The best stories told are the ones that take you through conflict, am I right?
- I’m going to show you that how we grow in our PERSONAL relationship with God is full of ups and downs but it’s an expected process.
- I’m going to show you that doubting is actually a healthy response that builds our faith to deeper levels.
- I’m going to put it all on the table, and let you see for yourself how one thread of experience can pull the whole tapestry of God’s design together, even if we don’t see the whole picture until much later.
Most Christians know what a testimony is but if you are just now beginning to question a deeper purpose in your life and are unfamiliar, a testimony is a personal account of why a person believes in God.
And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon the tables, that he may run that readeth it.
Habakkuk 2:2
My child like faith
I was raised Christian. Now, unfortunately that means a great many things these days because I see Christians doing a great many unchristian things like saying, “I’ll pray for you,” while living a lifestyle that doesn’t measure up to what the Bible says.
I’ll define what my understanding of the word is and Websters Dictonary online agree’s; a follower of Christ. My parents, though not church going, had been at one time, and they were full of Jesus on their lips and Bibles in their hands.
One memory I’ll never forget was during the 1986 earthquake in California where I lived with my family in a condo in San Diego. I remember the shaking and the fear as my mom, breathless, got us out of bed, ushered us quickly down the stairs to the first floor while the pictures on the walls swayed and dropped to the ground.
But more importantly, I remember my mom reading the Bible out loud to us in the glow of a candle flame, her voice soothing and my head sleepy with the time of night. A peace fell over our family even as the aftershocks rocked our home repeatedly. She had spoken peace over us with the power of God.
My parents were good parents, Lord fearing and kind. They put rules on us that our friends didn’t get from their parents; curfews, no parties, no pre-pubescent dating. My mother ever-vigilant screened friends before I was allowed to sleep over.
I remember often times feeling like they were a bit too strict but then I grew up and I watch a lot of Investigation Discovery and I realize now my mom wasn’t overbearing. My parents rules were because they loved us beyond measure and their job was to protect us in spite of our protest. They loved us.
So, as any young girl who is modeled love for God and family, I did the same. Without questions, I loved Jesus. I couldn’t wrap my mind around all of it, and I gave God many silly ultimatums growing up in my backyard like, “if you send me a yellow butterfly, I’ll know you’re real,” and regardless of whether or not that butterfly came flitting through, I absolved that He would send it when He was ready and kept on believing with child-like faith.
What is the Church, really?
In high school, I attended several churches that my older sister drug me too. My parents, having been avid church goers when I was too little to remember, resisted anything that wasn’t in direct correlation to what they believed and so, rarely if ever went with us.
I enjoyed the times my sister and I went. I loved the worship that came with singing hymns and enjoyed listening to sermons but didn’t take it in very deep. I was a typical teenager, I loved God and accepted Jesus, but he was not the first thing on my lips or last thought at night.
I was preoccupied with the social events of my youth and my boyfriend (I’d busted the dating barrier down and maybe as the fourth child, my parents didn’t put up too large of a fight). Eventually, I started attending church with my boyfriend and his grandparents. I felt like I was a part of something and I wanted to join the church and be baptized.
Now, my parents 100% agreed in baptism but they 100% did not believe in becoming a “member” of a church, (because, to them, we’re all members of the same church; the body of Christ). I remember continuing to persue it and thusly, was baptized.
It was a happy day but the pastor had said, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” and not in the name of “the Lord Jesus Christ” which is a subject of debate inside the Christian world and in my family, no baptism was complete without the Lords name spoken over you.
His name is not “Father, Son, Holy Spirit” it’s “Lord Jesus Christ.”
Hierarchy
Ah, my heart! I was not fulfilled like I thought I would be. I began to recognize a hierarchy within the church. The pastor was the King, the deacons and long timers, the courtesans.
I loved to sing and longed to be in the choir yet no invitation was offered and I didn’t know to ask. The church world was still a mysterious place for me. I know what the Bible said about a great many things through my parents readings and teachings but this was something different.
I wasn’t sure I liked it. I started pulling away and attending less. Then I was gone. My parents had been right, I wasn’t a member of anything. I wonder if they even noticed?
I imagine this is how a lot of people who once identified as Christians end up becoming agnostic or atheist. Maybe this is you? There are traditions within the building of a church that can ostracize instead of embrace it’s members.
Belonging
At the end of my high school days and the start of college, my brother who lived about 3 hours away in an amazing college town in our state, started inviting me and my then fiancé to come stay and go to church with him.
This was it! I’d found an amazing church. There were a ton of young people, Bible study’s, and Jesus name baptisms!
We moved there about a year later. I moved in with my brother, and my fiancé got his own apartment. Because I was not in college currently (I’d graduated with my cosmetology license with plans to return to college after saving up some money) I was placed in the singles Bible study group and not the college student group.
This group was older, professional, and I didn’t really feel like I fit. I did get my Jesus name baptism after all in a washtub in the basement of the church and upon rising out of the water, embraced my brother and we cried with joy in each others arms! It was truly amazing! I felt His spirit MOVE inside me!
In spite of not feeling completely in the right place with my groups, I learned so much. Everyone did group everything together and I did get to hang out with the student groups that I more closely resonated with since I was only 19.
Was this a cult? Or was I rebelling?
The sermons were strong, the studies were thorough, and you could feel God’s energy in the worship. There were problems surrounding my fiancé, however. They told us that we needed to get married or break up.
Deep in my subconcious, I did not want to marry this person and so we agreed to “take a break.” In the name of modesty, we couldn’t be alone together which was hard after being together alone for the last four years. It put strain on our relationship and we began to resent the church rules.
One evening after meeting up with my fiancé in secret, I came home to my brothers house late. His wife was still awake and she told me that our pastors wife had called and that I needed to call her back and apologize for not being home to take her call.
I was angry that she was telling me what to do, considering I was an adult and not her child to boss around but I called and apologized. The pastors wife told me I didn’t need to apologize and that I didn’t need to return her call that evening at all. But the bitter taste of resentment was already brewing inside me.
I began to question some of the teachings. One in particular was when it was brought up about end of life and being saved. It made me think of a girl I’d worked with that passed away in a car accident at the age of 17. She was catholic and so obviously not baptized full submersion and not in Jesus name.
They were saying that because of this, she wouldn’t enter the kingdom of heaven. I spent days studying scripture and thinking about her beautiful life and how kind, gentle, thoughtful, and generous she had been. I spent days on the phone to my mom and best friend trying to work out all the Christian angles I could.
In the end, I’d concluded that this was a cult and I needed to get out. I packed my things while my brother and his family were gone and I went to live with my fiancé. It was against my upbringing but I reasoned that we were planning on getting married.
My faith shattered
Then, it dissolved. My relationship and my faith. I understood that my relationship with my fiancé had been one built on fear and abuse. The subconscious feelings that he wasn’t the one, were now conscious thoughts and my feelings of deep connection to the Lord were disappearing.
I broke up with my fiancé in a flurry and my sister (the one that had dragged me to all those churches growing up) who was now married and living in Austria, offered for me to come stay with her. I packed my bags and flew into a brand new life.
Spirituality
In Europe, it’s VERY common to be atheist. It is a completely different place than America in that your choices are pretty much catholic or nothing. There are no real choices beyond this.
Lifestyles in Europe are very different; always flowing liquor, dancing at raves until 5am, and casual sex. It is not a culture based on Christian ideals. I started to think like those around me. Even my church dragging sister was more “spiritual” now.
I’d resolved that God was real but Jesus, maybe not in the way I had been raised to believe in Him? I believed in a higher level of self but heaven, maybe not? What I did believe in was myself and after breaking up with an emotionally abusive man after 4 years and breaking up with a cult minded church after almost 1 year … I guess it’s not too hard to imagine that this is now where I found myself.
I felt no power from God, just silence. I was desperate for love. I was unsatisfied. I was lost. I knew I wasn’t atheist because I started dating a man who was. It bothered me on a deep level that he didn’t believe even though I was only believing bits and pieces at the time.
Finding my faith again
I returned to the U.S. and started working and going back to college. I continued dating the European I’d met and his presence in my life as my boyfriend gave me the ammunition I needed to shoot down all the other offers I was receiving to date and focus on myself. That’s when true change started.
I met someone, a very special young man. We marveled that we knew some of the same people and yet, hadn’t met each other until now. We hung out and talked.
One eveing while looking at the stars, we discussed our faiths. I was raised Christian even though I didn’t go to church and he went to chuch but no longer felt Christian. I asked him about it and as he talked I told him why he should believe.
That young man opened his heart back up to the Lord and so did I. I felt moved by God that night, a stirring in my soul. That young man later became my husband.
A waking dream
I have found that the two things in this world that will truly rock your soul is death and life. The birth of my first child was my introduction into understanding the love of a parent. To this day, I remember sitting on my bed breastfeeding Cruz and I had what I can only describe as a waking dream:
I saw Jesus standing before me and the scripture, “He gave his only begotten son ….” echoed in my mind. I looked down at Cruz’s innocent little face. In that Holy moment I felt the magnitude of His love for us.
God gave His perfect, flawless son to die for our filthy sins. I was overcome with emotion. I understood His unwavering love for us.
A second vision
While pregnant with our second child I woke up to a toddler crawling into our bed and as a woman at the end of her pregnancy, I could not get comfortable with a little body squirming around so I went into his room to lay down on his twin bed.
As I was drifting off to sleep, I saw a tremendous light in the room coming from the window. I got up and looked outside and saw bright rolling clouds as if the light was inside them and they were getting larger and opening, like a time lapse video of a thunderstorm building.
Even though I didn’t know what it was in my mind, my soul knew. I was watching my Lord coming down out of heaven! The JOY I felt was insurmountable! I started trembling with excitement and shouting, “It’s happening!!” as I ran into our master bedroom to wake Kirk and Cruz to come with me.
Just as you would after looking at a bright light, I stumbled blindly against the walls holding myself up until I was standing in our dark room with Kirk sitting up in bed, sleepily concerned by my shouting asking me “whats wrong?”
Now, I’m not completely devoid of logic. Maybe you could say my inferior vena cava was partially occluded by my unborn child causing the blood flow to my brain to be slowed resulting in some sort of neuron misfiring. But it wasn’t what I saw as much as what I FELT.
You can believe me or not but even then, as my story unfolds, you’ll think back to these moments that God was showing me glimpses of Himself. He was strengthening my faith for His divine plan.
The trials
A few months later, we found ourselves in a financial crossroads. This rough time led to us moving about 60 miles from my place of work, back to the little town we met in. On those long drives I listened to a radio station that played sermons.
I got to know what preachers were on at the times of my long drive and they made me think and deepened my relationship with the Lord even more. In my down time on the drive, I’d talk to the Lord and pray.
One morning, after a particularly heavy snow had fallen, and I had to drive in to work. The snow had been plowed and was piled against the roadside like a snow ramp. As I climbed an overpass slowly, to avoid sliding on the black ice, my car suddenly vered off, sliding faster and faster, hitting the snow ramp and launching me up and onto the overpass railing.
I endured severe whiplash, a broken rib and was diagnosed with myofacial pain syndrome and bursitis in the affected shoulder. The morning it happened, I was listening to my radio station and praying repeatedly for God to keep me safe on the dangerous roads.
I was injured but alive. As I wasn’t able to work following that accident for many months, I started feeling restless and needed a way to cope with the stress the accident brought.
With my physical therapists permission, I took to running on our property and I used that time to pray. I thanked God for the air in my lungs and my legs that could carry me. The simple things we forget to be thankful for especially during difficult times.
I talked with God. I knew he had a reason and a plan for me. I never gave up hoping the pain would go away.
The blessings
After 8 months of chronic pain and painful treatments, I was literally healed by the hands of a massage therapist (and fellow Christian) after only three sessions and finally given a bill of health. After much prayer, I decided to accept a position in Georgia so we could live closer to my parents.
They had a large home and we were determined we could move into it until we found something for ourselves. Immediately after moving in, I made great friends with the woman that lived next to my parents. She was my age, had been married the same amount of time we had, and they had a little girl just a bit younger than our oldest. She was a built in best friend and a Christian to boot!
I had a great job at a local hospital and was making more money than I had ever dreamed I could make as a nurse. We were paying off debts and saving money and so we kept living with my parents to get back up on our feet.
The thread
About five months after being there, there was a large snowstorm, which isn’t very common for this part of the country and I was scheduled to work that night at the hospital. Unlike the midwest, the south does not prepare the roads with salt, or plow the snow.
I was filled with so much anxiety about driving in the snow following the horrible accident I had been in just a year before that I couldn’t bring myself to go. I was in a rental car I was unfamiliar with and still very new to the rolling and winding hills of the area. I was NOT driving in that weather.
The morning after the snow, I saw our friends with their sled heading down to the park while I played with my kids on the floor, feeling slightly guilty for calling out of work the night before. Not long after, there was a banging knock on the door.
When my dad opened it, the neighbor across the street from us, who we only waved to occasionally, was standing there. I didn’t hear what they said, I only saw my dad turn to look at me with a frantic look in his eyes. I said only one word, ‘Carson.’ The name of my sweet friend next door.
Being a critical care nurse, I didn’t waste any time. I ran next door to their house in my pajamas and house shoes slipping on the snow as I hurried. I got to the doorway expecting to find a cut finger or other small injury that needed my nursing skills.
Instead I saw through their entryway into their living room in front of the fireplace, Carson’s husband doing CPR on her, who was laying on the floor. My body went into action and I flew into the room. I took over compressions, getting what details I could from her husband.
This couldn’t be real. She was only 33 years old. She is healthy. Yet there she lay, under my hands as I pumped her heart. I watched her earlobes turn purple and her lips. I gave her mouth to mouth. I cried out, “breath baby!!”
Then my dad, who had been right behind me asked me if he could do anything. At that very moment, I looked past him and saw their small daughter backed against the wall watching me do CPR on her mommy. I directed him to take her back to our house.
Those few minutes felt like hours and I called out to God with every part of my soul. The paramedics came and I gave them report. Just a few minutes more and they had her loaded up and heading to the hospital. They had shocked her heart out of a lethal rhythm.
She had experienced sudden cardiac arrest of unknown origin. And she lived. She came home a few days later … the snow had melted by then.
The tapestry
Carson and I would talk about that day many times over. I cried myself to sleep for weeks after thinking about those moments in her livingroom and how close I came to losing her. But God had saved her and I had not only witnessed it but I had taken part.
A few weeks later, while we were talking together outside, the neighbor across the street pulled up and shouted over to her, “are you feeling better?” He had no idea what had transpired that day, just that her husband had ran to the front door and yelled for help.
We asked this neighbor if he knew that we were friends. No. We asked if he knew I was a nurse. No. So what then, had brought him to our door that morning? Why, when Rawlings called for help, did that neighbor come to us instead?
I spent a lot of time thinking this over. When I became a nurse, I went into critical care, specifically the Coronary Intensive Care Unit. My specialty was cardiac. I was a heart nurse.
When we moved to Georgia, we could have bought our own house but we chose to live with my parents because of the financial difficulties we’d gone through. We wanted to recoup some of what we’d lost. That decision placed us right next door to Carson.
And finally, the car accident that had brought me so much pain and stress and made me panic to think to drive in the snow that night is the reason why I was home that morning. I was home, right where God needed me to be in order to save the precious life of Carson. My beautiful friend.
So, you see … no matter the trials, the ups and downs that you go through in your life, there is a GRAND design in place. Faith is the belief that God will work it all for good, even when we can’t see the big picture. It’s trusting what we can’t see.
The Weaver
God is everywhere and in everything. Every part of my life has played out directly for the glory of His kingdom; even when I was lost, broken, shaken, and doubtful. He knows that we are not perfect and He saves us in spite of our shortcomings, or rather, because of them.
He wants our hearts. He wants to bless us. When we believe in Him and His son, Jesus, our souls are sealed as His. We welcome Him to live inside us. With that truth, we must learn to understand that everyone has something that ignites them.
That light inside you is your soul. Your unique universe within. If we are with God, we pull His power into us. Everyone has a universe within and I will show you how to cultivate yours.
You must:
- Tune out the noise (the mindless distractions of this world).
- Tune into yourself (the innermost desires that light your soul on fire, is where God sets your purpose).
- Listen and follow where God is leading you to go.
Trust the Weaver. The One who created the universe, thought it needed one of you, too.
