Testimonies
Twenty Miracles, More or Less
Shane’s Testimony:
6-20-08
It’s funny, the things God does to get you where He wants you. I know He started His work in me long before I ever remember His involvement, but my first recollection began with a desire to hit tennis balls against the garage door at age 13. (I‘m presently 3 days away from my 47th birthday.)
It was one of those crazy kid ideas… when you’re sitting around one afternoon and all your friends are busy or out of town or too far away to get to cause you can’t drive and you’re bored. Then you see your mom’s tennis racket in the closet and think, hummmm….? Anyway, I got the idea to hit tennis balls on the driveway, against the garage door, so I did…for hours! I must have liked it because I kept it up for days and days. Of course, this drove my parents more insane than they already were which may have lead to their signing me up for tennis lessons that summer. I think it was more to make me quit banging those balls against the garage door than it was anything else.
The tennis lessons lead to someone talking me into signing up for the high school tennis team my sophomore year (and I talked my best friend into signing up too). We made the cut (1st miracle).
My folks never liked to see any of us be mediocre at anything…. So wanting me to be the best I could be and being the over-achieving, alcoholic, workaholic, world travelers that they were, came up with the idea to send me (& my best friend, who had similar parents) to the John Gardner (not sure I even remember how to spell it right) Tennis Ranch in Scottsdale, Arizona…. which is right where God wanted me!
My mom’s younger sister happened to live in Scottsdale so it worked out that my best friend and I stayed with her for three weeks while attending the tennis ranch program. The part GOD had in mind was that my aunt was a born again, full gospel believer and rocked to the rhythm of the Lord Jesus Christ (2nd miracle). So, needless to say, we played tennis all day and learned about the Good News all night, every night, for three weeks. It was glorious.
Now Aunt Lynn knew the Word, was a gifted evangelist and was spirit filled, and still is all those things. She prayed with us, played the piano and sang with us and shared her love of Jesus. We attended her church, Assembly of God, with a large, full gospel congregation that reached out to us, prayed with us and shared their worship with us. Folks were speaking in tongues, interpreting and singing; I was clueless but felt the presence of the Lord for the first time in my life. During the service, a woman came to me at my seat and said that God had told her I was coming to visit and she asked if it would be alright if she prayed with me? (3rd miracle). There was an alter call and she went with me to the alter where I confessed my sins, believers prayed with me and I asked Christ into my heart and life (4th miracle). The same happened with my best friend and a separate person from the congregation (5th miracle). That night, after church, we studied scripture and listened to Aunt Lynn late into the night. At 1:30am, both of us, in unison, told my aunt we wanted to be baptized, NOW! There was a swimming pool included in Aunt Lynn’s little gated community (the Lord always provides!) and at 1:30 in the morning, in the warmth of an Arizona night with orange blossom trees smelling like heaven, we all put our swimsuits on and traipsed across the courtyard to the pool where I professed my faith in Jesus Christ and my aunt baptized both of us in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost (6th & 7th miracle). Praise God! He is risen.
Soon after that night, we headed home on a plane back to Nebraska with our new bibles in hand and Jesus in our hearts…. Not caring a hoot about the tennis! I remember getting off the plane and blabbering on and on to my parents about what I had discovered about salvation and what Jesus had done for me and how wonderful it all was and how much I loved my aunt Lynn and her friends… and them just sort of staring at me and not responding…. Maybe they were mad that I didn’t mention anything about the tennis?
Within the week my parents made an appointment with the Minister from our church to get me baptized in a private ceremony. You see, it seems that my parents had “spaced” on the whole baptism thing during my youth and came to the shocking realization that they had overlooked that aspect of my proper protestant upbringing when I came bouncing off the airplane, hollering, “I‘ve been born again!”. Looking back, I wonder if they thought the Arizona baptism wasn’t a real baptism and it needed to be done right? I don’t really know as it was never mentioned again. The message at home was clear, “we’re not really interested, and it’s all a little too kooky like your aunt Lynn”. My mom is coming up on her 80th birthday and she and my aunt haven’t spoken in years. At any rate, I remember saying, “okay, but I don’t think its really necessary”, the second baptism thing. But what did I know, I was only 15. So that week, we met the minister and his secretary at the church, my mom, my dad and me and the minister said a prayer and sprinkled some water on my head and we left and it was over.
About my best friend…. I don’t remember ever having another conversation with her about our experience or our new relationship with Christ after we got home and I don’t recall if she ever told me how her parents responded but that was the end of my joy in the Lord… for the time being.
I remember a brief encounter the following year when I attended a small Fellowship of Christian Athlete’s gathering and Tom Osborne was there and he prayed with us and witnessed to us and I remembered Jesus… but things got really bad after that.
In a nut shell, my mother’s alcoholism progressed and mine began. My father withdrew and eventually left the marriage and was absent emotionally whenever we were together. I adored him and it hurt deeply. It was a very destructive and painful time for all of us. I had just graduated high school (8th miracle) when my parents divorced and was into my first year of flunking out of college. It ended up taking two years to get kicked out of the University of Nebraska but I got ‘er done. I’ll skip all the ugly details but mention that I eventually ended up in treatment for alcoholism a week after my 20th birthday (9th miracle). There I re-discovered forgiveness during one of my sessions with the program Chaplin. It was a long time ago, but in my memory he was much like I imagine Christ to be; so full of grace and peace that it was freaky, so un-worldly. It was the first time I confessed my sins out loud to another person and was loved in spite of them… that is Christ-like, Amen?
My life went on, kind of crazy and wild, but sober. I had no direction, no real purpose or meaning and was pretty self absorbed until God rose up again and put another dad in my life, my mom’s third husband. I adored my biological dad and still do (he died in 1994) but my step dad was a true blessing and loved me and loved my mom and was a wonderful buffer between she and I (he died in1989). My step dad gave me my career and life’s work, State Probation Officer where I have remained for the past 20 years. But that’s another story.
In 1992, I entered a relationship with a wonderful man who adored me and 2 ½ years later we had the most beautiful baby girl I had ever seen (10th miracle). It was at that moment I came the closest to ever understanding the love of Christ and knew without a doubt that God was real and was crazy about me. In becoming a parent I understood that I would die for her without question or pause and I knew it the moment I heard her first squeak and looked at her face. I think God loves us like that, times infinity.
On with the story…. In 1995, we got married. I had accepted that I loved him, and wanted to raise our family more than pursue a higher paying career and could accept the ex-wife and three step kids and I moved to rural Nebraska, to my husband’s home town of 1100 inhabitants, where I remain (11th miracle). Shortly thereafter, God gave me another heart melting bundle of love-joy, an extraordinary son (12th miracle). And get this, he made me fall in love with my three never-ending, noisy, messy, costly, bothersome step kids, and I even grew to like and respect their mom! (Miracle 13-16).
But here’s the excellent part; for all my bad choices, wrong thinking and selfish behavior, God found me the most perfect little house and put little Christian warriors all around me, literally. God put a mighty Christian warrior princess (my dearest friend for the past 7 years) directly across the street and needy, hungry, broken, want-to-be Christian women all around my neighborhood (including and especially me) and made us a Bible Study. Those were wild, exciting, trying times! Refinement by fire! I fell in love with Jesus all over again and my faith was restored and renewed ten-fold! (miracle 17). The coolest part is that I fell in love with His Word (miracle 18).
And God never stops! His blessings never cease! His love never ends! I know that because a few years ago He put another funny desire in my heart and landed me at a community rally for teenagers. I cant stand teenagers! But God sent me a 17 year old girl on probation that touched my heart. Her mother was alcoholic and abusive and her dad was completely out of the picture, she was lost. She was to complete a significant number of community service hours to finish her probation and hadn’t done any, so I agreed to her attending the youth seminar for community service credit so she could successfully complete probation. We agreed to meet at the seminar and I ended up traveling over 75 miles one way, on a Saturday, off the work clock to meet and attend this gathering I really knew very little about and would never have been caught dead at. We met up at the beginning of the program and I never saw her again the rest of the day. I don’t think I really had much impact in her life… but that’s what God used to get me there and that’s where I met Darrell Sutton (19th miracle).
Darrell was in a small room in the back hall of the high school building, presenting on multicultural diversity or something similar (I just remember thinking to myself, “this awtta be great, ugh“). I had hooked up with 3 or 4 kids that didn’t belong to any particular group; we were a wayward bunch and a little on the strange side. The kids must have needed some adult attention cause they just started following me around and talking to me about nonsense, like they had nothing better to do; me either since the girl I came to support had ditched me hours earlier….
Me and my little motley group of bandits had been trying to find the room where a fascinating session was set to start, and we were late, the room was full. I mean really full, no-where-to-stand-at-the-side-or-back-of-the-room full. So we headed back down the hallway, dejected and wandered into this quiet room where some skinny, clean cut, well-ironed-shirt guy was standing, like he needed someone to listen to him. There happened to be a bunch of empty chairs and we were tired of being hurried and out of luck so we sat down, and experienced Darrell. God is so good.
Darrell and I stayed in touch and the introduction eventually turned into a bible study in our home that grew into a church that preaches God’s truth and grace, Gospel Lighthouse. God new I needed another warrior so he sent me a marine that had grown into a pastor with a heart for Nebraska.
Darrell is my pastor (miracle #20) and my friend and he is a Godly-man. He is full of God’s grace and reverence and after 12 years of marriage to my husband, Dave, because of God and Darrell, for the first time, I heard my husband pray out loud, in front of our children. God sent me Darrell because He, Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, loves me that much. I can’t wait to see what He comes up with next. Amen?
