Well, I can honestly say I never believed in miracles until this point. Not in a million years would it have even entered my mind that I would be up the front of a church telling my testimony – neither would anyone else I’ve known, come to that.
This has been a long journey, starting at around 2 years ago. This has also been a difficult task! I have had to try to condense thousands of new thoughts and feelings into something which actually makes any kind of sense – and this is what I came up with …..
About two and a half years ago I was living on the Canary Islands with my husband, Dave. This is about the time I had become very frustrated with myself. I wasn’t moving forward, I felt I wasn’t going anywhere.
All my life, it seemed, had revolved around pubs where smoking and drinking tended to be part of the package – it’s where our work had taken us. We had run a pub for 4 years and wanted out! Having no jobs to go to with nothing to lose, we decided to live a dream. So we bought a van, put the Karaoke system in, and drove off to the sunny destination Fuerteventura.
We soon got work and were working 7 nights a week for good money, and we had all day to sunbathe and beachcomb – sounds great, doesn’t it!
Life soon went by out there, days into weeks and weeks into years. Although you had lots of acquaintances you could not have friends. You couldn’t trust anybody. Everybody it seemed was out for themselves, stitching up the next person to arrive of their life savings – we had escaped this fortunately! You just didn’t know who to trust. Everybody lived for the evenings, when cheap alcohol and cheap cigarettes were a way of life. All this was where I had ended up, yet again!
I felt so desperate. I felt that this was all I knew. I said to Dave that I wanted to go home to England to go to church. (I don’t know why I said that!) I also wanted to go to the doctors as I hadn’t fallen pregnant after 4 years of trying and, if I was lucky, find some people I could trust and some people who wouldn’t judge me. I felt I had been unfairly judged on and off throughout life – judged on everything my life had brought, either in or out of my control. Nobody knew the real me, and it felt I was just existing. What was life about?
We had arranged to come home, and at this point I had fallen pregnant. This was just fantastic! We continued home and spent our savings renovating a house which David had bought, by chance really, before we left. I thank God he bought it now because, as well as having somewhere to live, it has led me to Burlington!
Everything I was doing now was for the baby. I actually had a purpose at last – something to think about. I was determined to be a good mum. Braidon, my son, was born and the love I felt for him was amazing. He was mine! I was responsible at last! All the “not very nice” experiences I had been through or witnessed in life were worth it now, as I was sure I was going to protect Braidon from them. I had to go through those experiences to make sure my children didn’t, I thought. I had never loved like this before – so effortlessly.
Soon after Braidon, Louie was born. My life felt complete – another little bundle of joy, another reason for life, my heart felt it was realising.
Amongst this utter joy though, I also felt sadness. I thought “These little boys would have to die one day. That was a certainty, and they didn’t even know it yet”. I loved them so much this made me cry. Then I thought “These little boys, would have to learn about killing, wars, natural disasters and strangers”. What a scary world they would have to live in, but at the same time I also thought how lucky they were that they had food and water and shelter, unlike so many other third world children who were just victims of circumstances.
All this started me thinking again “There must be more to life than all of this!” As content as I had ever felt, I also still felt something missing – and it wasn’t the cigarettes which I had started smoking again! Was I going bonkers? Was it a form of post natal depression? Or had my previous carefree party-loving lifestyle taken its toll on my brain cells? Probably, but this wasn’t it either.
I had noticed a sign which said something like “The meaning of life”, and I wondered what this was about. I started going to St Matthew’s Church where this sign was, and began the Alpha Course half way through. Because of this I felt like an outsider. I also started a housegroup soon after, where I felt I really didn’t fit in at all. I was trying to figure out for myself what was what. I didn’t have a clue about anything. It became very uncomfortable – and then it happened! …
A Burlington 150th Anniversary flyer came through the door! Other than throw it in the bin, as I normally would have done, I decided to go there. While there I met Kathryn, who told me about some playgroups and pointed to a board about Toy Library. So I went along to Tiddlywinks where I met the crew and Julie.
I could really see what I now know to be the Holy Spirit working through these groups, especially Toy Library, as the people running these groups were doing so much – and all for what today’s world would think of as for nothing. The people I have previously known, would have had the “time is money” attitude. This touched me. I had never felt touched before.
I had spoken to Julie at Tiddlywinks a little, and said I would try Burlington Church one Sunday. I did – and amazingly to myself, loved it – me coming to church and loving it, strange! I was even relating to and understanding the sermons. I felt I belonged here – so many people made me feel at home.
As well as coming to Burlington Church, I did an “Exploring Christianity” course at Tiddlywinks, and started a small group. These all in turn taught me about Christianity.
It wasn’t until I met Kathryn that I really started to learn about God, and how to apply this to life. God knew exactly what he was doing putting Kathryn in my life – she has spent hours and hours talking with me. She is fun and contemporary. She’s on my level of thinking, and someone I aspire to be like as a Christian. I have always felt the Holy Spirit in Kathryn. This to me has been a witness in itself. I wouldn’t be standing up here without her. She has taught me loads.
I have learned all about Genesis and the creation of the world, before sin, after sin, how human races came to be, why nature is cruel, including us eating animals, and that because of Adam’s sin Jesus had to be sacrificed to save us from sin. I now know sin to mean that you don’t necessarily have to be a murderer or an evil person – sin is anything negative, even in thoughts or spirit, and the rejection of anything ungodly, including God himself.
I now wanted to accept God by becoming a Christian. I had nothing to lose after all! All I had to do, was to pray a prayer asking God for the forgiveness of my previous life of not accepting him and that I accepted Jesus as Saviour. It was that simple, although I had to really believe it as fact in my mind and heart of course, and I did.
By doing this it didn’t mean that I would be slowly becoming a “goody goody”, but that I had learnt that God, Creator of everything, is a loving and just God and that we were made in His image to have a relationship with Him, and He with us. It’s our purpose for living. He made us, therefore He knows what’s best for us, even if we don’t like it or find it hard at first. That’s why He gave us the Bible. It is our life manual, our set of instructions. The only thing he left up to us was freedom of choice!
The world is still as it was before, but I see it from a completely different perspective now. My previous life of not accepting God has passed. My heart has been opened and I feel lifted. I also feel a sense of freedom. I don’t feel quite so bogged down by any worldly demands or expectations.
I appreciate the natural world God has made for us to enjoy; even colours and shapes have more clarity. There seems like a stillness of everything now; even the wind doesn’t break this stillness, but just blows right through it. It is also great to really know that the certainty of death I mentioned earlier is only a certainty of our physical bodies dying and not our souls. How exciting to think how far I have come, but in fact this really is just the very beginning of my journey into the truth.
As well as a huge “thank you” to Kathryn for what she had done for me, I would also like to thank everybody at Burlington Church. At first a genuine smile or a “hello” from people was all it took for me to have the courage to return each week. I got lots of those, and will always remember Elizabeth, Tony and the door staff for making me feel welcome. Last but not least, I would like to thank Julie for being Julie – dedicated, warm and kind! She too has been involved from the beginning and throughout my Burlington experience – so thank you all!
