Tiffany Thornton runs across the lobby of the main floor at the Disney Channel building, her two-pound Teacup Pomeranian puppy, Leo, tucked underneath her arm. “Hiiiii!” she says with a lot of energy, considering that she spent all morning on the set of “Sonny With a Chance,” one of Disney’s hit sitcoms. Acting nothing like her stuck-up alter ego, Tawni Hart, the blond nemesis of Sonny Monroe, Tiffany’s personality is warm and outgoing—the opposite of catty.

Our SUSIE Magazine interview takes place on a Monday afternoon following a morning read-through of a new script. Tiffany can’t say enough good things about her co-stars. “Demi is my closest friend. She’s like my little sister. All of us are pretty much in the same age range, although Brandon did say on Radio Disney that I’m like the mom of the cast. I was like, ‘Brandon, wait a second! I’m only 24. I’ve been 24 for two weeks!’”

Where She Gets Her Strength
After this morning’s rehearsal, Tiffany headed from Burbank to her favorite coffee shop in nearby Toluca Lake for her own private Bible study. She opened her new Praying Woman’s Bible that includes devotional topics and verses to meditate upon.

“Today was about emotions. I love this verse!” Tiff any says as she grabs her phone to check her earlier tweet. “I tweeted it: ‘Psalm 119:32. I run in the path of  Your commands for You have set my heart free.’ I think that’s such a cool verse. I said it out loud in the coffee shop. People were like, ‘Who’s this crazy girl talking to herself? She’s probably studying her lines. That’s so L.A.!’”

Being set free from the past is a notion Tiff any has been feeling a lot lately. “My pastor was talking the other day and said that some of the hard things in your past shape you into doing work for the Kingdom. You can go through them with the joy of the Lord—which doesn’t mean you like it! But you know that the other side of it will be good.”

A Less Than Perfect Home Life
Like many Disney stars, Tiff any grew up in Texas. She started off in a trailer until she was 4 but ended up bouncing around a bit with her brother, who’s a year and a half older than her. After their parents divorced, their mother got remarried and took a job out of state, leaving her two children with their stepfather.

“My mom became a flight attendant when I was young, and she was stationed out of Newark, N.J. You don’t get to choose your station. . . .” Tiffany’s voice trails off. She pauses for a bit, looking for the right way to express her thoughts. “We were kind of left with this guy, and he didn’t really know what to say or how to deal with us. It was hard for us. But he was adamant we went to church. That was good.”

Church attendance lasted until Tiffany’s mom divorced stepdad No. 1 and married stepdad No. 2. This one didn’t have the same relationship with God. “Church really didn’t matter to the man of the home, who’s supposed to be the spiritual leader,” Tiffany says. “Unless we were with our grandparents, we didn’t go. We went through a rough time with that stepfather.”

As troubles continued brewing in her home, Tiffany discovered solace in her bedroom closet. “I always found comfort
in small spaces. I’d go in there and pray and sing to God. One night it came to blows between my mom and my stepfather, and he became violent. That was the fi rst time I’d ever witnessed that. He tried to suffocate my mom, and I heard that whole thing going down. She was crying, of course, and my brother was hugging her.”

God Is Her Shelter
Tiff any remembers calling her grandparents for help before running outside. She perched herself on the mailbox and began singing, “Oh God, you are my God and I will ever praise you. I will seek You in the morning and I’ll learn to walk in Your ways. . . .” over and over again. She felt like she was dreaming.

“You know how when you’re dreaming you can look into a home and it’s like there’s no roof and you’re kind of floating over the house, watching things go on?” she muses. “That’s exactly what that experience was like for me. I know God had carried me to a safe place.”

She says her second stepfather never hurt her or her brother, but watching him lay hands on her mother was traumatic. “I don’t think at 12 or 13 years old you really consider the magnitude of what’s going on, but I know that God was protecting me. From that point on, I can think of moments when I’d go into my closet and write poems about God. I’m like, wow! That was me spending time with the Lord. I didn’t even realize that was what I was doing. So my relationship with Christ is very special to me.”

Solidifying Her Faith in Christ
Tiff any grew up listening to power vocalists such as CeCe Winans, Mariah Carey and Sandi Patty (“I had all her tapes and listened to them going to bed at night”). Her first solo was in fourth grade when she played Mrs. Claus at Oak Forrest Elementary. At church in junior high, she performed a few of her favorite Rachael Lampa songs. Outside of music, Tiffany was enthralled by her classes in biology and anatomy. She thought she would one day become a pediatrician or neonatologist—a doctor who works with premature babies.

Maybe the desire to care for children was a way of coping with the stress she faced in her teens. Tiffany and her brother moved in with their grandparents for several years, and when Tiff any won a modeling gig with the International Model & Talent Agency at 17, her grandmother even moved to Los Angeles with her.

For her senior year, Tiffany attended a Christian high school for the first time and took a class in world religions to really challenge her faith. “I’m the kind of person who wants to know what I believe—not because someone else told me,” she states. “So I studied what it’s like to be Buddhist, what it’s like to be atheist . . . so I could understand at the end of the day that my Christian faith was right for me. Being in that class really solidified what I believe.”

Catching the Acting Bug
While cementing her religious convictions, Tiffany began to fall in love with acting. Her dream was to book a show on the Disney channel. While booking small parts on “The O.C.” and other shows, she kept auditioning for Disney, hoping and praying God would open the door.

For several years Tiffany worked enough to support herself financially, but never got the big break. “There were times I didn’t know if I wanted to do it,” she confesses. “Right before I booked ‘Sonny,’ I went to church. I was like, OK, God, I feel like I’m just here, auditioning, not doing enough. I’m good at school. What am I doing here? If I don’t book anything this week, I’m going back to Texas and I’m gonna do something for the Kingdom. And the next day I auditioned for ‘Sonny’ on a Tuesday. Wednesday I had my callback. Thursday I had to test for the network, and Friday we had the table reading for our first taping on Monday!”

Tiffany says it was at that point she began to learn to give God complete control of her destiny. “When I was younger,
I didn’t have a lot of control over things I wanted to control. A little bit David and Goliath. I felt I was against a giant—the world—when I was growing up. I couldn’t conquer the evil. I always felt so tiny and small in my closet.”

She feels that part of giving up control involves making amends. “I knew I had to forgive people, even if I didn’t want to—with breakups, with friendships that go awry. At the end of the day, I wasn’t helping myself by holding a grudge against someone.”

Discernment
Watching her mother make mistakes with men forced Tiff any to build discernment with the opposite sex. “I’ve always had a lot of friendships with guys, and I only have a brother, so I don’t feel unsafe around guys. I don’t have hatred toward men, but I definitely think that I’m safely cautious about the people I let close to me.”

Tiff any recently announced her engagement to her boyfriend, Chris Carney, a courtroom officer and weekend worship leader at his dad’s church in Arkansas. They have no wedding date set and plan to stay engaged for several years before marrying. “We just prayed about it a lot,” Tiff any explains. “He doesn’t live here and so having that commitment to each other was something we wanted. We had a peace about it, and it brought joy to our hearts.”

At her coffee shop devotional time earlier today, Tiff any really allowed the message of controlling her emotions to sink in. “I’m 24 now and realize there are times I react a certain way that’s overdramatic! [A], I’m an actress and [B] I’m a girl, you know?” she laughs, “but sometimes I have explain to people, ‘Listen, I went through this as a child and maybe I have some abandonment things and sometimes I have a control thing. It’s always a work in progress. Everybody’s got their own stuff.”

For God’s Glory
Tiff any assumes that the stuff she experienced as a child will make her a better mother and wife someday. “It’s definitely brought me much closer to the Lord. When you have nothing else, you depend on that.”

She feels that God has rewarded her desire to work with children—even if it’s not in medicine. She appears on a TV show that brings a lot of joy into the lives of kids. “It’s something I always wanted. I’m very fortunate to have been given that gift. I found God leading me here, and I especially tried really hard for Disney, because it’s wholesome and we’re protected. I have a heart for children. What better place—if I’m not a pediatrician—than being on the Disney Channel?” she laughs.

Dan Ewald is a writer living and working in Los Angeles.