mary carol mazza
Moving Forward in Faith
A stranger might look at Mary Carol Mazza’s résumé and wonder if she knows what it is she’s after. But anyone who meets this vibrant, brilliant twenty-four-year-old quickly learns that the answer is simple, really: she wants to follow her God wherever He is leading.
So far, He has led her to a joint degree in economics and psychology from Virginia’s prestigious Washington and Lee University, a season of study in Austria, a stint as a summer camp counselor in Oregon, a policy job at the Texas Department of Health & Human Services, a summer at a women and children’s shelter in New York City, and missions work in Bolivia, Brazil, and Eastern Asia.
And she’s just getting started.
An only child who grew up attending a private Christian school in Houston, Texas, Mary Carol came to know Jesus Christ at a young age. Her mother shares her faith, but her father does not.
“I’ve prayed since I was in fifth grade that my dad would know Christ,” she says. “My family has always been divided in that way, and it’s caused a kind of split in my heart that I’ve carried since junior high. A lot of the choices I’ve made don’t seem reasonable to my dad. He wants me to do what to him would be the sensible thing: go to law school, settle down, and have a successful career using the gifts I’ve been given. And maybe it is easier to just please other people and do what’s expected of you. But there’s nothing better than following God in faith—seeing the way He leads and the things He does—and being able to say, ‘God did that!’ That’s the only way for me.”
If there was ever any question, a turning point for Mary Carol was probably the summer between her sophomore and junior years in college; she spent eight weeks living as an intern at a women’s shelter in Queens, New York. “All my friends were interning on Wall Street,” she remembers. “And when we’d meet up in the city they’d be talking about all the great stuff they were involved in, and say, ‘Now what is it you’re doing?’”
What she was doing was whatever it took to befriend and assist the residents of the shelter. “Some days it might be getting milk for their kids. Or just sitting on the side of a bed and listening to someone’s story. “I started organizing little outings for the residents. I was ‘that crazy girl from Texas’ who said, ‘Hey, let’s all go to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens this week. It’s free on Wednesdays!’ The amazing thing was, some of them actually did!”
Many of the women she lived with that summer were abused, addicted, and angry. Being in the middle of so much pain was a far cry from attending the sheltered, white-columned university just a few hours away. “I felt overwhelmed at times by their situations and their needs. It was lonely and scary, and I truly felt that God was all I had,” Mary Carol says. “I was there to build relationships, but they were pretty skeptical at first. When they saw that I wasn’t going anywhere, things began to change. What I was doing seemed small compared to [what] some of my friends [were doing], but it was incredibly fulfilling to me.”
The experience in New York solidified her desire to help others and taught her that building relationships was much more important than just offering detached service. That passion for involvement carried over to activities on campus, where she discipled other female undergrads through her dorm and sorority. “My senior year at W & L was all about relationships. It wasn’t about getting into a graduate program or getting a fellowship or landing a great job.”
As she began to invest in the lives of others, she saw a proliferation of women with whom she did share something in common: eating disorders that were hidden but powerful and disruptive. “It’s rampant on campus,” says Mary Carol. “And I thought, I’m a psychology major—I’m going to do something about this.” She and a few other women took on a research project on anorexia and bulimia, interviewing students and sharing their findings. “We began to speak out about the problem to other girls, trying to bring it out into the open,” she says. “We figured we need to talk about this stuff and not keep it a secret. We need to figure out how to heal.”
There was also a special relationship for Mary Carol at W & L—an undergraduate named Andy, two years her junior, who became a close friend, and then a boyfriend. They clicked almost immediately but had been dating only a short time when Mary Carol felt a nudge from God to pull back. They cared for one another deeply but agreed that the timing wasn’t right. “I haven’t really spoken with him in over a year,” she says, “but I’m trusting God to bring us together again if that’s what He desires. It’s hard to let go, but God has our very best in mind, and I’m trusting in His timing. I know this is His will right now, and I’m settled in it.”
Mary Carol moved to Austin after graduation and found herself challenged and stretched by her job at the Texas Department of Health & Human Services, taking part in an investigation of the state’s Child Protective Services agency. She found a church in Austin and became involved there, but after a little more than a year, she felt the tug of God’s leading again, this time to a kind of spiritual hiatus that may be her biggest challenge yet. She’s heading to Nashville, Tennessee, for an extended stay at Mercy Ministries, where she’ll open her heart and seek God’s healing for the “thorn” that’s been lodged there for years: her eating disorder.
“I believe God is calling me to do something big for Him, and I need to get ready. This is an area of my life that I know I need to work on. I don’t want to be weighed down by it anymore—or carry it into my marriage or pass it on to my children. God wants me whole, and He’s calling me away for a while to settle some things with Him.”
To some it may seem like a detour, but Mary Carol knows otherwise. “I’ve had enough experience to know when God is leading,” she says, “and to know that I want to follow. Maybe ‘big’ for me will be to get married and have a family. Or maybe it will be to move overseas and do missions work. Maybe I’ll go back to my job in Austin and He’ll have another assignment for me there, but I’m in preparation for the life He’s planned for me. There’s nothing more important now than deepening my relationship with the Lord—because that’s what we’ll be doing for eternity. God is teaching me that obedience does not require understanding. His question is simply, ‘Will you follow Me?’ and I mean for my answer to be ‘Yes!’”
To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
(John 1:12)