testimony 1

I joke that I learned how to be a Christian from a renegade Jew and a practicing Buddhist. For years I had hidden, distorted, masked, and repressed my emotions, and these characteristics were never given a chance to mature. So I was truly a toddler in Christ. As the Holy Spirit worked in my heart, I was still trapped within.

My first job was unusual in its training. The customer service training I received was based on biblical principles—but the owners and trainers would never admit it, if they knew. We were trained to think and go the extra mile with every customer. I was so excited to receive the tools to express my heart that I started talking to strangers on the street, and applying the same tools with my friends around the country. It became a lifestyle.

The company was also the first to impress the idea of giving to me. As I considered owning my own business, the 10% giving was always a guiding principle in the business plans, long before I was convicted of this biblically.

Not long after I wondered how I needed to share the gospel with those around me—I knew maybe five Christians in the small city of Ann Arbor—it was time for me to return West. I was tempted to doubt my faith because I had pretty much never evangelized, though everyone seemed well aware of my faith. (I used to laugh at this because sometimes they would mistake my nervous, reserved habits for upholding Christian values). So I was worrying that I had not upheld my obligation to share what I had learned, and packing to leave, when my co-workers started taking me aside to thank me for my faith, and recognizing that it must give me peace during the trials of my life.

It was a sad time because I knew that those who did not believe did not think them any closer to Christ, but I remembered the way God planted seeds in my life, long before I was ready to receive Him, and I smiled as I drove away. I couldn’t rely on Him using me this quietly for the rest of my Christian life, but He had answered a prayer that I be used in ways that others were used in my life. I always thought of that prayer in terms of the amazing hospitality friends and the family of my friends had heaped on me over the years, but God reminded me of other means to share His heart.

The next few months were empty months. I went some broken place in my heart from where I refused to beckon God. I walked a lot on the Colorado National Monument behind my parents’ home in Grand Junction. I was sitting on a small boulder one afternoon when I started meditating on the rock. I was impressed with the solidity of it, and started praying for God to convict and teach me about His foundation so I might have courage, faith, and the experience of Him and never look back. It took time, but the relationship He cultivated with me after that was….sweet.

I moved to Colorado Springs, was led to a church within a month, started making friends, and at the encouragement of my close friends started to dream again. What do you want to do? They asked me relentlessly. And I gave them several answers, but more than anything I wanted a family. I couldn’t make that my goal—it could lead to poor decisions or misery. That was out of my control, so I prayed with God for a month about the kind of man I hoped for, and if it wasn’t too much trouble I would appreciate it if his family were close (geographically and relationally) but in this broken world I knew that was a tough order to fill. Many, many people over the course of my life predicted that I would find my special someone. I can show you letters, Valentine cards, my autograph books where mere acquaintances pronounced my destiny, and each time I would scoff—there is no guarantee, no way to count on finding someone you would want to marry. So, having laid out my heart; asking that God not distract me with anyone except the man He wanted me to marry, I then asked Him to prepare me for His plans, fully expecting to be single for several more years. That’s when Mark started to talking to me, three months after we had been in the same church community

It was known among Bible study that I was not in the market for a boyfriend, so it surprised everyone when I responded in kind to someone’s interest, and then was smitten. And a year later God answered the desires of my heart to work in ministry and in planning to have a family.