me back, as I was now viewed as an adult. I asked Josh, who was now our Youth Pastor and he said yes! Honestly, Josh really took a chance on me. I had no prior experience and was out of my depth. I had no idea how to lead a group, and many of the people were close if not my exact age, which meant that I was essentially leading my friends. For a year, I did not change or improve the structure of the band and was mainly getting a grasp on how to lead people. However, everything changed in 2018.
In 2018, my dad had a widow maker heart attack and somehow lived. For a month, he was in the hospital and died around 20 times with the hospital reviving him each time. This was the first time that I had experienced the same amount of trauma as when I had died. Seeing a person that was very strong now be the weakest they had ever been was difficult. I knew that this would lead to him actually passing. In September, my father passed. This was the darkest point in my life. One of the biggest comforts that I had was that my father eventually accepted Christ. However, I put up barriers for myself and didn't even want to deal with the emotions that I was feeling. Through this, I dived head first into improving the worship band. I restructured the band to work as efficiently as possible and even worked with the band outside of our normal worship times.
The biggest problem with this was that outside of the worship band, I had no life. I did nothing and even started to play my guitar less and less. What I didn't realize was that I was in a deep and dark depression. My mom and godmother talked with me and tried to get me out of the depression.
Finally, when I turned 20, I decided to go to school. I wasn't sure what to go for but I felt like I was being called to worship ministry. So, I went for a degree in Worship. I applied to 2 schools, SNU, a Nazarene school, and Randall University, a Free Will Baptist school. To my surprise, I got into both. So, I had a descision to make. I was leaning toward SNU but when I did a virtual tour, since it was 2020, I felt extremely called toward Randall. I followed this calling and we moved to Norman Oklahoma.
While at Randall, I discovered that there was a lot that I disagreed with in their secondary doctrine. However, we could agree on the essentials. While I did not agree with some of their teachings, I stayed because I knew that it was what God was calling me to do. I would ask Him every semester if He was sure this was where I was supposed to be. Looking back, He was preparing me for where I would go next. During my time at Randall, I fell in love with theology. I loved learning about God and what He has done for us. Truly, I was being prepared and building my foundation of faith.
Now, I have offically graduated with a degree in Worship and Music Studies. However, I feel like God is calling me somewhere different now. I feel like God is calling me to get a Master of Divinity. So, I applied to 4 different schools. I applied to Harvard Divinity School, Boston University School of Theology, Duke Univerity Divinity School, and University of Chicago Divinity School. I ended up getting an interview with Harvard but decided to go a different way because of how they have treated Native Americans in the past and currently. As well, the situation with the anti-semitism really bothered me. Because of this, they turned me down. Chicago straight up said no since I didn't have enough money. Duke actually accepted me and offered a 33% scholarship. However, I would not have been able to pay for the rest, since my family does not have much money. Then, Boston University said yes and they offered me something I could not refuse. They offered a full-ride for tuition. This would leave fees and housing. I accepted and now look forward to living in Boston in the Fall! However, this means leaving my entire life in Oklahoma. My church, family, church family, and my friends. This is the toughest decision that I have ever had to make but I know that God is calling me there. I am excited, nervious, sad, happy, and joyful. I know that God will bring me through this but it does not make it any easier.
Overall, I can't wait to see what God will do with my life. I have already seen His faithfulness, grace, and mercy in my life already and know that He will help me through this new adventure.
If you want to join me through this journey, feel free to stay on this website! I will be posting new music on my music page and updates on all of my thoughts on my blog!
