Meet our editor for the 2012-13 year: Amanda!

Hi, my name is Amanda Hamilton and I am the editor-in-chief for Mighty Strong Girls. 

Once the school year gets rolling, my life is packed. I choose my extra-curricular activities carefully because I don’t have time for much beyond homework, work, and practicing my violin. 

A recent graduate of Lincoln Land Community College with an associate degree in liberal arts, I will soon move to Millikin University where I will finish my bachelors, double majoring in music and English creative writing. I love to read a good book, go to symphony concerts, hang out with my grandparents on Sunday afternoons, and write music. I like to plan, schedule, and organize.

So where did I find time to be editor-in-chief for Mighty Strong Girls? I didn’t find the time. God did.  

Honestly, I would have jumped at the chance to write for any magazine. So when I heard about this new magazine my friend Amy Denney was starting, I was excited. It was better than just “any magazine.” It was a Christian magazine for teen girls and Amy planned on touching all the issues I dealt with as a teen. This magazine was something I would have wanted to read in high school. It was going to be challenging and informative, fun, encouraging, and overall a great resource for more than just teen girls. I offered to write freelance, suspecting I was forfeiting some sleep in the upcoming semester. She suggested I consider being a columnist. Wow. Yes, I was definitely forfeiting sleep in the upcoming semester. Goodbye, weekly hour of free time.

Then Amy offered the internship as editor-in-chief. It was the perfect internship. It was not only writing, but editing experience, something I’ve considered pursuing as a career when I finish college. And all of it was working for a compassionate and passionate ministry for teen girls. But the time involved was a huge brick wall. Goodbye sleep, goodbye free time, goodbye social life, extra-curricular activities, and sanity. I wanted to do it more than anything.

That’s when I started to see God happen. I crunched numbers and realized my college savings would go farther than I thought, meaning that waiting to find a job for a semester or two would not be stupid. I found I could get college credit for this internship. It counts toward my major. I just happened to have a class I could drop, leaving a perfect, three credit hour hole in my schedule. Mighty Strong Girls fits very nicely in that hole. If I had looked at Joshua and that whole Jericho scenario in the Old Testament, maybe I would have remembered that destroying brick walls is God’s specialty.

So here I am, interning as editor-in-chief of Mighty Strong Girls. I never expected to find an English internship with a Christian ministry while going to a secular university. This magazine is as much an opportunity for spiritual growth as it is a professional experience. 

God is going to do some amazing things through Mighty Strong Girls. How incredible and humbling that he has chosen for me to be part of it.