Part II of My Testimony

See previous post for Part 1.

Raymond resigned the church before school started my senior year.  So I begin my Senior year with a bad case of ‘I don’t care’.  And it got worse.  I moved again 2 weeks before 1^st semester exams. 

In this new town, 3 hours away, I had one Christian friend at school.  It was a bigger town and a much bigger school.  I still have nightmares about being lost in the building, can’t remember my class schedule, can’t find my locker, can’t remember the lock number. The church met in a tiny very old building.  I looked in the basement.  Once.  I was not going down there!  I really can’t recall anyone that was pouring into me at this point.  However, my attitude was not welcoming to such.  I was angry at God and felt I had good reason to be.  

As a senior in High School, I became the church pianist.  God’s music was really the only biblical thing that was going into my head.

But it wasn’t enough.  When I graduated, I began hanging around a different crowd, and not a better one.  I was leading a double life – partying like crazy, and then at my piano bench at 10:30 Sunday mornings.  No one called me on it.  Churches didn’t usually teach or practice that kind of loving church discipline.  And there was literally no one else in the church that could do my job. 

My parents moved again, I stayed in an apartment.  Which was not a good choice, as the choices I was making in my life were becoming more destructive.  I eventually moved back in with my parents.  And immediately there was a need for a church pianist!  Guess who got that job?

I was still living a double life, sometimes it was a close call to get to my bench on time on Sunday morning because I’d been out all night.

But this is where I met the love of my life, my Marky.  We started dating and one night we almost got killed at a railroad crossing.  Okay, God had my attention now!  I asked him if he knew where he was going if he died.  He thought so.  He started going to church with me on Sunday morning.  After some time, he asked Jesus to be a personal part of his life.  We were married 5 months later.

We were still not living like we should, but we were making progress.  And we had people pouring into our lives, living out an example of a Christian life as they knew best.

Mark and I moved to the next little town up the road and started going to church there.  That’s where things began to really change.  Mark was so hungry for truth in the Scriptures that he started meeting weekly with the pastor for discipleship.  We attended a couple marriage seminars, which were fabulous.  We participated in a 12 week discipleship training.  We had lots of people in the church and surrounding churches that were loving on us, teaching us, caring about us. 

After over 25 years at this church, we changed churches.  Hope.  That was the name of the church and it gave us hope.  We’d had too many responsibilities at the previous church.  We hadn’t learned how to rest in the comfort of the presence of our Savior.  We did at Hope and God placed some amazing people in our lives that became dear friends.  They loved on us and encouraged us in so many ways. 

I began doing Beth Moore Bible studies.  And her studies will change you!  I begin to see a different view of how God wanted me to live.  It wasn’t about performance, it was an attitude of gratitude. 

Then God added 2 new preachers in our life – our son in laws.  And listening to them, we began to see a clearer view of what living a Christian life looked like.   

In 2006 I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It was a difficult time in my life, I won’t lie about that.  But God sent special people to love in my during that time.

One lady, Barb Humphrey, was the most important one.  She’d been our neighbor over 20 years.  She’d had a liver transplant 15 years earlier, but it was failing.  I got pneumonia and was so sick, I literally couldn’t talk.  Barb called me to encourage me!  She knew she was dying but she was compelled to call me.  To tell me I’d been a great mother, that God was going to take care of me, that we were going to go to Reno and that I would be a fabulous grandmother.  There are no words to describe what that call meant to me.

God did take care of me through the cancer journey, we did move to Reno and I’m working on being that fabulous grandmother!

We’ve been in Reno 8 years and God has sent so many people that have loved on us, taught us so much, blessed us in so many ways. And we are eternally grateful to each and every one of them.

So, there are 2 ways of looking back at your life.  You can look for only the negative, unhappy things.  And everyone will have those.  No one is perfect, so you’ll never be surrounded by perfection.  And you won’t be an example of perfection either.  So there will be consequences in life. 

Or, you can look at things with an eye for searching for God.  It’s like the game of ‘Where’s Waldo’, only much better.  When you make God your focus, you can see who he has sent to love you, protect you, to teach you.  And those are the things that make the important difference in your life.  More importantly, make sure you are being that person for those in your life.  You can make a difference!