(Tears)
Childof Christ, your post is a hard act to follow. I'm thinking about how to phrase/write up mine, but I'm not there yet. Working on it. Hopefully I'll actually get to the point of typing it in and such.
THANK-you for your heartfelt post!
Anyone else???
Quoting UPWifeKim:I feel the same way you do. I want to post mine but I'll have to come back when I can out the words together and her story is amazing. Thanks so much for sharing, Child of Christ. I can't wait to hear some more testimonies.
He is a wonderful Father isn't he!!!
(Tears)
Childof Christ, your post is a hard act to follow. I'm thinking about how to phrase/write up mine, but I'm not there yet. Working on it. Hopefully I'll actually get to the point of typing it in and such.
THANK-you for your heartfelt post!
Anyone else???
Then there was me. I was born second. I was fat, struggled badly in school, had very few friends, and never excelled in anything. I was quiet and painfully shy. I was the one that blended in and was never noticed...never noticed until a friend of my uncle started coming around and decided that I was exactly the type of girl he'd like to befriend. I loved all the attention he paid me. He took me places and bought me things and made me feel special, so when the sexual abuse began, I was terribly confused. I wanted that attention he paid me but I didn't want to endure what he did to me. When I threatened to tell, he told me that he'd been in the military and knew all kinds of ways to kill a person and make it look like an accident. So I kept quiet out of sheer terror. This started when I was 11 and continued until I was 13. At 13 I discovered that this man was also abusing my little 6 year old cousin so I knew that I couldn't keep quiet any longer. I told and after many depositions and testifying before a grand jury and testifying in court, he went to prison for 4 years.
My guilt was so deep, though, because I knew that if I'd told before, he wouldn't have abused my cousin. I stole some prescription strength sleeping pills and decided that the next time I was home alone, I was going to take the whole bottle of pills. I was 16 when I finally got my chance but I wanted to have some fun first. That evening I turned on my Dad's CB radio that we were forbidden to touch and I started listening to people talk. A voice came over the airwaves that touched something in me. He asked, "Is there anyone out there that wants to have an intelligent conversation?"
This man and I started talking and I told him what my plans were. He shared with me about Jesus and how Jesus wouldn't want me to do that. That God wanted me to use my pain and make something good come frome it.
That conversation changed my life. Two days later I met the man in person and today we have been married for 16 years. For the first time in my life, all those years ago, I felt God move in my life. I no longer felt alone, I no longer felt invisible and unimportant. My husband saved my life all those years ago because God made sure he was in the right place at the right time; right when I needed someone to save me.
www.daniellemariepeck.com
So thats my story. I thought I was saved and had a great relationship with the Lord for nearly 5 years. Then He showed me how much our relationship was truly lacking and how I had never really turned from my sins. But I'm a changed woman now! Now I can measure the growth in my life.
Anita
What exactly is a personal testimony? To me, it's when God has shown Himself and when he has shown his love for me or his people in such a way that I believe/can testify to his existence and to His love. For me, it has come in a series of "moments", almost "supernatural" events if you will. The first was when I was in my early 20's and had found myself on a path back to my faith, which I had partially veered off of for most of my teen years and early adulthood life. I had been attending a class at my church for some weeks and was starting to feel a reconnection to God for the most part, but one evening when studying the day's lessons at the kitchen table, I literally felt the Holy Spirit lift my soul, fluttering up to God, and He made me understand exactly what it was that I was feeling, no questions asked—I clearly knew and understood. It was a truly blissful experience in which I felt His love beyond explanation. The next "moment" I shall speak of was in my late 20's when I had been recently experiencing major depression that had followed the birth of my 3rd child and had been feeling so overwhelmed at times that I felt I simply could not go on. Suicide was a real option for me at that point on several occasions. My sheer love for my family and how it would affect them was the only thing holding me back from that permanent step. It was a nice sunny afternoon and I was spending a little alone time on the porch swing, but it wasn't a pleasant time in my mind. I was soooo depressed and in such a state of hopelessness that with suicide not an option (since I understood too well how it would hurt my family) I was just in a state of mere hopeless existence, almost paralyzed if you will. I heard a clear voice that said "Go To Your Husband". At the time I did not think about what it meant or where it came from, but I just felt compelled to obey, as I had no other options at that point, being at the end of my rope. I somehow found the energy and motivation to rise, walk to DH, and talk with him, and even though it was probably just small talk, etc. those simple actions prompted by that caring voice led me to simply "be" with my loving husband, instead of being alone; and it helped me to start getting back on my feet again. The next "event" that came not too long after the previous one, when I was still "on my way back up" was when I was writing in my journal. Most of what I was writing was expressing my troubled feelings and lack of knowledge as to what to do next. I was feeling pretty hopeless and confused. I just happened to suddenly start writing very fast and even somewhat sloppy, but the pen just kept going. As I was writing, I wasn't "thinking" the thoughts before writing them, but basically "reading" them after they appeared on my paper. It was a message TO ME. Now, I can't say exactly what the words were from memory; I have since stashed this page in the deepest parts of my keepsakes/writings, and treat them as almost sacred and thus, don't feel compelled to bring them out and read them on a daily basis. But they were words of extreme encouragement; they were words of God's love; they were words that made me get off my pity party and get on with life for my family's sake and make a difference in my life. This is the first time I have spoken of these events to another soul. But I hope and pray this is a safe place to do such a thing, and just maybe it will help even just one person's conviction of faith. The next "moment" was when my mother was on her deathbed with a sudden brain aneurysm. A blood vessel was in the process of trying to burst in her brain and would likely kill her. She was over 100 miles away and I had been notified by my sister a short time before by phone that she was in the ER with a pending aneurysm and that they were going to be transporting her to a larger hospital by ambulance. When my sister called, I had never heard of such a thing and had no idea how life-threatening it was. I was worried, but being so far away and knowing that she was in good hands and that everything that could be done for her was being done, I uneasily went on with my day, waiting for news. I was sitting on the couch reading. Suddenly, I felt prompted to stand up and make the sign of the cross. (I'm catholic and so is my mother, and the sign of the cross is just a mini-prayer with movements of the hand that we begin and end every prayer with) But it was different this time--I did it opposite of normal—I did it "outward", as if "onto another", instead of onto myself. Amazingly, I didn't think anything of it at first—it didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary had happened. Till it had a chance to "register" in my brain....A short while later I received a phone call that my mother had been so close to death that a priest had administered "Last Rights" (a catholic prayer for those that are dying) to my mother. The motion that the priest does while saying this prayer for this person is to motion the sign of the cross over her—exactly what I did just moments before. I added up the minutes and time, and concluded based on what my sister had told me, that it apparently happened at the very moment the priest was praying over her. God truly meant to show the love my mother and I have between us and within Him that day. (BTW, dear Mother fully recovered after an extensive, almost radical type of surgical treatment for her aneurysm and is still with us to this day!) I have since experienced one more slight/short time of the "pen writing a message to me from God", but again, I can't just talk about it openly, as it is so deep in my memory that it's hard to pull it up as to what the exact message was, but I know it helped me on my journey toward a more faithful life in Him.
He is here, He knows, He cares, and He looks after every one of his faithful on their journey through this earthly existence to His heavenly home.
Thanks for listening.
Do you wear tank tops in the summer? how do you feel about it?
- sweets719
on Mar. 9, 2008 at 10:14 PM