I was born into a strong Christian family. My parents were Christian school teachers and also leaders in the church. Not remembering the whole true experience of kneeling by my parents bed when I was 5, I really began having doubts about my salvation experience. The doubt really began to set in around age 10. I began to really question my mom about my experience as a young child. The feeling of doubt didn’t go away and a feeling of emptiness began to really set in. A few months later, I asked my mom again about my experience of accepting Jesus at her bedside. She sat down and went through scriptures to help give me assurance. The assurance only lasted a short while before the doubts came back. For several years I tried to avoid the issue totally, but the doubt grew stronger and I felt like I was carrying around a huge weight. I began to have very low self-esteem and felt no purpose for anything. Suicidal thoughts had even set in. At age 12, my Grandmother whom I was close to  nearly died. This had an impact on my life. I would love to say that I now invited Jesus into my life, but I didn’t. I continued to live in darkness and felt no purpose.

My life before Christ was one of confusion, no peace, and lacked purpose. I was not raised in a Christian home. Both parents were alcoholics. My family was very poor and we had few clothes to wear. I remember being made fun of by my peers at school . I started working fulltime at the age of 15 to support myself. I moved out with my older sister when I was 16 and was married with a child at 18. I was not prepared to be a wife or mother and wasn’t good at either one. I did alot of things in my late teens and early 20’s that I am very ashamed of. My maternal grandmother was a wonderful Christian woman who lived in Mississippi and visited us every couple of years and I knew she had an inner peace, love, and joy that must have come from the Lord.

In August of 1982, I didn’t feel that I could live another day in the lost and miserable world I was living in. I was sobbing and cried out to the Lord. I confessed my sins and begged for His forgiveness. I asked the Lord to come into my life and he did so immediately. I asked God to show me a sign so I would be certain Satan wasn’t playing a game with me. He revealed a very small bright light for just a couple of seconds and it disappeared. I was overwhelmed with joy and innerpeace. I knew I had just died to an old life and was beginning a new one.

After joining a church and being baptized, I was happy and at peace. I attended worship service, read my Bible and prayed. Then in 1991, I backslid when I was faced with divorce, my dad with terminal cancer and my mother not expected to live but a few months. I became angry with God and turned my back to him. In 2004, I developed an auto-immune disorder that prevented me from working and ended my nursing career. I became more angry. On Sept. 3rd, 2006, 15 years of being away from God, I rededicated my life and joined First North. My life is better than it has ever been even though I have an illness. My life has meaning and direction. I have an inner peace. I have what I saw in my Grandmother! I love the Lord and all my hope and strength comes from Him.

All of my life I wanted to be a United States Marine. Though life didn’t go according to plan leading up to boot camp, I finally found myself at Parris Island ready to realize my dream. Leading up to that time my life had bottomed out as I had only lived for myself and what I wanted. I didn’t have a “religious” background and didn’t know much about who I was and why I was here.

When I was a young teenager, I was very active in my church. Because I had been in church since I was a baby, I knew how to act and talk like a Christian. I even won a plaque for memorizing the most Bible verses in one class. But the more I learned, the more I realized something was missing inside me and that basically my life was meaningless.

I realized it didn’t matter how many times I went to church or how much of the Bible I learned, because in God’s eyes, I was a sinner. I had to ask God to forgive me for my sins and to be Lord of my life. Outwardly, I doubt if people could see a big difference in my life. But it had changed! Then my life had a purpose. I didn’t want to memorize scripture to win a prize…I wanted to study the Bible so I would know what God wanted to say to me. And I wanted to share that with other people.

I am so thankful that I made that decision at a young age. For over 45 years now, I have had and continue to have problems, but God has always been right by side through every problem. And in all that time, I have never doubted that I would go to heaven and spend eternity with Him when I die. Today I can say with confidence…my life has real meaning and purpose.

I grew up going to church and always knew who Jesus was. At the age of 12 during a revival I asked Christ to come into my life. I knew that Christ was my Savior but didn’t fully understand what that meant until years later.

I felt like I had to work at religion. I tried to be a good person, but I was never quite good enough. I started to drift away from God and turn to the world for my comfort. I thought I could do it on my own, make myself happy, but my life seemed to be going nowhere. I had no hope, no peace, no future, and I knew there had to be something more. So I turned back to the Savior I knew growing up and had accepted into my life years ago. I began to realize having Jesus as my Savior was more than practicing a religion. It was even more than just believing in Him. It was giving your life over to Him. It was a relationship -a personal relationship- with the creator of the universe!

As I surrender my life to Christ each day I am filled with a hope for the future, a hope that is only found in Christ. Jeremiah 29:11 says “’For I know the plans I have for you’ declares the Lord ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’” When the world tries to pull me away again I just turn to the one thing I know for certain. That is the love of God and the hope that comes only from Him.