by Kristin Lane Williams

Created on: March 12, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

The power of a witness. In a courtroom, one witness could condemn a man or set him free, if backed with certainty and evidence. The same can be true for the testimony that is your life experience. No one will ever have the same set of experiences as you. So it should be with great pride and a humble awe of the great measure of grace that we boldly relate our simple tales of humanity meeting greatness.

My encounter with God began long before I was born. Of course, it took me years to uncover the fact that I had people in my corner begging God to use me and save me from my own self and the deliciously empty pleasures this life has to offer. Never underestimate God's ears. He's listening and doesn't need a hearing aid. I am proof.

As a young child of six, I sat on my pink canopy bed with my mom and asked Jesus to come into my heart. I had no cognition of what that meant and no soulish understanding of the depths I was capable of. My words, while heart-felt, had little real life experience attached to them. I was a six-year-old determined soul who fought her way tooth and nail into this world and was reluctant to come in second for anything. That's just how I came out! I didn't know life should be any different.

I grew up in an overly religious household. We had to go to church every Sunday because that's what Christians do. We had to read the Bible every day and pray a couple times a day as well. That's what good Christians do. I had to make sure I didn't cuss and obeyed my parents and followed every other rule, even if they weren't written in the Good Book. I didn't really know why. I never got that part. All I knew was I struggled a lot at being a good Christian. I answered more altar calls than can be counted on all my digits seeking assurance that I was going walk through the pearly gates, wherever they were. I had fun singing songs and memorizing verses. I loved this Jesus man who did miracles and helped people. He was a hero though I knew he had lived long ago. I wanted to meet this guy in person and something about him made me want to ask to be like him, if that is humanly possible.

At about age twelve, I began to choose to socialize with a few classmates outside of church. They said words and talked about things I never had encountered before. I am a soul who loves novelty. So I ate up the rush it gave me every time I broke the boundaries and started to seek out knew limitations and then test them. This exploration, while periodically and sometimes scarily checked by my parents, went on until the vacuum collapsed. I spent these years building my life around seeking every pleasure and eventually acting on every impulse. There were some limits even to my madness. There were certain things that I, as a Christian girl, could not do because well, I was a Christian. But, I justified everything else with contradictory jargon and moved on to the next thing.

The real breadth and height of my rebellion needs volumes to explain as does its own demise. From many points of view, the choice to surrender and give up my own selfish pursuits can be attributed to many things other than the grace of God. In my own experience, grace is what I experienced. I tried all the things the world had to offer, found them void, even nearly died a couple times and then found the one thing that caused a river of life to flow in me. My encounter with God is as real to me as the wind on my face or the smell of a pine tree. I see him all around me even though my heart is prone to wander and forgets the great love I have received. But, patient as he is, he never leaves me, never forsakes me and loves me just as I am.

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