I’ve shared some about my life already in this post, but I wanted to give a fuller, more in-depth testimony. My life has been shaped by many things, and not all of it is stuff that I’m proud of, lol! But God has been very good to me, and that is the essence of my testimony. I was born and raised in a Christian home. That was a good start for me because I was immersed in the things of God from a very young age. We attended church and sought Jesus in every aspect of our lives.
When I was about 3, our church life went belly up (we still don’t really know what happened), and God called us into doing exclusively family church. (If you want to know more about family church, buy my sister’s book, available on Amazon at this link). Essentially, it just means having church in your home. I’m a big proponent of family churching, as I believe that our primary connection with God should happen outside the four walls of the church. Church is great – don’t get me wrong. I love the church and encourage people to be involved in a local church. But if that’s the only place you ever connect with God, that’s not going to provide the basis for a good relationship with God. (Come on, if you and your spouse only talked once or twice a week, your relationship wouldn’t be very fulfilling or even that good). So even if you attend a local community of believers, I highly recommend also having times of worship and corporate Bible reading and prayer in your home as well. I think I always knew at some molecular level about the sacrifice that Jesus made for me to atone for my sins, but that came alive to me one April day in 2006. My family and I were on a hiking vacation in southeastern Arizona, and we were visiting the beautiful Chiricahua Mountains. As we hiked around Chiricahua National Monument, we were awed by the incredible rock formations the area has to offer. As we stood around enjoying the views, I occupied myself by playing with one of the signs that proclaimed the name of the formations. My siblings told me to stop, and when I failed to do so, they decided my punishment would be that I had to walk with my father (which is such a terrible punishment…actually, it kind of was because he tends to walk a bit slower than some of his children, and I liked being in front). As we walked together, he began to explain to me the purpose of atonement and the cross. He shared the gift of God with me, and that day, I prayed the sinner’s prayer and became a follower of Jesus. I’m not sure I wholly understood the commitment at just shy of six. My family has said that they almost immediately saw the difference in me – my attitudes were better, and they could clearly see the work of the Holy Spirit in me. All I really knew was that I was now a Christian – and that’s a good thing, right? It took some six years for what that really meant to sink in. When I was about 12, I was involved in a very minor swinging accident. The swing broke underneath me while I was about 10 feet up in the air, and I went flying, landing hard on the solidly frozen ground. Nothing was broken, but I was very stiff and bruised for several weeks. I don’t really know what it was about that incident that drew me into a closer relationship with God, but it did. I began to read the Bible that my parents had given me when I was 10. I began to pray. In fact, my primary prayer location became my swing! (At 21, I still swing all the time…) For a few years, my life remained simple, and I moved forward in my knowledge and experience of Christ. But right around the time I turned 17, my life as I knew it blew apart. Some of it was that I have a tendency to live in my own dream world 90% of the time. I had kind of been able to drift over issues and anything that was going on that I didn’t like by losing myself in my imagination. So when I was rudely awoken, it really was a rude shock. I don’t feel free to share all the details of all that went on during that time as I was very peripheral to much of what happened. It’s not really even my story, but the truth of family is that when one member hurts, everybody does. I was in college by this point, having graduated from high school at age 16 (yes, I’m precocious, I know), so I was also up to my ears in schoolwork. I didn’t know it, but it was going to set in motion four of the hardest years of my life. I was neck-deep in my studies, and with a lot of drama going on, it was hard to just drift back into my cozy little world. I didn’t completely understand why God was taking me through this hardship and pain. Why the people around me were hurting even more than I was. Why this was all going on. My journal entries from that period are filled with confusion, doubt, brokenness – even anger. I had to learn to get real with God. Things continued to progress as time moved on. I tried to deaden the confusion and doubt by allowing myself to slide into some old vices – such as using my imagination for impure purposes. I seemed to go around in this cyclical process of getting close to God and then having all my hopes dashed and pulling away. This didn’t help when I got into a relationship with a guy that I’d known for a few years. Things were alright at first; we loved each other enough. We even got engaged – we were planning our lives together. I was trying very hard to do what God wanted me to do; I truly wanted to honor Him and His will for my life. Suffice to say that the relationship didn’t end well. He blamed me for letting my parents (who were rightfully concerned about where this was all headed) ‘interfere’ in our relationship and left me. (Girls, let me just tell you this. If a guy you’re hanging out with refuses to honor your parents, say goodbye. It is not worth the pain you will go through – take it from my experience). Needless to say, however, this all dealt a crushing blow to me. I had been genuinely trying to do the right thing the whole way, and I had believed I was following God. Now, I was faced with all the questions, the doubts, and the uncertainties. Where was God? Did He lead me? Did I mess up? Did someone else? Were my parents wrong? Was I? Was my now-ex? What could I trust? Who could I trust? Not knowing what else to do, I dove into the Word of God. I routinely surrendered to God. And yet my life did not seem to improve much. We were going through a lot. Situations and circumstances swirled around, and I felt so numb that I didn’t know if I could even trust God anymore. Trust, once lost, is hard to regain. And given all that I had been through, re-learning trust was an even more painful process, a step-by-step journey of learning to walk by faith and not rely on my sense of sight. I had to stay grounded in the Word of God when I was unsure of my ability to even hear the voice of God. I had to continually remind myself of God’s character. God started to speak to me through a myriad of different sources – primarily, the Bible, but also through preachers that I ‘just happened’ to come across online or through social media. He kept on reminding me not only of who He is but who I am in Him. (As a side note, I don’t recommend making your primary source of theology preachers or theologians, but God can definitely use them to speak to you, so don’t discount it either.) It was into the midst of this process that God dropped the idea for the Wings of Heaven into my heart. On Thanksgiving Day, my family and I were visiting the coast of North Carolina for the week, and my sister suggested that I start a ministry while I was in the waiting season of trying to obtain work. I prayed about it, thought about it, and pondered what kind of a ministry God would have me do. My education is in social media marketing, so I decided to start with what I knew and let God lead the way from there. My goal is to speak from my own experiences. I know that God has led me through some things – some very painful or ugly, some beautiful and incredible. I’ve discovered that the point of it all is to draw us closer to Jesus. No, He does not author the pain that I experience, but He does let me experience it because He knows that I need some things to be stripped away. He knows that I need to get free from some things, and only leading me through the wilderness is going to provide what I need. Maybe someday, I will be able to give a praise report on how this all ends. I don’t know yet. But what I do know is that God is good, and He has faithfully led me through every season and situation that I have ever faced. I don’t have to be afraid of what is coming because He has been faithful before, and I know that He will be faithful again. I can trust that. And that’s the heart of my testimony. Yeah, I’ve lived through some stuff, but I can look back and see through it all a slender thread of purpose. I’ve been bruised and broken before, but He is my Healer. I’ve been in impossible situations, but He is my Provider. I know that I am more than my circumstances, and those things don’t define my life. He defines me. And, of course, my testimony is an ongoing one. As long as I have breath inside of these lungs, God isn’t finished with me yet. So stay tuned…you never know what He might decide to do with me next…
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Sarah GraceHi! I'm Sarah Grace, and I'm so glad you stopped by the Wings of Heaven blog! You can find short posts for easy reading or longer, more in-depth musings! I hope you're blessed! Archives
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