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When I was 14, my family moved again, this time to a small close-knit community. After a year and a half, I still had no real friends, until one day another new girl appeared in one of my classes. She and I started talking and forged a friendship. She introduced me to another girl and soon the three of us were fast friends. Over time I came to know there was something different about my friends – they knew God. To them, He wasn’t some cosmic Santa Claus; He was real. They had a relationship with Him. I soon saw that this was something I wanted, but I didn’t know how to tell my friends that I wasn’t a Christian. Fear that my friends would feel I deceived them kept me quiet. You see, I always thought I was a Christian. Finally, after months of desperately wanting to tell my friends, one afternoon at school during some free time in the last class for the day, I told the other “new girl” that I wanted to be a Christian. Still during class, she took me to get our other friend (thank God for the flexibility of small schools!) and they both went with me to see one of the teachers who was a Christian. It was the teacher’s free hour. The four of us crammed into her small office; she counseled me and prayed with me. That afternoon I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I was 16 years old. Since then my spiritual walk has gone through lots of ups and downs. I walked away from the Lord while in college and although I went through brief periods of revival in my life, I only fully realized the depth of my error in my late 20’s. The realization was brought home when my great-grandfather died. At the grand old age of 93, my great-grandfather, the patriarch of the family, died. I’m not sure when I first knew, but I knew Great-grandpa was a Christian. His death was bittersweet in many ways. Through it, I not only found out that many others of my extended family were Christian (I live 900+ miles from my family’s home), but his death also served as a catalyst for much healing within the family. On the day of his funeral, while sitting around my aunt’s kitchen table watching the healing of age-old family wounds, I got a phone call. Our good friends’ 16 year-old daughter had died. Her death was completely unexpected. I found my way home as quickly as I could. The devastation her death brought on her unsaved family can’t be described with words. The dichotomy of the two events was striking. My great-grandfather, a Christian, lived a long, fruitful life, leaving a family grieving for their loss, yet many of them were comforted by the knowledge he was in the presence of his savior. His death brought healing within his family. At his funeral, his pastor spoke at length about my great-grandpa and about his relationship with Christ. Our friends’ daughter was so young. She left a family stunned, shocked and completely lost. The man who preached her funeral had never met her and it showed. It was at her funeral that I clearly saw the difference in a life with Christ and a life without Him. That day was a turning point in my walk. Want to know more about God? Click here. |
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