My Testimony - "Religious Nuts"

By the sixth grade, I was a deeply depressed, God-hungry Amy Grant fan. The sexual abuse of my childhood had just ended and I was flunking school. I wasn't sure if I believed in God, but an old fifth-grade teacher prompted me to take a leap of faith.

She was a pretty young teacher, about the age that I am now, with a gentle disposition and the patience of a saint. As a fifth-grader, I clung to her like glue. I had maybe two friends, who were also school nerds that got picked on every day, and I either huddled in a corner with them at recess, pretending to be homeless (what a fun game!) or I sat alone, making snot balls out of rubber cement slathered on my hand. I was the only girl in a bra at the time, and I was a little butterball. That teacher, however, always saw the good in me and I loved her.

In the sixth grade, I went back to elementary school to visit her all the time, and during one such visit she announced that she was pregnant with her first child. For the first time, I decided to ask for a little divine intervention for someone other than me and my own demise and I started asking God to take care of her and her baby, and make sure that they were both healthy, happy and OK. When her son was born later that year, it was like a faith shot in the arm. I was still young enough to have some childlike faith, and I gave God the credit for everything working out nicely.

The summer after sixth grade, new neighbors moved in next-door. They were a couple in their mid-thirties with three kids. The oldest was a bit older than me, but the two youngest were still small. Hoping to land myself a babysitting gig, I quickly introduced myself and it wasn't long before I was swimming in their pool and - as planned - watching the two youngest. I loved them dearly; I was always welcome in their home. They never turned me away. Over time, I opened up to them about my struggles and their house became my home-away-from-home. When my family was in turmoil, I ran across the yard to join theirs, and I knew the door was always open.

Eh.. Just one little problem.
They were... religious.
Every time I saw them, they invited me to church with them, and sometimes they talked about God as if He lived there in their house, eating their Fritos and sharing the toilet and such. I wasn't sure what to make of that. I wanted to be with them constantly, and yet I felt the need to run home to pull the blinds and lock the doors and huddle on the staircase until they went away, or at least until they stopped talking about God. Mama done warned me about them religious nuts, did she not?!?

That God fella was hot on my trail, apparently, because that same summer, my parents agreed to send me out to San Jose, California to visit my aunt and cousins for two weeks. As it turns out, I was related to some religious nuts, too. My cousin, Jay and his wife, TJ had two young daughters at the time and they were so much fun to be with. Jay had a crazy sense of humor and his wife was cool and gorgeous and I loved playing with their kids. I tagged along with TJ and the girls one day to Vacation Bible School and found that I wanted to cry the entire time... in a good way. The more I listened to stories about Jesus, the more fascinated I became. I asked them to take me with them again, and I accompanied them several times during my stay, and made friends with the children's pastor, who was a very kind man who made me feel comfortable and welcome.

While in California, I went out and purchased Amy's "Heart In Motion" album on cassette. If you're a teenager and you don't know what I mean, look up "cassette tapes." They were horrible creatures that forced you to "fast-forward" and "reverse" - you couldn't just select a track and play it. And if you left them in your car in the sun, they'd melt. Those were the bad old days. In any case, I bought the album on tape and nearly wore it out listening to it. Poor Jay and TJ - I asked them to play it in their car every time we went somewhere, and they kindly did.

Jay was very forward about his faith, but not in a way that would have offended a non-believer. I recall a conversation in which we were sitting on the floor in his living room playing Super Mario Bros. on his Nintendo system (again, kids, look it up) and I asked him a series of questions about his life. I wanted to know if he and TJ were going to have more kids, if he was going to go back into music (he was in a popular Bay Area rock band in the 80s), all of which he answered with, "If it's God's plan for my life." Both of them talked to me about Jesus in detail, but that's the conversation that really sticks out in my mind, nearly 20 years later.

God help my parents - I came home from that trip talking up a storm about God. My parents didn't have a problem with me believing in God, because THEY believed in God in their own way. They just found it odd that a kid who never went to church was suddenly rambling on about God and asking for her own Bible. They said my cousins' beliefs were "weird" and that religion was a deeply private thing you didn't talk about with others.

As a burgeoning Amy Grant fanatic, I started listening to her older music after I became such a huge fan of "Heart In Motion", which led me to listen to other Christian music. I found the local CCM station - WJTL - and began falling in love with the music of Michael W. Smith, Petra, Newsboys and others. The more I listened, the softer my heart seemed to become. I still didn't know if or what I believed, but I wanted the stuff they were singing about. The idea of unconditional love, there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, along with unending forgiveness was incredibly appealing to me. Who WOULDN'T want that? The question is, are you willing to believe in those things in the form of an omnipotent God you can't see?

Listening to Christian radio also introduced me to Dawson McAllister Live, a call-in show for people (at the time) 18 years of age and younger. Kids were calling in with all kinds of problems, many of them like mine - kids with family problems, sexual abuse survivors, teenagers with depression, etc. I started tuning in every Sunday night. On the show, they always mentioned their toll-free hotline for kids who needed someone to talk to, known as the "Hopeline," and I jotted down the number for future reference, though I never really intended to call it.

The people on the radio kept talking about becoming a Christian and "accepting Jesus" into your life. I had no idea what they meant, but I wanted to do that... whatever it was. I asked my parents what they thought that meant - my mother called her girlfriend, who told her I was on the cusp of joining a cult. Hmm, no help there!

Now, I feel like a goof going on about Amy Grant because I'm a grown woman and I know I sound like I'm sitting here with electrical tape holding my glasses together with Amy Grant posters all over the walls of my efficiency apartment. In other words: I sound like a dork. But this is how God worked in my life, so I have to tell the story exactly the way it unfolded.

There is a song on Amy's 1988 album, "Lead Me On" called "Saved By Love." I'm not going to post the lyrics here because I know Amy's manager and I don't want to break some kooky copyright law by doing so. (Eh hem.) The title is pretty self-explanatory. I don't know what it was about that song exactly, but one day, when I was 12 years old, it absolutely broke my heart for the Lord and I found myself on my knees in front of my bed, weeping and asking God to save me. I didn't know if I was asking the right thing or if I was asking it the right way... I just told God I wanted what my neighbors and my cousins and Amy Grant had.

When I stood up, I felt different... but I was still a little paranoid that I hadn't done something right when I prayed.

So I pulled out Dawson McAllister's Hopeline number, dialed it, and got a sweet-sounding lady named Ginny on the other line. She asked me if I was a Christian, and I said yes. She asked me how I knew I was a Christian, and I said I knew it because I had never killed anybody and I was born in America. ::::sigh:::: Long-story-made-short... she finally explained to me what being a Christian and "accepting Jesus" meant. And it had nothing to do with an American or being murder-free. She asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart (in the official capacity, I suppose?) and without hesitation, I said yes. In fact, I yelled it. She asked me if I was sure, and I yelled it even louder.

I asked Jesus into my heart.
It was May 4, 1992... the day before my 13th birthday.

In the next segment, we'll discuss my journey AWAY from God... Pin It

My Testimony - My Religious Background

I always wanted to start my story off the way Ellen DeGeneres started her book, "My Point...And I Do Have One." Here goes nothing.

I was born, bred and lightly sauteed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I burst into this world on May 5, 1979. I am the youngest of three children and the only girl. My parents were older when they had me (Mom was 37, Dad was 43... which, back then, was pretty old to be having a baby) and my brothers are ten and twelve years older than me. My maternal grandmother came to live with us when I was 2. My grandfather had Alzheimer's and, at the time, it was a relatively new disease and many nursing facilities didn't take Alzheimer's patients. Yet they were able to find a nursing home for him nearby, so Grandma moved in to be closer to him and to help take care of us kids.

According to my mom, we had a religious family. If by "religious" you mean we went to funerals, then maybe that's an accurate description. My mother and her side of the family belong to the Mormon faith. My dad is an Episcopalian, and his side of the family is a combination of Episcopalian and Catholic. I recall going to church once in my life, when I was very young. It was my mother's Mormon ward, and I loved Sunday School and didn't want to leave and screamed and kicked when my mother and grandmother came to get me. During the service, we received communion (known in the Mormon church as receiving "Sacrament") and I really liked the bread. Nobody explained to me what the bread meant, so I assumed it was just a nice snack for the congregation. I took a piece and my brother took the basket from me and I yelled, "WAIT... DON'T TAKE IT, I WANT MORE!!!!" My father shushed me and I remember being good and PO'd that I wasn't able to snatch a handful before the basket was passed on.

That pretty much covers my childhood church experience.

Of course, my mother had visitors from her church periodically. She had friends from the Relief Society stop by at times, and the bishop would visit. When I was a child, I loved all of them and I loved their visits because they always brought me something. I used to sit in the living room while they did a Bible study (or maybe it was a Book of Mormon study, I really don't remember) and we'd pray. My mother participated because SHE was born, bred and lightly sauteed in the LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Church and it was the thing to do. I participated because it fascinated me.

I don't know how much you know about Mormons... but they don't drink alcohol or coffee or smoke, all of which my family did. Quite a bit, actually. So when the Mormons showed up, the coffee pot got shoved under the sink where the liquor was hidden, the smokes got stashed away, and my folks went through a bottle of air freshener at a time to get rid of the awful stench of sin.

Other times, church people were not welcome at all. Religion in my family was very much a mood-based sort of thing. I had a job to do, and I did it well: if I was outside and I saw the Mormon missionaries coming (it's hard to miss a couple of hot-looking teenage guys in black pants, white shirts and black ties carrying Bibles) I ran inside to warn my family. If they were not in the mood to be bothered spiritually, we all ran around closing the drapes, locking the doors, and we huddled together on the staircase in silence until the knocking on the front door ceased.

Ah, good times.

Now, my mother always told me the reason we didn't go to church was because she was forced to go to church growing up. They lived in Provo, Utah, where everyone was white and everyone was Mormon, and if you didn't go to church every time the doors were opened, something was considered wrong with you. Apparently, it didn't matter if my mother and her siblings were attacked by a pack of pit bulls and mauled within an inch of their lives - they went to church, and by golly, NOBODY COMPLAINED.
In an effort not to force church on her children, she just didn't take us at all.

It wasn't that my family didn't believe in God, it was just that everyone was afraid of overdoing it... so I supposed they underdid it.

However, that doesn't mean I got no religion growing up. My parents also enrolled me in a Christian preschool which I actually remember very well. I used to walk around singing "Jesus Loves Me" all the time and I played with wooden figurines in the likeness of Bible heroes. I'm pretty sure I accepted Jesus as Savior during that time of my life, though I don't remember it. I was totally down with Jesus, though, and it stuck.

A lot of the religion I got as a young child came from - believe this or not - my older brother's girlfriends. A few of them were Catholic, so when my oldest brother brought them home from college for Christmas (I remember 2 of them), they always wanted to go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Fortunately for me, those girls thought I was cute so they let me tag along. I loved all of it - the liturgy, the Latin, the somberness of it all. I always had a longing for God, even before I knew the first thing about Him. I just felt like He was real and I wanted to know for sure.

At the same time all of this was happening, I was being sexually abused by a neighbor on a daily basis. My grandfather died when I was 4 and my grandmother began drinking a lot and slipped into senility. I often found her passed out on the floor, at the bottom of the stairs, or mumbling incoherently in her recliner. My uncle - my mother's brother - started stealing money from our family (about a half a million dollars) and my mother sank into depression. I started eating to soothe my broken heart and by the fifth grade I was officially "Fatso." I was bullied mercilessly by kids in the neighborhood and at school.

By that point, I wasn't so "down" with Jesus anymore. I wasn't sure I believed in God at all. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, just sitting on my bed and thinking about eternity, the size of the universe, how we got here, and whether or not we went anywhere when we died. Everyone thinks about that sort of thing, but I'm pretty sure it's not normal for a 10-year-old to think about it daily, or to the point of becoming suicidal...

It was around that age I knew something was wrong with me. I know that the problems in my life were enough to make anyone depressed, but it was just... different. I didn't know if I really believed in God or not anymore, but I did start praying - that God would kill me. I started asking God to take my life because life was too sad to live anymore. And I begged him, if He was real, to have mercy on me for not knowing what to believe.

I started to get a better idea of who God was when I entered the sixth grade... Pin It