To the “Board”

My first awareness of God was when I was about five years old. My grandma, who was the only Christian in our family, would come to baby-sit while my mom and her sister would go out and party. Grandma told me about Jesus. During that time, I had been having reoccurring nightmares about snakes, and Grandma told me that I could ask Jesus to make my dreams about something else, like cartoons. My dreams that night were cartoons in color and I never again dreamed about the snakes. Then a while later, I wanted it to snow really, really badly, and one night I decided to ask Jesus to make it snow and when I woke up, there was about 6 inches of the beautiful fluffy white stuff! So after that I was convinced that there really was this Jesus and that he really did listen to people and answer their prayers. From then on He was real to me.

[The photo: Erin-Joy (left) having lunch with Judy at a cafe in Washington state where they both live.]

My mom and dad had separated when I was about two and my mom moved in with my great grandmother to help her run a boarding house. Later my mom met another man and married him. Both he and my real dad were alcoholics. Mom eventually bought the boarding house from my great grandma, so we were raised until we were pre-teens in that setting. We had as many as 14 boarders - usually working guys. We really learned how to work during those years and also learned about discipline and the importance of always telling the truth. (My mom believed in the "bar-of-soap-in-the mouth" method of breaking that bad habit!) We were sent to attend Sunday school at the local church wherever we lived – we attended until high school. But our parents never attended with us – well they may have attended a couple of times on Easter, but that was about it.

I met Bob when I was 16. He was the first guy I ever dated and the first to kiss me. Two years later, we were engaged and then a few months after that we were married, against my parent's wishes. His parents liked me, but mine didn't like him. I worked for New York Life Insurance Co. and Bob worked at Boeing. We lived in a small apartment at first and then bought a house after we had been married about six months, where we had our first two kids, a boy, David, and a girl, Brenda. We went to church at Bob's family's church, a small independent Bible Church. We got very involved and were really doing well there. Bob worked with the Boy's Brigade group and I worked with the preschool Sunday School class. But we also continued partying with his old school buddies and their wives on Friday or Saturday nights.

Eventually we moved to a larger house and tried to find another church. In the meantime I got pregnant and really didn't want to be, but there I was getting ready for number three. It took me nine months to really even accept the idea. But as it turned out, I was more relaxed and enjoyed that one much more than the other two – I knew how to take care of a baby by then so I was much more relaxed and happy as a mom.  I nursed Tyler for nine months and actually enjoyed even getting up with him at night. We had him dedicated in a small Baptist church we had been attending nearby, and not long after that, one morning I said to Bob that I would just as soon sleep in, and we did for 17 and a half years.

We said to ourselves at the time, we would still pray and read our Bibles and carry on with our faith. We felt we didn't have to attend church to be Christians. I had quit my job when I had the first baby, and since Bob had a good job and I didn't work again until my youngest was in school full time. We taught our kids morals, but really didn't talk about the Lord much at all and after a while we quit reading the Word or praying regularly. As my kids got older we bought into the lie that if you let them have a drink or two at home with you they won't sneak it on the outside - the same lie my parents believed with my brother and I. Over the years my kids all developed quite a drinking problem and to me, my life seemed to be the pits. I drank too much at times and had horrible hangovers just like my step-dad. Bob drank too but seemed to have more control over it than I did. I began reading every pop-psychology book I could get my hands on, and since that was the beginning of the self-help book craze everyone was doing it. I really thought I would eventually find the one that would help me fix what was wrong inside of me.

During that time I was so unhappy I even thought about divorcing my husband; "Our marriage must be the problem!" I said to myself. Thankfully I eventually decided that was not the answer either. Finally in desperation one night, as I lay crying softly in bed next to my sleeping husband, I realized that the hole in my heart was a God shaped vacuum (a concept I had heard a pastor talk about years before) and nothing else would ever be able to completely fill it. I prayed in desperation, something like, "Help me, God!"  Then suddenly, in my minds eye, I saw a door slightly ajar with a strange bright light coming through. I wondered what was behind the door so a pushed on it slightly and there stood this man, radiant with white light coming from behind and all around him, and I knew it was Jesus. He didn't say a word - he didn't have too - I was suddenly broken by the mere fact of his being there. I realized in that moment that even though I had turned my back on him so many years earlier, he had never turned his back on me and was always there just waiting for me to open the door. It just blew me away! I cried myself to sleep, only instead of self-pity, it was tears of repentance mixed with tears of joy. I didn't share any of this with Bob – it felt too personal and I guess I wanted to make sure it was real first.

Within a few months everything changed. The Lord dropped a dedicated Christian lady into my life who prayed and mentored me back into the faith. I found a good church and after some repentance to Bob for leading him away from the church in the first place, he started to attend also. I rededicated my life to the Lord. Before all this it was "God out there" and now it was" God in here!" He was in my heart, and I was developing a personal and intimate relationship with Him. Bob and I were both changing. Our kids wondered where their parents had gone. They didn't want to hear about the Lord and the more we got involved with the church the more they went the other way.

By June of '89 the older two children had graduated from High School and were out on their own, doing pretty well for them selves. Our youngest was to graduate in June. During previous year our communication with him got a little better and I had seen some evidence that he was beginning to move toward accepting the possibility that God might be real, or at least not dismiss the whole notion. My son's graduation came and went and my husband and I were thanking God and breathing a huge sigh of relief that all three kids had survived high school and all the parties that always followed graduation.

On a night a couple of weeks later, Bob and I went to bed a little earlier than usual, but were awakened at about 10:30 PM with a phone call. It was the mother of someone our son knew and she said there had been a terrible accident and Tyler was involved and we should go to the hospital. Without going into all the details that would make this testimony even longer, I will just tell you that our youngest son died that night drinking and driving. I think most people can't even begin to imagine what that night and the following days were like for us. However God used this tragedy powerfully in our life and in the lives of many people, especially young people though the weeks and months that followed. Ty had been a very popular student, a four year letterman, was being scouted by a college for football. He was a good student who had gotten better than average grades and by that time was working as a carpenter's assistant with his old vocational ed teacher (who also was also a contractor), building a two story house over the summer. There were many who would miss Tyler, but none so much as us and his brother and sister. Our lives would never be the same again.

Within the next year, God made a way for me to quit my job with the Public Schools and I started assisting our Pastor plan a retreat, eventually also becoming his full time assistant, a lay counselor, teaching adult classes, etc. We had a very special outreach to broken and hurting people called Prodigals Ministries. I was the Associate Director and after eight years when that pastor accepted a call to another church, I was put in charge of the whole ministry. However with the change in pastors, came a change in vision and within six months God closed that chapter of our lives and we left that church.

We have continued to serve the Lord where ever has led us. My oldest son, David, gave his life to the Lord and got married not long after his brother died. They got very involved and have served the Lord in various capacities over the years while raising their three daughters in the church. Our daughter, Brenda, is still single, owns her own home, and is doing very well financially, but is not "walking with the Lord". We know that God is working on her and we believe, in His time and in His way, she too will come fully to Him. We are now retired and live near the salt water and enjoy fishing, crabbing and digging clams as well as gathering oysters and in the fall, we have started gathering wild mushrooms.

Since there are not a lot of churches in this neck of the woods we have struggled to find a congregation that feels right to us, and has good sound doctrine, but we will keep on looking. In the meantime, Bob and I are growing closer through our love for each other and our love for the Lord and His Word and though we once could just "sleep in for 17 and a half years", because our faith was not deep, there is no way that could happen to us now. Jesus is such a part of the fiber of who we are, walking away from Him now is just inconceivable. I thank the Lord for his faithfulness to us all these many years and through all these various tests and trials. He has made our faith strong, firmly established and deeply rooted on the Rock, Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord!
 

Revised August 25, 2008