I was your typical kid, growing up. Played lots of sports, had lots of friends, got good grades…etc. etc.
As I think happens to a lot of girls around this age, I began rebelling around 15 years old.
I’m skipping a lot of the unnecessary details – I dropped out of High School at 17 and went to live with friends.
Again, leaving out the details, I frequently used drugs from 17-23 and very quickly progressed from doing it for fun to doing it because I was an addict and had to have it if I didn’t want to get sick.
I met my husband when I was 22 years old. Dustin has little to no tolerance for drug use… and I now know that it was God that brought him into my life… but at the time I thought he was easy on the eyes and I liked being around him.
We married less than a year after we met and he was deployed to Iraq about a month or so after we married. Before he left, he told me that if I wasn’t clean and sober when he got back, we would get divorced.
So, true to form, the last day I used was in mid-June 2003, the day Dustin returned home from Iraq.
I moved to Lawton immediately, where he was stationed at Ft. Sill. And then we moved to Kitzingen, Germany in October 2003.
I met a girl who lived on the 1st floor of our apartment building, named Tara. Tara and I were immediate friends – which isn’t like me at all – even to this day, I have a hard time getting close to people and really letting people in.
We would stay up for HOURS just talking about anything and everything.
I had this sudden interest to know more about God, but at the time, I was not sure WHO God was. I suppose, by definition, I was agnostic. I was pretty sure there was a God, but I had no idea who God was and I wasn’t sure there was a way to know.
Again, I now know that is was God who placed this sudden desire to know if there was a God in my heart…and if there was, Who was it?
So, one of the many nights Tara and I stayed up talking, the subject turned to God. Tara is Christian and believes the Bible to be 100% literal. She started telling me about things that I had never heard before – specifically the baptism of the Holy Spirit – and I was completely enthralled.
I called my mom and told her to send me books on Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism for Christmas. (That sentence, in and of itself, is comical, if you think about it) I didn’t want any person to sway my decision – I wanted to do the ‘research’ myself and know FOR MYSELF who, if anyone, God was.
So, my mother never sent me the books, but in the meantime, while waiting for the books that I thought would come before Christmas, I started ‘praying’ and saying things like, ‘God, if you are real, I want to know. And if you are real, I want to know WHO you are. Please show me.’
It’s hard, if not impossible, to explain how I knew that God is the God of the bible. It was because of the conviction that came from the Holy Spirit… but trying to explain that to someone who has never known that conviction is difficult… if not impossible.
But, as best I can put it, there was an assurance in my heart that nothing could make me question. Especially when I entered into a house of worship – the presence of the Holy Spirit was so REAL and PRESENT that there was no denying it.
I would break down in tears and not be able to do anything but lift my hands and worship… I don’t know how to explain it.
God is awesome.
I accepted Christ in July 2004 at the Würzburg Christian Servicemen Center.
http://www.wurzburgcsc.org/common/content.asp
So, that’s my testimony of when I came to know the Lord… but, in all reality, I could just keep on writing up into present day… I’m finding that it’s not a destination, but a journey that will continue until I'm no longer on this side of heaven.
Some days I’m striding forward in my walk with Christ… and others I’m standing still…and others it’s like I’m complacently standing on 1 of those conveyor belt walk ways you see in the airport… but I’m going backwards.
But no matter where I am, God is always right there with me… and He’s always ready to catch me when I fall, pick me up, strengthen me, encourage me, forgive me, provide for me, love me…
God is awesome.
If you are someone who does not know the Lord… or maybe you read this and think, ‘I still don’t know if I believe in God’, I encourage you to pray and ask: If there is a God, show me who you are.
He will always answer when someone is sincerely seeking Him.
Jeremiah 29:12-13: Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
