I was raised in church and my salvation was uneventful; I don’t remember how old I was or what was said that caused me to accept Jesus as my savior. I do remember my cousin asking my father to come talk to her about it and I rode along. I don’t remember if I asked to go or if my father took me with him himself. I do remember being in the room with them, sitting in the chair in the corner while they were on the couch. My cousin and I were baptized on the same day though I only remember changing out of my wet clothes afterwords. Often I’ll hear people describe their conversion in exacting detail; they remember the date and time, what they felt when it happened, what they had for breakfast that morning. I can’t do that. It’s not as if this event is uniquely hidden from my recollection, my childhood is only bits and pieces for me. Not until my time in middle school does the weave of my memory becomes more coherent, mainly because it was an awful experience rife with sickness and social exclusion.

I often became jealous of those people; the ones who can remember it all. More specifically, the ones who were so burdened by their sin and shame and sadness and anger that their salvation rocked them. They can look back and declare, “This is what Jesus saved me from!” and their testimony is all the more powerful for it. Much like Paul they fervently wield their testimony for the kingdom and the retelling of it in thankfulness keeps them humble before Christ. What has the Lord brought me through? What great challenges have I overcome with His help? Not many. I’ve led a very sheltered life and the mistakes I’ve made have been light on consequences. Because of these things, my testimony is of little value; why should I share it? I’ve struggled with this. At most it’s made me doubt my salvation and at least my usefulness. At times, perhaps I leaned too far into legalism, looking for a way to prove that I’ve been changed. After all, I can’t remember my life before Christ.

I missed the point. Once I set these things aside and gave God a greater amount of trust, I started to understand more and more about His faithfulness. Finally, and cautiously at first, I took my anxiety to Him instead of sitting on it and He led me to a peer group that would lift me up. My life then became an exercise in counting my blessings; instead of looking for things that God had saved me from, I started looking for things that God had kept me from. It was through this that I discovered, even in my wanderings when I felt so far away from Him, He was right there the whole time. After that, He taught me to pray, and He showed me that in His presence I could win the war against the habitual sin that I had been fighting all alone. I thank almighty God that I’ve never had to learn the really hard lessons that come through intense pain and poverty. Now when I pray, I say, “be with me as You always have.”