Blessed to be Broken

Panic. The minute the group leader who just happened to be one of the pastors at my church said, “Each of you will be sharing your testimony during this study. One testimony per week. I’ll pick the person each week.”

Yikes!

My brain hole started whirl-pooling. Do you all have a brain hole too? Things that just get stuck in there and swirl round and round like a vortex? I digress, back to the story.

My brain thought, ummm, like, thee testimony or any of the testimonies since thee testimony? (Thee isn’t misspelled, it’s spelled this way for dramatic effect). HA!

Then the pastor shared his testimony. Yup, he meant thee testimony. Crap! Yup, I said, crap!

We had some parameters. Write it out. Do it in under 5 minutes.

Since, none of us in the group had any idea who’d he be calling on the following week, we had to have the assignment done.

I get it. As followers of Jesus Christ, we need to have our testimony ready to share whenever God calls us to share.

It’s easy for me to share pieces and parts of my testimony. I can totally share what God’s done in my life. Easy peasy.

It’s easy to hide behind a blog and share my testimony.

But, to put it all tougher, and say it out loud to a group of folks I don’t know? Ooooooh weeeeee, child, that’s a whole other level of sharing.

As I was preparing my testimony, I had a good cry in the shower with God about it. I was trying to figure out why my whole being was so bejiggity about sharing.

I confessed through my tears, “Lord, it’s embarrassing.”

Indeed my testimony is embarrassing when I make it about me and what I’ve done.

But, my testimony is not mine. It’s His! It’s about God’s amazing grace, love, mercy, faithfulness, goodness, and forgiveness in my life.

When, I confessed my testimony was embarrassing, I got in my spirit, “it’s powerful.”

That’s not a brag, because it’s not about my power, my strength, or my perseverance.

There’s not a single place I can look back on in my life and not see God there. Even in all my sin.

We each have a testimony. Each one is a powerful story of God’s hands upon our lives.

When was the last time you shared your “thee testimony”?

I did the assignment. I wrote out my testimony. I wanted to pray the pastor would pick me first to get it over and done, but then I didn’t want to go at all.

So, I placed it in God’s hands and my whole being felt like a duck’s feet under the water.

The evening came for our next meeting. I thought, “I wonder if I could have someone else read it?”

I waited in anticipation for the pastor to pick this week’s testimony teller. Dun. Dun. Dun.

He instead asked for a volunteer before he would voluntold someone.

Crickets.

Suddenly, my hand shot up and I said I’d do mine because I wanted to get it done.

I forewarned them, I was a crier. My trembling voice and shaky hands gave way to my nervousness. Gulp, here goes everything.

“I was born in Elmira NY. I was raised among a prescription drug addicted and alcoholic family. Suffice it to say, at the very least it was chaotic, unstable, and fraught with things children should never have to be a part of or witness to. 

Physical, sexual, mental, and emotional abuse was passed down from one generation to the next in my family. Police presence was not an uncommon thing in our house. But, there were some good times when for small periods of time, the drinking subsided.

We were baptized catholic and went to catholic schools through 8th grade. My idea of God was he was a hard nosed, gavel slamming, judgmental God who didn’t care. How could He care with the things that happened in our home? Church wasn’t anything we attended regularly. It was more often used as a weapon when we misbehaved. 

Needless to say, I grew up. I knew I’d always leave my home town, but I had no clue how that was going to happen. 

Enter the Air Force. Me and my then unknown to me trauma went out into the world. I was in the military for 29 years. 20 of those years spent in Alaska. In that time, I knew and understood the worldly version of God. We’d be here all day if I spoke about my then lifestyle, but suffice it to say, ALL manners of sin reined in my life. 

When it came time to retire, I had no idea what I was going to do. I was stressed, panicked, angry, and incredibly sad. Add on top of all those emotions, being a “functional” alcoholic to the mix. I was a walking, ticking time bomb. 

I placed the whole world on my shoulders and the darkness crept in all around me. I couldn’t see any good in my life. All I saw was failure, after failure, after failure, and my home held no joy. I saw no other way to get rid of all the enormous amount of pain except to end my life. 

So, on a night my son was gonna be out all night with friends, I decided that was the night. With a knife in hand and after several glasses of wine, I held the knife to my wrist. I was so involved I didn’t even hear the garage door open, but I did hear my son walk through the door, so I quickly hid the knife under the pillow I’d been practicing on. 

My son went straight to his room, and I went straight to my knees and sobbed as I poured my heart out to a God I didn’t even know except through some television evangelism and occasional church visits. I may not have known Him, but He most assuredly knew me. 

In July 2011, I called my younger brother. It was his birthday and I figured I’d just be leaving my normal bday song, but he actually answered and we had a heart to heart about my impending retirement. He told me about a town called Skaneateles in NY. He couldn’t talk enough good about it. After we hung up, I went to the computer and looked it up. I was immediately drawn to the pictures of the town gazebo, the folks dressed in Dickens era costumes and the lake from the Chamber of Commerce website.

I remember looking at that and saying to a friend later on, “I’ve got to get there.”

Things moved quickly and after applying for a couple of jobs found on that same website, I wound up getting a job at a Bed and Breakfast as an inn keepers assistant in Auburn NY with a Christian family. So, I moved back to an area I swore, I’d never, ever live again, and began life in the civilian world. The family I worked for went to church every Sunday after guest check outs. Months later I also started attending. 

After months of attending, the Pastor spoke about baptism and the class they’d be holding, and I signed up. 

Don’t you know, that church was in Skaneateles, NY. Its name was Grace Chapel and I was baptized in the very same lake, by the very same gazebo that I once looked at from behind a computer screen way up in Alaska.”

Only God could have set the stage for this testimony to take place. Only He could write a love story that would use things that He knew would draw me in to Him.

As I cried my way through the telling of my testimony, I assured the group, they weren’t tears of sadness. They were tears of what God brought me through.

I dunno about you, but if it’s been awhile, maybe it’s time to remember, and thank God for ALL He’s done for you.

And you know what? He’s only just begun. So, who’s next? Who wants to share their, thee testimony?