Kristyn Dolinsky shares the first part of her personal testimony, sharing her struggles growing up, and her experience in the entertainment industry.

ACF Institute 2018: A Higher Aim

<p>Kristyn Dolinsky shares the first part of her personal testimony, sharing her struggles growing up, and her experience in the entertainment industry.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Adventist Christian Fellowship (ACF)

Kristyn Dolinsky

Identity Crisis- Part 1

Well, I've had such a nice time getting to know you, a few of you, a little bit.

And so I thought that I would take this time today and tomorrow to tell you a little bit about myself.

And I hope also if you could, if you brought your Bibles that we could use them tonight as well.

So this is going to be part 1 of my story.

First, I just wanted to show you, that's me.

As far back as I could remember, my parents had been separated.

My mom separated from my biological father.

And I was an only child, it's just me there.

And that was our family, my grandpa, my grandma, my mom, and my mom's brother, my uncle.

But for being an only child, I think that I had a lot of love.

I was surrounded by my family a lot of the time.

And I grew up for some years in my grandparents' house.

And right around that time when she remarried, I remember I started going on visits.

There was a really big, ugly custody battle, and then I had to go on visits to my biological father every other weekend.

As a little kid, I cried every night that I was there at my biological father's.

And I didn't want to leave my mom and my new dad.

And my dad, I consider him to be my real dad, as my stepdad.

He was 27 years old when he and my mom got married.

And it was just a number back then, but I look back at it now and I'm like, that was really young.

And that was really young to, I think maybe some people would say, get saddled with baggage with a woman who was older and had a five-year-old, and that's how he basically started off his life, fresh out of college and then working for a couple years.

But the thing that I love about my dad is that he did it freely, he did it selflessly.

You know, he wanted to do it, it wasn't like a burden, It wasn't like, just from the get-go, he was just my dad.

He and I are probably the closest in our family, which I find extremely interesting and ironic because we're not blood related.

I found it extremely interesting that as I got to spend more time with him, he's the 1 that I spent the most time with.

My mom was actually the 1 who was working and she had to work pretty far away.

It was like a 45 minute drive there and back so she couldn't pick me up from school.

And my dad was the 1 who was there to oversee my homework.

My dad was the 1 who helped me, you know, learn how to play chess, learn how to play basketball, just teach me how to roller skate, roller blade.

So we did a lot of things together and he really was my real dad.

And because we spent a lot of time together, I ended up growing up to be a lot like him in many ways, the more time we spent together.

And he ended up adopting me eventually when I was 15 years old.

But as for those visits that I had to go to to my biological father, I completely, after they happened, they were so, I think, traumatic for me that I just blocked them out of my mind.

And it got to be to the point where it was like, okay, they almost happened to another person as I was getting older and older.

I would wake up in the morning at like 6 a.m.

Really excited to read the book that I had put down the night before, and I would just, I was like the biggest nerd, and I would just read in my bed, and it would be the most exciting thing for me to do.

And you know, I was an only child, So I was used to playing by myself and, you know, just, it was easy, I was a very quiet kid.

My mom always used to say, like, you know, you weren't any trouble whatsoever, you just go off into a corner and read or like, you know, draw, And I would love to do those things.

Like when I was little, I would play going to school.

And that was like my fantasy as I was playing.

So as you can see, that was me reading everywhere I went.

When my mom went to the mall, I would follow her reading.

When we went out to a restaurant like that, I would be reading.

I really liked school, and when I was around 9, 10 years old, I tested into a gifted school where you had to have a certain IQ to go there.

So I went to a very elite school when I was going into middle school.

And how I grew up was, I'm actually sixth generation Seventh-day Adventist.

I mean, he may be a little off on the numbers, but the point is that I come from a long line of seventh day Adventists, but the thing was was that we were not even cultural seventh day Adventists for a lot of, you know, I never went to Seventh-day Adventist schools.

I think after second grade, I went to another private school.

We basically just went to church on Saturday and that's all I knew.

She would pray by her bedside every day and at a certain time.

And I would always run in there and tell her, okay, not too long, but I'll pray with you.

And I would, you know, I had the picture Bible and those Bible stories, the blue set of books, and I was used to love that.

So I, you know, I had, I guess, an idea of God, but not a very correct 1.

And when I was around 7, I got into singing.

I really liked to sing and so my parents started me on lessons.

And by the time I was 10 years old, I was starting to do professional singing.

So that's the other thing that I really loved.

And, you know, I belonged to these Broadway review troops and stuff.

Remember how I said my view of God really wasn't accurate?

Just every time before I would go on stage for a performance, like that day, you know, I'd be in school and I'd just act really super nice, like extra nice.

Because in my head, I was like, okay, so if I act extra nice, then God will give me a good performance that night.

And it was this, you know, I think it's very natural, although it's incorrect, a very natural thing to kind of want to give and do like this quid pro quo kind of relationship with the Lord.

And that's what I thought, but what I didn't realize was that all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags.

And I wanted to start by, if you could turn to Galatians 6, 3 with me.

Galatians 6, 3 says, for if a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.

And I love this verse because it very clearly says, when he is nothing.

Identity Crisis- Part 1

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