My Testimony, Part 3

OK, this is the best part. For some reason, I didn’t get discouraged that Allen wasn’t as enthusiastic as I was about Who Saul saw so many years ago. Once we got home, he ate a meal, and then we went to bed.

I do not remember how long I was in bed before I suddenly felt a Presence in the room – very holy and very pure. It was, in fact, a glimpse of the holiness and purity of God. It overwhelmed me, and I started to cry because I knew I was covered in sin and shame. Allen asked what was wrong, but I couldn’t articulate what I was experiencing. In what seemed like a moment, I saw in my mind’s eye the Cross of Christ. A cleansing wave of water gushed from it, and it washed over me. The next thing I knew, I was crying tears of joy and happiness, because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had been cleansed of my sins, and it was Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross that had accomplished that feat. I cannot tell you what Allen said at this time, because all I could do was focus on the divine Presence that seemed to be at the foot of our bed. Then the Presence spoke to me in my mind.

“Come with Me,” He said.

I protested immediately. “I can’t,” I silently told Him. “I can’t keep any of the laws.” (By this time, I knew that the Old Testament had 613 laws, many of them still taught in Catholicism.)

The Presence smiled – or laughed, I don’t know.

“I’m not asking you to obey laws. I’m asking you to put your hand in my hand. First, I will take a step, and then you follow in that step. It’s very easy, really,” He continued.

I thought it over briefly. The choice was mine – I knew I was completely free to accept Jesus or to reject Him. But by this time, I also felt the irresistible love of my Redeemer so completely, so utterly, that I knew I would be a fool to refuse. Reluctantly, I said, “Yeah, OK” – a rather informal answer to the King of kings and Lord of lords.

But that answer was all God was looking for. I suddenly felt the joy, the happiness, the contentment of Jesus. He seemed to be smiling at me. And then He was gone – as suddenly as He had first come into the room.

I was awed by what had just happened. In fact, I was incredulous. What had just happened? Was it real? Would this feeling of euphoria last? “I’m dreaming,” I said to myself. Then I turned over in bed, and fell right asleep. I don’t recall speaking to Allen about it that night, but he certainly heard me speak about it in the years after that!

As soon as my eyes opened the next day, I knew a profound change had happened inside me. That evening, we would be attending a Bible study in Allen’s Chief Petty Officer’s home (I can give you the details about that at another time), and I wanted to be sure and read the assignment in preparation. We were studying the Gospel of Mark, and the words “Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee” in Mark 1:16 jumped out of the page at me. I knew that Jesus! I had met Him! I don’t remember if I shared what was happening to me with Allen that day, but I do remember being completely engulfed in a new passion for reading and absorbing the Gospel. And soon after that day, two friends stopped me in the street and said, “What’s happened to you? You’ve changed!” And so I had.

I’m going to end my story here. I could go on and on about learning more about Jesus, leaving the Catholic Church, buying theology books and testimonies and prayer books and so on, but you’ve stayed awake this long, and I don’t want you to fall off your chair from fatigue! So I’ll just make these few last points, and be done.

Here they are:

1)    My encounter with Christ was my own, individual encounter. I am not asserting that it is any sort of standard, or any pattern. It had nothing to do with my gender, ethnicity, or disposition. God did not visit me because I was a girl, or an American, or a confused Catholic, or a depressed wife. He came to me because I was – and am – God’s own creation, and because He loved me. He knew I would be forever lost without Him.

2)    God’s purity was beyond words. It penetrated every dark corner of my soul. I knew then, and know now, that no sinner can stand in the presence of this awesome purity without the direct intervention of Jesus Christ.

3)    Christ’s Cross was solely responsible for my transformation – nothing more, nothing less. I saw and felt the wave of divine mercy from the Cross wash over me. It changed everything about me. My sin and shame were gone; I felt a magnificent love being showered upon me.

4)    All I did was say “yes” to Jesus Christ’s compelling invitation. He did everything else. No church or denomination – no formula or rote prayer – “saved” me. My response to Jesus Christ was very important – and it was all God required of me.

5)    I have known for these past 50 years – and it will be 50 years sometime in August of this year – that this encounter was absolutely and totally real. As I have stated several times, it changed my life. Soon after, BTW, Allen’s heart was drawn to Jesus in a fresh way. His transformation was not like mine, but we nevertheless became a solidly Christian couple. You already realize that I’ve been through trials, and I’ve had moments of great joy. I have changed in my ways and my knowledge. However, the truth about my encounter with Jesus Christ has never faded or changed.

6)    My testimony, as I said at the beginning, is a true record of how Jesus Christ came into my life, and – when I responded to Him – how He began the change that has grown in me for 50 years. (If you want more, be prepared for several hours more of me sharing – just kidding!)

7)    I have shared all this with you because a long, long time ago, I realized, as the Scriptures I read earlier state, that Christ had appointed me as an ambassador of His saving power. If you can testify that there has been a point in your life where you, too, realized all that Jesus has done for you – then embrace it and celebrate it and speak it out loud to everyone. If you are not there yet, I hope you will seek out Jesus and pursue Him until He breaks into your heart and mind, too. I know He will, if you ask Him.

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.

My Testimony. Part 1

 ^{My brothers and sisters, would you turn with me to 2 Corinthians, Chapter 5, beginning at verse 11.}

¹¹ Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. ¹² We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. ¹³ If we are “out of our mind,” as some say, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. ¹⁴ For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

¹⁶ So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. ¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ¹⁹ that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ²⁰ We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. ²¹ God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.                        (2 Corinthians 5: 11 – 21)

May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart, be pleasing and acceptable in Your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen.

Before I begin telling you my testimony, I want to make one thing absolutely clear:

I am not an expert in anything, except this one thing: I am an expert in how Jesus Christ has changed me these past fifty years. That is all I am going to talk about today.

Most of you know that I was married to a wonderful man for nearly fifty years, before his untimely death in November of 2020. We were married in 1971, when he was 19 and I was 18. He had already joined the Navy, and that fact led us to Spain in 1972. We had been separated for a year due to Allen’s being posted in Adak, Alaska – an unaccompanied posting.

The year that we were apart was quite traumatic for me. I sunk into a deep depression, and only survived by keeping myself super-busy. I attended my second year of college, and I got a job at a department store. When Allen was posted to Rota, Spain, I was elated, because it meant that he and I could be together.

Well, so I thought, anyway. Although the military did not pay for my trip to Spain, I paid for my own trip and arrived in Spain the day after Allen did – quite a feat (for another time). I only wish to explain that the day I arrived at Madrid Airport was a terrible beginning for my life in that country. I could only speak about four or five words of Spanish, and I also had the misfortune of being stuck at that airport for a very long time. I was hungry. (I didn’t know where to eat, and anyone who looked “official” did not seem to understand my English.) I was frightened. I had no way to contact Allen to let him know where I was. At one point, wandering around the airport, I stumbled upon the chapel – which was, of course, a Catholic chapel. Being Catholic myself, I went in, searching for a moment of peace.

But a terribly depressing thought gripped me: God may have been in America, but He certainly wasn’t in Spain! It was oppression from the enemy of our souls, but I didn’t know it at the time.

Let me explain a little of my faith journey up to that moment. I was born and raised in the Catholic Church and she educated me in the basic tenets of the Christian faith. This knowledge kept me from making serious mistakes once my mother died (when I was 12), and I became a latchkey kid at 14. But my faith in God was practically nonexistent. Oh, I went to Mass, and even went to Confession occasionally, but I was unsure where the God of my religion was. I loved the saints, and prayed the rosary (sometimes), but Jesus was a total mystery to me. When Allen and I started courting, each Sunday he attended his church first and then came to Mass with me. We talked a lot about Who Jesus was (or so I thought), but he didn’t share his own faith journey with me. I just thought it was cool that we were on the same page – we understood each other. And that led to marriage.

Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

Erasing the Cross

Has anyone else noticed an interesting change in photos of Damar Hamlin? Although I cannot reproduce what I saw, I definitely noticed one thing: the “cross” on his cheek has disappeared! Just after Hamlin’s tragic collapse, an on-field picture of him, sporting his eye black in the shape of a cross, was shown everywhere. It was distinctive, and it was not posed – it appeared to have been taken as Hamlin was walking or moving.

Suddenly, several days after Hamlin’s health crisis, the eye black has disappeared. I testify that it was the exact same pose – same background and all. But I noticed that the cross was gone. Knowing what I know about airbrushing and photo alterations, there is no doubt in my mind that some “woke” editor had taken it upon himself or herself to send a subtle message to the audience: We have no need of Christianity’s most important symbol.

The change cannot be “accidental.” It makes no difference to the recognition of Hamlin’s face to leave his eye black in place or to remove it. I propose to you that this deliberate action has deeper significance.

The cross is an enemy to the spirit of this age. Satan is the leader of the assault against God’s law and the morality that has steered this country since its inception – and he is crafty. He knows that hiding the symbol of Christ’s sacrifice tends to hide the call to repentance that that symbol projects. If he can make Christians ashamed of this symbol, he thinks he can take away their opportunity to speak about their Savior.

I will not make this blog longer. I just want to raise awareness that the media does not necessarily want you to be reminded of Jesus Christ and His Way.

Before My Husband Allen Was a Husband

Weeks ago, I promised to say more about my husband Allen, who passed away just over 20 months ago. Well, here are a few important reflections regarding this wonderful man:

Let’s start at the beginning. Before Allen was a husband, he was born a male. Yes, he didn’t decide to be a male the moment he took his first independent breath. Neither did his parents conduct some sort of Affirmation Ceremony at his birth. And – as far as I know – there was no discussion between the doctor and nurse(s) present as to which gender he would be “assigned.” It was an obvious, logical reaction to a certain anatomical fact that was obvious the moment he emerged from the birth canal.

I wasn’t even aware that God had planned a future Soul Mate for me. But I arrived in this world five months later (and we never argued whether a summer or a winter birthday was better; we just enjoyed the fact that we existed and shared the same birth year), and found him about sixteen years after that.

Before Allen was a husband, he was a boy. He played with boy things; he played baseball on the street with the other kids. Notice that I did not say “boys”; his younger sister was one of the “kids,” and played alongside whoever showed up for street ball. He was taught that boys, being – generally speaking – a tad bit stronger than girls, he should not bully, beat up, or strong-arm his female acquaintances. There were no anxious, woke-ful discussions regarding how boys should be more like girls. His parents merely followed the Biblical instructions for training a boy in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness (yes – I know he was a pesky brother at times!), goodness, faithfulness, and self-control (Galatians 6:22-23).

And before I even knew he was to be my husband, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this tall, lanky teenager with red hair and playful eyes was a kind soul who would rather walk away from a potential argument than start one. His manly, ingrained gentleness was a much-desired trait.

Before Allen was a husband, he became a Christian. When he was eleven, he attended an evening revival meeting at the church he attended with his mother, and responded to the altar call. After affirming his proper understanding of this spiritual event, he was baptized. It goes without saying that he grew in his faith and became the young man that I was attracted to.

Once we began courting (yes, you read that right!), and as I began to suspect that Allen and I would someday get married, he and I talked and talked and talked about God and His Son, Jesus Christ. We went to each other’s churches (I was Catholic; he was Baptist. Before he departed this life, my husband and I had joined a nearby Methodist church). We discovered that we shared a common thirst for God’s truth, and for worshipping Him each Sunday. (At times, we even joined in Sunday services at both our churches on the same Sunday!) Once he became a husband, he made sure that his wife was fully supportive of their unified church choice. Therefore, we never took a “holiday” from Sunday worship.

Before Allen became a husband, he decided where his national allegiance lay. Believing that his low draft number (“20” in 1970) would result in his being drafted into the Army, he signed up for the Navy. The job he was trained for in that branch of the Armed Forces ended up being his job for life. Despite being affected by progressive deconstructionism of traditional American patriotism and recent woke-ism, Allen stayed true to everything he had thought through and affirmed during his teenage years – before he became my husband. How do I know this? Because he and I discussed our views and our reactions to everyday events every day of our married life (which happened to be just short of 50 years). Of course, I am not counting the time he spent assigned to Alaska, or out on naval vessels in the Mediterranean Sea as daily interaction, but we affirmed our love and devotion to each other through letters and phone calls during the necessary separations. There is not now – nor has there ever been – any doubt in my mind that Allen was true to established American ideals.

And – yes – our views evolved as we studied more and more of the Scriptures, and listened carefully to sermons and tapes and videos that touched on important political topics. Remarkably, though, we never seemed to “discover” – as so many unfortunate “woke” people, adrift in their anchorless existence, have “discovered” – that our patriotism and dedication to serving America had been misplaced. Right up to retirement, my husband proclaimed his commitment to Bible-based American ideals – even though he “sat in the corner” for the last year of his career, stripped of any meaningful power to affect the affairs of his branch of government due to his relentless loyalty to the truth.

He became a true, verifiable husband the day we were married. But he started on the road to being a husband the day he was born. He progressed through childhood, following the correct and godly path for boys pointed out to him by a loving father and a loving mother. He accepted Christ as his Savior and Lord, which provided the foundation for him to become the husband a woman could (and did) lean on for godly leadership. He was a husband by God’s design – and he made me a wife.

Praise God for creating a husband through His design!

Service That Isn't Service

When is “service” technically NOT service? When it insists that you – the consumer or client – go to some extreme to obtain the so-called “service.” Allow me to give a few examples, and then we will see if the Scriptures have anything to say about my point.

On Friday of last week, I developed a gum abscess. It grew in size (and dimension of pain), but rather than call my dentist and ask for an emergency meeting, I decided to go to a nearby fast-in-and-out clinic on Sunday. Was it a mistake? Well, besides being given a prescription for a do-nothing antibiotic (and no pain medication relief), the attending physician decided to give me a lecture on my high blood pressure (yes, I know – I have a medication for that, and my blood pressure tends to be elevated when I have had an average of 2 – 3 hours’ sleep for several nights, plus other factors which I will shortly enumerate). After several reminders that it was NOT possible to visit my primary care physician on a Sunday, she finally stopped lecturing me and let me go. I visited my local pharmacy, which – remarkably! – had the prescription filled and ready to go (keep that in mind a few paragraphs down), even though it had been less than 30 minutes since I had left the clinic. I had not visited that particular pharmacy in over 18 months, so I was not up to speed on its official hours; one sign in the window said it was open until 6, and a poster just to the right of the window said, “Effective 11/21/21, Pharmacy Drive-thru 9 am to 9 pm” (pictures that I took can be furnished upon request). Now – logically – which one would YOU believe?

Fast forward to Tuesday, when my dentist squeezed me into his busy schedule, dealt with the abscess, and sent me on my way after calling in a stronger antibiotic to deal with this ugly thing. I arrived at the pharmacy mentioned above an hour later, and after a 25-minute wait in the drive-thru line, I was informed that the prescription was not yet filled, and that it would take another 20 minutes or so to fulfill it. That information was delivered to me at 5:35 p.m. I had not eaten anything solid since 9 am due to the pain, so I drove home to eat something (now that the pain had subsided substantially), thinking I had until 9 p.m. to claim the prescription. I was “wrong.” At 7:30 p.m., I drove up to the drive-thru window, only to discover the pharmacy was locked up, lights off, and with no way to claim my much-needed medication.

Shortly after 9 a.m. the next day, I headed back to the pharmacy (a 5-minute drive). I joined the line, and waited over 30 minutes to receive the antibiotic. When I pointed out to the pharmacy manager that there were two different times on display, he said, “Oh,” and then proceeded to offer an excuse (not a reason). I think the fact that I took pictures helped him to realize how unacceptable his excuse was. I hear the “everyone-knows-this-so-why-don’t-you?” ploy all the time. Either I’m supposed to have a telepathic gene somewhere which makes me omniscient – spoiler alert: I don’t – or this is part of the “we-played-for-you-and-you-didn’t-dance” nonsense that Jesus decried in Matthew 11: 16-17 (see my blog from 2 days ago).

Am I complaining? Yes. Although many Christians have been conditioned to believe that complaining is wicked and is a sign of an unforgiving spirit, may I remind you that the Lord Himself spoke the truth to the hypocritical Pharisees (Matthew 23, etc.). Saints Paul and Peter reminded Christians to be kind to one another, but does that “kindness” mean that we are to suppress the truth? (Again, I direct you to Peter’s dealings with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5.) Some may remind me of the cheek-slapping and burden-bearing we are to endure when confronted with thoughtless bullies (see Matthew 5:39-48). However, as the brilliant crowd-funded-for-television series The Chosen points out, once you retaliate, you cannot preach the Good News; therefore, Christ directs us not to retaliate. However, there is a little-regarded caveat: Jesus does not forbid us to speak out. While we are standing there waiting for the next slap, or walking the extra mile with our enemies’ burden on our shoulders, we have the opportunity and right to speak to the injustice occurring. (Otherwise, Paul speaking out against his near-flogging in Acts 22:24 promotes some anti-Christian theology.)

I am not talking about retaliation here. I am calling for an awakening in a society that claims “Christian” values – such as caring for the sick, the underprivileged, etc. – but insists that their “woke” philosophy need not spring from a commitment to Christ – and therefore does not need to adhere to any of His teachings. Such a stance can never work because it has no core values; they are ever-shifting.

OK. I promised to give you one more example, and I will. On the same day that my abscess developed, I was expecting a group of students (from an out-of-town “ministry”) to show up at my house. I had been preparing for months – literally – storing up paper plates and cups and coffee and tea and lemonade and plastic ware and sheets and towels and spaces to put blow-ups and places to sit and eat, etc. – I and my late husband had played hosts to this group over the past seven years, so I pretty much knew what was needed and what to expect. I should have known that something was amiss when communication from them was in short supply. Finally, the day before their supposed arrival, I received a text message with their itinerary; it stated that the group was planning to arrive in my town around 2 p.m.

Two p.m. came and went…then 3 p.m…then 4 p.m. At 8:30 p.m., I decided to call the person who had contacted me. This person explained that her group was just about ready to cook dinner at another location, and that nine persons would arrive at my house around “10:30 or 11.” Yes – that was p.m.! Slightly perturbed, I explained that not only was that projected arrival past my usual bedtime (remember, I had continued to prepare all that week / day), but that the young couple who also occupy my house were expecting their first child any day; they needed and deserved uninterrupted sleep. Settling nine or so excited, chatty persons was not an easy task; it would take at least an hour once the bed assignments and the showers and the drinks of water and the directions for soiled laundry and the blankets were claimed to bring peace and quiet to a tired household. I urged them to bring some food over to my house right away, get settled, and cooperate with the rules of hospitality that are in place at my house (everyone here settles down at 9 p.m.).

The response? “We’ll just sleep on the floor in our other location(s).” It was a real two-for-one! “We’ll slap your hospitality in the face, and you’ll tolerate it. Besides that, who cares if you shouldered our burden for over ‘two miles’?” Suffice it to say that no student crossed my threshold either that night, or for the rest of the weekend. Crickets.

I have no idea if the person in charge who I spoke to is a Christian; I am not here to judge. I am writing to claim that Matthew 5 does not make me a doormat – not to the clinic, the pharmacy or the student groups. If you claim to be “serving” me or others, act like a true servant.

Even doormats squeak from time to time.