Trish Cozart

I am a native of the area and grew up going to a Lutheran church. Attending church on Sunday was as normal a part of my life as brushing my teeth. When I reached my inquiring college years (compounded by being a science major), I spent a lot of time questioning religion and looking for proof that God was real and that Jesus really was the Son of God. After a considerable amount of research, I came to the conclusion that there was enough evidence in His favor.

Now fast forward seven years to the birth of my second child and the resulting complication of a herniated disc in my back. For the next six months, I spent the majority of my afternoons curled up on the floor weeping from the pain. I couldn’t sit or lie down without being in utter agony. We had just joined Faith Lutheran Church, and I spent a lot of time standing and carrying my newborn around the house and watching over of my 2-year-old, while listening to Faith’s worship band on CD. During that time, God placed on my heart a prayer — not for healing — but for the peace to be able to get through each minute.

Somewhere in that experience, my left-brained religion turned into a right-brained faith. It didn’t matter to me whether or not I could prove God was real. I knew He was. Surgery healed my back, but God healed my heart. I haven’t needed to open an anthropology or Roman history book since (though I like to now and then). It just doesn’t matter to my faith anymore.

My Gifts

God has blessed me with the gifts of discernment, leadership, encouragement, wisdom, creativity, and strategy. I have an innate ability to figure out how to make complex things simple, especially in the field of communications.

My Mission

God called us to be salt and light in the world. I’ve found my mission in the encounters I have with people every day. My job takes up a great deal of my time, but I’ve found I can serve God right where I am just keeping my eyes and heart open to help people out in a hundred different ways all day long.

For 15+ years it has also been my mission to invest in youth as a leader in scouts, or as a room mom, or as a volunteer teaching kids science.  My children struggled in school for a variety of reasons and my volunteering, at first, was a necessity to help them survive and, I hoped, to thrive. I soon came to understand that it was a lot more. I was a voice–an important voice–a voice that made a big difference in every youth I encountered. I had a tremendous power to lift up and inspire with the simplest of kind words or encouragement. Not the fake kind. The kind that is based in real truth. Because of this, I’ve also found my mission serving as a youth leader here at Faith.

One of my favorite verses is Colossians 4:6 “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”  We can change lives every day by being salt and light.  My mission is simple — just concentrate on doing the little things every day. Eventually people ask, “Why?”  And I tell them, “Even though life can be really tough, God loves us despite ourselves and He’s on our side and I’m on your side, too.”