Confessions of a Born-Again Christian (Part 1)

I am a born-again Christian.  Before you run for the hills, take a moment to read.  I have some insights to share with you.

I grew up in the Methodist Church in the mountains of NC.  I frequented  church suppers with my granny and I went to Bible school.  My friends were old time Baptists, and I would frequently go to church with them, and tense up during a service filled with hell fire and brimstone.  One time a lady in front of me got the Holy Spirit and started shrieking as loud as she could. She flew up out of her seat like something had bitten her on the behind.  She scared the living daylights out of me and I yelled out.  So people thought I had the spirit too.  Boy, was I glad when that service was over.  I was prayed over like I have never been.  And I faked that I had the Holy Spirit because I was afraid of what would happen if they knew otherwise.  Visions of fire and brimstone kept going through my head.

I lived across the street from the Catholic Church, and I thought this was a really cool church.  I would look out of my window and watch the nuns in their black and white habits, and I used to pretend I was a nun too.  They seemed so mysterious to me.  One day they came to my house and invited me to vacation Bible school at their church.  I was so excited!  I went every day for a week, and had a good time.  On the final day we were to have a little test to see if we had learned anything.  The ones who passed the test received a beautiful little prayer book.  Well, the test was to name the ten commandments?.in order.  I was fairly sure that I could name them, but naming them in order left a bit of doubt in my mind.  I was the third person in line, so I figured that by the time they got to me, surely I would know them just from listening to the others.  So I sat and listened intently.  I watched each child hold out his hand and proudly receive his prayer book.  When I was finished, I was confident that I had named them all correctly.  The nun asked me to hold out my hand.  I smiled and opened it for her.  WHACK!  Right down onto my hand with a wooden ruler.  It turns out that I had gotten the fourth and fifth commandments out of order.  I went home with my pride wounded and my view of the nuns a bit tarnished.  I never wanted to be Catholic again after that.

So I continued to go to the Methodist Church.  I truthfully never got that much out of it.  I would constantly look at my watch to see when it would be over.  Sometimes I would go back to the Baptist Church with my friends, and it didn?t seem so bad since I knew what to expect.  And one thing was for sure.  I surely did not go to sleep in there, with people jumping and shouting.  Goodness knows what would happen to a person who fell asleep. 

The Baptists were different than the Methodist in that at the end of every service they had an alter call.  The preacher would talk about how you needed to get saved.  Then he would explain how you needed to ask God to forgive your sins and ask Jesus to come into your heart.  And then the music would start playing ?Just As I Am?.  And as the music softly played he would say, ?Do you feel the Lord speaking to your heart tonight?  If you do, you better listen.  You better answer the Lord?s call.  Hell-fire waits for the ones who don?t answer.?  Now, for me, this was a lot of pressure.  I mean, how was I to know if I was hearing the Lord?  Because my own voice could be telling me to go to the altar if I thought it would keep me from the fires of Hell.  So I would sit there and listen and bargain with God in all kinds of strange ways.  In my mind, I would think something like this:

"God?...if it is You talking to me and if You want me to go to the altar call, then let the lady in front of me rise up out of her seat and shout, "AMEN!"  So I would wait, and nothing would happen.  Then I would say, "Well, if You want me to come up there, then let me get a cramp in my leg so I have to stand up on it.and then I will know."  Again, nothing happened.  So I would go home thinking that God wanted some others a bit more than me that night.  In a way, I was relieved.  But in a way, I felt like I was missing out on something.

It didnt help that my best friend in the world was the daughter of the Methodist minister.  I would go to her house and visit almost every day.  And the difference in her family and my family was like night and day.  They all seemed so happy and considerate of each other.  At dinnertime, they had a family devotion and prayer at the table in which everyone participated and actually liked it.  Nobody ever said bad words.  Everyone seemed to get along.  Without going into detail, let me say that my house was the exact opposite.  At my house, we prayed on Thanksgiving Day, and that was the ONLY day.  If you heard God?s name in my  house at any other time, it was not in a very pleasant manner.

When I was a teenager, my friend's father was moved to another conference area, and I no longer had that positive influence in my life.  I was so sad she had moved.  My life seemed to spiral downhill, and right when I was entering my teenage years.

I began studying the occult.  I listened to heavy metal bands.  I plastered posters all over my wall and I would sit in my room for hours burning candles and black lights, meditating.  My poor granny thought I had lost my mind.  My parents fought and drank.  I withdrew deeper and deeper into my own little world.  I began shoplifting music from the store.  My parents began drinking heavily.  My father began to sexually molest me.  I began turning boy-crazy, and looked anywhere I could for the love I was missing at home.  I became a food addict as well, trying to fill that emptiness inside of me.  I still went to church, but only to please my granny?and to flirt with boys. 

One day I was walking up on the hill behind our house.  It was a really beautiful place.  You could see the Blue Ridge mountains rising up in the distance.  The hill itself was a big soft meadow with wildflowers growing.  I would go there to think or to rage or to cry.  On this one particular day, while on that hill, I heard voice speak to my heart.  I wasn't looking for this voice or asking for it in any way.  I was just feeling so much pain.  And I knew that this was the voice of God speaking to me.  And He was telling me that He was there to fill my emptiness if I would only let Him.  So I put my face into the soft earth and asked God through my tears to forgive me for trying to worship Satan and for the shoplifting and for all of the wrongs I had done.  And I asked Him into my heart.  I felt a peace flood over me like I have never known before. 

And this was the beginning of my Christian walk.       (to be continued)