My Testimony, Part 2

Back to Spain. Before we went to that country, I had read The Exorcist, and was thoroughly frightened by its content. I realized that if the devil and evil were real – and that book convinced me about all that – then God Himself – the source of all goodness and beauty – was real as well. It surely wasn’t a solid foundation, but it was a start.

Being in Spain with Allen didn’t dissolve my depression. In fact, a day or two after Allen picked me up from the Seville Airport, I learned something that I dreaded: Allen was to be sent off regularly on a ship (BTW, he was a “land sailor,” so this was not good news), and these deployments could last weeks, or they could last months. No one told you anything, and – as you might have guessed – this was the era when low-ranking seamen’s families were all but forgotten. We were treated as appendages, and very little was done to keep our spirits up. We had no television or phone in Spain, and so I turned to reading and sewing while Allen was at work.

The bookstall at the Navy Exchange (our local store on base) was pretty thin and uninspiring. However, in my aimless pursuit of some truth, I picked up a book by Taylor Caldwell entitled Great Lion of God. It was a novel about the life of Saul of Tarsus, later Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles. I did not know it at the time, but this book would introduce me to the Savior.

The first part of the book was mostly fictionalized, but much of it was plausible and interesting. Miss Caldwell worked in the idea of sin and guilt quite well – and, as a Catholic, I identified with all that. At first, it offered me no answers, but I kept reading – what else was there to do? One evening, I came to the part of Saul’s life when he was on the road to Damascus.

The effect on me was electric. It suddenly dawned on me that Saul (later Paul) had encountered Someone Real. Having listened well in school and church, I knew exactly Who Saul met. I also knew the effect that his encounter with Jesus Christ had had on him – he was completely transformed!

Something lit up inside me. If Saul had changed – radically changed – on that road and with that vision, it stood to reason that Saul had met the actual, physical, risen Jesus! I knew that no one’s life had ever been changed by ghostly encounters; instead, one wants to forget such encounters as quickly as possible! So I worked my way back to the Resurrection – I realized that it had actually happened! That meant that Jesus had defeated death! It also meant that Jesus was the Savior of the world!!!!!

About the time I had worked this out in my mind, it was time to go pick up Allen from work (we only had one car, and I had needed it that day to run errands). He was on the evening shift, so this was about 11 p.m. As soon as Allen got into the passenger seat, I began to relate to him my amazing discovery. I vividly remember him asking me, “What’s in the fridge?” He didn’t seem interested in what I had to say, but I kept going on and on about how excited I was.

The 3rd and final part will be posted next.