When I was eight years old, I have a vivid memory of my younger brother and I standing next to a fence next to our local skating rink. There was a kid that used to hang around the rink standing in front of us, and we were discussing if any of us were going to heaven or hell.
The innocent bystander, my brother was witnessing the conversation between the local kid and myself. The kid had the stance that heaven or hell certainly doesn’t exist (And he seemed quite proud of it). Little did I know that this would become part of my Christian testimony.
Just as he was very adamant about this, I was firm about the opposite – I truly believed we were all going to heaven and God was real.
Now, I am not sure where this belief came from. I was eight years old; I went to church maybe twice with my parents before that point, but my parents quit going to church after I was five years old (so I don’t remember much). After my parents quit going to church, which included my siblings and myself.
My father started saying, “I just had to try so hard to believe”. Both of my parents were raised in Christian households, but for some reason the religious rituals of saying grace, praying when you need God’s assistance, and going to church had dissolved with my family. Does this make my family wrong? No. I do believe this dissolving of beliefs was something that came from the “evolving” world.
All throughout my teenage years’ I identified with being a rebel.
I had my phases, I identified as goth, punk, and skater girl. Then once I hit high school that is when I started experimenting with substances and boyfriends – then I was stoner/hippy girl. As I went through all these phases, I don’t think I remember feeling in touch with any sort of spiritual nature.
I was too busy rebelling, getting kicked out of class for disagreeing with teachers, and hiding the fact that I was smoking cigarettes from my parental authorities. I remember not being bothered at all, and even agreeing when friends told me they did not believe in God. All this to say, looking now in hindsight – I was certainly protected by God during that time.
In my early 20s, I can remember having this slow transition into more awareness. I was eating well and started living a healthier lifestyle. The first thing that I started noticing was I started seeing patterns in everything and everyone. I used to call them “coincidences”. It’s the phenomenon where you are just telling your friend a story about someone you used to know, and then a day later you end up seeing that person at the grocery store. Yes, you know, that thing…
…. Well, this started happening to me every single day. I was starting to have suspicions, were these really just coincidences? This made me want to seek answers. I started to notice that I wasn’t really controlling anything, something was controlling us. Soon I became curious about meditation. This is a fancy way of saying – lay on the ground, close your eyes and breath. This got me to notice there was something I would put my focus on, but what was it exactly? Something above me?
All it took was a small moment out of my day to connect to something greater than myself.
There are a lot of people in this world who have had things a lot worse off than I. But equally, no one on this earth, leaves this earth without some sort of trouble. I had troubles big, and small throughout my life. And there were some that were still bothering me as I moved through my 20s.
After a breakup that left me feeling depleted and fearful, I felt guided to go to my local naturopathic clinic, the doctor I met there would be the one woman (other than my mother) who would have the biggest impact on my life. The first time I met with her, I told her about all these “coincidences” I was experiencing. She responded, “they aren’t coincidences, it’s just life.” I felt in that moment my spiritual journey had raised to another level.
(See How A Naturopathic Doctor Changed My Heart)
The community of people I met at the naturopathic clinic were the most joy filled, fun loving, and God loving people I had ever met. Many of them had a personal Christian testimony. But God loving? I still was unsure of who God was in my life. Was He the one I was connecting with when I did my meditations?
Was He the one who was carrying me through the times when I thought life was worthless? I didn’t know for sure yet. I met some amazing people at the clinic who had helped me through so many struggles, one woman in particular who told me she went to the church that my parents stopped attending so many years ago.
She stopped by my apartment I was living in at the time, we were chatting while having some tea. She had asked me, “Do you know who Jesus is?”. Nervously, I told her about the little bit that my parents had told me, and the small bits I had learned from history lessons. But that’s about all I could come up with.
When she was about to leave, she said to me. “Can I pray for you before I go?.”
I didn’t think twice like I maybe would’ve before. I closed my eyes as she said her prayers to God for me. After she finished praying, she gave me one of her bibles to have. Before she left, I told her that I would like to go to church, but I am really scared. She said, “do you want to go together?” and I told her “Sure.”
It came the Sunday that we planned to go to church together. I didn’t get much sleep the night before as I had a lot of anticipatory anxiety. In the morning, I had all these questions – Do I wear makeup? Do I not? What do I wear? Am I doing the right thing? Is it going to be tense? Do people talk to me when I get there?
None of which mattered.
She came and picked me up, we entered into the building together and we took our seats closer to the back. There was a big crowd of people in the dim light, and a beautiful band that came out to sing. I started putting my hands up while the band was singing, and I had a moment, a small moment that made me burst into tears.
I think that was the moment I became a Christian.
My friend consoled me, and we went over to the prayer team for someone who was volunteering to pray for me. It was as if all of the things that I was ashamed of and wanted to forgive myself for came out all at once. I got this overwhelming feeling of sorrow and relief all at the same time. I was asking God for forgiveness.
Since that day, I continued to study God’s word, and also started praying on a consistent basis. I realized the power of prayer and started attracting people into my life who would talk about God with me. These people were one of the biggest factors of guidance in my faith journey.
I started reflecting on the things that had happened in my life previously and how God really had a hand in all of it. I remember this enormous feeling of longing throughout my life, and no person, place or thing was ever able to fulfill that longing. Now I know that whenever that feeling returns, I know it’s because I need to re-connect with God.
There was an inherent knowing when I was a young child that God existed. Like I told the local boy at the skating rink so many years ago. I even have very faint memories of praying at the end of my bed at night and looking up into the stairs.
I had no idea was born a Christian, only to become a Christian again.
Clearly a child comes into this world knowing the spirit of God, they just don’t quite have the thoughts planted into the mind that sometimes can carry you away from that inner knowing as you grow up. My life went full circle, and I found the heart that God had originally planted inside of me.
If you don’t know God, I hope that you open your heart to Him too.
This post was inspired by:
Heartland Family Wellness Centre
Prairie Alliance Church
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