My Testimony ~ Part 1

I can't look back at my life without looking at the very One who created me.

I shared my testimony with a group of high schoolers one day at the Christian school where I helped out. It was something that was done during chapel on occasion.  I think all the teachers may have shared at one point in time and even some of the student's parents.  Talk about un-nerving.  Not knowing how much information to actually share was a challenge as well as trying to keep a group of teens interested ~ we all know how "la-de-da" they can be.  So trying to get the seriousness across along with some humor and good ole honesty  was tricky.  I certainly did not want to glorify my unsaved years, but life is life. 

And God meets us right where we are.  

So my testimony went something akin to is this:

I was born and raised the first three years of my life in a place called Marion, Virginia.  We lived just down the "bottom" from my mom's parents.  It was a tiny little house as I look at it now, but didn't seem to affect me back then.  I had fond memories there, as well as some scary ones.  My grandparents raised, killed and butchered there own hogs and chickens.  I still remember the old smoke house where the hogs hung while they cured.   When you kill a chicken, you can do one of two things:  either wring it's neck or put it on the chopping block (which just happened to be an old stump).  My Papaw used the latter of the two.  After axing the head off the bird you let it go and it runs til it dies.  On this particular day, when he let that bird go, it headed directly for me!  Now keep in mind, I'm probably no more than four or five years old.  That chicken chased me all around the yard and up to the back steps. Oh yes it did!  Only when I had gotten safely inside the screen door did I dare turn around to look.  And there to my horrible surprise, at the foot of the steps, lay that dead chicken.  This memory is forever burned into the archives of my mind.   Forever. Burned.

I remember sitting in the back yard in the summer snapping green beans with my mom and Mimi.
I remember sitting on her kitchen table licking the bowl when she made banana pudding.  I remember sitting in the big wooden pews in the church across the street from their home.  The church they attended all my young life.  I was told Papaw wasn't always that man. A God fearing man. But I'm glad that is the way he was for me.
Those were impressionable years in my life and I loved my grandparents dearly.

My dad moved us away when I was three.  To the flat lands of the Eastern Shore. We did go back when Bobby and Donna were born (even though we lived in Delaware mom went "home" to have her babies, well, except for Tiger).  We visited over the summers.  Then Mimi died when I was in second grade.  I took it hard.

We moved to Fruitland some time after that.  New school.  New life.  So it would seem.  But sad people just seem to get sadder and find outlets to relieve that sad pain they feel every day.
But even so, my mom had a way of placing the fear of God in us without actually teaching us about God. All of His attributes were neglected except for the "punishing" one. So I grew up respecting God out of fear, not knowing He was also a loving, kind, forgiving God. She also had a way of making us look at life thru the eyes of others. The unfortunate, the handicapped, the ill. She was good that way.

Jump forward to my teen years.  There were now four children in our family.  Mom became more and more agitated with life, with us and probably with herself.  Her comfort was alcohol. 

At fifteen I met a boy.  An unstable boy.  A boy I needed to fix.  Because that is what I do.  We dated for three years, I became pregnant.  My dad was furious.  My mom, in denial.  Her way of punishing me was to not come to my wedding, my graduation, or the birth of her first grand child.  I was for all intents and purposes, on my own.  Alone.

Papaw died when Jenny was just about two.  I went to see him in the hospital.  Can I say I still love him?  My mom didn't even go to his funeral.  I'm tellin' ya, the woman had issues.  Just sayin'.

All was well for a few years. Well, not really, but as well as could be.  My husband and I moved into a new home,  and we had Kelly.  It wasn't too long after that, that this little cacoon would started unraveling.  It is apparent now (not at all then) you just can't fix people.  The grass was greener on the other side for him and he decided to jump the fence.  And I was on my own with two little girls.  Alone ~ again.

It was then I chose the rebellious road.  The operative word there is "chose".  I knew better, all the things I chose to do went against all that was taught me and it even grated my conscience.  I challenged my moral, ethical and spiritual boundaries.  (spiritual being taken loosely here)  I was determined to go against all that was right.  It was foolish and dangerous, but that didn't stop me.

You see, even though mom "put the fear of God" in me, she did nothing to ground it.  No church, no Bible reading, no praying.  She did teach me hymns from her youth.  But, that's it.  So it seemed only right ~ in my mind ~ to challenge the very being of God.  Make Him prove Himself.  I was too scared (or too smart) to claim to be atheist.  No way.  God could have struck me dead at the very sound of the word coming out of my mouth (this very God I am challenging to prove Himself) so, agnostic seemed "safe".   You aren't denying God, just making him show that He is who He says He is and that He is real.  Or so you think you are making Him. 

Be careful what you ask for and who you challenge.  Be sure that God, being God, will take you up on it any day. 

And He meets you right where you are.


Want to stop for a while? Yes?  Ok.  I'll finish tomorrow.  Promise.