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...
