SUYL - Your Testimony

In continuing with Friday festivities, this week over at Kelly's Korner, we're talking about our testimonies. I don't think I've ever really gone into detail on that one here.

So here it goes.

I didn't grow up in church. It was never a part of any part of my family.
My family beleived in God. Growing up I heard things like "God wouldn't like that" and such. However, the extent to which I knew about God was through the pictures in the Bible or the little Bible Stories books in the doctor's office.

The extent of my prayer life was "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, If I shall die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."
(Now looking back on it, that's really kind of a sad prayer for a little child! Haha!)

Now you need a bit of a preface:
I didn't meet my real dad until I was 19. My stepdad came into my life when I was 4. He was all I had ever known of a father. He wasn't a real good one. For the most part, we didn't get along. We had our good moments, but there were more bad than good. The older I got, the worse it got.

Toward the end of my 8th grade school year, during spring break to be exact, he was arrested for buying/selling drugs. We had no clue any of this was going on. His story was that he was trying to help a friend. Some friend. He went to prison for about 6 weeks, posted bail, and then court issues began. You have to understand that through all this, our household was complete and utter chaos and turmoil. After his court trial, he was sentenced to some ridiculous amount of jail time and only had to serve 3 years. Well as a result, we pretty much lost everything we had in trying to "save" him. And as a result of all of everyone's time and efforts going into that, I was kind of put on the back burner.

The beginning of 10th grade, my bff at the time and I went on a double date with brothers. Their dad was a preacher. Our first date was Wednesday night church. Now, this church was a full gospel church denomination. Very charismatic. Very pentecostal-esque. Very very scary for a person who's only been to church maybe 3 times my whole life! And, somehow, I stayed. Whether it was for a boy, or for something else I was looking for.

Not too long after going there, I realized I wasn't saved. I had never known what that meant. I thought that because I believed in God I was automatically saved. Turns out that wasn't the case. I knew nothing of the story of Jesus, of his sacrifice, of the relationship that He offered. And during that time of my life, I NEEDED that relationship more than anything. I had no where else to go but to God. So in October of 2000 I surrendered. I knew I couldn't do it all on my own. My life hasn't been the same since.

The great thing was that my mom saw a fire and excitement in my life, and she too rededicated her life to the Lord and got back into church. It helped her through this ordeal in amazing ways too.

My stepdad has long since been out of the picture. That's a whole other issue.

I later became an intern at a different church and there was one piece of advice I offered those students:
"Don't wait until God is your only option to turn to him. Life is so much easier to go through when you already have him than trying to find him in the midst of turmoil."