Testimony

A few friends and I have been talking about testimonies lately so I thought I'd share mine.

Growing up I had the picture frame family. My dad was the chairman of the deacons at my church and my mom was my sunday school teacher. My dad was working for Chrysler and we were living the American Dream. I accepted Christ as my Savior at age 6 at a VBS. I know that at that point, I knew that lying to my mom was going to send me straight to hell and that I didn't want to go. I was always "the good kid" so my lifestyle didn't take a dramatic turn around. Living in a small town, a dry town at that, I had never really been exposed to the real world. I didn't know what it meant to really need God.

To tell you a little bit about Holly Pond, my parents were raised there, as was most of my friends parents..and their parents. No one leaves.....ever. I was one of very few that went off to college right after graduation. Now I know why God removed me from Holly Pond. He knew that I didn't have a reason to trust Him.

Soon after I moved, my parents went through a rough divorce. My parents were married for 27 years. A month after that, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. A week or two after that a relationship that I was in for 3 years come to an end. I remember laying on my dorm room crying and being mad at God. But I know now that He was teaching me why I need Him. I had never needed to trust Him, and now He was all I had.

In October of 2006, the man I thought I was to marry proposed. Things were perfect, we had our future planned as best as we thought that God wanted it. He was the romantic, thoughtful man of God that I had dreamed about. I took extra classes to graduate in May so that we could go to seminary. Around Christmas, the relationship came to an end. The only answer I got from him was "I just don't have a peace about it." I found myself doubting everything I had known, everything I had learned, everything I was. I didn't know why that the God I prayed to and asked to guard my heart would fail to do so. All I ever wanted to do was serve God alongside this man that I had fallen in love with. The God I had been taught about all my life didn't seem so merciful and just anymore. I began to quietly rebel. While I never strayed from church, or the BCM, my life outside of church began to struggle. I begin to turn to earthly pleasures for fulfillment instead of running closer to the only source of true peace. Nothing could fill the emptiness that I was feeling. Everyone around me would comment on "how well I was taking things", however I didn't feel strong at all. I felt abandoned by first my earthly father, then the man I thought would be my children's father, and now my heavenly father. Thankfully, one of God's promises is that "weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." Psalms 30:5 Thank You, God, for the morning, and thank You, God, for the people in my life that didn't cease to pray for me.

Today, I sit here four years later and I don't have a clue what God's plan for my immediate future is, but I am here to tell you that you don't have to have it all together. If there is one thing that I've learned, it is that God doesn't pay much attention to me telling Him what His plan for me is. Looking back, I know that my plans weren't God's best. I know that just because something looks Godly and just because you are doing something FOR God doesn't mean that God is IN it. The Bible tells us that God's plans are to prosper us and not bring us harm. He doesn't offer us a street light, He offers us a lamp unto our feet and we have to take it from day to day because if we were to know everything that lays ahead of us, there would be no need for Faith.