Nancy

“The evening that we got engaged, I heard this little voice in my head that said, ‘do not be unequally yoked.’ My boyfriend had just come back from Vietnam. At that point, I asked him, ‘Do you believe in God?’ He said, ‘no.’ I was shocked.  It was crazy, because I knew that he was Catholic and had gone to church. I was Protestant. I said, ‘What do you mean? How can you say that?’ He said, ‘If you had been where I've been and seen what I've seen, you wouldn't believe in God either. A good God would not allow that.’  I figured that he was kind of shell-shocked, and it would pass.  But it never did.  We were in a home that was unequally yoked. He started drinking, became an alcoholic, and started cheating. We ended up divorced.

I was really angry with God. Why didn't God fix this? I went to my pastor for counseling.  He kept talking to me about surrendering to the Lord. Honestly, I did not have a clue what he was talking about. It just made me angry, because I couldn't understand. I was taken to church as a child and I was saved by my Sunday school teacher when I was 5. All my life, I believed in God and Jesus. He said ‘You have to give everything to the Lord, your life, your job, your children. I said, ‘Let's say I tell God, OK, you can have my children and He decides to take them to heaven. He said, ‘Well, do you really think God needs your permission to do that?’ I was so angry. I walked out of his office and slammed the door. This went on for a couple more weeks with him. 

One day I was complaining about my life. I was whining about being alone and not being treated properly at work. All of a sudden, I'm transported. It's like people say they have these out-of-body experiences when they're in the hospital having surgery or something. All of a sudden, I'm on the walk of sorrow to Calvary. Jesus is on His knees, crawling with the cross. He gets right in front of me and looks up at me. He said, ‘Did they treat you this badly? Did these people that you're talking about, did they spit on you? Did they beat you almost to death? Are they going to kill you?’ I said, ‘no.’ He said, ‘Stop complaining and accept the blessings I give you and enjoy the life I give you.’ That was it. From that day on, it's been me and Jesus. I surrendered all. “Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”

2 Timothy 1:6-7

Trust Him. I remember when it came to surrendering to the Lord. It was like putting a child on the kitchen counter and saying, ‘jump into my arms.’ They are afraid you're going to drop them. Finally, they jump into your arms and you twirl them around and they scream with delight, saying ‘do it again.’ That's exactly what it was like for me when I finally jumped into the arms of Jesus with surrender.  It was like, ‘oh, my, why didn't I do this decades ago?’ Why didn't I know about this decades ago? But I wish I could have jumped off the counter into His arms much earlier.” Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” Luke 9:23-24. My name is Nancy, I’m human, and I surrender.”