Isla’s story

Hi Isla! Tell us a bit about yourself and your family…

So I’m Isla, I’m twenty four, I’m a speech and language therapist by day and a youth worker by night!

My family? Gosh, where to start…
They’re a crazy bunch - I have two families really; my mum and dad are not together anymore so I have my mum and my sister and then my dad, my stepmom and my brother so that’s them.

I’m married to Jonny who works at the church and we’re about to have our first baby.

What was life like growing up? Did you grow up around Church or faith?

My family are not Christians so I didn’t grow up in church. The first time I set foot in a church I must have been about fourteen years old when we visited my great aunt for Easter.

God wasn’t someone who was spoken about in my family, my dad had this deep sense of us being self-sufficient as a family and that we do everything for ourselves and don’t need anyone else, that was very much the message that was drilled into me as a child.

So I didn’t have much of a concept of faith or church or God, let alone Jesus. It wasn’t the easiest road for us growing up, the various things I witnessed growing left me, amongst other things, just feeling lonely.

Looking back now I’d say that I encountered the Holy Spirit, though I didn’t know it at the time.

What changed? How did you come to faith?

Some of the things I witnessed when I was younger made me come face to face with people’s weakness and my dad’s ideas about doing everything in our own strength and being able to fix every problem ourselves just didn’t feel true to me. I mean, if that was true than why had I experienced some of the things I had and why did I feel so dark inside because of it?

I was quite an angry, anxious, scared teenager because of that and it came across in all my relationships. Then I met my (now husband) Jonny and he was just really different to all my angsty friends. He just seemed lighter and I got to know him and his story although I still didn’t believe what he had to say about God! After all, if God was real than why did some of the things that I had witnessed in my life happen to me?

Eventually we started going out and one day he invited me to a church carol service. I thought to myself ‘it’s only Christmas songs’ so I agreed to go along and see what it was all about. During the service I broke down and found myself in tears and unable to stop crying. Looking back now I’d say that I encountered the Holy Spirit, though I didn’t know it at the time.

Straight after the service I said to Jonny that I thought I needed to start coming to church, I didn’t know why at the time but over a period of about six months I explored more about faith through going to church services and discovered who Jesus and genuinely heard some answers to some of the big questions that I had in my life.

What questions?

Well, questions like ‘why are people so broken?’ And ‘where did this loneliness I felt come from?’
After about six months of exploring I heard a sermon where the pastor said that he felt there was someone in the room who was running from an inevitability that God is chasing them and they need to stop, they need to give in and turn to face Him. That was the day I gave my life to Jesus.


And how old were you at that point?
I was seventeen.


You’ve touched a bit on this, but what difference has Jesus made in your life?

Everything about my life is different now. People that have known me since I was a teenager would say that I’m a different person to the person they knew when I was younger. Some people might be confused by that, I think my family to this day are confused by that and by the change that’s occurred in me.

I let Jesus into my life (or Jesus came into my life radically!) And I realised that darkness didn’t have the final word in my life. I was sad and I was lonely and I was anxious and probably depressed and I didn’t know where to turn and Jesus was the light at the end of the tunnel.

And that’s not to say that I never get sad anymore or that my life is all sunshine and roses but I know that I’m not walking through this alone. There’s someone there who has loved me since before I was born, even before I knew He existed. He was there, who wouldn’t want that?


I’m aware that many people reading this will have had their own battles with anxiety, depression, anger and loneliness. What would you say to someone who is going through a difficult time with their mental health and thinking of engaging with church or exploring who Jesus is?

There are so many things I could say to someone! From where I was at that point in my life, I had nothing to gain by holding on to the anger that I had from some of the things I had experienced. I thought it was the anger that gave me strength of character, like it was something I needed to prove myself in the world.

I guess, when you’re alone in your room, what do you really have to lose from exploring the idea of a God who loves you in a way that no human could ever get close to. At the end of the day we’re all broken people trying to make our way in the world and God is a Saviour.

So what might it look like to you to just push on that door. Jesus says: ‘knock and the door will be opened to you’ so just knock, just ask in the dead of the night ‘God are you there?’ ‘Do you hear me?’ And see what happens, because it changed my life.