It has been more than thirty years since I gave my heart to the Lord Jesus in the summer of 1975. It all seems so long ago, and feels like another life. It was another life! I’m a different person now.
When I was sixteen, I had an older cousin who was a Christian. She attended an assembly meeting in Texas. She shared the gospel with me, but I was young and foolish and told her that there were many ways to God, much like sewing a dress. I told her that some start with the hem, some with the neck, but we all end up with a dress. Well, as you can tell, I didn’t sew or I would have known that you have to start with a pattern. But she continued to pray for me.
I found this out later from her daughter. As I told her daughter of her mother’s sharing Christ with me, I could see tears in her eyes. She told me that her mother had continued to pray for my salvation throughout the years. Praise God for her faithful prayers! I hope this will encourage you to continue to pray for your lost relatives and friends, even when you don’t see visible signs of God answering them.
I graduated from high school and went to college for a few semesters, but was unsure what I wanted to do. So I decided to join the Air Force and see the world. After my basic training in San Antonio and my medic training in Witcha Falls, I was stationed at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, DC. My first tour of duty was at Malcolm Grow Medical Center.
Everything seemed to go well during my time there. I had worked in different departments in the hospital. One day I was placed on a general medical ward and was responsible for the care of a 26-year-old woman who was dying of cancer. That night I had gone in to take her vital signs. We were expecting her to die very soon so her husband and children were with her. As I took her blood pressure, I noticed that it went down very quickly so I took it again and realized that she was gone. She was living one moment and dead the next. I was young and had never experience someone literally dying in my presence. It scared me. I turned to see the children who were looking to me to find out what was going on with their mother. I didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t have to say anything; the expression on my face told it all. They knew their mother was gone. As they began to cry, I just walked out of the room. I wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible. That day I began to run from the Lord. But you might say that the “Hound of heaven” chased after me.
You see, someone was praying for me! She didn’t know how God was interacting in my life; she just faithfully prayed on. I tend to be a stubborn person so the Lord had to bring me to my knees. He had to bring me down to the lowest point in my life. And He would do just that over the next few years.
As a form of escape from thinking about death, I became involved in the use of drugs and alcohol. It helped to forget that I was mortal and that death would come some day. But forgetting only lasts as long as you are taking the drugs. I ended up with a drug overdose and found myself in the hospital. They worked with me as best they could.
They gave me a choice at this point—to take a medical discharge or be shipped over to England. I chose the discharge. After I got out of the service, I took various jobs till I ended up at the Dallas Dialysis Center. There one of the doctors was an elder at a Dallas assembly. But I continued to run.
Somehow I was able to hold down a job and continue my weekend drug use. The Lord was faithful to me even in those days in protecting me. I was tired of running at this point and sought to “end it all” by taking a drug overdose, my second. I spent a few days in the hospital and then was released. I continued under the care of a psychiatrist whom I was seeing on a weekly basis and soon I went back to work.
There I discovered that I had a Christian patient, a Dallas policeman named Charlie. Our dialysis patients at that time were on artificial kidney machines for about 6 hours at a stretch. So as I took care of him, we had a lot of time to just talk. He would share the gospel with me and I would listen. But I did, after all, go to a High Episcopal church. I would tell him that I didn’t think I had anything to worry about. But in the back of my mind I knew better. The doubt was there, and I couldn’t shake it. Another seed was planted, this time by Charlie. So now my cousin and Charlie were praying for me.
As the weeks went by, I grew more anxious and was feeling more hopeless. I began to plan. On one of my visits to the doctor, I had mentioned to him that I had not been able to sleep. He gave me a month’s supply of sleeping pills. I now look back and see that he was giving me permission to commit suicide. Over the next few days I took the whole bottle.
I’m not sure if I was crying out for help or just wanted to face this fear of dying and get it over with. I woke up in Dallas Parkland Memorial Hospital with my stomach being pumped out. I was then sent to their locked ward. Now, I will tell you that Parkland psychiatric ward is a place where people committing crimes such as murder are sent for evaluation. This is a place where you sleep with one eye open.
I had a lot of time on that ward to think. I began to think about what Charlie had shared with me about being a sinner in need of forgiveness and about Jesus who loved me and came to earth to die for my sins. Charlie said that I needed saving from God’s wrath. I had come to the lowest place in my life and had nowhere else to go. I had hit rock bottom.
There on that ward I bowed my knee to the Lord Jesus. I had realized I was a sinner and all I could do was call out to Him. It was that day that I cast my case on Jesus. “Our hearts are not safe in our own keeping and are only kept fully…when we have committed them into His keeping.”
The Lord began to change me that day in the mental ward. I was released from the prison of my sins, to be made a prisoner of Jesus Christ, who is alive! How sweet to be held a prisoner by the bonds of our Father’s love and I will never, ever be released from that love. It is His promise to me and He is the great promise keeper. “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay; and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings. And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God…” (Ps. 40:2,3a).
I met my husband, Mike, a month later and he was saved within the year. We have been married for 27 years and it has been a sweet gift from my Father to have a husband that loves Him and has loved me as Christ has loved the church. We have had many blessings of sharing in the joys and trials of our Christian walk as we continue to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
A word to those reading this, who have not given your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. You may not consider yourself to be as bad as I was. May I remind you of Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Please don’t compare yourself to me; compare yourself to God and see your own heart as He shows it to you. Then don’t walk, but run to the Saviour and give Him your heart. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved…” (Ac. 16:31).