Christina’s Story
“My life before I knew Jesus, I thought, was a normal one. It was filled with chaos and stress, very unfulfilling and full of heartache and pain. I was a single mother living my life as I thought I should.
I didn’t go out a lot, I stayed at home with my children, didn't do drugs or drink and I worked a full-time job and provided a roof over their heads. This is what I thought made me a good person.
My marriage seemed to be failing from the start several years ago. My husband and I fought all the time, over everything and our first five years were anything but blissful. Throughout all of my marriage problems, I lost my dad to cancer. The year after his death, my sister was killed in an accident, less than a mile from where my mother was killed in an accident a few years prior. Then, I lost my job, then we lost our house. After so much loss and a failing marriage, I gave up completely on any faith I thought I had. I was hurting deeply and became very angry at life, at people and especially at God.
Yet, despite my pain and anger, I had an overwhelming sense to reach out and seek God’s help, to seek His wisdom and guidance, but I chose to fight it because I was so angry at Him.
One day in February I received a $40 rebate check from the dentist, which was weird to me because who gets a rebate check from the dentist? I deposited it and that same afternoon I took my 4-year-old to the mall to play. As we walked up to the play area, I noticed it was closed, and it’s never closed. As I turned around to leave with her, I was face to face with the Christian bookstore.
I had passed it a hundred times, but something about this time was different. I knew I needed to go in. As I walked in, the first thing I saw was a display table ...on troubled marriages. I was drawn to two books and knew I had to purchase them.
I didn’t even know how much they were, but as the cashier rang up my purchase she said, "Well it's your lucky day, these are all on sale." My total came to exactly--you guessed it--$40.
I took this as my sign that God was calling to me as loud as he could to not give up on my marriage. I wrote my husband a letter and left it for him on the kitchen table explaining to him the events of the day. My husband had been praying hard for me, that I would be given relief from the anger and bitterness I carried towards life. I felt God had placed his hand on my shoulder and told me to lay all my pain and anger and worry at his feet, and that day I did.
My husband and I continued to pray for each other, our broken family and our marriage. We consulted with a couple we knew had also been on the verge of divorce. They were members of Compassion Christian and became a huge influence on our re-growth.
I starting praying more than I ever have, and I felt a connection with Christ and couldn't explain it. I just knew the Lord was listening, and that He had His grace over me, my marriage and my life like I never felt it before. Although my husband and I were in separate states, we began to communicate better than we ever had. We talked like we never had and prayed together like we never had.
My prayers and his prayers were answered in many ways. My anger and bitterness left. The sense of peace within me was overwhelming and it showed. Our communication grew every day and it seemed as if we were falling in love again.
My daughter and I came back to Georgia in mid-April. Although my husband and I have nothing material, we have a stronger bond and a better marriage than ever. He has taken leadership in this marriage to be our spiritual leader, and although we are worse off financially than ever before, we are better off than we ever have been emotionally and spiritually.
We attended Compassion Christian on and off whenever we felt like coming over the years. Within the past six months we have come on a regular basis. I always knew that I belonged in this church and I couldn’t explain that either. Pastor Cam's sermons seemed to always speak right to me, right to what was happening in my life. After coming out on the other end of what seemed a hopeless time in my life and in my marriage, I was baptized for the first time on April 28th, with my loving and supportive husband right there in the water with me.
I met Cam that day, and meeting him meant more to me than meeting any famous celebrity. He will never know how his work through the Lord has changed our lives.
Thanks to Compassion Christian and a lot of prayer, we are happier than we have ever been. People wonder how we can be happy when we have nothing. We look at each other and we get it: we would rather have 'nothing' material and everything spiritual like we do now.
Society can keep a focus on money and possessions. I am happier than ever being so connected to my husband and God. There isn’t any possession I would rather have than that.”
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