A Long and Winding Road

The title above indicates that I have not always been the person I am becoming. There were many hard lessons I had to learn in my quest.  However, if that's what it took to get me to where I am today, it was worth it.

To begin with, I have always believed in God, even though I did not always follow Him.  I was brought up in the Catholic Church, and even as a child I was full of questions.  When I was four years old, sitting beside Mom in church on Sundays, when I saw people going to the front for Communion, in my child's mind I thought they were going to 'get a piece of God', and I wanted to go and get a 'piece of God' as well.  However, I was told I was too young, and could not do so.

When I was five, I was allowed to go and sit in the front pew with the other little girls, and - you guessed it - I went up to 'get a piece of God'.  Well!  The ruckus that caused!  I was told I was a bad girl because I had not made my 'First Holy Communion', and promptly was put in the kindergarten class with the 6-year-olds to prepare for that event.

Kindergarten had a lasting impression on me because of a story a nun told us one Sunday.  The story was about some martyrs who would not deny their faith and were killed by having their tongues nailed to a table.  That horrified and frightened me, and I just knew I could never love God enough to ever let anyone do that to me!  So of course, I felt guilty.

Guilt is a terrible emotion.  It eats away at you from the inside.  I didn't know how to make it go away.  I went to confession every week, and did my 'penance' of whatever prayers the priest told me to say .... but my guilt remained.  Sometimes I put pebbles in my shoes to show God that I really did love Him.  I would look up at the huge crucifix at the front of the church, seeing Jesus hanging on the cross with drops of blood across His brow, at His side, and His hands and His feet ...... and I knew my sins put Him there, but I didn't know what to do about it.  I could find no answers.

Eventually I left the Church, having become very disillusioned.  I figured if the 'truth' I was searching for wasn't in the church, then maybe it was in the world.  I searched for truth, reading psychology and philosophy books, and New Age stuff .... and each time ended up with the proverbial 'sand in my mouth'.

I had begun drinking at university, and discovered that when I drank I didn't know when to stop.  I had blackouts from the first.  But it took me a lot of years to realize and admit that I was alcoholic.  I was married with three kids, divorced and remarried before I finally found sobriety in AA.  Thank God for AA!
And thank God for my sponsor!  She was wonderful.  The first thing she told me was to ask God for help in the morning, and to thank Him at night.  This I did.  I began having a 'quiet time' in the morning before going to work - a time with God.  I read spiritual books.

I began to ask God to show me His truth.  I told Him I didn't want a church's truth, I wanted His truth.  After about a year of asking Him for His truth, Jesus spoke out loud to me, and said, "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father but by Me," and, not as loud or clear, He said something about "the Father draw Him."

I did have a Bible by this time, and I took it from the shelf, held it in my hand, and said, "If You want me to read those words, You'll have to show me where they are, because I don't have a clue where to look."  Then I let the Bible fall open, and my eyes landed on the first words Jesus had spoken.  I flipped some pages once with my finger, several pages moved, and my eyes landed on the words, "No one can come to Me unless the Father draws Him."  I was overwhelmed!  That Jesus would speak out loud to me!  I was such a sinner!

That was close to thirty years ago.  Believe me, it changed my life!  That is not to say I immediately changed.   For me, it took time.  A friend had told me that when I read the Bible, to ask the Holy Spirit to show me His truth, and that I did.  I studied the Bible for several years, and every time that I watched Billy Graham on TV and he gave an altar call, I would ask Jesus to be my Lord and Savior.

Finally, I was ready to be baptized.  I went to a Baptist church a few times, and finally spoke to the pastor and told him I wanted to be baptized.  He and his wife came over to my apartment one evening, and after some discussion, he agreed to baptize me.  We set a date.

The big morning arrived, and the pastor's wife phoned and told me I might want to reschedule my baptism, because the hot water heater had quit working overnight, and there was no hot water.  But I told her I didn't want to reschedule, I wanted to be baptized.

Let me tell you, that water was COLD!  But I was baptized!

Since that day my life has changed dramatically.  Somehow I began to change 'from the inside out'.  It wasn't so much that I was making conscious decisions to change, but rather that Holy Spirit was changing me.

Today, twenty-some years later, I'm a different person than I used to be!  Glory to God!  It's all about Him, Father, Son Jesus, and Holy Spirit.  Three aspects or Persons in one God.  He changed me, and continues to change me!  Oh, how He loves us!  He loves us enough to change us and move us out of our misery and striving to a place of peace and joy.

Yes, it has been a long and winding road .... but what a ride!  The excitement continues!