My Story
Every soul has innate and distinctive gifts
and a mission to enrich the world.
Creator of Beauty. That’s the identity I progress in most powerfully. Painting, composing and performing music, weaving, dancing, writing poetry; they're as easy as exhaling. And the more I seek to create beautiful things, the more I see the beauty in everything.
When I was a child, I daydreamed about composing and conducting symphonies. When I was a high school freshman, I learned music theory, form, and notation and began to arrange and compose right away. I involved myself in nearly every choir and music class in the school, and I was named Sterling Scholar of Music.
In 2009, I entered the music program at Utah Valley University as a piano major. I was invited to be a student conductor. I toured China as a member of the UVU Chamber Choir and traveled to Kenya for ethnomusicological research. I changed my emphasis and finished my degree as a voice major.
I kept myself busy composing. I began to win national and international composition competitions, and I received some notable commissions. After graduation in 2014, I married and started a family. I loved composing music for the community and school choirs I conducted, and I wrote and co-directed a musical play.
In 2021, I had an opportunity to study art with a distant relative for 5 weeks. Here was another avenue of creating beauty, and I excelled in it. In 2024, I spent 500 hours painting murals in an edifice in Mexico. I applied myself to learning the Spanish language that year and realized the intrinsic beauty of language. My next goal? Hawaiian!
In early 2025, my 4th child was born. While experiencing profound perinatal depression, some unresolved emotional wounds from young adulthood resurfaced. I registered for Irish dance classes over the summer to lift my spirits, but a few weeks before our showcase, I broke my foot. I was literally brought to my knees, though my heart was already on the floor.
Every heart is a diary of griefs and joys etched in flesh.
What happened next can be described in one word: Grace.
Since I couldn't walk, I took extra time self-reflecting, studying, and meditating. I craved praise and worship songs and became reacquainted with contemporary Christian music for the first time in 15 years. I began to see life, people, and opportunities through a new lens. I learned how to pray powerful prayers. Lifelong prejudices and fears began to crumble.
Though I had spent my life creating beautiful things about Jesus and for Jesus, I hadn't done it with Jesus and in Jesus. Genuine worship was the missing link. Once I understood this, praise songs began to spill out of me. Lyrics, melodies, and harmonies came easily, as they usually do, but I felt extroverted about them. There's something contagious about the joy of redemption; one can't help but want to share it with the entire world.
Every masterpiece is a legacy of faith.
Art, music, beauty in all its forms - they are vehicles for glorifying God and bringing His children closer to Jesus. As I compose and paint, every note and each brush stroke is infused with these intentions.
Neither canvas nor musical score can duplicate the beauty of our Savior, but His grace and truth can frame and echo every artistic act of worship.
He makes all things new, including me. And the more He recreates me, the more I want to create.
Something graceful.
Something beautiful.
Something new.
