I was the second born to two Christian parents. They were very active in the church. God lead them there before I was born. They found a church family in their new home state far from where they moved from. I accepted Jesus in my heart when I was 6 and was baptized when I was 9. I was raised in a home my parent’s bought a few months before I was born and had for 45 years. I was brought up in a church I attended for 45 years. I recently left both after my husband and then both of my parent’s passed away within 1 year and 10 months of each other.
Growing up I was in church every Sunday morning and Wednesday night. I loved church. I loved attending VBS every year. My friends were all from church and families of my parent’s friends. I knew the bible as much as a kid is taught. It was definitely sugar coated in my church. I was familiar with bible stories and people in the bible. I could see God’s standard lived out in most of the people around me. My parents, other couples in the church, my friends. I knew the 10 commandments. I loved to be in the plays and sing about God’s word. I hated memorizing scripture in GAs but for the most part I knew God’s standard.
When I was a young teenager I chose to walk away from God and church. I remember the day in 8th grade I was at the library with friends on a Wednesday for school and I was begging my mom to stay instead of leaving to go to Wednesday night church. She had grown so tired of pleading with me to go she said yes and that she wouldn’t make me anymore. I was so excited, but deep down I knew that had broken her heart and this was not good. But, I had grown apart from the church and didn’t even know a lot of the people anymore. My friends were at school. Later, in high school I was sitting on the floor of my best friend’s bedroom and I told God he wasn’t enough. That I could fill my life better than He could and I didn’t need him. I had stopped living for God a few years earlier so I don’t know why I would think I’d be walking on a path of blessings. I was an ungrateful, rebellious fool. I believed that same old sorry lie from the garden of eden that God is holding out on me and that it is a delight to my eyes to do what I think is best. God was like see you soon prodigal.
My life got so much worse after that. My friends at the time liked to drink alcohol, smoke and dabble in recreational drug use. I desperately didn’t want to be left out. I idolized them. My friends wouldn’t tell me things because they said i wouldn’t approve which made me want to align with whatever they did so I wouldn’t be left out. The only thing I couldn’t lower my standard on was boys. I’ve never been boy crazy. Sexual sin is not my sin weakness. It wasn’t a temptation for me. I remember telling them one day when being asked if I liked boys was, the only lowering of the standard of no sex outside of marriage that I would do is: that I don’t have to be married to him- he just has to be who I would marry. As Bart Millard would say in his book I Can Only Imagine- remember this for later.
The arduous journey back from this disasterous detour was long with lots of suffering with self inflicted consequences and trials for growth and for my good. Romans8:28 My mom told me later in life that God said to her that I would not always be like this. The journey I had to take was one of self love. I thought so little of myself. Not how God saw me at all. I didn’t think I was pretty, or had good style, I didn’t think I had any skills or talents, I didn’t think I was smart, I didn’t think I was witty. I thought my friends were all of these things and I admired them so. Idolized. When focusing my thoughts on my friends instead of God I couldn’t develop into what God made me to be. I had been doing this my whole life and I needed to learn to LOOK UP.
Ive learned idolizing and insecurity attracks people who self hate even more than I did. Who cope through insulting, belittling and casting their negative thoughts of themselves onto me. I coped with my poor self assessment with trying to please those who had attributes I thought were strong and courageous. In the self loathing people I attracted it presents itself as prideful, arrogance with a smile and a false offer of help and instruction, which I thought I desperately needed. Sounds like that old serpent in the garden, eh? I was right in that I desperately needed help and instruction I just received it from all the wrong people. I needed to look to Jesus.
Unfortunately, I didn’t learn this lesson until after I got married. I fell in love with a guy and I had never been in love before. I thought he was all the things he said he was. I thought he had all the strengths where I had all my weaknesses. This is know in toxic relationships recovery groups as mirroring. They say they are all the things you love and admire. Then, eventually the mask starts to slip and the true nature is seen. After years of living with a mentally and emotionally abusive person and years of studying human behavior I have learned to recognize these character traits.
My mom got me into bible study after I finished my masters degree. She said you are done with school, now you can study God’s word. My faith caught fire like never before. I have a bachelor’s in psychology and a master in social work. I loved studying human behavior and helping others. I enjoyed studying it very much! Studying God’s word with Precept Bible study and Kay Arthur excited my brain even more than the study psychology did. It also renewed my mind, comforted my spirit and gave me wisdom I was so lacking. It gave me my foundation back. God loves me. Never foresakes me and equipped me to raise my children to know Him and to be a good wife in a bad marriage.
Lesson for Life:
We are not saved by our parent’s faith.
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers!g Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?h 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.i 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’j I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.k Matthew 3:7-10
Romans 5:12
[12] Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 1 Corinthians 15:22
God Has No Grandchildren – Answers in Genesis
Big Daddy Weave “My Story”
https://youtu.be/1TKAN-nAsu8?si=ksMLZp2dXXYj87mv
John the Baptist is my favorite Christian