Testimony #4

Hey guys!  I am really excited to share this testimony with you today.  Nancy Rue was one of my favorite authors when I was younger.  So, I present to you, testimony #4-- Nancy Rue!!

I’m always a little envious when I hear moving testimonies from fellow
Christians who have had dramatic conversions from deeply troubled lives to
sudden and complete commitment to Christ. I don’t covet the troubled former
lives, of course, but the drastic change from nothing to all – I’ve never experienced
that and I can’t help a small degree of wistfulness.
And yet would I really change how I have come to know our Lord God? I
was born into a devoutly Christian family, baptized at six weeks old, and raised
with the church as the center of my life. Not only were we there every time the
doors opened, we were often the ones who opened them! Worship, prayer, and
potluck suppers were as much a part of the rhythm of my world as school and sleep
and summer vacations. Looking back as an adult, I know that my parents breathed
their faith, especially in the many times of sickness and sorrow we suffered
through together. It never occurred to me that there was any other way to be.
When I was twelve, I naturally went to confirmation class so that I could,
well, confirm my faith and be blessed by the bishop. I pretty much knew all that
our minister taught about the Episcopal Church, but what I didn’t know was that
for the first dozen years of my life I’d been simply worshiping my parents’ God.
As we learned about prayer, I started talking to God myself, alone, for the first
time, and I was amazed to find that God talked back. Not in audible words – I’ve
only had that happen a handful of times, really – but in a palpable sense that God
was real and had been waiting for me to come by myself into that presence which
can’t be described or proven or measured.
So I suppose if I had to pinpoint the moment I came to Christ on my own,
it would be the spring of 1964. With a foundation of church and scripture and the
fellowship of believers laid for me by my mom and dad, I could stand before my
congregation and say for myself, “I am a Christian.”
Maybe that’s why I spend most of my professional time ministering to
tweens and teens through my writing and speaking and blogging and teaching.
It’s an age of first awakening, of taking on the responsibility of having a real
relationship with God. I like supporting my youngest sisters in that place, because
it was such an important place for me.
Would I change how I have come to know our Lord God? Perhaps not,
because I have a feeling that was exactly as God wanted it to be. How can we
argue with that?

-Aylin