How many of you see your “story” as a mess? This past December God refreshed my soul to remember that the story of the first Christmas was a mess too. God did not wait for humanity to “clean itself up” or to “deck the halls” before He came. Instead, the mess became His beloved backdrop. Be encouraged as we move into a new year, that in the same way “the AUTHOR and perfecter of our faith” redeemed the messy story of Mary, Joseph, and every other outcast in Bethlehem that first Christmas, God is weaving His victorious redemption into your story too—all for His glory! Maria’s story paints the powerful truth that God specializes in taking our messes and making us into glorious masterpieces.
Every one of us has a unique story of how God is moving and working in our lives. These stories (often called testimonies) are meant to be shared. When we testify to how God has transformed us, He often works in those listening, softening their hearts and drawing them closer to Him. As I share my testimony in the following paragraphs, I pray it encourages you to get out of your comfort zone in 2026 and share your story with all you encounter!
My Story…
I grew up in a small, rural town in southern Indiana known for its cornfields and coal mines. A place where everyone knows your name, full of simple, blue-collar folk. We grew up playing board games, listening to our music on 45 records, watching Family Feud, the Brady Bunch and Happy Days. Most weekends and summer days were spent playing outside all day, riding bikes back and forth between houses until evening. It really was a perfect picture all-American life. There was one thing we were missing though. Our family never attended church except for the obligatory once a year Easter Sunday and sometimes that didn’t even happen.
As a child I was overly concerned with what would happen to me when I died. I had heard about heaven and hell, and I knew where I didn’t want to end up! I often asked the adults around me what I needed to do to make sure I went to heaven. One person told me that I would stand before God and he would look at all the good things versus bad things I had done, and if my good outweighed my bad, I would get in. Another person said I needed to be baptized. But my friend in first grade told me I just needed to ask Jesus into my heart. So every night before I went to bed, I prayed that Jesus would come into my heart.
A King James Bible with gold edged pages…
I was infatuated with my mom’s white King James Bible. The cover zipped up around its gold-edged pages. I loved unzipping it and turning the thin pages. I knew something about it was sacred and holy. Once I learned how to read, I would try to read it, but couldn’t make much sense of the formal language that included words like hath, thee, thou and thy.
When I was in seventh grade, I joined several of my friends for confirmation classes at their church. I saw this as my chance to be baptized. All I remember about the day I was ‘sprinkled’ is that one of my friends and I became extremely tickled about something. My whole body was literally shaking with laughter as the Reverend sprinkled me. As a confirmation gift, my mom bought me my very own white King James Bible with a cover that zipped up around its gold lined pages. I didn’t really feel any differently after being baptized except guilty for laughing through the whole thing. Even so, I was glad to check this off my ‘to do’ list to get into heaven.
Rocked to the core…
In the spring of my eighth grade year, our ‘picture perfect childhood’ was rocked to the core. Our mom and dad set us down to explain that they were getting a divorce and the years to follow were rocky ones. I turned to the popular crowd and my brother’s friends to navigate these years. Needless to say, I looked for happiness and fulfillment in all the wrong places. I rarely went to church. But once I got my license, I would go occasionally by myself and sit in the back. Something drew me there—I know now it was God. Whenever I was at church, I felt a peace wash over me that I didn’t have anywhere else in life.
College couldn’t come soon enough for me. After a semester at Indiana University I ended up transferring to Murray State the next semester. I changed my major to Accounting and got serious about studying. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was where I was supposed to be. Looking back, I know it was God that was drawing me there. No matter where I moved, my white King James Bible came with me and sat in a special place on my shelf. Every so often I would pull it out and read it and try to make sense of it. Every so often I would get up on a Sunday and go to the Baptist church on the Murray town square and felt God’s peace that surpasses understanding every time.
Living on empty…
At the end of my junior year of college I met Eric, the man I would eventually marry. There was a stability and steadiness in him that I was drawn to that I had never experienced in my past relationships. Eric had been to church his whole life and came from a ‘religious’ family. We were basically good people. Yet, in the still of the night, when all was quiet, I felt an emptiness that all the worldly things I was pursuing never seemed to fill.
Before you knew it, we had graduated from college, gotten married and moved to Nashville for our new jobs. We were living the dream. From the world’s point of view, we had it all. Yet, I still felt empty. For the past ten years I had tried to fill my life with things I thought would satisfy and fulfill me: partying with my friends, trying to achieve good grades, landing a successful job and making money, getting married, buying a nice car, buying a cute home…no matter what I tried to immerse myself in, it came up hollow. What I didn’t realize is that we all have a God-sized vacuum within us that can only be filled with a relationship with Him. Only He can truly satisfy. The more I tried to fill my life with things that I thought would bring me happiness, the emptier I felt. If I was playing a song to depict this season of life it would be ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones. Occasionally, we would attend church and sometimes even visit a Sunday school class. I noticed a joy in so many of the people I met and thought, I want that.
God breathed His life and words into me…
For a wedding present someone had gifted us a Life Application Bible. One day I pulled if off of our shelf. It had been sitting next to my old faithful white King James, collecting dust. As I read, I noticed there were footnotes that explained what I was reading. It also related the scripture to real life. Week after week, often for hours at a time, God spoke to me through His Word. He counseled and healed me.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 states that: ‘all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.’
As I read, God breathed His life and His words into me. He taught me, He gently rebuked me, He corrected me and explained what it meant to live righteously.
At the same time all this was occurring, our best friends from college, Christy and Doug, invited us to their church and Young Marrieds Class. Walking into church, we also met another two couples from our neighborhood! God had moved us into a neighborhood and surrounded us with young Christian couples. It was a full court press.
For the next three to four weeks, I continued reading our Bible. We kept going back to Two Rivers Baptist with our neighbors. I started listening to a Christian radio station on the way to work each day. One winter morning, as I sat in my car, I looked up at the clear, blue sky and I finally responded to God’s invitation. I told Jesus I was ready to surrender my life to Him. Instead of just asking Jesus into my heart as I had done over and over as a child, this time I cried out and acknowledged my life as a sinner and that I needed Him as my Savior. The change that came over me was in an instant. His peace that surpasses all understanding flooded my entire being. An indescribable joy filled my heart.
I was experiencing 2 Corinthians 5:17 in real time. I was a new creation in Christ: the old was gone, the new had come!
The new has come…
For so long I had held back from making this decision, thinking I had to give up all the worldly things I liked to do. What I didn’t realize is that God would change my yearnings. His desires became my desires. The things I had once did, I know longer wanted to do. Instead, I couldn’t wait to go to church; I couldn’t wait to hang out with other Christians and discuss God’s Word; I wanted to listen to worship music or a sermon when I was driving; I no longer had a desire to cuss. I decided to get re-baptized in short order. This time I did not have an uncontrollable, giggling fit. On the contrary, I joyfully heard every word as the pastor dunked me in the water: ‘Upon your profession of faith in Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, buried with Him in baptism, and raised to walk in a newness of life’.
Eric watched from the sidelines as my life drastically changed. He silently observed and took it all in. Because he had grown up in church, I assumed he had ‘rededicated’ his life. What I didn’t realize was that he was just faking it and blending in. A few months later, he completely surrendered his life to the Lord too.
Twenty eight years later, Eric and I have raised five children together and work in full time ministry with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA). I am awestruck when I think back to how lost we both were when we met in college. Yet He was working in the background even to giving us a Life Application Bible as a wedding gift. How thankful I am that Jesus was an important part of our wedding day even if we didn’t know it yet.
My story…His Glory!
How thankful I am that His grace covers a multitude of sins. Since the day God saved me, my life’s passion is sharing God’s Word with young people. First with our children as they were growing up and now with middle school and high school students through FCA. I think often about how different my childhood, teenage, and college years may have been if someone had taken the time to get to know me and share the Good News with me. I am a living, breathing testament of the lengths He will go to bring one lost sinner to Himself. I am a living, breathing testament that nothing in this world will come close to satisfying us like He can. Only He can fill the empty places of the soul.
‘So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.’ Isaiah 55:11
Like Maria, Heart of Womanhood Ministry is built on the promise that our stories are written by God to bring Him greatest glory! As mommas we have the honor to dive into God’s Word with our daughters confident that ‘all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training (the next generation), so they may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.’ To begin your interactive study of God’s Word together, go to http://heartofwomanhood.org This year is the perfect time to become living breathing testimonies of our glorious God!
