Testimony of my Salvation

When I was about thirteen years old I lay in my bed one night. A sliver of light streamed into my bedroom from the living room of our double-wide mobile home through a gap between the door frame and sheet that served as my bedroom door. A few days prior the door had been removed from its hinges by my mother’s boyfriend who drank and did various drugs. The air smelled heavily of cigarettes, stale beer, and incense which burned in futile effort to disguise the odor. My twin-sized bed was against the window of my room so that I could see the night sky over a mountainous, tree-filled hill that steeply inclined in front of our home on a gravel country road in rural Oklahoma far from the streetlights of town.

As I lay in my bed I had a vivid memory from my childhood: I remembered being a little girl outside of a southern, Baptist church before Sunday school on a Spring or Summer day in the south. (Arkansas, U.S.A.) I remembered the pleasant feeling of twirling in my Sunday-school dress before church. I remember looking down at my twirling skirt and feeling the lacey petticoats underneath the frilly, puff-sleeved dress and patent-leather slippers with tiny, buckled straps (all of which were indicative of the 1980's). The outfit befitting a southern belle, I felt like a princess and twirled in the grass lawn outside the church before Sunday school in a memory of a far away, safe sunshiny day of my childhood. The memory was so vivid but felt so very far away. I prayed to God for the first time in a long time, “God, I need you or I need something.” If the cry of my heart were worded more accurately that prayer would have sounded more like a scream of “God, Please help me! Save me! Help!”

The very next day I was at my locker in the hallway of the high school I attended in that rural, small town in Oklahoma. As I stood at my locker exchanging books for those needed for the next class, a boy that lived down my street stopped in his tracks, did a double-take, back tracked and ask me, “Ryan, would you like to go to church? My church is having a revival.” I didn’t even know what a revival was, but I very much wanted to go. Not yet old enough to drive myself and knowing that it was unlikely that I could get a ride from anyone at home, I told him “Yes actually, but I don’t have a way of getting there.” He responded, "If I can't pick you up then my mom will." I didn’t know him very well and was surprised that he spoke to me at all in the hall that day, much less invited me to church. He lived down the same, gravel country road that I did, but his home was at the end of that country road where my school bus stop was. We were merely acquaintances.

I can still see him stop abruptly as if he walked into a glass window rather than a neighboring glass door. I distinctly remember that he did double take before approaching me. In hindsight it was as if someone invisible screamed at him, “Stop! Wait! Ask her! Yeah, that girl there. Invite her to church immediately!”

That night I heard the message of how Jesus died for our sins and I repented of my sin, found the abundant grace of God, the belief God sent His only son, Jesus Christ, to die for my sins to provide me with salvation and forgiveness of sins. Praise God for His very amazing grace! My life certainly had many adventures since, some of which I’ll discuss in this blog, but I have never been without God’s love. I have never been the same since. God saved me. Further, He protected me in ways I didn’t even realize.

The boy who invited me that night died before I graduate high school. I am forever grateful for his obedience to the Holy Spirit that day and I look forward to thanking him with a big hug, a grateful embrace when I see him in glorious Heaven. I am a life that was changed.