I’m spending a little time sharing my testimony on my blog right now. It is a 4 part series. This is the second installment if you want to start at the beginning click here. In the first installment, I give a background on what my home life was like spiritually for the first 12 years of my life.

I am not entirely sure why, but I had it in my head that 12 was quite practically a grown-up and I was old enough to start making some more serious decisions about my life. Among my arbitrary decisions, one of the ones I love to laugh at now is that I could use a knife to cut my own food.

 My big decision was that I wanted to be a Christian. At that time to me, that meant that I got to own my own bible and I could go to the church at the end of the street we lived on by myself if my mom wasn’t willing to go with me. I had been longing to go to church since the Christian family had lived next to us, but my mom had always refused to take me. Now I was old enough to take myself. I was strong-willed and persuasive so my mom gave into me rather than argue most of the time.

 I had my mom take me to Target so I could buy a dress, I hated them and didn’t own any dresses, but I was 99% sure you had to wear a dress to go to church. After Target we went to the Hastings bookstore next to it and I picked out a bible of my very own that I could buy with my allowance money. I picked out a pale pink Precious Moments illustrated New King James bible. I sat in the car on the drive home and held it in my hands like it was precious jewels. I was so excited to have a bible of my very own. 

 My mom was struggling with all of this. I could tell she had something she wanted to say but she held it in until we got home. She snatched the bible out of my hands as soon as we walked in the door. This naturally made me furious and I jumped to my temper and demanded she give it back to me - it was purchased with my money, not hers and she couldn’t take it from me or claim that it was hers. She held it back and focused her stern glare at me, clearly not happy with my outburst and said: “I’ll give it back to you, but you have to promise me you won't read it on your own.”

 I crossed my arms over my chest sizing her up getting ready to stage an all-out battle over this one.

 “You don’t understand what is written in this book and you can’t read it unless you understand it. If you read it and you don’t understand it, the devil will come in and twist it all up on your brain and you will worship him and not God. I won't have a devil worshipper in my house! You can take it to church and read from it only to follow along with what the pastor is preaching on.”

 Despite the fact that I had decided I was grown up I really wasn’t and her words scared me. I promised I would only read it to follow along with the pastor and she handed me the book back. It was suddenly scary to have it in my hands and had lost much of its magic.

 This event, as scary as it was, I think ended up being a good thing in some ways. I was opened up to the idea that things could be twisted and truth could somehow become not the truth anymore. From that day on all of my prayers than had a special call-out at the very beginning “Dear God, I want only to worship you, the real God, please help me not to be confused and to only follow you.”

 Things started to get more serious with the man my mom was dating and he had been an elder at his church, before his divorce. He wanted his girlfriend to be Christian as well and attend church. He hadn’t found a new church since he had been ousted from the previous one so I boldly suggested they attend church with me. This man was about 20 years older than my mom who had me later in life, he belonged in my grandparents’ generation and was not used to a child, let alone a girl child, having her way or stating opinions so decidedly.

 My mom convinced him eventually, though he certainly went into the arrangement with a chip on his shoulder, but when I was happy I wasn’t one to let anyone rain on my parade. I proudly marched them into the church with me one Sunday, I was so happy to show them off. This little peacock display in me probably exacerbated his frustration with the girl child who so decidedly always got her way.

 At the close of the service, I began chatting with a family near us while my mom and her boyfriend chatted with others. They eventually came towards me and I boldly introduced my mom and her boyfriend. The scene plays over in my head now and my goodness how I wish I could throw water on the fire that fueled my boldness! My mom’s boyfriend was insulted by my introduction and chastised me for being so very impertinent in front of everyone. It really killed the mood.

At last one of the people broke the awkward silence and laughingly called out the awkwardness of the situation. She started to make some sort of laughing comment about it, though I can’t remember the actual words now.

 My mom cut her off before she could finish and took this comment as a critique of her parenting. She quickly made some reply defending herself and her parenting and allowing her child to go to a “so-called Christian church” by herself. 

It got ugly very quickly. My mom insulted them, voices got raised, I checked out in the tension totally confused and wishing it would all end and wondering how it had gone so wrong. Eventually, in that state, my mom yanked my arm and marched us out of the church. She sat in the front seat indignantly marveling at the nerve of a bunch of strangers to her boyfriend who marveled at my nerve of introduction and didn’t anyone know he had been an elder at his past church?

The next week I went back to the church with my sister naively thinking that all would be well if I went back without my mom and her boyfriend. They were going to attend the church where he and his ex-wife had attended. I walked in the front door and moved toward my favorite row, service was moments away from starting. Everyone was in their places to make the morning greeting and move into the song. The pastor spotted me and came down off the stage and walked right up to me and not too quietly said, “I don’t think you should be coming here anymore. It’s not right for a child to come to church without their parents or their parent's approval. You need to go home now.”

 I was mortified. Everyone had turned to witness what had brought him down off the stage and people were looking at me and whispering to each other, no doubt about the previous week’s scene. I turned, held my head high though my lips were quivering, and marched out and went straight home.

The next week my mom and her boyfriend “allowed” me tag along with them. I say it that way because my mom’s boyfriend really didn’t like me and I was never invited to spend time with them without some sort of talk about how I was a child and couldn’t expect to be included in adult things.

 When I went to church with them that morning I knew full well that I wasn’t really wanted there and that my task was to keep my mouth shut and not speak unless I was directly spoken to. I wasn’t to partake in a general conversation if we were standing as a group talking as I had at the previous church. Seen but not heard doesn’t really describe it, because he would have preferred if I could be invisible and not even be seen - which were his words and not mine.

 Needless to say after my first experience with church I was shy and not entirely confident or comfortable at church. I knew church was where you had to go to learn about God and I was desperately curious about God so I kept going and it eventually became a condition for my mom’s boyfriend that I attend church - as quietly and invisibly as possible, I think he thought that it would heal my bold and impertinent ways, little did he know I was the first wave of millennials and I was born to a different generation.

It was Easter of 1999 when I finally came to believe that Jesus was the Son of God. Yes, I had always been interested and curious about God, but Jesus had remained a mystery to me. I was told from the TV specials that he was born at Christmas, I was told he died on the cross, but the rest of it remained murky. Why did we care about him being born, why did he die for me on the cross?

After a year and a half of teaching, I finally understood that He was the Son of God and He died on the cross for me because He could, and that mattered because He didn’t have too. I was standing next to my mom and it was during worship, and as we were singing the words to the hymn it all the sudden made sense and the knots were at last untangled. Peace came over me and I knew for the first time that I truly believed Jesus was who He said He was, or at least who the preacher told me He said He was - I still wasn’t allowed to read the bible by myself and I was too scared of it to disobey.

I’ll talk about the spiritual aspect of my home life growing up in just a minute, but I thought I should probably start with a fly over of my family life. My dad worked the night shift as a Sysco Foods driver, a job he started shortly after I was born. He worked well over 40 hours a week and was frequently tired and worn out when he got home. My mom has some mental illness and life with her was very unpredictable. Beyond the mood swings with her, there was verbal abuse and gaslighting that occurred behind closed doors.

My parents were an explosive combination and their disagreements excalated very quickly. I don’t want to call them out on specifics here, I’ll just leave it with this - it was a tense house to grow up in and I spent a large amount of time hiding behind the couch. While I hid from them and their crazy world I always felt like there was someone sitting there with me. I knew I was not alone, and it was probably this knowledge more than anything else that founded my belief in a god in a home where spirituality wasn’t a priority.

For the first 7 years of my life, I had an awareness of Christianity only through the 80’s American culture which I lived in. Each year there were TV specials that came out around Christmas and Easter that gave some general idea of what the holidays were about, though Santa was my first thought at Christmas and not Jesus.

Through my parents’ divorce, my mom moved into some sort of angel worshipping and had angels placed all around that house and pins that I wore on my shirt. She would speak to the figurines and ask them for protection and talk with them on occasion like they had life in them. My sister fell in with a rebellious crowd at school and someone made a remark about the devil in her yearbook and I remember my mom being over the top angry. I first learned about exorcism from this event and not the movie. My mom was convinced that my sister had fallen in with devil worshippers or at least said so dramatically in her arguments with my sister.

There were two bibles in the back corner of my mom’s closet. I frequently came upon them as they resided right next to my mom’s old cowboy boots which I dearly loved and frequently snuck in to wear around when I thought no one was paying attention. They were old and beat up and there was a book labeled “Old testament” and one labeled “new testament”. On occasion, I tried to read them as a very new reader but they were incredibly difficult and were King James Version so even the words I could make out it was all way over my head.

I very distinctly remember standing next to our old Lazy Boy recliner one day when I was only about 4 years old. My parents were having a deep conversation about my uncle and they were both very distraught. I don’t remember what they were saying, I only assume they were talking about my uncle based on the events that followed. My dad left the room when they were done talking and my mom turned to see me standing there. She paused for a moment, I could tell she was torn between anger that I had been there and wanting to scoop me up and hold me close.

She settled on scooping me up. She came down and knelt before me giving me a big hug and when she pulled away she had tears in her eyes and she said to me “We need to pray for your uncle. He and Aunt are getting a divorce.”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about but she was so serious and insistent with tears in her eyes. I nodded my agreement then hesitantly asking “How do I pray?”
“Nothing to it.” She said and then informed me I need only say “dear God” then ask for what I want and at the end toss in an amen. We said a very simple prayer together “Dear God be with Uncle and help him out, amen.” and that was that.

Being the ever compliant child that I was I took this task very seriously and whenever I found nothing to do I would repeat that prayer with very little variance. Honestly, I probably said it 8 times a day. Then one day I was watching the Andy Griffith show and there was an episode when Opie’s aunt tells him to say his prayers. From watching this episode a few others that followed I gathered that you were supposed to say your prayers before bed and you should be kneeling with your hands in the proper position. I also learned you should bless your family members at the end of your prayer before you say amen. In this form, my prayers changed. “Dear God, Help my uncle out and give him comfort. God bless mom, God bless dad, God bless my sister. Amen.”

A few years later while walking through a craft fair with my mom at the local Catholic church I came across a sign that intrigued me; it read “when I count my blessings I count you twice.” I was very curious about this. Were blessings at the end of my prayers supposed to be counting something? Were they for my benefit or the benefit of those I was blessing?
As my mom and aunt moved forward to the next booth I quickly whispered to the woman “What does that mean? Why would you count someone twice in your blessings?” She smiled at me and said, “Your blessings are all the things you are thankful for, and if you count someone twice you are extra thankful for them.” I quickly caught up with my mom and aunt and contemplated this new information.

It made a difference in my little heart. Once I had digested this information my prayers changed remarkably. They were no longer quick things I said before bed, they took hours! I always had a hard time falling asleep so this new ritual really helped me out, my own form of counting sheep I suppose. I would make my request for the prayer then I would go through a list of EVERYTHING I was thankful for. “God bless my penguin stuffed animal, God bless my pillow, God bless my bedroom, etc.” Then when I got to the people I loved I would go through this process twice.

I am very serious it took about 2 hours to complete each night, if not more. I would frequently fall asleep before I could finish and then I’d be so upset the next day that my pray the previous night had not been heard because I had forgotten the “sign off” with an amen. So I developed a new habit to counteract this, when I started to feel a little sleepy I would say “and God I’m going to say amen now even though I’m not done in case I fall asleep.” Remember I was a child no more than 6 by the time these habits were formed and I had little to NO adult guidance on any of this.

For some years our next-door neighbors were Christians who attended a large church in our home town. They had daughters that were around my age. When they first moved in we were instant friends, however, my older sister had a nightmare one night about the mother. My mom was convinced that my sister’s nightmare was a sign from the angels that this woman was demon-possessed and evil and I was no longer allowed to play directly with them anymore.

Being the persistent kid that I was I always found a way around this, one was to climb the fence between our yards and chat with them from there, but my mom often noticed that and would yell at me not to be “the little pest on the fence”. I discovered a knothole in one of the wood boards which soon served as my means of conversing with the girls.

In this manner, I continued on until I was 12, and then everything changed. That is the background for me to begin my story. Come back next Thursday and I’ll dive into the next part of my story.

In mid-September when the Conversation Journal launches I will also be launching a podcast to help support parents in their efforts at having conversations with their kids. The podcast will feature real-life conversations between parents and their kids, tips and interviews with seasoned parents, and conversational tools to help parents.

This process has been incredibly scary and I've shed more than a few tears - I mean have you ever had to listen to your own voice? It is strange and uncomfortable for someone who prefers to stand behind the star.

Jason has always had big dreams, and I wont lie they have scared me, but I’ve taken comfort in knowing I’m just the behind-the-scenes girl. I could play a part of his big dreams, they were in a way my dreams too, but I didn’t have to stand out in front and shine. Standing behind him made going after things I was passionate about all that much easier.

With this, I am not only having to step out in front but step out alone. He might be giving me technical tips here and there, but ultimately I’m standing here alone and staking a claim on this thing.

For years I rode horses. Time after time I met people who had bought a horse simply because they loved them. They had no idea how to ride or train a horse and in many cases they were terrified to actually get up and sit on top of those wildly tamed beasts. I marveled at them. I didn’t understand what they were afraid of, and I couldn’t understand why they would go through the trouble and expense if they were so terrified.

Now I understand. My wildly tamed beast sits in front of me in the shape of a dream - a ministry of helping parents have conversations with their kids. It is tame, what is there in writing and recording a few podcasts, and yet it is wild - new and unknown.

All this being said, I recorded a simple podcast on our summer goal of learning a new language as a test. I forced myself to publish it and let me tell you, I shed quite a few tears over it. Excitement, anxiety, fear, so many emotions that I’m not used to feeling all at once. The actual podcast wont launch until September, but I’m going to record a few small episodes to practice and help me get over my fear of my own voice. If you want to be a part of the process click below to listen to The Conversation Podcast.