Meet Kaleigh Knight. If you've been to one of the Set Apart Living in person events, you have had the pleasure of hearing her beautiful voice lead us in worship. Kaleigh is a wife, friend, and soon-to-be mom through adoption! She loves coffee, reading, singing, and working with children. A fun fact about her is favorite author is C.S. Lewis, and she owns almost every book he ever wrote!
Here is a few more fun questions Kaleigh shared her answer to:
What's your favorite worship song:
First Love by Kari Jobe
What is your favorite thing to do with your friends?
Talk about the Bible, drink coffee, go on day trips.
Favorite part of this season?
The sunshine and warm weather; I love taking books to read beside a lake - so peaceful.
Kaleigh is a dear friend of mine; I am so excited for you to hear her testimony on friendship. Here is her answer to the question, "How have friendships influenced your life?"
"Friendship is vital to the Christian walk. Friends provide accountability, encourage us when we are down, and meet us in our darkest moments and pray over and with us. There was a time when I did not understand fully what friendships looked like through a Biblical lens. When I first started high school, you may not have been able to tell me apart from those who weren’t Christians, based on what I presented on the outside at least. While I did believe in Jesus and knew when things were right or wrong for the most part, my outward words and behaviors did not always reflect that.
For most of my life, I equated acceptance with value and worth. If someone did not accept me or like me, that meant that I was not valuable. To ensure that I was accepted, I tailormade my actions, and words for each person or group I was interacting with in any given moment. This, of course, was exhausting. My identity became fractured, and I very quickly lost touch with where the false pieces of myself stopped and where my true identity began. A battle began between finding worth in the Lord versus finding worth in the world.
In the midst of all of this, I was friends with a girl who was in my band classes with me. I had known her for several years in school, but in high school, I started taking note of how set apart her lifestyle and her choices were. While I knew she wasn’t a perfect person (as no one is), she did not seem to hide her imperfections the way that I wanted to hide mine. I observed how different she seemed to approach obstacles and others not accepting her compared to how I did. The biggest difference between she and I was that she lived her life for Jesus, and while I believed in Him, I wasn’t living the way He called us to. I was afraid of being set apart, while it was evident that this girl wanted no part of any life that did not include Jesus. I don’t know if she ever knew how much I admired her ability to put her trust in Jesus and see her value through Him instead of others. She did not compromise church life for school or extracurriculars. She served in worship at a local church and was involved in their youth program. She approached conflict with a Christ-like heart and always tried to be kind to everyone, even if they weren’t her cup of tea. And she may not have known it, but it was through watching her live this set apart life that I started seeking the answers to my own identity and worth in Christ. Having her as my friend opened up the opportunity for me to seek truth that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise heard.
Her role in my story (thankfully) did not end in high school. The fall of the year we both started college, a mutual friend of ours passed away in a tragic accident. That incident was my first introduction to true grief, and it felt as if I was drowning emotionally. Losing a friend at only 18 years old highlights just how short life can be and that none of us are promised a tomorrow. That thought was constantly on my mind, and I was struggling with the conviction that I had wasted so much of my time on earth so far not living for God. About three weeks after this loss, the friend who I had admired so much for her Christ-like living, invited me to come to her church one Wednesday night. After the service and after many people had already left, I sat on the curb of the parking lot feeling so convicted by the Holy Spirit that if I was going to live my life for God, it needed to start tonight. I felt a tremendous peace in those moments, and then I felt convicted again to do something I had put off for several years. I felt an undeniable conviction that it was time to be baptized and proclaim to everyone who I had chosen to surrender my life to. In tears, I called my friend and told her what I was feeling and asked her to pray for me. She did and encouraged me in my decision to be baptized. I asked her if she would be the one to pray over me at my baptism, and she accepted. On the morning of my baptism, she walked up to me smiling and gave me a bag with my name hand-painted on it. Inside was a hand-painted canvas with a verse on it, and a jar filled with hand-cut slivers of paper, each with a Bible verse or encouragement on them. I had not always been the best friend to her and did not always make the effort to stay super close with her, but here she was showing me that I was valuable to her and, more importantly, to the Lord. She showed me Jesus that day, not in that she gave me gifts, but that she thought enough of me to take the time out of her weekend to make sure I felt seen and loved. I will never forget how I saw Jesus in her that morning. And the jar she gave me still sits on my nightstand to this day, and the Canvas she painted sits in what will be my child’s nursery. That’s how much her kindness meant to me.
Her friendship has continued to pour great things into me over the years. She was one of my biggest supporters when I decided to go on a month-long mission trip across the world. She was a big part of mine and my husband’s wedding day. She encouraged me to pray when I struggled with a big decision to leave a previous job to work in ministry, and she supported me through that transition, even as I discovered just how tough ministry can be. She has continued to show up and speak Biblical truth when I needed her. And the pew that I sit in on Sundays at my church – they are sitting in the very church she invited me to as far back as high school. That was over ten years ago when she started planting seeds in our friendship that helped me to grow and mature in my faith. Her friendship has been an important part of my story, and I will always be grateful for the investments she has made in me over the years.
While not all my friendship experiences have turned out like this one, I am grateful for each and every one. God teaches us things through our friendships and uses them to grow us and provide comfort in the hardest parts of life. My prayer for all of you is that you can have a friend like the one I have described here, at some point in your life, if you have not already. These kinds of connections are truly life-altering in the best way."
Follow along with Kaleigh on Facebook and Instagram @kaytheadventurer
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