Who I was...Who I am now!

How I was saved by Jesus…

It all began with a marriage proposal…

Getting married is a time when we all begin to consider the past before we step into our future life. I was 18 years old when Jay and I decided to get married. I felt that many questions had been unanswered in my life.

I believed as a person I was totally faultless. I believed I was a good person. Sin to me was only what very bad people committed like murderers, adulterers and thieves. I didn't even fall into that category in my mind.

So I began to dig around in my life wanting desperately for all these questions to be answered before I married Jay. There was a restlessness in me, a stirring within my soul. I suddenly wanted to know things about myself that I had never even considered before.

My father was adopted when he was a baby.  I was unexpectedly conceived when my mum and dad were together. My Dad was strongly set against having child so it was decided by him that he was not to be a part of my life. Though I wasn't aware of it at the time this rejection had been at the centre of my life and influenced much of who I became as I grew into an adult. The future was looming before me, a future with the love of my life but something did not feel quite right…the past felt as though it was unfinished somehow. At the time I could not put my finger on the reason why I felt so incomplete.

Jay and I had started going to Church, the one where we decided to get married. It had been a long time since I had stepped into a Church yet as I kept going every weekend something began to revive inside me. There was an indescribable peace within the Church and all the congregation. I had gone to Church as a child because my mum had taken us. I was even involved in Sunday school for a while. However during the teenage years all that was forgotten and I was consumed by school and friends.

Before Jay had proposed to me in July 2011 I had begun to search for my Dad’s real family. He was completely unaware of the search as I knew that he would not want me to do so. By June 2011 I had found the family ironically through contacting a Church in the area my father was born. The Church had put an advert in their Parish Newsletter on my behalf and that advert was answered! I was amazed how quickly I had found them! With fantasies in my mind of my first meeting with my grandmother who was still alive I checked my emails every day waiting for a new message.

In the meantime in July 2011 Jay and I were engaged and were making plans to get married the following year. We had plans to meet with the Reverend Stephen in September 2011 to set a date for our wedding. Yet on the very day we were to meet him I had news that became the beginning of my transformed life…

Through a video call I discovered that my grandmother had Huntington’s disease. Huntington’s disease (HD) is an incurable genetic brain disorder. This meant I could have it. The chance was 50/50 and only a blood test could tell me the answer. I had to give my Dad the news that he also was at risk and he decided that he wanted to test for it. His test was in January 2012 and came back positive for HD. So I also went forward with testing and got my results in March 2012. I also came back positive for HD.

Suddenly my life had been broken into a million pieces. Yet what I did not know at the time that it was broken but was going to be rebuilt into a life that would surpass anything I had ever known before! Much happened in the time after my diagnosis, I nearly lost the love of my life and everything around me. My life had hastened into a moment of chaos and disorder. Yet God had plans for me, just as the caterpillar enters the dark empty chrysalis all alone, only to be transformed into a beautiful butterfly on emergence. That dark time for me, I was all alone, everything I had known had been shaken. It was as though a storm had passed through and suddenly in the eerie quietness after the storm I began to wonder why am I here?

I started to look for videos on the internet about God and began looking for answers to my questions and after what I believed to be just an insignificant curiosity, my answers began to get answered. In February last year I began to read the Bible from the very beginning. I began to pray to God.

Jay and I got married in January last year, we decided to get married on our own and really treasure that moment together. The first prayer I prayed was to ask God to provide Jay with a job. At the time Jay had been searching for a job for well over a year and could not find anything. He really wanted an apprenticeship in IT and had come out of college without being able to find one. I started praying in February last year, I knew it was so important to Jay and was even making him depressed.

In June last year I first felt the Holy Spirit come into my life. I went to a Church that offered a healing clinic. At the time I wasn't too sure about it but still something kept telling me to go. When I arrived there it was an older couple called John and Jenny who ran the clinic. They asked me why I had come and I told them everything that had happened. They placed hands upon me and prayed and prayed for healing in my life. Never before had I felt the feeling that instantly came over me during their prayers. I felt light headed and a strange deep warm fire-like feeling right in the core of my being. “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.  You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.'  The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

Since then I have come to know this feeling over and over again. This feeling is the Holy Spirit, it comes when I worship God, it comes when I pray and it comes when I read the Word of God… I asked Jesus into my life and I asked to be forgiven of all my sins. My relationship has been growing and growing with God and piece by piece my life has been rebuilt, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone”. The Lord is the foundations of my life now.

“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock.  Though the rain comes in torrents and the flood-waters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock.  But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn't obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand.  When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”

At the very end of June last year I first experienced God answering my prayer. I had prayed every day and sought others to pray for Jay about getting a job. He received an email asking him for an interview for an IT Apprenticeship the very next day. He went to the interview and within a couple of hours he was given the job! God provided for us! It wasn't just any job he ended up getting a job better than he could ever have dreamed of! It has opened so many doors in his life and has been a great blessing. "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.…

I have seen my prayers answered over and over. I've seen miracles and my life has been transformed. I have been born again and God has been healing every part of my life. Jesus knows all my faults and weaknesses and yet He loves me always...