My Testimony - A Work in Progress

I don't know why, but I feel very strongly that it is time to write my testimony. Please don't think I'm doing this just for the blog - I've actually never ever written out my testimony before (even when asked to do it) so this is more of a "for me" thing. I was thinking about it the other night and was just amazed at how the Creator of the universe pursued me - why I'll never know - for so long before I allowed myself to be caught. I just feel like it is time to glorify Him by sharing the story. 


To begin at the beginning, I am one of those people who, for a long time, thought I was "born Christian." Actually, I was born into a home where being a Lutheran (capital "L") was much more important than being a Christian, and since I was baptized into the Lutheran church, I didn't really have anything to worry about on that front. For my family, religion was never really about God so much as it was about tradition and family heritage. My grandmother was baptized in the same church in which my mother was baptized and confirmed, my parents were married, my sister was baptized and confirmed, and I was baptized. (The only reason I wasn't confirmed there is that we moved away, never again to join a church because none of them, according to Mom, were enough "like home.")


I can remember when I was small asking my parents how Christianity was different from other religions, or what it meant to be a Christian, and receiving the answer that if you believed that Jesus was God, you were a Christian and going to Heaven. I also remember something about having to follow the Golden Rule. Interestingly, as uninformed as this approach was, it was not legalistic. My parents didn't tell me I had to follow the ten commandments or live by the rules in the Bible in order to be saved, just that I had to believe that Jesus was God and basically "be a good person."


It was never really enough for me.


I know now how uncomfortable I made my parents with my constant desire for more religion in my life. It seems I was aware of the God-shaped hole we are all born with in our hearts earlier than most, which is what makes the ridiculous amount of time it took me to find what fit inside so tragic. Anyway, I can remember not understanding why we didn't read the Bible and trying for a few weeks when I was maybe eight years old to read one chapter aloud to my parents before dinner each night. Obviously, it didn't last. 


Around twelve, I had a friend who I thought could help me. She probably could have, to tell the truth. She led me through the Sinner's Prayer and I asked Christ to be my savior. I went down to the Christian bookstore and bought myself an NIV Bible. I started reading and highlighting in Psalms, wanting so badly to understand what God was telling me, but winding up feeling overwhelmed by what I didn't know or just didn't "get." She and her parents took me to church with them for a few weeks at a non-denominational mega-church in town, but my parents disapproved of a church with no organ where people wore jeans and I buckled under the pressure and stopped attending. With no one to guide me, I abandoned the endeavor. I'm foggy on whether or not I was actually saved at that point; I meant what I said in the prayer, but I don't know if I understood it or not. Regardless, I wandered away from Jesus a lost sheep, whether He was my shepherd at that point or not.


But my search for spirituality didn't end, and some of my new friends at my new school introduced me to the idea of Wicca and/or Paganism (I don't think even they knew the difference at the time). We sat in circles at night and tried to blow out candles with our minds. We played with Ouija boards, watched "The Craft" and I bought books on channeling. It was thrilling to think I might be able to connect with some "force" out in the universe and use it to control my life, and very disappointing when it didn't work.


In high school I was taught that Christianity was a tool that Western man used to manipulate his control over the world. My first year in college, I learned that it was the Eastern religions that truly promoted peace, and Christianity preached mainly intolerance. Like my father, I learned to worship knowledge above all else, and I thought myself very sophisticated for not being ensnared by the silliness and "evil" of organized religion.


And then I met Adam.


I hated him. He was an awkward, arrogant know-it-all. Even worse, he was a crazy conservative, fanatical Christian. And I had to give him my phone number and my instant-messenger screenname because we had been paired up, by default, for our class presentation. Within a week he was my boyfriend; my only explanation at this point is that God must have reached down and scrambled my brain. 


In the first two months of our relationship we endured both the Yankees losing the World Series to the Red Sox (Adam cried) and the re-election of President George W. Bush (I cried). We argued about sports, politics, economics, his friends, my friends, money, and time. We should have been through. Again, there's no explanation for the endurance of our relationship other than the hand of God.


Over the months that we were together, I started to see that Adam had a supernatural ability for grace (though I didn't know that was what it was called at the time). He was so generous, so forgiving, so genuinely friendly it was infuriating. I could not figure out what made him the way he was. When I asked him, he said it was God, Christianity, something like that. I don't remember his exact answer. My God-shaped-hole-filled heart started pounding.


I wanted so badly for him to invite me to church, but I had scared him away from it with my rants and tirades against the hypocrisy of fundamentalist Christians. It took weeks (months?), but I finally asked him if I could go (how humiliating!) and I started attending with him and his family. I waited until they were all out of town one week to go on my own and respond to the altar call. I didn't want the fuss and fanfare from him, and I didn't want his mother to know I wasn't a Christian already. It was October 2, 2005 - one year and one day after we had started dating - and that time, I know for sure I was saved.


For a long time I thought that day was where my testimony was supposed to end. I don't know where I got the idea, but for some reason I always believed that your "testimony" is the story of how you came to receive salvation. Now I finally know that the story doesn't end there - salvation is only the first step in the Christian walk. That was over four years ago, and if you'll indulge me, I'd like to share with you what knowing God for four years has been like for me.


For almost two years after accepting Christ (for real this time), I was just learning the basics. At church, I learned how I had sinned against my God and how He had cleansed me of those sins. I learned about justification through faith alone. I learned that my baptism wasn't what I thought it was. 


I learned mostly doctrine in those first years: what it meant, intellectually, to be a Christian. I discovered that, as I had suspected when I was just a child, there was a lot more to it than agreeing that Jesus is God and living by the Golden Rule. It was good to know that I had found what I needed to fill the hole in my heart, and that I finally had someone to take me by the hand and guide me through the journey.


But it wasn't until September of 2007, when Adam and I had been married for four months, that I really began to engage with God. Until that time, I had been an infant in the faith, still fed on milk and not ready for solid food. But praise God - my heart came alive when I was roped into attending my first Beth Moore retreat, "Loving Well." I had never known before what it was to apply God's word to how you lived your life. I never knew before how personal He was. I never knew you could feel like that about God.


Beth had something I knew I wanted. I signed up for the first Beth Moore Bible study I could ("Stepping Up," it is wonderful) and hung on her every word while she taught me how to study the Bible. In 2008 I walked with God like I had never known was possible - He lived and reigned in me, and He changed the person I was.


I regret to say that 2009 was different. It started off well - I had been feeling for several months that God had been calling me to get re-baptized, truly baptized, as a Christian. In fact, He even gave me a deadline - I had to do it before I had children. I signed up for the next baptism at my church - there is one every month - and it was scheduled for February 22nd. I was sick all night the night before and believed that Satan was trying to keep me from my baptism. But it was not, in fact, Satan. My husband made me take a pregnancy test before we left for church and it came back positive. I knew then that God was absolutely serious about his timing.


That morning when I was baptized was probably the last reigning moment in my life in 2009. Once the reality of the pregnancy hit me, I succumbed to fear. I could no longer pray "thy will be done" - what if God's will was to take this child from me? I couldn't live with myself if I told God I'd still love and trust him even through a miscarriage, and then I did miscarry. It would be like giving Him permission to do something awful to me! I stopped trusting God right then and there and hoarded my pregnant belly all to myself. I even led a Bible study that year, all while refusing to trust Him with my life or my child's life. 


Three months after Hosanna (Anna) was born, the guilt and shame finally caught up with me, and I knew I had to return to my God with my tail between my legs. At the beginning of this year I confessed it all to Him, and, though I should not have been, was pleasantly surprised to find his grace and forgiveness ready and waiting. The prodigal returned and was showered with love and bathed in abundant grace - the very blessings with which I now write this blog. I pray I will never turn from Him again.