When I was in high school, I was actually a pretty bad kid. I got into a lot of trouble and made one bad choice after another. It is very surprising to me that I didn't end up in jail. It is only by God's divine plan that I didn't. I dropped out of school at 17 years old and continued on the path I was choosing to walk. I never went to get my GED. I was too embarrassed to even tell anyone that I didn't have it to even get information on how to get it. But still, God had a plan.
When I was 26 years old, I was still making bad choices. I was dragging my husband and kids through my problems with alcohol. My cousin came to me one day and asked us if we wanted to go to church with him at this church up the road from us. We ended up going and boy did I try everything I could to not go. I started fights with my husband on Sundays and Wednesdays as an excuse not to go. Being the wonderful man he is, he would load up our kids and go without me. Praise God for the guilt I felt when he would come home because eventually I gave in to the Lord and started going regularly. I remember that for the first year, I cried through every service. Sometimes I even sobbed to the point that I'm sure I embarrassed the people around me. I raised my hand at the end of every service for the pastor to pray for me and for the Lord to come into my heart. I don't remember the exact day I received Christ but one day i'm sure i'll know.
Over the next couple years I was determined to follow Christ. I wanted to know everything about Him that I could know. A day came though that I stumbled and fell back into my old ways. I started to hurt the people around me again because I lost focus on Jesus. I remember having this EXTREMELY vivid dream one night. It would freak you out if I told you, so I will keep that one to myself for now. It shook my whole world though. It was a glimpse of my future if I continued to make these choices after learning about and accepting Christ, because I knew better. I confessed every sin I had committed against my husband over a 3 day period. I remember sitting on the front porch of my house and just crying out to God. I pleaded with Him to not make me tell my wonderful husband of all my treachery because he would leave. God was honest with me and told me something that I will never forget. He told me how healing comes with honesty and humility. That sometimes we have to admit our faults because in this is the only way to truly be healed. He even told me that if my husband chose to leave me and take my child, that was a consequence I would have to deal with because it was a just decision. I deserved it. I truly deserved it. Even after knowing he may leave me, I was still honest because I desired God and His plan more than anything else.
This started something in me. For the first time in my life, I was free and clean. No secrets, no dark rooms in the house of my mind. All the lights were on and I could finally move forward. One of the secrets I had confessed to my husband was that I had never finished school. It may seem like a stupid thing to need to come clean about but it was important. On my 30th birthday, God spoke to my heart and told me that He wanted me to go to school. That His plan for me was to help children in some way. I remember that I chewed on this information for a couple days and didn't tell anyone. The weekend came and my husband and I had decided to go to one of my favorite places to eat to celebrate my birthday. On our way back we were talking about God's plan for our lives and I told him that a couple days earlier, I really felt the Lord had told me to go to school for ministry. He looked at me amazed and said that the Lord had told him the same thing a couple days before. Wow! What amazing confirmation. That was all I needed though. 5 Months later I had my GED and was enrolled in my first semester of college. After a long thought process I actually began a degree in psychology.
About 6 weeks into my first semester of college, I began to get depressed. I didn't know why I was depressed. I had all A's in my classes. I was balancing school and home pretty well I thought. Something just wasn't right though and I was just miserable. I had even began to question if God was even real. Earlier in the year, my husband became part of a motorcycle ministry called the Priesthood, which was wonderful. Some of the people in the Priesthood had decided that they would have a worship night once a month at a church called God's Shining Light and use it as a way to come together and have special prayer and fellowship for the leaders and pastors of other churches and Priesthood members, but it is open for everyone. One of the Saturday nights we were intending to go, we had a bad storm come through the town we live in. My mom was watching my kids while we went to the worship night and everything in me didn't want to go. I was worried about my mom and the kids because they all get scared during bad storms. My husband kept telling me that it was just the enemy trying to keep me from going. We even got to the church and had a little argument in the parking lot before we went in. He convinced me that we needed to be there and stomping my feet basically, in we went.
To back up a little. The previous Thursday, we were supposed to have a guest speaker in my psychology class. I had to leave early though because there was an issue with one of my kids at school, thus I missed my class and the guest speaker. The worship night was the following Saturday.
So, we go into the church and the evening begins with worship and prayer. Pastor Dixie Pebworth opened the alter for prayer. I stood there and watched as so many people went forward and people began to put their hands out and pray. Something kept nudging me to go, but my brain fought it with things like "why do you need prayer? Nothing is wrong with you. Your not sick." After about 5 minutes, the Lord finally broke through to me. He showed me my pride and asked me if I wanted to continue trying to fight alone. I left my place of comfort and pride and went to the alter for prayer. I stood in front of Pastor Dixie and just cried. He asked me what I need prayer for and all I could spit out was I don't know. I began to sob and tell him how I was so sad and didn't know why. I just cried and cried and he told me to pray what he was praying. I even remember that I started to pray my own words and he told me to be quiet. Wow, I needed to hear that! It was a little reminder that sometimes we need to be quiet and listen. I started to feel hands of others on my shoulders and cried even harder. Pastor Dixie asked me a question while I stood there. He asked me how long I had been a believer. I told him 4 years. He looked at me for a second and told me something that opened my eyes. He said that sometimes the depression we feel is actually grieving. It could be that the Holy Spirit is trying to tell me something that I'm not hearing and that I needed to ask the Lord and then listen. He prayed some more and then after I felt like it was okay to go and realizing I could stand in that place for hours, I moved out of the way for the others who need prayer. I went back to my place and just sat and was quiet.
After the service concluded, Pastor Dixie came and found me. He asked me a couple questions about my life and I told him about the journey I had taken over the past 10 months and that I was in school for psychology. He began to tell me a story about a lady that used to attend his church. He told me how she was faithful and came every Sunday. She felt a call on her life and went to school for psychology because she thought that was what it was for. He said that the lady had slowly started missing church and that eventually she didn't come at all.
Two years had passed and he received a phone call from her. He said that she told him she didn't believe in God anymore. After a few minutes of conversation he told her that she did believe in God and that if she didn't, she wouldn't have called him. He asked her what had happened and why she left the church. She told him how she felt led to psychology, but the longer that she was in school, the more depressed she got and the more she questioned whether God was real. Eventually, she left the church because of this. What Pastor Dixie was telling me was exactly my life but I had told not one person my thoughts and feelings other than I was sad. In this moment I realized that this Pastor was a voice of the Lord. I felt a blanket of peace and clarity fall all over me. He told me how psychology was the world's way of helping people. He said that even though it was good for some people, God's plan for helping people was better than anything the world could teach, and the God was the best teacher of all. I made a decision in that moment that I was no longer going to go to school. Pastor Dixie told me that I should complete the semester at least because God did not call us to be quitters. I started the semester, so I should finish it.
Tuesday came and I sure didn't want to go to school. I remembered what the pastor had said though so I was going to finish the semester but not go back after that. On my way to school, I called my dear friend Pam. I told her about the amazing thing that had happened Saturday night and all that Pastor Dixie had said. She told me that she agreed 100% with everything he said except one thing, that I finish the semester. She told me how anytime she was doing something out of God's will, that the only thing to do was to stop doing it. Well, these both seemed like correct answers. I decided to go ahead and go to school that day because I was undecided about what to do all together. It was so difficult when I got there because I just felt like this was not at all where I was supposed to be. Still I went through each class. My third class of the day was my psychology class. This is where God truly showed me how much He loves us. I went into my psychology class and next to my professor sat a skinny, frail, young woman. When class began, the professor started talking about how she was the guest speaker we were supposed to have the previous Thursday (the class I had to miss) and she couldn't make it but was going to speak today. I could tell by looking at her that she had suffered a hard life and concluded that we were probably going to be hearing about her testimony.
Our guest starting talking about her life and how she had been a meth user. She got really personal and talked about some really tough things. I remember sitting there thinking about all the other students in the class. I was the oldest and had kids of my own. I was probably the only one with kids actually. Most everyone was fresh out of high school. I remember thinking I was going to be strong for the woman as she spoke. I kept the most loving smile on my face that I could because I wanted her to see that even if everyone in the class judged her, I wasn't. She kept her eyes on me and the professor the whole time. After she was finished speaking, I went up and hugged her and told her that what she was doing was a wonderful thing and that even though it was hard, she could do it. Our class ended a little early and so I went to stand in the hall in front of my last class and wait. As I stood there, I heard the voice of one of my classmates sitting at the end of the hall. She asked me to come sit with her. I remember telling her I didn't even notice the chairs down there to sit in. We sat there for a while and talked about the history exam we were about to take. My history teacher even saw us and came and sat down to chat. We sat there past the time that we usually went into class. When we all realized what time it was, we began to get our things and as I gathered mine, my psychology professor came around the corner with his guest speaker. He was chatting with her as they walked and I spoke up and told them to have a good day because they didn't see me sitting there. He stopped dead in his tracks and smiled at me. He said "Laura I just want to tell you thank you." I looked at him pretty crazy i'm sure and so he began to tell me about the guest he had. He said that it was her first time to ever speak to anyone and that I had helped her tremendously because she could keep looking at me during her testimony and seeing reassurance in my face. She was standing behind him just smiling as he told me this and then she reached around and hugged me. It almost made me cry. After that they were gone and I went to my last class.
That night and the next couple days I was just so confused about what I should do concerning school. Both things seemed like right answers. I remember standing in my room and I said out loud, "God, I don't know which way is right, to quit now or finish the semester!" I was getting frustrated at my self and then I began to think about grace, and how God loves us more than we could ever know. I decided that since both seemed right, I would just make my decision based on what I wanted which was to withdraw. I told the Lord that if it was wrong, I was sorry but that I knew He could see my heart and that my every intention was to do what what was right and pleasing to Him. I told Him that I knew I had His grace and that He loved me no matter which way I chose. I also told Him that I believed His grace would carry me through and help me if the choice I made was a mistake and I still stand on this.
The next day was Wednesday and I was at my church, Church on the Move, and I was waiting for our volunteer meeting to start. The volunteer leader had asked me how things were going and I gave him a very short answer about the past week and his response was one that helped me see. He said something like sometimes we go through things in life that make no sense, but it creates a ripple that we don't see and that we never know who it impacts. In a moment a saw the guest speaker and how shining my God given light to her just may have been to strength she needed to share her testimony with others and that if even one life is saved, it's worth it.
For a while I thought about all the sacrifices I had to make to get my GED and then to go to school. I even remember thinking that from the outside, it looked like it was all for nothing. So many people questioned me when I told them I had withdrawn from school. They looked at me like I had made another mistake. However, I choose to believe that if all the sacrifice I made helped even one person, it's worth it. I, in no way compare to Jesus, but to have opportunities to show the love of Christ to another is worth every sacrifice. You see, Jesus went to the cross for every person. He knew that there would be people that rejected Him. He knew that people would mock Him. He still did it though. He still laid down His life for each of us equally.
It humbles and excites me to be used by the Lord. I am in no way special though. God will give each and every one of us opportunities to lay down our life for another. I may never know who was affected by my decision to do what I believe God wanted me to do , but I don't care. Jesus knows. Every choice we make could potentially affect another persons life. I decided that laying down one year of my life is most definitely worth helping another, even if it was only one.
I pray that this helps someone. I pray that it encourages each reader to seek what the Lord might have for them. He has a plan for us all, but the choice is ours to be easy to lead. I ask that each of us that reads this say a pray for the lady that spoke to our class that day. I think her name was Amy. The Lord knows her name though. Pray for her to be strong through every testimony she gives and to be strong to keep giving her testimony. Pray for her children and family because her choices have and will impact them. Pray that the Lord's glory is manifested through her. Thank you for reading. Please share and God bless you.
