A Testimony

I was asked to share my testimony. For a long time I wasn't sure I had one. But really--- our testimony is just about His work in our story. So here's mine so far....

I don’t really have a turn on a dime story where everything changed. There is no time, really, in my life that I don't remember knowing God. I feel like I always knew God and knew Him well. And for that I am so very thankful. I owe my mother for that. She had that experience some of you have spoken of: being young and, for her, in catholic school just *knowing* there was more. She journeyed as an adult through all kinds of denominations, blessing me with her lessons learned.She struggled as a mom but she always pointed me to God. My first memory of God or anything related to Him was when I was very little. I was in the back seat of our station wagon and my mom prayed with me. Asked the Holy Spirit to be with me, to teach me.

I had basic churched-kid church life. I attended different protestant churches, went to Sunday school and youth retreats, saw my mom trash my older brother’s heavy metal cassette tapes. I did have some not so basic experiences too. My family was actually kicked out of one church just before it morphed into a cult. (Seriously). My mom had been married 4 times by the time I got married. But mostly my mom was a single mom. There were step fathers and kidnapped siblings (by one said step father). And we moved a lot. I had leukemia in 4th grade and I was hospitalized for depression in 9th grade and through both those storms I met people at perfect times who spoke God's truth into my life and helped me stay on the path God had planted me.

But I was a teen who pushed all the limits. I never questioned God or what He wanted from me. I knew very well I was not living up to His expectations. I did my own thing. I'd cut school and then debate the bible with friends. I did some drugs and drank a lot, all in my first two years of high school. I refused to go to church with my mom as a teen. But it wasn't church in general, I still very much loved God (I just always liked to push the envelope). It was this specific church. I didn't like it. I had a bad feeling...I still have a bad feeling about this specific denomination and my brother is now a pastor there.

I met my husband when I was 16. He was 25. Then I met his two children. We dated 4 years. We got engaged. One night we stayed up way late, talking. He had grown up catholic and was a self professed agnostic. We prayed together for the first time that night. He gave his life to God. We looked for a church to be married in. We found one and we've attended there ever since. well, until..

I became a wife, a nurse, and step mom all in the same summer. I had my babies a couple years later. We loved God as a family. My husband and I have had a tough marriage. We were young and neither of us had any decent example of what marriage should be. We struggled in our relationship and with money. I wanted more children and he didn’t. It hurt. I grieved, for years. I had started working weekend nights. This helped life. We had more money and a calmer schedule. I stopped going to church every week because I was soo sleepy most Sunday mornings. But my husband would take the kids. I realized the less time I spent in church the more time I studied the bible by myself. I stopped relying on sermons. I’d use downtime at work to to investigate questions I had. It’s amazing what can happen with a bible and a computer and no predigested commentary. I saw things. Things I didn't think were there. Things I thought read one way actually read differently. Once homeschooling began we studied deeper and deeper. Our curriculum suggested keeping the bible feasts as we were studying ancient Israel and history from their perspective. We started and never stopped. Each year we learn more.

THEN I had a...detour. I was just beginning to see, the scales were falling and we were learning but there were wounds and old hurts and the enemy used it to tempt me, to distract me. I can’t go into details because it’s not far enough past to not open raw wounds, but I made sinful choices. I went down paths I shouldn't have. I behaved in ways I never thought I would. It was dark and ugly and most people don’t even know about it. I struggled for a couple years to really put these things behind me, sliding down slippery slopes again and again... But I prayed and prayed for God to just make me want to want to do the right thing. He did. I took steps of obedience from diet to the days we kept as holy. I learned to love what my King loved and to obey just because He said so. *And He set me free*. Since then my marriage, which I thought at one point would definitely end, is hugely better and healing. My health is amazingly improved. My heart and my emotions don’t repeatedly betray me as they once had. I don’t grieve no more children with the emptiness I once did. I am HIS and He is mine. And my family and I are on this walk together to grow in His truth.