It has been laid upon my heart to share my journey to God and how I was lead to a relationship with Him. After I became a believer, I could see His works in my life, even when I was not a believer. Noting happens by accident. God is good, loving, and forgiving.
I did not grow up in a Christian home. My father didn’t believe in God. My mother did, but never showed it or talked about it. I am sure a large part of that had to do with the fact that my father thought all Christians were “bible thumpers.” A lot of my extended family on my mom’s side were believers and they were not afraid to show it, but because my father was a control freak, we did not spend a lot of time around them. However, as I look back, I can see how much influence they still had on me.
A lot of things happened in my childhood, things a child should never have to witness or experience. As I look back on them, I can see that the only reason I survived was because of God’s hand carrying me through.
I went off to college just a few months after turning 18, vowing to only return for visits. Because I was finally out from under my father’s thumb, I was on my own and able to make my own decisions for the first time, I went on a little rebellion streak. After all the years of being controlled and being told what to do and what was expected of me, I did not know what to do with myself or how to act. So as a freshman in college, away from home and having her first taste of freedom, I went a little wild. Again, without God’s hand in my life, I don’t think I would have survived.
Around my 3rd year of college I finally had all the wildness out of me and I was starting to get my head back on my shoulders and I was ready to take responsibility for myself. This is about the time Jon entered my life. You can read more about that here. Everything is always in God’s timing. I don’t think that Jon would have entered my life the way he did if I had continued with my wild ways. I was growing up, God saw that, and He knew that I was ready for my life partner.
The first few years of our lives together were….interesting. There were a lot of great times, but almost as many low times. At the time, I didn’t know it, but I was suffering from severe depression. It was bad. Really bad. I have said it before and I will say it again, but it is only by God’s hand that Jon stuck it out with me. He took my verbal abuse, he took my depressive states, he took my suicide attempts, he took my overwhelming anger, he took my underwhelming joy; he took them all, picked me up, wrapped his arms around me, and stood by my side. Jon is an amazing man who shines God’s love.
I finally got to a place where I was good; I was certainly not completely healthy mentally, but I was healing and I was moving forward. I got my degrees and started teaching preschool for a couple of years. I was finally heading in the direction that I wanted to be going.
Fast forward a couple of years to the birth of our first child. That alone is a beautiful and amazing blessing. Life was good with our baby boy. I loved being a mother.
Move forward another year or so; 16 months to be exact. I was getting ready to go to work (I was working a few hours in the evening after Jon got home) when Jon’s parents drove up. Not unusual for them to just stop by, but we weren’t expecting them either; what was odd was that Jon’s mom was carrying a box of tissues with her. What I didn’t know, was that my world was about to be flipped upside down by nothing I had ever experienced before.
Jody. Sweet Jody. One of Jon’s best friends from high school. He was the brother of my roommate’s boyfriend who had introduced us. He was gone. Taken. You see, Jody had passed away in his sleep the night before at the young age of 29. It was unexpected. It was shocking. It rocked our family community. It was something I had never experienced before. I had lost people I loved; grandparents, etc, but it was all when I was younger, too young to know what true loss was.
Through all the preparations and the funeral, I never allowed myself to grieve. I held it all together in order to be the strong one for everyone else. My husband had lost someone close to him; as the boys put it, he had lost a brother from another mother. He needed me to be strong for him. But because of that, I did not allow myself to grieve. In the end, I was very angry, hurt and confused. Why was someone so good taken so young? Why wasn’t he allowed to live out his full potential of life? How could someone so full of life just be gone in a second?
I needed answers.
Fast forward a little bit more. We were starting to meet other families with kids the same age as our children. I noticed that a lot of the families around us were attending church; either just starting out or they had been believers their whole lives. God was planting the seed.
I started thinking about the house I had grown up in. I did not want my children to experience anything even close to that. What was missing? What component needed to be added or changed? How was I going to do it all differently?
Then it happened.
Friends of ours invited us to their church; a church that they had only just been attending a for a few months. Jon was hesitant. He came from the thought that if he believed in God, why did he need to go to church to prove that? So, I went by myself. It was a little bit lonely; it was something I had hoped we could do as a family. But God knew that it was something I needed to do alone. I needed to own it. I needed to experience Him by myself. I started taking the kids with me. Jon didn’t mind at all. In fact, he encouraged it. Then the kids started asking why daddy wasn’t going with us. I let him answer that question and just kept praying. It only took a few months and Jon gradually started joining us every Sunday.
At this point, I was going to church and learning about my Father, but I was still missing something. I went in to talk to our Pastor about something else and he asked me if I had accepted Jesus into my heart. I had no idea what he was talking about. So with his help, I accepted Christ into my heart that day in March 2007. I was baptized a little over a year later on the 3rd anniversary of Jody’s death. I had my answers.
God has touched my life and laid His hand on my life in so many other ways. I could go on and on about the ways that God has lead me and the ways that God has blessed my life. My Father has shown me such love. He has forgiven me for all of my sins. He has shown me grace for all that is in the past. God has shown me the beauty that life can hold, even in the midst of a tragedy.
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Tags: spirituality