Uber Blog Award

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...







I feel very humble and glad to receive this award from Jennifer at Sit-N-Chat.



Thank you very much:o)


Here is the history of the award:
Uber {synonym of super} Amazing Blog Award is a blog award given to sites that inspire you, make you smile and laugh, gives amazing information, a great read, have an amazing design, and any other reasons you can think of that makes them Uber amazing!
Here are the rules that go along with the award:
Copy the badge and put the logo on your blog sidebar or post.
Nominate at least 5 blogs {or more} that for you are amazing.
Share the love and link to this post and to the person you received your award from.
Come back here and comment so that your link could be added to the master list of awardees.

I will get back soon with the blogs I plan to nominate.

Born again birth-day

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...




It was my birthday yesterday; I was 7... (And who said the Christian life was dull!!!)


7 years ago I didn't have any contact with my natural father and God gave me a new Father(and a restored relationship with my dad, who He saved and took home since then).

7 years ago God took away my natural family, a family that for the most part I didn't have much contact with, and joined me to a new, holy, loving and supportive family.

7 years ago I was having a relationship with a terrorist, (yep, the real thing. He was shot by the British authorities, taken to England, extradited to the US and spent time in different prisons there for being involved in buying missiles, to shoot down helicopters in the North of Ireland.) and God took him out of my life (but not before he heard the Gospel several times!) and joined me to a loving, godly and holy man, of His choosing.

7 years ago I was suicidal, totally without hope and without help in this world. Not only did God give me a reason to live, He gave me a new life!

7 years ago my son's father was dead and God gave him a new, godly, loving and holy dad.

7 years ago God asked me to give up my house, a house that held many troubles for me and many bad memories, and then gave me a home of His choosing. A happy home where I attend to the works that He has prepared for me.

7 years ago I had been known on occasion to sit up until dawn drinking and smoking with my boyfriend. God took the desire to smoke and drink completely away, it's just gone! However, I am grateful to God that through all this, I was a good mother and God protected Seán from this lifestyle I lived.

7 years ago I had no idea what salvation was, what being 'saved' meant and couldn't have cared less. God showed me the meaning of these words and took me to Him the only way I would go... The hard way!

7 years ago I didn't believe in Hell. God has, as a huge cost, rescued and saved me from that very real place...

7 years ago I didn't believe there was a place called Heaven. Now it is my home.

7 years ago I didn't even know that the Bible had a page of contents, let alone what was in it, and then God gave me a huge desire to read it, believe it and apply it. He gave me a big love for it and I have given hundreds of them away and have hundreds more in the Church building waiting to be put into the homes of a village nearby!

7 years ago I didn't know what a Sunday School was, now I am a Sunday School teacher!

7 years ago I didn't know, and had never heard of a Holiday Bible Club, and God showed me, and involved me in the running and participation of one every Summer.

7 years ago I had no heed in spending time with children and then God gifted me to love and work with them where I live.

7 years ago I was lonely. I will never be alone again...

The list goes on....

Over 2,000 years ago, God paid the highest price that could be paid for me. Not for the me that is here now, but for the me that was there back then. The blasphemer, the murderer, the adulteress, the liar, the thief, the trollop, the drunkard... Again, the list goes on....

How can you start to thank God for that?

I used to think...

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...

Over in Amy's blog she has made out a list of things she used to think. Ruth has also joined in so I thought I would put down some of my more serious thoughts on the matter, however, I plan to write a different type of list on our family blog so you can check them out here if you like!

I used to think that there was no God. It was just me and nobody else involved in the running of my life... I am glad to say that I was VERY wrong with this one and that God Himself came and showed me how wrong I was!

I used to think that there was such a thing as coincidence... Ha! Actually, knowing that God is in control of everything and that nothing goes on here in my life that He hasn't allowed gives me great security.

I used to think that 'The Buck Stopped Here'. It was an awful burden on me and I was very pleasantly surprised when I realised that someone much more wise, kinder and loving is in charge... and is doing a much better job that I ever did or could.

I used to think that the best way to live was with me first, my son second and any partner I had would come third... Now I know that God comes first, my husband second, my son third, the Church fourth etc..... then me! This is a truly better and more Godly way.

I used to think that friendship just happened, but realised too late that it takes a lot of work and that I must cherish any friends that God has so kindly given to me

I used to think that there wasn't more to this life... that this was all there was. Now I know that there is God, spiritual warfare, the building of a Church and a new and eternal life to look forwards to.

I used to think that I would finish reading the Bible. When I was first converted I thought to myself "This is a great book, but what will I read next when I am finished it?!!!!"

I started to believe that I couldn't change... Well, with God's grace and help, strength and love I am changing.

I used to think that I had my chance at life and that I would never be happy again. This would have been true if it wasn't for God saving me and forgiving me, giving me a peace and contentment, a friendship and relationship.

I swore I would never live in the area I now live in... That's a story for another day. Funny how God can change your mind on even these things.

I used to think I wouldn't enjoy this life any more but I do enjoy my life, it's just that it is a different one. That's what happens when you are born again, you are given a new life...

I used to think that I would always be on my own (Regardless of having a partner). Well, God is my best friend and He is with me. He has promised never to leave me or forsake me and you know God never breaks His promised. He is not able to.

I thought I would never love anybody or anything as much as God and that I would always put Him first. Sadly, sometimes I love my sin more than Him, but He is always willing to forgive me, and does.

I also thought that love was a feeling but it's not, it's a person... God.

Home maker

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...


I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this post is about how I changed and now want to be in the home...

When I lived in Dublin City in the early 80's I used to work. Because I came from a large poor family, and because my father encouraged us to do well for ourselves and not rely on men to get us through life, (he had 7 daughters) I became very independent and would strive to be strong and not to be dependant on anybody, especially a man. I would pay my way in restaurants, holidays, anything, and felt awful if I were under any complement to anybody.

When I had my son Seán, I was just the same. Because I didn't drive, sometimes I relied on people to drive me here and there and would give them money for petrol and this would help me feel less of a burden. I really disliked cooking and thought it was the most boring thing in the world to have to do. My plan was, as son as Seán was old enough, he would go to play school and I would get some part time work.

After my conversion things changed for me in these regards. I wanted to be with Seán more. I didn't mind spending all my time with him. Also I longed to cook for somebody! My sister and my pastor used to call over every Tuesday morning and I used to be happy to make up something small for them to eat for lunch. Nothing fancy, a salad or omelette or soup etc. This pleased me and these feelings took me by surprise!

Before I married Niall I started to get used to making dinners for more than one person... (me). I would invite visiting speakers to my home, along with other people from the church, and that got me back into the swing of things. So by the time I married Niall I was very happy to cook and wash and keep home and homeschool... Something I would have once really disliked, I now love! Having said all that, I am not a fab cook and sometimes still get a bit bored cooking two times a day..

I am so glad and grateful that the Lord has taken me out of the workforce. I do have a small job cleaning a local community centre once a week that helps pay the bills. It is literally 3 doors down from my home! Yes, I could work but it's simply not worth the price my family would have to pay.

I am not superwoman. I can't work outside the home, then come home and shop, cook, wash, dry, iron, clean, be mother, wife, helpmate, sister, be a regular church goer, let alone spend time reading the Bible, reading other godly books, pray and visit folk.... I just can't do it all and I don't want to.

So how do we get on? Just live a simple life. It may not be as simple as I would like it to be, but by today's standards it's pretty simple... But the benefits are amazing!

I get a lot of hand-me-downs... I quite enjoy that!
I buy second-hand.
I buy new in the sales.
I don't have TV (so no TV licence to pay).
I don't buy make-up.
I don't buy perfume.
I very rarely buy magazines.
I rarely go to the hairdressers.
I don't drink.
I don't smoke.

What do I do...

I go to the movies.
Sometimes we go to the pool.
Sometimes we go ice-skating.
We go to the Library.
I go to visit my sisters and brothers in the Lord.
Sometimes we go on holidays.
We light a fire and settle down to watch a DVD.
We go on homeschooling outings.
I visit neighbours and friends.
We visit family.
I blog.
I read.....

I couldn't do the half of this if I were working, and I would be working if God hadn't given me the desire for a more simple home life.

I love my life, I really do. I love my home which I call 'my nest!' I love my family. I don't care if the world thinks it is unusual for me to be home so much, to be fulfilled with my life as it is.

Not too long ago I would have despised this kind of lifestyle, now I love it, why?

Because God changed me in this area of my life too!!!!




I can be a decent daughter to God, wife, mother, sister to the brethren and neighbour.

Christmas

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...



I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this post is about why I don't celebrate Christmas...

What? Don't celebrate Christmas! Even when I was an atheist before my conversion, I joined in the usual Christmasy things! Whatever happened?!

When I was growing up in our family home, Christmas was a wonderful affair. It started with mum emptying everything out of the sitting room and giving the lino on the floor a good wash, and after it dried we got some sort of wax and put that on. Then came the fun part; we were all given rags which we tied onto out feet and held in our hands and had a grand time of it, sliding up and down the floor bumping into each other and having the time of our lives!

The next big thing was getting the Christmas tree. This was always dad's job and he would take some of the older children with him, but the last time he ever did it he took me! He would take his gun with him and go to a place called the Fox Cover where there were lots of trees planted. He would then pick out a lovely tree and saw it down and take it home... Why the gun? Well, if he was stopped and questioned by the people who owned the land he would say we were out shooting.

Once the tree was in the sitting room the older children were allowed to decorate it. I thought it was wonderful, with the lights and the same decorations every year! Of course they weren't grand or expensive but to me they were, and hanging sweets on the tree helped!

A month or so before Christmas mum would ask us what we wanted from Santa and we would tell her. She said she would send the list up the chimney! Of course, by the time Christmas day came we would have forgotten most of what we had asked and would have been delighted with what we got. We hung real socks on our bed posts about a month before Christmas.

On Christmas morning whoever woke up first would wake the other children and so we would check out our sock and we might get an apple or a small toy or something small to keep us going. After what would feel like ages, we would stand in the hall in front of the sitting room door and sing "O why are we waiting?" to the tune of "O come all ye faithful"! Eventually the older children would get up (some of them would be tired after going to the local dance the night before) and we would queue up outside the door from the youngest to the eldest. Mum would slip her hand through the door and put on the light then we would count down 10, 9, 8, 7... and then burst open the door into the room!

The sight was always wonderful! You see, with so many children (10) there was always a mountain of gifts under and on the tree. They would even be hanging on the walls!!! We would rush over and search and poke and prod until we found a gift that felt like something soft (new cardigan mum might have knitted ) or a rectangular box (new pair of shoes perhaps?) Something we could wear to mass that morning and we had to leave the rest until after dinner. This wasn't a torture to us; the anticipation was great and...well, it was just the way we always did it.

After mass we went to collect our two grannies. Mona, my dad's mum, lived in a big house with her two spinster sisters, Dotie and Delia. Delia would normally knit something for us or would wrap a pound note around an unusual mug and give it to us, (she worked in the family delph shop) but Dotie was one of a kind! Every year she was given a very large box of chocolates from an admirer, and on Christmas morning she would show us the picture on the lid, take the lid off, unfold the four leaves of the paper one at a time, and holding it out under our noses say, 'Have one", in the sort of voice you heard in a Humphrey Bogart movie... We thought more of that one measly chocolate than we did of the present her sister gave us, pound or no pound!

Then we went to collect our other granny. Gran was my mum's mum. We didn't like her very much. It's a pity really, Mona was such an exceptional grandmother that any other granny was bound to be in her shadow, and Gran was a grumpy granny!

We would go back home to a hot turkey dinner and a roaring fire. We needed extra seating and table space because there would be mum, dad, us ten, plus two grannies and possibly somebody's boy friend. (I have six sisters) We children had to suffer the delay of mum serving the beautiful dinner, then dessert and then tea and pudding.... Finally, after all this was finished we all sat around the fire on chairs or boxes or whatever we could find, and dad would ask one of us to pick a present from under the tree. When we picked one and handed it to him, he would read out the name on the gift..."To Martin, from Santa" and the parcel would be handed around until it got to Martin and we would all look on to see what he got, oohhing and aahhing and then when it was well and truly looked at, admired and complimented on, (whether it was a pair of socks or a toy) dad would call for another present, and so the great day would continue until we took a break to watch the Queen's speech, had more tea and Christmas cake and then back to more present opening. Finally, we would settle down to watch the James Bond movie and we kids would quietly play with our doll, Meccano or whatever. We loved Christmas and it was just awful when we all grew up and people went their own way and we younger ones were left at home to watch our parents break up due to mum's ill health and dad's unfaithfulness...

When I moved to Dublin city at eighteen and met and settled down with Dave, I continued to make a big deal out of Christmas. I always had a real, big tree, lots of gifts and family over to visit on St Stephen's day and I used to make home-made decorations etc. When Dave and I broke up (a couple of months before Christmas) it cut the heart out of me, I lost a lot of the joy in Christmas for the years that followed.

Then I met Sean and when he died I found myself alone with a baby the next Christmas, and needless to say, that knocked a lot more of the joy of Christmas out of me, literally each decoration on my tree held unhappy memories, so by the time of my conversion, I didn't really have the same affection I once had for the holiday.

God saved me in August, so my first Christmas as a Christian came on me quickly. I wasn't happy about the whole Santa thing and lying to Sean so I asked my Pastor how he and his family handled it with his two children. He said that he and his wife told them there was no such thing as Santa but that they were not allowed to go around telling everybody in school. Then I spoke to his two boys (about 15 and 16 at the time) and asked them how they felt about it all when they were growing up, and they assured me that they did not lose out!! They said that when they were younger they didn't care as long as they got their presents!!! So that settled it for me. Sean was only three so it was easy to just drop the Santa thing. He still got lots of gifts, more than he should because of the fact that his dad had died, so, although it seemed a bit strange to the rest of my family, he wasn't missing out on anything.

Bt the time the next Christmas was on the way, I was engaged to be married to Niall. Things had to change. Niall doesn't celebrate Christmas. For lots of different reasons his conscience won't allow him to. When we were having marriage guidance with Stephen and Marie before we married, we discussed this and I decided that I had a choice in the matter. I could celebrate it or not. Niall however couldn't. So, you see, because of the changes over the years, giving up Christmas for Niall wasn't as big a thing as it once might have been.

However, it wasn't that simple! People didn't like the idea at all, and I suspect they didn't like Niall for it either. The fact that we had a young child only made it look worse. However, we weathered everything and have come up with something that seems to work for our little family... MacCarthaigh Day!!!

On our first Christmas together as a new family we decided that when people gave Sean gifts (we knew they would) that we would give them to him as they came. Well, they came thick and fast and it turned out that every time a visitor came to our home over a period of three or four weeks, they gave our four-year-old son a gift. Eventually, Christmas came to an end, but not for Sean; he still expected to get a present from every visitor that put a foot in our door! We realised that the next Christmas would have to be different and that we would have to give Sean his gifts all in one go and not spread out over weeks.

We decided that we would have a family day sometime during Christmas week. This way, Sean's relations (particularly on his first father's side) could give him his gifts and he could open them on one particular day. We would eat exactly what we want (my favourite is a kebab from a local take away!) have treasure hunts (DVDs as prizes) and play and watch our favourite movies all day, no-one else welcome!!! This has turned out to be a great success and up until now, we have spent Christmas away; Sligo, Belfast, Armagh, but this year Sean wants to spend it at home. It also helps that some of his friends are at the age where they doubt, or know that Santa isn't real and this makes it easier and more fun for Sean.

So there you have it! Some day around Christmas time, the Lord willing, we will wake up, go downstairs into a room that has the floor strewn with gifts and covered with what seems like a million balloons. (well it feels like a million the night before when Niall and I have to blow them up!) We will spend the morning taking our time opening them. We will not leave the house all day. Niall and I will spend the day playing with our son, spending time together and having a special time with our Lord, thanking Him and singing to him! Praise the Lord!!!


Best Christmas present I received.......... My red bike.

Most frustrating Christmas present I ever received.......... My red bike... I couldn't ride it!

Worst Christmas present I ever received.............. I asked Santa for a ballerina dress (in my mind's eye it was pink and made of tulle) I got what I thought looked like a grey sack!!!

Make up

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...



I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this post is about how He took away the need for me to wear LOTS of make up!

I still wear make up!!! Just not as much and not for the same reasons that I used to.
What do I mean by make up? Well, false tan, foundation, powder, blusher, mascara, eye shadow, eye liner, eyebrow pencil, false lashes, false nails, concealer, lipstick, lip liner and nail varnish.

Why did I wear it? To try to get people to think I was better looking than I am... To give me a sense of strength... A sense of protection... Because of peer pressure... Pride... Fear of looking unattractive... Insecurity... To look better than my friends... The list goes on...

These are not good reasons for wearing make up, having said that I am not quite sure that there are "good" reasons to wear the stuff!! Now-a-days I sometimes wear concealer if I have spots, but just sometimes. For special occasions I wear a little make up, mostly just to give me a little pick-me-up.

The reason I cut down on wearing most of this stuff is because God saved me, and when He did that, I found I have my source of significance in Him and I don't have to rely on looking like a different person, someone I'm not but would like to be, to be significant. I am significant in God and in His eyes, because of what Jesus did....

God doesn't love me because of who I am or what I have done; He loves me because of what Jesus did over 20000 years ago when He died on the cross. When I realised what a terrible sinner I was and what I was facing when I died, I asked God to forgive me. He did; He transferred all of my sins onto Jesus and put His righteousness on to me, and punished Jesus in my place...

So, when God looks at me He sees me as being clean. The sinless clean life Jesus lived is now mine, in God's sight. I don't have any significance in myself, I am significant because of God.

Do I think it is wrong to wear make up... no, but I think that we could re-visit the reasons we wear it. Do I think people who don't wear make up are more Godly... NO, but I think that it is better for us when we women are in the place in our lives when we don't feel under pressure to look in a particular way/conform to fashion/worry about how we truly look.(and we do)

So where am I now? I am careful when I put on make up. (not only what colours I wear!) My husband doesn't like me wearing it so, mostly, when I am with him I don't wear it. I love Niall very much and I want to be attractive to him, and if wearing make up makes me unattractive in his eyes I won't wear it... this one's a no brainer!
I decided not to wear it on Sunday mornings when I am at the Church service... why? Because I am more self concious when I wear make up and end up being distracted and not paying enough attention to God's word.

So that's it. I am not hiding behind my mask any more; I don't have to! My peace and contentment is is God and not in me.


Check out this blog. It has photos of celebrities without make-up. Ladies, they're just like you and me!

TV or not TV?

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...



I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this post is about how He added hours to my day by taking away my desire to watch TV.

When I was living in Dublin city as a younger woman I gave up watching TV for a week. My boyfriend and I put a cloth over the TV and decided to play board games and visit people and we actually survived! I loved the idea and although I really enjoyed the experience, after the week was up, the cloth was removed and we went back to normal.

I used to have all sorts of grandiose ideas before I was saved, and one of them was that if I ever had a child, I would NEVER use the TV as a babysitter. Well I wasn't long back-pedalling on that one, and would clean and cook while Sean watched 'Telly Tubbies' and 'Bear in the big blue house'.

By the time I moved back home to Blackrock, Sean was almost 3 and I hadn't much of a social life, so when he went to bed, after tidying up, I usually watched the TV or read books. I don't know what the equivalent of 'soaps' are in other countries but here in Ireland and England, they are very, very popular. I wouldn't have been caught dead watching one before I had Sean, but since his birth, I got used to watching them. However, after my conversion things changed.

I started reading the Bible a lot and also started going to meetings on Sunday and then Wednesdays. Also some of my new Christian friends would visit me so my days began to fill up. One day I received, as an anonymous gift, a box full of Christian videos. There were a lot of tapes of the Canadian preacher J B Nicholson and also a series of talks on creation in it, and I started watching these, loving every one of them.

Something else happened; When I watched the soaps I didn't enjoy them any more. I was more aware of the content and how ... unpleasant they were. Stuff that I took for granted as being 'just life' like divorce, adultery, homosexuality, child abuse, drunkenness, swearing and more, I realised they almost glorified them. The shows hold them up as being ok and acceptable. The whole thing depressed me and I am glad to say that I eventually stopped watching them altogether.

I kept a small TV in the sitting room with a video player for Christian material and put the big TV upstairs in my bedroom so Sean could watch cartoons in the morning. Eventually I gave that TV away too. It was easy and a relief! I had so much time on my hands and so much to do now, my life was so full, reading the Bible and books and going to meetings, getting visits from friends and Stephen, my pastor, calling around to disciple me.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I know something now that I didn't know then! God had planed that I would marry Niall. Now, although Niall's job is as the 'TV Man', he is the first person to admit that he is addicted to watching TV! If you were in a room having a conversation with him while the TV was on, he would totally ignore you and watch it. Because of this he had given up watching TV years before I met him, so really, I believe the Lord prepared me for him way in advance!

Some might say that we ended up going from one extreme to another because we now have an 8 foot screen in our sitting room with a very old projector! On some evenings, we light a fire, lie on the sofa and enjoy a movie with popcorn and Coke floats, and on some Sunday afternoons we will watch a film about God's creation with our dinner on our laps! A lovely way to spend time together as a family on the Lord's day...

I know that there are lots of other good reasons why people, especially Christians should cut back on watching TV, or give up watching it altogether, but I will let somebody else with more time and better qualifications present them.

Here are some things that you might want to consider...

When is the last time you prayed for your neighbours, one by one?
When was the last time you handed out Christian material in your area?
When was the last time you witnessed to somebody?
When was the last time you went to a mid week meeting?
When was the last time you sat with a neighbour and shared his/her problems?
When was the last time you prayed as a family?
When was the last time you read the Bible to your kids?
When was the last time you read a Christian book?
When was the last time you watched a Christian movie/programme?
When was the last time you held a prayer meeting in your home?
When was the last time you had Christians over for dinner?
When was the last time you has single Christians over for dinner?
When was the last time you cooked a dinner for somebody in need?
When was the last time you sang to God in your home?
When was the last time you fasted?
When was the last time you said 'no' to yourself?

Let me end by suggesting that you pick up a copy of your local newspaper, open up the page that records the deaths that occurred that week, and consider where those souls are....

TV or not TV... that is the question.

My Hair!

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...



I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this post is about how He helped me to be comfortable with the way He made me... and my hair!

I know this is silly, silly, silly but I also know that some of you out there will understand me! I used to have this 'thing' about my hair. From an early age (14) I was not satisfied with it. I have cut it, coloured it, permed it, dyed it and straightened it. When I was low and unhappy with myself, instead of changing myself, I changed my hair. It kinda became obvious, to me anyway, that any time I had a major change in my life, my hair would go through a radical change too! I would sit in hairdressers for hours at a time, smoking, drinking coffee and reading magazines while I was painted, rolled, pulled and ironed... all the time loving it and sometimes hating it.


While writing the last post, I mentioned how I used clothes as a form of armour to hide behind. Well, this too was part of my armour.

When I became a true believer I found that God was my source of significance and not me, men, food, drink, family, child, work... the list used to go on and on. Once I made the decision to be directed by God instead of myself I found that I very soon only cared about what He thought and not what I, the world, my family, my neighbours or my friends thought.

I was born with brown hair or as they would say in the States, I was a brunette! At the time of my conversion I was a blonde. I had, up to that point loved being blonde and would have seen no good reason to change. I thought it was more attractive and therefore I thought (hoped) it made me more attractive!

However, on the weeks coming up to my Baptism I became more and more aware of the colour and became more and more uncomfortable with it. I can't really say for sure why, but I think one of the reasons has something to do with it not being real, not being me and of course the fact that I had it that way to draw attention to myself.

So anyway, on the week before my Baptism I went into the hairdressers and had it darkened slightly. Weeks went by and by the time my roots started to show I decided to let the colour grow out and for my natural colour to take its place.

If truth be known this was a very tough thing for me to do but I decided to do it because it would help me to stop being vain... and it did. It took a year for it to grow out, during which time I looked pretty awful with half my hair brown and the tail ends blonde but it didn't kill me!!!

On the week of my wedding, I had the very last of my blonde bits cut off and so I married my man with a full head of the brown hair that God gave me!!! It always felt dry and brittle with the colour in it and so now I can run my fingers through it no problem. It is much nicer now than it was when I was blonde. It suits me better and it feels great!

I guess in every age women always loved playing with their hair and this age is no exception. Next time you are in a bus or a queue look around and see how many women don't have their hair 'done'. Personally, I have absolutely NOTHING AGAINST people who 'do' their hair. But I can say this; As a woman who has had it both ways, I much prefer my hair the way God gave it to me. This is my 'hair' testimony!

Clothes

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...



I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this post is about how He showed me to dress differently...


This can be a touchy subject, along with women's hair and make-up! But I will start with God and what He has to say about it.

In the beginning nakedness was not a sin. However, when sin entered the world we had to cover up. Why? Because our way of thinking is now perverted and corrupt and we are unable to look at the human body in the way we used to, without sinning. How do we sin? Well, I suppose the most obvious way is when a man lusts after a woman. A husband may desire his wife but a man who lusts after a woman is sinning. Women too can lust after men but, to be honest, we're just not in the same league as the men!

Clothes can be worn to cover the body, to be comfortable and to keep you warm, and then they can be worn to cover the body but accentuate certain parts and draw the eye of the opposite sex.

Before I became a Christian I wore clothes for different reasons. Jeans, tracksuits etc just to hang around in and to work in, to keep warm and to be comfortable in. I also wore clothes that would draw the attention of men towards me, and then I wore clothes to impress other women... peer pressure! Other times I wore clothes as a kind of armour, power dressing. If I were going somewhere important and meeting somebody who intimidated me, I would put on the smart trouser suit, make up and hair... my armour!

When I started going to Church services I began to look at the way other Christian women dressed. Some, most, wore clothes that were not expensive. Others wore outfits that were put together with a little thought but again, not expensive and others didn't seem to mind what they wore so long as it covered them!

There were some young women in out Church and they really surprised me by how they dressed. They looked great! Trendy, modern, up to the latest fashions and discrete! They wore some of the same kind of tops that were out there in the boutiques but instead of wearing it low cut, they would put a t-shirt under it, or they altered it by sewing it and still looked great!
As I got to know the women in the Church, one by one, some of them told me that they shopped in second hand clothes shops as well as the regular shops. One woman, who was quite short, got almost all her clothes second-hand, gave them to a dressmaker to alter them and looked fantastic! You would never know she did this! Another woman I know in the Church dresses herself and her kids from the second-hand shops with the best of clothes, good labels and all, you'd never know!

I had thought nothing of wearing tops that didn't leave much to the imagination, skirts that were too short and clothes that were too tight. But how do we know what is too short, low and tight? What do we gauge it all against?

I came to realize what I was doing was wrong when I read in the Bible that when a man looks at a woman and lusts after her in his heart, he commits adultery...

When I go to church wearing something that is used to draw the attention of men to my figure and attract them to me, I may be stumbling them and possibly tempting them to commit adultery in their hearts with me and sin against God. Tough stuff.

Some would say that surely it is up to the men to mind themselves and just look away.

Well, yes it is, but it is also up to me to consider my brother, to esteem him higher that myself, to protect him and not to stumble him. Personally, I didn't know a lot about the Bible at the time, but I knew enough. The fact that somebody looking at me with lust caused him to sin. I didn't want to be a part of it, so I changed. It didn't happen straight away. It took months initially and a couple of years to iron out the finer points but eventually, I hope, I got there. Even now, I find myself tempted to slide back into the ways of the world, but then God gives me a gentle nudge and pulls me back.

It can be a fine line sometimes. You can go too far one way or the other. It is up to you to love your brother and not stumble him so you can't go around wearing certain styles of dress. However, we are not called to cover ourselves from top to bottom.

Let's use a bit of wisdom here ladies and consider what we wear. Do we want our brothers to be talking with us after the service while trying desperately not to look at our cleavage, or can we give them one less thing to struggle with in the world that day..? We don't have much choice in what we have to look at from day to day in the high street and work place, but we can make out Church services a restful place to be, where our brothers, husbands and sons can rest from temptation in this area, even if it is just for a couple of hours.

Loving your enemies and reconciliation (2)

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...



I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this second post is about how He helped me love my enemies...

In the previous post I described how God commanded me and then helped me to love my enemies and how He encouraged me to be reconciled to my father. Well, this post is about how he healed another broken and troubled relationship I had...

Five years before I became a Christian I met Sean. I had previously been in a long term relationship that had broken down and wanted someone special in my life. Sean and I hit it off straight away and we loved each other very much. We bought a house together in Newry, Co Down and started planning our wedding and our family. Well the family part came before the wedding part, (we decided to try for a baby before our wedding, thinking it may take a couple of years to get pregnant, but it took two months) but three months before our baby was due to be born Sean died in a car crash.

I had gotten on very well with Sean's mother Tess and all of his family. (With the exception on one of his sisters but that is another story) Because Sean and I weren't married by the time of his death and our child wasn't yet born, Tess was his next to kin and therefore she was the one who legally decided what to do with anything Sean owned. When Sean and I bought the house I was unemployed at the time and so it was just Sean's name on the mortgage but I had sold my previous small house and spent most of the money on buying our new home and renovating it.

Slowly but surely Tess and I drifted apart and although I cannot see into anybody's heart I suspect it was due to a few reasons. Her grief over her son; the fact that I eventually started to date someone else and problems we were having over the house. Tess decided not to put the house in my name but instead to put it in my son's name (she eventually decided to sell it). I confronted Tess a couple of times and tried to organise a mediator to come and help us work things out (this fell through) but nothing helped. I was hurting and Tess was hurting.

I had grown to love and rely on her family and I had, for a season, been a part of it but I found that I was on the fringe of it instead of being a part of it. I resented the fact that my son (Sean) was a part of this family while I was not. When Sean died I had decided to stay in Newry for two reasons: His family was going through the same grief that I was and we understood and supported each other, and I didn't want to take Sean's only son away from them. I was cut to the bone when I found myself being ostracised but my baby accepted. The way I looked at it was that you can't have one without the other. If you want Sean, you have to take me too... I still see it this way.

Anyway, three years after Sean's death things came to a head and I left Newry without leaving a forwarding address and moved back home. I rented a house in Blackrock and looked forwards to a restful Summer. I didn't have the restful Summer that I had hoped for but as a result of more unhappiness God saved me!

Things exploded in the most wonderful way! All my problems seemed to almost disappear compared to what happened and I wasn't worrying as much as I had been over my home and Tess etc. On the week leading up to my Baptism I got two summons to court. One was because the rates hadn't been paid on my house in Newry (Tess had changed the locks and I couldn't get in) and the other was Tess taking me to court for access to my son.

Stephen, my pastor was with me when they arrived in the post and commented on the fact that they came at an important time in my life and were designed to distract me from my Baptism. How right he was! I thought about them and prayed to God and then, and after writing a letter to the relevant authorities explaining about the rates, I just put it all to the back of my mind and concentrated on more important things: my Baptism and my testimony.

Three weeks after the Baptism I went to Mississippi and stayed with the Lowerys for three weeks. While there I talked a lot to God about Tess and my son. Because He had helped me out so much with little things since my salvation and He had shown me what to do about the house, I told Him that I knew that I could trust Him with this big thing and said to Him one night..."Just show me what to do and I will do it, but You have to show me." Well, He did, moments later! He showed me that I was to leave it in His hands. I did this and had great peace about it. I have written about this in more detail in this part of my testimony if you want to read it.

When I came back to Ireland I had to face the court case over the access to Sean. Again God showed me from the Bible that I should love my enemies and pray for them and do good to them. I really thought that this was impossible and I didn't want to pray for her but I started to pray anyway. Within weeks I noticed a new attitude in me with regards to Tess. My thoughts towards her had softened, and a couple of weeks after that I felt sorry for her, and after that I actually began to love her again... This was truly amazing to me and helped me greatly when I eventually had to face her in court.
You can read about what happened here, here, here and here!

As you might have guessed Tess and I have been reconciled. We have been in close contact for almost six years. Things are not perfect but I realize now that the love I have for her is not the same as before. If it was, the relationship would crumble as soon as something happens that I don't like. This time it is a love from God and He contains and keeps and strengthens it. It is different.

Tess comes to visit us and we go and visit her. Sometimes I meet the rest of her family and am glad to say that at least we are on talking terms. I pray for this whole family and will keep doing so, and Niall's family, and my own family... I have yet to see salvation in any of them but my hope is in God and not in another.. I can wait...

It's a wonderful thing to be able to see God at work in your life. He shows you where you are wrong, tells you how to do what's right, gives you the strength and power to do it, and when you do, when you obey and trust God you get closer and closer to Him...

Loving your enemies and reconciliation (1)

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...



I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this post is about how He helped me love my enemies...

At the time of my conversion there were two people I did not want to have any contact with and, left to my own devices, I would have in no way made any contact with them, regardless of the situation, be it their sickness or death.

The first time God brought one of them to my attention was just before my Baptism. I had decided to ask everybody in my family to my Baptism, along with friends and neighbours, and this is when I was forced to consider inviting my father. Now let me say that my father is no Ogre, and neither is he a Saint, but for many reasons, good and bad, I had grown to dislike him and hate him. Of course now that I am saved I can, with the help of the Bible, judge things in a more truthful and honest light and I can see where I have went wrong in our relationship, and I can see why he is the way he is. I can also see my sins and how awful I have, and still can behave, and therefore I am in no position to ever judge him.

However, I was only saved about 10 weeks and found to my surprise that in this instance my desire to please God was stronger than my desire to please myself. I had read in the Bible several times that God commands me to love my enemies and so I met with Stephen my pastor and asked him for advice. He said that I should invite my father to the Baptism and leave whether he would turn up or not in God's hands.

I did ask him and he did turn up! After I gave my story about what my life was like before God saved me, how He saved me and what my life is like now, the people in the building formed a queue, which is traditional to our Church, and they hugged, kissed and congratulated me, and suddenly there was my father. He hugged me and gave me a gift and said that he always loved me!

I have had contact with him these past six years. Sometimes it hasn't been easy, but recently he has been diagnosed with cancer and is dying. This has changed him and his outlook on life. He doesn't have long to live and I am still praying and waiting on God to save him...

There is just no way that I would be reconciled to my father if God didn't command me and then help me. The Bible says we should honour our parents and this is whether we feel like it or not, or whether we think they deserve it or not.

The Bible also says that if you hate someone in your heart that this is the same as murder. I can see now why God couldn't allow the situation to continue and I am very, very glad that He showed me where I was wrong and than came along side me and took me through it, step by step!

At the end of the day, when I compare things, God has had to forgive me far, far, far more that I would ever have to forgive my father and if that doesn't keep a body humble I don't know what does..

Since writing this post dad has died and God has saved him.. read about it here!

Drinking, Discos and Pubs

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...

I am still writing about changes that God made in my life since my conversion and this post is about how He directed me to stop drinking, going to pubs and discos.

There is a very big drinking culture here in Ireland. People think nothing of going out three nights a week to pubs to sit and drink, and although there are people who don't drink at all or just have a few drinks, many, many more would drink to excess.

It seems to be a large part of our culture, to go to a pub and watch a football match and drink, to eat a meal and drink, to celebrate the birth of a new baby and drink, after the baby has been baptised and christened we go to the pub and celebrate, when children make their first holy communion we go to a pub/hotel to have a meal and drink, after their confirmation we go to pubs/hotels and eat and drink, after a funeral we go to the pub and have a meal and drink, when we celebrate our children's 21st birthday party we hold the party in a pub, we watch the St Patrick's parade and then go to the pub and 'drown the shamrock', we celebrate our work successes and drown our failures in the pub, we meet for lunch during the working week in the pub and we go to the pub for a pub quiz night, and it has been the way for years now for some to go straight to the pub for 'the cure' straight after attending mass; we have locals, early houses and late houses and it is unheard of to have a wedding without a full bar for the guests.

My father almost never drank and my mother was the same. Dad would on a rare occasion go to a pub in the Rock and sit over a glass of Guinness and mum, if she was went out, which was almost never, would have a drink sitting in front of her and if anybody asked her if she wanted a drink she would point to this drink, smile and say she was fine, thank you.

I had my first taste of alcohol when I was about twelve. I first got drunk when I was about fifteen and became a regular drinker when I moved to Dublin City at eighteen. My boyfriend was a musician and played bass guitar in a rock band. The guys in the band were not your usual type though, but rather held down stable employment, being civil servants, factory managers etc. Because the guys all had jobs to go to in the morning, their wasn't that much drinking going on but we had our moments.

When Dave and I broke up ten years later and I moved back home to Dundalk, I started going out with some of my sisters and went to pubs and discos most weekend. I didn't like this scene but just went along with it all. I met Sean two years later and moved to Newry to be with him. Sean was a big drinker and hung out with people who drank to excess. Anyway, without going into too much detail, It would be truthful to say that I started to drink more than I normally would.

When Sean died , I had given up drinking because I was six months pregnant. (with the exception of having the very odd glass of red wine mixed with water)

After Sean was born sometimes his granny would mind him and I would go out to the pub with her daughter. Eventually I met a man called Mickey and would go out with him too. We didn't have a lot in common but I liked him and felt safe being with him. I really wanted to meet somebody nice and get married and settle down; I was very lonely and although I knew that my relationship with Mickey was going nowhere, I liked him, he liked me and I was very glad of his company.

So by the time I became a Christian I was drinking in pubs and at home but at the time I wouldn't have thought it was an awful lot, although I know now that it was.

After God saved me my desire to drink almost disappeared and although over the next few months I still went to pubs etc, I had cut down to having one or two. Eventually I would go out with my friend Mandy, who also didn't drink much, and and not drink at all... Now this was strange!


Bur before all this I had been doing a computer course soon after my conversion and when the course was finished it was arranged that everybody would go to the pub across the road and have a few drinks. I went along and had two glasses of beer. It was then suggested that we go back to the home of the man who ran the computer course and have a glass of wine. I went back and had a glass of red wine. At this stage I was not used to drinking much and the two glasses of beer began to take effect and impair my judgement. It was extremely strong wine, and as the old saying goes 'once the drink is in, the wit goes out'... I had another and another and ended up drunk and stayed there the night with the man.

I hard to describe how awful I felt the next morning. I was so very ashamed... and sick. I felt so dirty, sorry and guilty before God. I knew what I did was utterly wrong. When God converts you, He actually comes in to live in you and you become His temple, so there I was, after knowing that it was wrong to be with Mickey and breaking with him, getting drunk and sleeping with someone else... Doing this with God in me... Just awful... At the end of the day, God has given us a free will and He promises that with every temptation we are exposed to, there is also a way of escape. I choose to ignore the escape on that occasion and suffered the consequences. All I can say is that God is faithful when I am not, He comes along and works them all out for my good and His glory, and I am glad to be able to say that as a direct consequence of that awful night I have never drank again.

Now, although I knew I would never drink again, I still continued to go out about once a fortnight. One night I was getting ready to go out with my neighbour and friend Mandy. I started to get ready, having my bath, choosing my clothes and putting on my make up and I realised that slowly but surely, bit by bit, God's presence began to leave me. Now I should say here that I would feel God's presence with me very, very strongly all the time, so I thought about it, but continued to get ready anyway.
Eventually His presence left me completely and so I prayed and asked Him what was wrong and what should I do? I realised He was showing me that I shouldn't go out. At first I thought this was strange. I didn't see any harm in going out. Then I thought maybe he was protecting me in some way. Maybe the pub would go on fire!!! Anyway, there I was all done up like a dog's dinner and was going nowhere! The strange thing is that I didn't mind; the only thing I was bothered about was having to go over the road and explain it to Mandy!!

The next week I went through the same ritual and things seemed to be going fine. We both went out to a pub and I ended up talking to an acquaintance for about an hour. I wasn't drinking at all but he was drunk and was talking to me about God. That night I decided no more... It was just so wrong, sitting in a pub and talking to drunk people about God... It just wasn't right. That was when I decided not to go to pubs any more.
Another night I went to a dance to see a live band. I wasn't drinking and had another experience there that showed me what being drunk really looked like to God, and since then I've stopped going to discos too.

So this is where I stand at the moment... Jesus first miracle was to change water into wine so it isnt right to say that people can't drink. However, God makes it very clear that it is a sin to get drunk. I understand now that with my background and weakness, I am not able to drink. If I have one, it will effect me and I will want more and eventually I will stumble and fall and have the next one, and the next one and before I know it I would be drunk...
Also, God not only knows the past and present but thankfully he also knows the future and He knew that He would be giving me a husband who doesn't drink and wouldn't marry a woman who did, so there you have it! We are a good match, a match made in heaven, literally!!!

I don't mind not drinking in the least. It was God who took the desire to drink from me, and from many, many, many other people who He forgave and adopted to be His own...
It's all about Him you know!

Reading the Bible

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...

The first time I read the Bible was when I was in my early twenties. I had rejected any thoughts of their being a God in my early teens but decided to read the Bible and decide for myself what the Catholic religion was all about. I was working nights in a large nursing home in Dublin at the time and took my mum's huge old white Bible into work with me. Each night I sat and read from it and it really must have been a strange sight; an atheist reading it like that! There was a elderly nurse working with me who was a bit religious, that is, a Catholic who prayed but didn't live like she did. She advised me not to read the Bible on my own, that I should have help or at least read it along with another book that would guide me and tell me what it meant. I didn't pay any heed to her as I figured that the Bible was easy to read and that it was a matter of whether it was true or not. I didn't want another opinion on top of the many I was brought up with.

I started reading the Old testament and I came to a part where the Philistines had stolen the Ark. Because of this, the Lord cursed them with different plagues. In this particular family Bible it said that one of the curses was that all the Philistines had haemorrhoids and that they had to make seats of sheep skins to sit on... Well, I thought this was a scream and the Nurse on duty and I had the tears rolling down our faces that night, we thought it was so funny, so that was the end of that. I put the Bible down and didn't pick it up for another thirteen years. I know now that at the time I was trying to prove the Bible wrong and not searching for God, and I believe that that is the reason that He didn't show Himself to me.

Thirteen years later and already saved but not knowing it, I lifted up the same Bible (I had seen it in my sister's home several weeks before this and had decided to try reading it again, but hadn't got around to it) and started to read; this time from the New Testament.

I can't remember what I read but after a few minutes I put the Book down, placed both of my hands palm down on top of it and said out loud, 'This is exactly what I have been looking for all these years'. I knew three things... That every word of the Bible was true, that the answers to everything was in it, and most importantly, that God was God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit. I didn't know at the time, but it truly was a revelation from God. I just sat there crying! It was just such a shock to know that there was a God! Can I describe it? He was in me. All of a sudden He was in me!

This was the start of me reading and reading and reading the Bible any chance I could. I started to go to the Wednesday evening Bible study in the Church centre and on my second night there, I took along my mum's big white Bible. Like most family Bibles in Ireland, it was wrapped up in tissue paper, placed in a box and left in a cupboard. People treat the Bible like a good luck charm rather than an amazing and Holy book that should be read every day. The box that this Bible came in was a bit torn so I left it in the tissue paper and put it in my brief case and took it along to the study. I felt very embarrassed about taking it out in front of everybody but I was glad to have it and anyway, where would I get one of my own? It's not as if I could just walk into a book shop and buy one, could I?

The next Sunday Frank Moore, a very godly man, gave me my very own Bible! Just the size of a regular book, and when I asked him what I owed him he wouldn't hear of me giving him money. A long time after this Stephen, my pastor, joked about the time I came to the Bible study with a Bible so big I had to take it into the building in a suitcase with wheels!!!!

Now, I just can't believe that hardly anybody has a Bible in their homes and I have spent the last six years getting and giving out free Bibles into the community. I know that most people, if they get a Christian tract through their door, will probably throw it out... but not a Bible. And if they have a Bible in their homes, who can say whether the Lord will draw them to it and use it to convert them?

I love reading the Bible. I start at the Old Testament and read right through. When I am finished I start over again. The first time I read it and finished the New Testament I started on the Old Testament. While doing this I read other parts of it, during different Bible studies, Sunday school etc. There is nothing useless in the Bible, not one word. And if you believe this truth, then you will enjoy reading it... every bit!

The first time I read the Bible through I started in the New Testament and continued to read on through to the Old Testament. This is where I started to get a glimpse of how mighty and powerful God is!!! When I was nearly finished reading it I remember thinking, "I wonder what I will read next when I finish reading the Bible?"!! I found out pretty quickly that you will never finish reading God's word!

Smoking

If you are looking for my life story please just scroll down until you get to "Early Years In Blackrock"...

I thought I might start writing about the changes God has made in my life and the ones that are ongoing! The first obvious change in me, other than my conversion, was quitting smoking.

I have got to say here and now that as a young believer, I thought what God was doing in my life was truly amazing (and it was) but I had no idea that after He was finished changing the obvious external stuff, that there would be so much internal stuff for Him to work on!!! But for the time being, I will write about it, one step at a time and in the order that I noticed.

I started smoking cigarettes when I was eleven years old. My younger sister Nicola used to go for a walk down a grassy lane that led to the ocean, to have a smoke. She used to bug me to go along with her for the company, and that's how I started. Although my father smoked, my mother didn't, and she would have smelt the smoke straight away had we smoked in the home. However, having said that, their were times that we would light up in our bedroom if it was raining, huddled beside the fireplace and smoke there, blowing the smoke up the chimney!

When I went to secondary school the smoking stepped up a bit and it was here that I learned to inhale properly. I have got to say that it wasn't easy for me to smoke. I didn't like it but because Nicola smoked and some of my other friends smoked, I felt pressurised to do it.

I continued to smoke well into my twenties and finally gave them up when I was about twenty-five. I just did it one day at a time and at the end of the each week I took the money I would have spent on cigarettes and bought myself something. I figured it would encourage me to keep off the cigarettes and to a certain degree it worked. The first thing I bought was a really nice jumper, then curling tongs (the type that used gas which was a new thing back then!) and so on. The last thing I bought was a large antique silver plated kettle on a stand which I saved up for. Eventually I decided to invest the few pounds, which was about the same amount of money that you would use to pay a mortgage at the time!

I stayed off the cigs for three years but went back on them when my marriage broke down. The next time I seriously thought of giving them up was when I became pregnant with Sean. I stopped drinking, only having a glass of watered-down red wine every now and again but couldn't stop smoking. I did what I thought was the next best thing at the time, and smoked a brand that had the lowest amount of nicotine in it and got it down to three cigarettes per day.
I did have great intentions of quitting altogether but with Sean's death during the pregnancy I hadn't a hope.

Almost four years later when I was thirty-two I had decided to quit smoking by using patches. I gave up smoking on the same day as I became a true believer, (Friday) using the patches until the Monday, and when I realised I really didn't miss them much, I took off the patches and that was it! Almost no craving at all and I have never smoked since. It is interesting looking back because I didn't know I was a Christian for three weeks after my conversion and so I know that it was God who took the desire of smoking from me.

Well, that's the first obvious change that God make in me during and after my conversion!

Early years in Blackrock, Dundalk

I was born on 27th May 1965 and was christened Margaret Ruth Johnston in the local Catholic Church, but was always referred to as Ruth. I was brought up in Blackrock, a fishing village and seaside resort near Dundalk in County Louth, Ireland. My father was a fisherman by trade, deep-sea fishing for salmon during the summer months and designing and building fishing boats most winters. I suppose by today’s standards we would be considered to be a large family and so surprisingly, along with rearing us, mum found time to run for local election, and be on the board of fisheries.

From what I remember, by the time I came along, there was little need for a lot of discipline as we were fairly good children and a sharp word from dad usually kept us in check. As with a lot of people at the time, there was little to go around, but because most people were in the same boat (excuse the pun!), it didn’t seem to matter much. Being as I was at the time, quiet and a bit shy, I found my teenage years to be excruciatingly turbulent and painful. The main reason for it being so was, I have no doubt, rampant hormones so at seventeen I left home and went to live with my sister Caroline in Dublin.

To Dublin..and back again

Around this time I met, dated, and eventually married Dave. We were deeply in love with one another. Our life consisted of working, going on holidays, enjoying our family and friends’ company and generally enjoying life to the full, and with the exception of his dear mother dying of cancer, life’s problems seemed to pass us by. I was devastated when I learned that our relationship was over. Dave had found someone else. Not only did we have to break up after being together for ten years, I wasn’t legally married in the first place. I couldn’t bear to be close to Dave, as I still loved him very much, so we sold our home and I moved back to Dundalk.

The initial months that followed were horrible. My whole life had changed. Everything that was familiar to me had disappeared. I had no work, no home, and no husband. All of my friends were in Dublin. I had no idea how to start over again. Indeed, I felt that it was impossible to start again and at twenty-eight I thought my life was over and that I would never meet or love another man as I did Dave. Because I had, up to then, lived a fairly sheltered life, this situation was crippling and I had no idea how to cope.

For the next two years I lived with several of my sisters and their children. They were a brilliant support to me, as were all my family, and took me out and about whether I wanted to or not! The first few months went by and eventually, over time I began to feel more competent and less… lost, I suppose. I became stronger and I began to pick up the pieces of my life. I got a job and made new friends. During these two years I began to take control of my life and, once again, to feel normal.

Sean & Sean

It was then that I met Sean. I could hardly believe it possible that I met him! I was sure I would never love someone else again. I thought that you were blessed if you met one person in your life that you loved and loved you back, as was the case with Dave and me, and here I was being given a second chance! We started to date and eventually got engaged to be married. We bought a house together in Newry and spent many happy times tearing it asunder and putting it back together again, just as we wanted it. We made great plans for our wedding and the future, and started to plan for a family. We loved each other very much and were very happy together.

On a Sunday, Sean’s cousins came to our home and told me that Sean had died in a car crash. There is no explaining how one feels under these circumstances. If you have lost someone close to you, well, you have an idea of how I felt at the time. If not, I am afraid I can’t explain it to you.

I was six months pregnant with our baby, our baby that we had planned for and eagerly waited for, when Sean died. I had our son, Sean, on the due date, exactly twelve weeks after his father’s death. I must say it was the most bittersweet experience of my life. I expected him to be wrinkly and red and very unlike anybody, neither his father nor me. But when he arrived he was spotlessly clean and the image of his father, just like a little man, a little Sean! It was very hard on us all. When Sean died I was afraid I would miscarry our baby if I grieved and cried too much, so I kept it in as best as I could, thinking that, when the child was born, I could let it all out. In reality, when Sean was born I was very afraid that I would suffer from postnatal depression, so I kept as tight a rein over my emotions as I could and got on with caring for my new son.
It’s an awful thing to think that someone who has died might be beside you, and that you can’t touch them or hold them. People said to me, ‘He is looking down on you both, he’s minding you both’. Just as I was about to give birth to my son, the Sister in the Hospital, who was present for the birth said, ‘Sure, he’ll be the baby’s Guardian Angel’. I didn’t want him to be the baby’s Guardian Angel. I wanted him here, with me, to be a father to his own son, to be my husband. This kind of talk just tormented me.

From bad to worse

I didn’t believe in God. I had been an atheist for years. People suggested I pray. I thought the idea of praying to a God that I didn’t believe in to be silly, to say the least. Although I visited Sean’s grave, I found no comfort there as his family seemed to do. I ended up wanting to believe in God, but felt it wasn’t an option open to me. Either you believe, or you don’t. How can you make yourself believe in God? It never seemed to be a matter of choice to me and therefore it was a luxury I didn’t have.

When I met Sean, his family and I got on extremely well. On the most part they accepted me into their lives and we became friends. His mother in particular was very good to me and from the outset we developed a strong mother/daughter relationship. This friendship continued after Sean died and if anything, because of Sean’s death, we became closer. We spent a lot of time together and both of us doted on the child.

Almost two hellish years had passed. I found that things were getting worse rather than better. People expected me to be over Sean’s death a long time before this. I started to go to a bereavement group once a month and found that, rather than being abnormal, I was feeling just the same as any other person under the circumstances. The people there were wonderful, kind and understanding. We all helped one another and soon after this I started to let go of Sean, and once again began to look forward.

Downward spiral

For reasons best left alone, my son’s grandmother and I started to fall out with one another approximately two years after Sean’s death. During the third year it became clear to me that I could no longer stay in Newry. Because we had become extremely close to one another over the years we both found the break an unhappy and bitter one. I left my home, my furniture, most of my personal belongings and moved back to Dundalk, cutting off all ties. I moved into a rented house back in Blackrock and looked forward to a long peaceful summer with my son and my own family.

When I moved back home I had hoped to put a lot of my problems behind me, and for a short time it looked as if I did. But then, within a very short period of time, I fell out with three of my sisters, the very ones who had been a great support to me in the past. I couldn’t believe it. As sisters go, we were fairly close, so I knew something was very wrong. This was the last straw for me. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t understand why these things were happening. I felt every crutch I had to support myself and my life had been kicked from under me. First Dave and my home in Dublin, then Sean, then Sean’s family, then my home in Newry, and now my own family.

Everything went into a spin. I found myself unable to trust my own judgement or instinct. Everything I touched seemed to crumble away. After one particularly bad falling out over the phone with a sister, I sat on my bed and cried and cried. I thought of all the people that I had been close to over the years and how almost every one, for different reasons, had let me down. I thought of the long life that I had in front of me, and the thoughts of going through it friendless and on my own horrified me. To have to go against my very nature and not trust people, to have to close ranks and shut people out, to harden myself as I had seen other people do seemed impossible. Yet the opposite of it was just as bad, to go through life continually leaving myself open to people, trusting them and being hurt and deceived again and again would be unbearable.

Is there anyone listening?

With these thoughts I spoke out loud and said, ‘I don’t care, I don’t care if there is a God and if you hear me, what is the point of living this life and not caring for anybody? What is the point in living this long life and not being able to mix and share with people? I don’t care if you are there, I wish I were never born…. I wish I were never born’. I was crying and I just said these things out loud. Whatever little bit of faith I had left in the human race deserted me at this time. I hated the world and everything to do with it. I wanted out. It’s hard to admit it now, but right then, what went through my mind was the need for everything to stop, I wanted to end my life. It was really then that the full horror of my situation hit me. I wasn’t going anywhere because I had my son Sean to care for. I couldn’t leave him and make him an orphan with no father or mother. I felt trapped. Whatever lows I had reached up to this point in my life, this was the worst, and I knew I had hit rock bottom.

Moments later, my sister Caroline phoned me. Although she had no idea what was going on, or how I was feeling at that moment, she spent two hours talking to me about some of the very things that were causing me problems. I was very glad to hear from her and felt much better afterwards. A chain of events had begun that would change my life from that time onwards, that looking back on, I find amazing! Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but at that time I had no idea what was happening to me or what the outcome would be.

Talking to the wall

On the 6th of August 2001, three months after I moved to Dundalk, my sister Caroline attended the women’s meeting in the Baptist Church. She asked the women there to pray for me because she was going to ask me to attend a gospel meeting with her that was going to be held in a house in Cooley that Friday. She thought that if she asked me to go, I would laugh at her and refuse, a very real fear as she knew that in the past I had laughed at the very idea of people believing in a God. I ridiculed them for their beliefs and thought they didn’t live in the real world. The next day, Tuesday, I was talking to my brother, and he said that if I wanted to know God, I should find a quiet moment and ask The Lord to come into my life. That evening, my son was in bed and it was peaceful and quiet. I remembered what he had said, and standing in the kitchen I said, with as much conviction as I could under the circumstances, ‘Lord Jesus, please come into my life’, or words to that effect. I did say it with as much feeling as I could but afterwards I felt incredibly silly and thought that if anybody could see me through the window they would think I was doing a Shirley Valentine, talking to a wall! I went to bed and forgot all about it.

Born again!

Caroline did indeed ask me to go to the meeting with her and I accepted. I thought ‘why not? I might just get some comfort from it.’ I had never been to one before, and the only concern I had at the time was that I would bump into someone I knew (the shame of it!). So three days later, on the Friday, I went. There were quite a few people there and the lady who owned the house made me feel very welcome.

If I had been uprooted and planted on the moon, I couldn’t have felt more ill at ease. I sat on an armchair and waited. The meeting started and a man, Clifford Law, began to talk about the Bible and God. He told us all about Jesus and why He came and died on the cross for us. He explained how much God loves us and how much of a sacrifice the death of His Son was to Him. I never thought of it in quite this way before. I had never thought of it as being real before now, to think somebody, let alone God, would do that for me, die for me, well it’s humbling. When he was finished another man got up. His name was Willie Fenton, and he too gave a talk about the Bible, God and His Son, Jesus. When I thought that I was going to find any comfort there I was sorely mistaken. I spent most of the evening upset and on the verge of tears, I felt awful. One of the speakers said that he was going to confess his sins to Jesus and if anybody wanted to join in, they were welcome to do so by repeating silently after him. He started by saying that he was an awful sinner. I thought about some of the things I had done in the past, things I had long buried with the hope of forgetting, things I was desperately ashamed of. I said to myself that I too was a sinner and meant it. Then he said that he was very sorry, and I repeated this to myself. Everything he said sounded very heartfelt and genuine and, in turn, I was very genuine in my confession, although I didn’t realise that I had actually confessed my sins until many weeks later. Incidentally, I gave up smoking that same day.

Meeting the new family

Two weeks later I went to the Dundalk Baptist Centre with Caroline. It was wonderful! It was just lovely! Never before had I heard grown men and women pray and talk with such love and softness in their voices, as they talked on a one-to-one basis with God. It really touched me. They didn’t rhyme off long impersonal prayers like I had been used to hearing. It was nothing compared to the mass I had attended in years past. I had begun to think there was no peace to be had, and that any peace and happiness that I had had in my life was in the past and gone for good. Listening to these people praying and singing uplifted me, but it also had the opposite effect on me, as it reinforced just how much my life lacked grace and beauty, peace and contentment. I felt that every wrongdoing I ever did was written across my face for all to see. I felt my sins so keenly that I thought all someone had to do was look at me to see them. When the service was over Caroline paused to introduce me to some of the people but I looked at her and said no. When I saw her face drop, I hastened to tell her that it wasn’t that I was being unfriendly, but that I might start crying and I had to leave. I spent the remainder of the day with Caroline and her sons feeling happy and contented and looking forward to the evening service. I did return that evening and again I felt light-hearted and at peace with myself, but also, there was a feeling of brokenness and a deep sadness lying heavily on me.

A day or two later I got my mother’s old Bible and thought I might glance through it. I hadn’t looked at a Bible in years let alone read one but after reading it for a short while I laid my two hands on it and said out loud, ‘This is exactly what I have been looking for all these years!’ I felt full of wonder. All of a sudden I knew that everything in this book was true. I knew there was a God. I believed in Jesus. I know it sounds like such a cliché, but I started to cry with happiness. I can’t put on paper and describe to you the huge significance of this revelation.

Imagine that, there really is a God! To find out, just like that! This was amazing to me! For years I was told that God was real, but it wasn’t until God choose to show Himself to me that I knew!

Developing an appetite

By the time I got back to the Church the next Sunday I had changed. Not only was the Bible beginning to make sense to me but I also believed every word. I knew that I would never be alone again. I felt God was with me all the time. I spent a lot of time thinking about what was happening to me. Issues that I didn’t agree with in the Catholic Church, core issues that had bothered me in the past, I found that the Bible didn’t agree with them either! A lot of what I was taught as a child wasn’t true! You don’t pray to dead people, not to Mary, not to the saints, not to your dead relatives. The Bible forbids it! You only pray to God. Under certain circumstances divorce is allowed. And not only is it allowed that our Church leaders are married but it is thought a good thing. It is actually recommended that they be family men! It’s all in the Bible for you to check. I was crying and reading so much within the first couple of weeks that I started to get headaches! I found it hard to go to sleep at night because of all the things going through my mind. Sometimes I would wake up during the night and lie for hours thinking about what I had discovered and the changes that were occurring in me. Every day I was letting go of some old part of me and I was feeling renewed. My problems of old seemed almost to disappear; I spent that little time thinking of them. They didn’t seem that important to me anymore. I cut down drastically on drinking, and with a couple of exceptions, I only had one or two, or indeed none at all when I went out.

Over the weeks I continued to attend Church. I also attended meetings where we studied the Bible. This gave me the opportunity to question Stephen, the Pastor, and others about what the Bible says, and have whatever I needed explained to me. Most times however, when I had a question, I was told to refer to the Bible. I didn’t always appreciate this answer, but can now, in hindsight, understand and appreciate the lesson I was being taught. I was not being allowed to get into the bad habit of relying on anyone or anything other than the Bible. There are so many opinions out there, people’s opinions, that are unfortunately, mostly unreliable. Stephen encouraged me to look to the Bible for my answers every time. There were lots of leaflets and booklets available in the Church that I took full advantage of. I am told that it is quite natural for newly converted Christians to read a lot. When I found things in the Bible I didn’t quite understand I would take notes and ask Stephen or other members of the Church to explain them. Every effort was being made to assist me, but no credit was taken.

Growing pains!

The initial six weeks after I was saved were some of the best weeks of my life and also some of the most soul-searching and heart-wrenching weeks. I spent many nights reading and learning and praying. Just talking to God the Father. Sometimes I would feel so happy and elated, so young and fresh, full of pure delight at what He was showing me. I would read and read and think and wonder, and I would never feel overwhelmed by it all. I felt that no matter how much I took in, it was never too much. Many nights the tears just streamed down my face and I would laugh out loud with happiness and joy!

On the other hand, there were many times that I felt sick I would feel so rotten and bad. The more I grew to love God the more I could see just how good and wonderful He is, the sacrifice the Father made in sending down His Son, knowing what would happen to Him. The horrible death Jesus endured, being whipped, battered and murdered. The reality is that this is no fairy story; this was all done so Jesus could take my place and my punishment, instead of me, so I can stand in front of God, clean and without sin, God cannot tolerate anything less.

I began to see the gaping hole of a difference between what I was and what I should be. Up until now I thought I wasn’t too bad a person. Fairly honest, kind enough, and pretty decent. God has held up a mirror in front of me and let me see what I am really like! I am so far off the mark it’s frightening. There is no excuse for any sin. I can’t say certain things happened to me so therefore it wasn’t my fault that I did such-and-such a thing. I can’t say ‘I sinned, but it wasn’t my fault’. It doesn’t matter what drove me to it, at the end of the day I sinned…and, like it or lump it, the buck stops here. I had always measured my standard against other people’s, not God’s. It’s an awful shock to realise just how far from His original image of us we really are.

So I started to see what I should really be like and with the help and direction of the Holy Spirit I began, almost unknown to myself, to get rid of my old habits and ways. There is no way that I would have been able to see the need for change, let alone actually change my own nature, without the help of the Holy Spirit. The surprising thing is, it was so easy!

Almost every day scripture that related directly to my lifestyle was bombarding me. My confidence began to return to me in relation to decision-making. Instead of asking two or three different people for an opinion that I didn’t trust myself to make and end up being even more confused (if that could have been possible!) I asked God for His guidance and got it! I started to feel uncomfortable with the way I dressed and on several occasions went through my wardrobes and removed any articles of clothing I felt were inappropriate for me to wear. At no time did anybody say or imply that my mode of dress was wrong, but rather, I learned from the example the women in the church quietly gave and by the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Although I wouldn’t have been one to swear a lot, I found it startlingly offensive when I let one slip or when someone else did. In fact the more I grow as a Christian, the more disagreeable it becomes.

Walking the walk

Before I was saved I had been in a relationship with a man for over a year. I didn’t expect it to develop into anything in the long-term, but I did care for him. I knew that it couldn’t continue as the Bible makes it very clear that it is wrong to have any kind of physical relationship with a man unless you are married, so I trusted God and broke the relationship. Although I knew it was the right thing to do, it was, none the less a sad time for both of us.

Six weeks after I was saved I asked Stephen if I could be baptised and it was agreed that I would be baptised on the 4th of November. When I went to Church the following Sunday somebody congratulated me. I looked at him and hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. He noticed my expression and repeated what he said. I asked him ‘Congratulations for what?’ At this stage he looked a bit confused and said ‘Stephen told me you are saved’. I was stunned. I didn’t think anybody would care. I hadn’t expected that other people would have an opinion one way or the other. That evening, one of the younger ladies congratulated me. I was embarrassed but not caught out! She gave me a hug and said that from now on I was her sister! It was lovely!

Soon after my conversion, I went out to a dance in a local hotel with friends to see a band that were playing that night. My friends and I arrived early and got a good table where we could watch the band and other people. The night turned out to be very strange for me. Soon after we sat down I noticed that everybody seemed to be ‘handicapped’. I know it sounds strange so I will try to explain it as best I can. As I looked at all the men and women dancing and talking, it was as if every one of them was deformed in some way. The word ‘handicapped’ kept coming to my mind. I questioned the two girls I was with and asked them what they thought of the night so far. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. None of us were drinking. The word ‘handicapped’ kept going around in my head and eventually I thought that it was Satan trying to make me think these things. I felt very ashamed and confused that I should have such thoughts and by the time the night was half over, I wished I were at home.

At the Sunday service I told a church member what had happened to me. He told me that it wasn’t Satan who put these thoughts into my head. It was the Holy Spirit showing me what people are really like when they are drunk. I was amazed and thankful that God would show me something with such clarity. When I was saved about five months I got a very strong indication from the Holy Spirit to stop drinking and going to pubs. To be perfectly honest I didn’t mind in the slightest but I must admit that, at first, I found it hard to tell my friends and family. I was worried that they would think I was odd. (About as odd as I had once thought other “Religious” people to be!) However, once I got over the initial telling, it became easier for me.

I kissed dating goodbye!

I became curious as to where I should stand with regards to dating. It was clear to me that I couldn't have a physical relationship with a man but I wanted to know what the alternative was. I found out very quickly that a relationship with a man who was not a Christian was out of the question. I asked a woman from the church for advice and she recommended I read a book called ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ by Joshua Harris. When I started to read it I realised that the author, who is a young American guy, was suggesting that Christians shouldn’t date at all, and that they shouldn’t even kiss! He recommended people meet and go out together in groups, and get to know one another properly before even thinking about being together. I thought this was ridiculous, but as is my habit, I continued to read the book and see if I could get something out of it. By the time I finished it, I found (to the amusement of my friends) that I agreed with a lot of what it said and decided that this was for me! The idea of not having to meet someone, date for a while, find out that we are not suited and then go through the unpleasantness of breaking the relationship appealed to me. What a relief! I was happy to go along with this train of thought but knew that the proof of the pudding would be in the eating, so to speak, and I would have to wait and see!

Invitations

I started writing out my story (Testimony) for my Baptism. I had begun to keep a record (scribbles!) of my feelings and thoughts since God showed Himself to me and I was using these. I became aware of a bad and evil presence around me some nights while I was trying to sleep and this worried me. I also found it hard to pray and I eventually told my Pastor. He prayed with me, the bad presence went away and my prayer life went back to normal. During the two weeks running up to my Baptism, I got two different summonses to go to court. Sean’s grandmother wanted access to Sean, something I was totally against. Stephen was there when one of them came in the post and pointed out to me the significance of the timing of these summonses, as they could be a distraction to me. I received an invitation to go on a nice foreign holiday with somebody. Needless to say, the offer wasn’t made with the most innocent of intentions so I declined. I felt that, spiritually, these things, among others, were attempts to try to trip me up. I was very glad that there was a week of special meetings coming up and that I got to go to them all.

Clarke and Sheila Lowery are a couple from Mississippi. Clarke is the Pastor of a Church in Wiggins. The whole family had lived in Dundalk for about five years, six years ago, and had been very involved in the Baptist Centre. They came back to Ireland because Clarke was guest speaker at the week of special meetings.

The question of whom to invite to my Baptism arose. I was still not on great terms with some of my sisters, but I went ahead and invited them all anyway. My father was another matter. I think it would be fair to say that we hadn’t spoken to one another more than five times during the past twenty years and I didn’t want to invite him and for him to refuse me. I spoke to Stephen about it and he suggested that I invite him and leave it up to God because the Bible does say that we must honour our father and mother, so I invited him.

Getting dipped!

The day of my Baptism came. After the morning service Caroline took Sean for the day and left me in a computer store in town so I could type out my testimony as I had it scribbled on several pieces of paper. When I finished I went to pay for it and discovered that the time was twenty to six. I was supposed to be at the Church at a quarter to! I had no clothes to change into (I was to be fully immersed in a pool) or time to get them. I phoned my neighbour and she collected me and we went to a store and bought some. We finally arrived about half an hour late. The Church was full. As it happened, it worked out well as I didn’t have much time to get too worried about getting up to talk. I stood up and gave my testimony. When it was all over everyone came up to me and congratulated me and shook hands etc. My father did attend and when he came up to congratulate me, he kissed me and told me he always loved me. He called down to see me in my home two days later and again on the Thursday! Since then, I am glad to say we have been in regular contact with one another and visiting one another. After the Baptism we had a supper with everybody at the Church. Clark and Sheila invited me to America so I could meet the people at their Church and give my testimony there. Two days later I accepted!

Since writing this post my father died. I have written about his death, and his salvation here!!

Mississippi

Two and a half weeks later I left for America and flew from Belfast to London. On the flight from London to the U.S., I ended up talking to a man. He was in his late sixties. He came across as being quite rough and ready and after talking to him for about fifteen minutes (I didn’t want to talk to him any more but didn’t want to be rude and turn away from him) I silently asked God, ‘Oh please let him fall asleep’. Immediately after that prayer, the man looked at me and told me he was dying of cancer. We spent the next two hours talking about our lives and by the time we parted company we had become very close. I have prayed for him many times since I met him and I realise how much of a blessing he has been to me. I often think of him and hope and pray that God will reveal Himself to this man.

What can I say about Mississippi? It was a feast of good food, good company and good Christian friendship. The members of the Church over there were just as genuine and friendly as in Dundalk. Love and kindness surrounded me. I felt very close to God and ended up making some serious decisions during my stay there.

Talking - and listening - to God

A couple of days before I flew over I got word from my Solicitor that Sean’s grandmother was planning to sell my home and put the money into a trust for Sean. Because his father and I had not been married when he died, and my son was not yet born, she was next-of-kin and therefore she became administrator of the estate. Suffice to say I was very angry and planned to fight this decision in court. I had sold my own house in Dublin and invested the monies from that sale into this house and there was no way I was going to allow anybody to take my home from me. Whilst in America, I prayed and prayed to God about it. I was at my wits end and eventually said to God that I didn’t know what to do anymore and whatever He wanted me to do I would do it, but that He must make His will very clear to me. Up until then every time I asked God for advice on something I always got a clear response, so by this stage I had learned to trust Him. One of the first things I had begun to learn in the States was that God is in control of everything in my life and that I must trust myself to Him and not fight His will. His plan for me, without question, is perfect and totally beneficial to me. Therefore, regardless to how hard it is sometimes to trust Him in certain areas, I do, and will continue to seek His will in my life and obey it. So when He did answer me, He had me prepared for the task ahead. He made it very clear that I was to let the whole thing go. I phoned my Solicitor in Ireland and cancelled my instructions regarding the house and did what God led me to do. I immediately felt as if a huge burden had been removed from me. I cannot describe the peace I felt. Not once since then, even when I had to explain my actions to my family (who on the whole did not agree with my decision) have I regretted it. I trust God completely. I don’t have to know what plans He has for me. I know they will be in my best interest. It’s clear to me that God is doing a much better job directing my life than I have ever done!

Because God had given me direction with regards to the situation with the house, I began to pray about Sean’s grandmother trying to get access to see Sean. This was more worrying for me because at the end of the day, a house is only bricks and mortar; but my son is my son. I didn’t want his grandmother near him and would have gone to any lengths to keep her away.

I took courage, prayed, and said that I would do whatever God told me to do. Again I got very clear instructions. I was to leave it in His hands. I was to behave in a way that was honourable. I could not bring up things in court that would discredit her, even if what I would say about her was true. God was clearly instructing me to back down. Again and again God showed me Proverbs 11: 16, ‘A gracious woman retains honour.’ I accepted God’s will in the matter and again I felt very much at peace with myself afterwards.

Southern hospitality

Sheila taught me a lot about edifying one another and the importance of Church members caring for one another and helping each other out. I was able to see how, during the women’s Bible study, everybody genuinely cared about their sister’s life and problems, and all the members prayed for one another. I also had the chance to watch people and see how they behaved with their children and how they lived together as a family. Remembering to give thanks before a meal was a problem for me, as I was not used to it. The first Sunday I stayed in the U.S. I had dinner in a couple’s house. Lots of people were present and when we had all sat down Clarke had the bright idea of asking me to give thanks! I had never given thanks at a meal before and I was a bit nervous. From what I had noticed, people would take ages thanking God for their morning, weather, company, health and food amongst other things and so I felt intimidated to say the least! I started by saying ‘Dear God, thank you for this food’; I paused and died several times over during a very long five seconds before saying ‘Amen’. The only other thing I remember was an eight year old girl gasping ‘Oh!’, her hand flying up to her mouth to stop something else from escaping and her mother giving her a sharp look! Probably the shortest thanksgiving in history! If memory serves right, Clarke didn’t ask me a second time!

Lacey

Lacey was, at that time, a sixteen-year-old girl in Mississippi. From what I remember, she was saved at twelve and developed a serious illness when she was thirteen. I was told she almost died the year before, after an operation, and has been in and out of hospitals before and since. When I got to the States she was very ill and had just arrived home from a recent stay in hospital. I got a chance to meet Lacey in her home. She was on morphine to keep the pain under control and as she was lying on the sofa, I knelt down in front of her. I thought she was the closest thing to an angel on earth. She is a very beautiful looking girl and she seemed to be transparent. I chatted for a short time and Clark asked me to pray. I looked at him and I panicked and said “No” then I looked at Lacey and just knew that I had to. At this point of my new life I don’t think I had prayed for anyone out loud. I hadn’t time to think. I held Lacey by the hand and so I prayed, out loud. I stumbled and mumbled a prayer of sorts. I haven’t a clue what it sounded like. I can scarcely remember what I said I was that shocked, because when I looked up she was crying and the tears were falling down her face. I stood up and muttered something about Sean needing me and left the house.

I met her again in hospital, and again, and again. I had the chance to see and watch how she and her family, as Christians, coped with her illness and most of all with her pain. They never blamed God. They never reproached their Father for allowing this. They knew it was happening for reasons and that God was in control. They prayed with her and even Lacey said she didn’t mind so long as God was working good out of it. This is where I learned the meaning of (and indeed put it to use with regards to going to court over Sean’s access) Romans 8: 28. ‘And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose’ and James 2: 2&3. ‘Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience’.

A tough learning curve

I came to realise just how much I was blessed and honoured to meet such a family. To be so close to them during such a difficult time in their lives and to be able to watch God at work in and through them was humbling. I told Lacey during another one of her many stays in hospital, that I felt honoured to have met them and that God had me in America for certain reasons and that she and her family were one of them. The two of us ended up crying, we kissed one another, I thanked her and told her I would pray for her.

On the drive back, we wondered, if it could be, that one of the many reasons Lacey was sick was for me to learn from her and her family. This is what I wrote in my diary that night: ‘I dare not think of this. I am afraid to believe it. To make me sick for me to learn a lesson, to make my son sick so I could learn a lesson, but to make a girl sick in America, to make me learn a lesson… if this is true, it is the ultimate humbling…I am afraid to even think of it. If I need a lesson so bad, what is before me?’ Now I understand that God will use something bad for good. God did not make Lacey sick, but he did use her illness for good. I am one of many people who learned many lessons from Lacey being unwell. I received a letter from her recently and I will quote some of it; “Each and every time I go into the hospital, my faith is strengthened, my testimony becomes stronger, my walk with the Lord is sweetened. I am, in ways, thankful for this illness. God has truly blessed me with many things through it. It is when I met you. You have been on my heart for quite some time now. I want you and Niall and Sean to know that I am continually praying for you all”. Incredible?

Home again

Around this time I had begun to pray for Sean’s grandmother. I have to admit that at first it was not easy, but the Bible clearly tells us to pray for our enemies and sadly, at this point in time, that was what I thought of her. I did pray for her and bit by bit I began to forgive her. I also began to realise the part I had to play in the breakdown of our relationship and my need to take responsibility for it. One of the wonderful things about this is that I lost all the dislike I had in my heart towards her, so it was a double blessing for me.

I came home from America on Friday 14th of December and went to court six days later. Stephen came with me, as he did on each of the four court appearance. He was a tremendous support to me. I felt sick with apprehension at the prospects of seeing Sean’s grandmother again but found that, what with talking with Stephen and discussing the Bible with him, the time passed quickly and almost pleasantly for me. I spoke to my Solicitor, Catherine, and instructed her not to cross-examine Sean’s grandmother. I had decided that I would not make any accusations against her of any sort but I would defend myself against any she might make against me. Catherine was not happy with my decision and spent most of the morning trying to persuade me to have her questioned. I had prayed a lot about the whole situation, as I knew I would face opposition. Well, I wasn’t disappointed! I got plenty of opposition from my family as well as from my Solicitor! I found it very difficult to hold my own and not give in to pressure. After getting advice from other solicitors and a barrister, Catherine told me that if I didn’t have her cross-examined that the Judge might not allow me to give evidence. I had, in the end, decided that if that was the case then I would just not give my evidence and leave it in God’s hands. Thankfully I was saved from having to go ahead with this decision as the case was forwarded to 2nd January2002.

Re-opening doors

Well, we went to court and Catherine informed the Judge of my decision. He was not happy with the idea but said we could go ahead and allow it but that he would keep an eye on things. Sean’s grandmother got up and her Solicitor took her through her evidence. Then I got up and Catherine helped me through mine. When she was through, Sean’s grandmother’s Solicitor questioned me. It wasn’t pleasant. There were accusations made that I wasn’t happy about. When all was said and done, the Judge said he would make his decision during the following week and that we were to come back in six days.

That evening at home I prayed about the whole situation while doing the ironing. I had come to terms with the thoughts that she might get access to Sean. I was prepared to accept this, no matter how hard it might be, as it would be God’s will and I knew He would give me the strength to cope with it. Again I thought often and hard on Romans 8:28. However, I also thought of what would happen if she were denied access. At this time, all feelings of dislike and resentment towards Sean’s grandmother had left me. I thought of how this sort of outcome might affect her and was overcome with compassion for her. First she had lost her father, then her only son and then she lost her only grandson. Again and again I thought how the Bible tells us to love our enemies. I promised God there and then, that if she were denied access I would visit her four weeks later to the day and make an offer to her that she could see Sean for two hours every Saturday.

Ups and downs

Tuesday the 8th of January came and the Judge gave his decision. He was very compassionate and kind towards both of us in his delivery. The application made by Sean’s grandmother was dismissed. This meant that she was not entitled to have any access to the child. She was stunned. The Solicitors were stunned. My family and friends were stunned. Everybody expected her to gain some sort of access, especially since I hadn’t allowed her to be cross-examined. When the decision was given I was not triumphant. I left the court and Stephen and I prayed for her in the car on the way home. I waited for the four weeks to pass so I could go to see her and make the offer.

A week and a half later I got another letter from my Solicitor. Sean’s grandmother was appealing the decision. We were going back to court. This added another dimension to the whole picture. My heart sank. There was no question of me backing out of my promise to God, and it really didn’t bother me that she might think she had me on the run, so to speak. What did worry me however, was the fact that she might refuse my offer, go to court and use my offer as a tool to get to see Sean. However I had made the promise to God and was not going back on it. To tell you the truth, the hardest part of it all was telling my family. I guess some of them were perplexed, some accepted it and a couple of them were totally against it, telling me that I was making a big mistake. I could hardly blame them. They knew in detail what had happened between Sean’s grandmother and me, and thought the whole thing unjust.

A great new start

I made contact with a member of her family and made arrangements to meet in her house on the appointed day. Stephen agreed to come. We arrived and were made most welcome. Tea was made and I came straight to the point. I told her that I was saved last August and that it had made a great change in me. I said that one of the changes was my decision not to have her cross-examined in court. She acknowledged this. I went on to tell her of the promise I made to God in relation to her visiting Sean. I said that I wasn’t just making the offer because I felt I had to, but with my hand on my heart I was happy to make it. She said she loved Sean and that she missed him. I said it would be better for me to come to her house with my hat in hand, and for her to come to my house with her hat in hand. Better for Sean and better for us, than if we went to court and for her to triumphantly come into my house unwelcome and against my will or for us to go to court and for her application to be dismissed again.

She happily agreed, I’m glad to say, and we hugged. We spent a short while talking and looking at photos, and left with the agreement that Sean and I would expect to see her for a visit the following Saturday. Since then (February 2002) she has been to visit every week. Recently we talked about the house and what to do with it. We have both agreed to sell it and put the money into a trust for Sean until he is older. I have allowed that she and a person of her choice be trustees, which means that I have honoured my promise to God by letting go of it completely. I am content with this arrangement and glad that it is no longer a thorn in our flesh, something unpleasant between us. Slowly but surely our relationship has been improving. Both Sean and I look forwards to seeing her every week and we all get along very well. I am grateful for the chance given to me by God for a new relationship with her.

The Courtship

Since writing this piece I need to update it by telling you that I met, and entered in to a courtship with a man called Niall MacCárthaigh who attends the same Church that I do. We applied most of the principles of Joshua Harris’s book “I Kissed dating Goodbye”, also his new book “Boy Meets Girl”, where he tells about how he met a woman, courted her, and eventually married her. These books give real answers to questions that single people and couples ask. We have both found them to be a good source of information, help and advice and are recommending them to our friends.

We got engaged in June and kissed for the first time on our wedding day on November the third 2002! Now I know this whole event seems hard to believe, but in truth, without the help of the Lord, it would have been impossible for Niall and me to want to go down the lane that we did, let alone have the will power to succeed! I am delighted to report that there have been no doubts or horrible regrets since our marriage, and can only say that it was definitely the right thing for us to do.

Christians courting

One of the most amazing and (almost!) unbelievable things I have learned since I have been saved is how a lot of Christian parents are rearing their children. There is a whole worldwide community of children out there who are not going to discos, are not dating every Tom, Dick or Harriet, and who do respect and obey their parents. They are not bringing home all the problems that are associated with this kind of living. I found it incredible when I met parents who did, and still are, bringing up their children with Biblical standards. I have met many families who have done this and with great success. I thought it so incredible that initially I refused to believe it, I simply couldn’t believe it until I saw it with my own eyes! Children have grown up into adulthood and have yet to be in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. Teenagers and adults who have accepted God’s standards and who are happy, willing and able to do so. The Church I attend has these families in it, families who are living proof that it is possible to live your life by the standards set out in the Bible, with the help of our Lord. So with this in mind, it’s not that incredible to think we made it to our wedding day without falling by the way side. I love Niall very much. This is more than a third chance of happiness. God has given Niall and me the wonderful privilege of living as man and wife are meant to live, and with God’s blessing, we will live out our lives together for Him and His glory. Here is a photo of Janet, one of the tenagers who was a member of the Dundalk Baptist Church who didn't date and went on to be married to Sean and recently settled in Australia!

Closing thoughts

So that’s it. There have been a lot of other things happening to me but I would never get it all down on paper! I would like to say that the reason I attend The Dundalk Baptist Centre is because the Church teaches what is in the Bible and only what is in the Bible. Nothing more and nothing less.

My last word is this; God is really here. What I am experiencing is not some sort of wishy-washy, vague belief that there is something out there. God, through the Holy Spirit, is in me. He is moving me, daily, to change. I have never felt so fulfilled. I have never experienced such peace and, on the other hand, such excitement. Every day I am glad to be alive. But most of all, I have never felt so loved with such a love. Miracles have become commonplace in my life!

What about you?

If God is out there, but not in here, not in you, then it’s not enough for you to accept, and you really don’t want the alternative. What you must do is truly and genuinely ask God to come into your life. He will not reveal Himself to you if you are proud and think you have no need to humble yourself before Him. Acknowledge Him as the Holy God that He is, acknowledge your sins and your need for forgiveness, and with His love and grace He will come to you with His Holy Spirit. The Bible tells you all about it, how to come to God, how to enter into a proper relationship with Him. You will be welcomed, with warmth unknown to you before now, by other believers who make up this wonderful family that I am now a part of. It does not matter what particular background you come from or what beliefs you hold, nor am I suggesting that you join up with any particular group. You don’t have to clean up your act, go to church or become holy all of a sudden to go to God. Go to Him just as you are, right now. He died for people just like you. Pick up a Bible and read it, if you don’t have one, phone the number at the end of this and I will get one to you. A good place to start is John’s gospel.

Some people think that you cannot live your life by the standards set out in it, and they would be right. You cannot do it on your own, however, you can if you have the help of God’s Holy Spirit. People say that the Bible doesn’t tally up, that it contradicts itself. It does not. When people don’t understand it they automatically blame the Bible. If there is a choice between the Bible being wrong, and a person’s understanding of it being wrong, well, I’ll back the Bible any day! The pride of man! If he doesn’t understand it, well it must be God who has made a mistake! God Himself says that the natural man cannot make much sense of it. (1 Corinthians 2:14) If you are an atheist like I was, learn from me and seek God. No matter how silly you may feel, no matter how much your pride may stand in the way. Find out for yourself, don’t wait till it’s too late. If you believe in God, trust the Bible. Use it as your starting point. Check what you believe with the Bible. It is always right, always. Don’t just believe what someone once told you or taught you as a child. Find out for yourself what God says in His own Book. If what you have believed is not in the Bible, it is wrong. Pray to God to show you the truth. He will show you if you ask.

If what you believed were wrong, would you want to know?

I believe that God loves me and has been waiting for me to call out to Him. I in turn was busy living a happy, contented life without a thought for God. Thankfully, with love, God got my attention (eventually!) by allowing my life to fall apart, bit by bit, so that when I got so low and there was no one to turn to, I turned to Him. I was an atheist for almost twenty years, but ended up desperately hoping that there was more to life, and God proved to me that there is. An awful lot more! An eternity!

God speaks

Here are a few verses from the Bible that you might like to read;

JOHN 3:16:- “FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, THAT WHOEVER BELIEVES IN HIM SHOULD NOT PERISH BUT HAVE EVERLASTING LIFE”.

JOHN 5:24:- “MOST ASSUREDLY I SAY TO YOU, HE WHO HEARS MY WORD AND BELIEVES IN HIM WHO SENT ME HAS EVERLASTING LIFE, AND SHALL NOT COME INTO JUDGEMENT, BUT HAS PASSED FROM DEATH INTO LIFE”.

JOHN 14:23:- “JESUS ANSWERED AND SAID TO HIM, ‘IF ANYONE LOVES ME, HE WILL KEEP MY WORD; AND MY FATHER WILL LOVE HIM, AND WE WILL COME TO HIM AND MAKE OUR HOME WITH HIM’ ”.

ROMANS 10:9&10:- “THAT IF YOU CONFESS WITH YOUR MOUTH THE LORD JESUS AND BELIEVE IN YOUR HEART THAT GOD HAS RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD, YOU WILL BE SAVED. FOR WITH THE HEART ONE BELIEVES UNTO RIGHTEOUSNESS, AND WITH THE MOUTH CONFESSION IS MADE UNTO SALVATION”.

ROMANS 10:13:- “FOR ‘WHOEVER CALLS UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED’ ”.

1 CORINTHIANS 13;4,5,6,7 &13:- “LOVE SUFFERS LONG AND IS KIND; LOVE DOES NOT ENVY; LOVE DOES NOT PARADE ITSELF, IS NOT PUFFED UP; DOES NOT BEHAVE RUDELY, DOES NOT SEEK ITS OWN, IS NOT PROVOKED, THINKS NO EVIL; DOES NOT REJOICE IN INIQUITY, BUT REJOICES IN THE TRUTH; BEARS ALL THINGS, BELIEVES ALL THINGS, HOPES ALL THINGS, ENDURES ALL THINGS. . . AND NOW ABIDE FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, THESE THREE; BUT THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE”.

PSALM 108:12:- “GIVE US HELP FROM TROUBLE, FOR THE HELP OF MAN IS USELESS”. (My Favourite!)

Ultimate Questions

Life is full of questions. Some are trivial, some more serious
- and some tremendously important.

Even as you read these words you may have questions about
your health, your financial situation, your job, your family or
your future.

But the greatest, the ultimate questions, are about God and
your relationship to him. Nothing in life is more important
than this. Good health, financial stability, secure employment,
a contented family and a hopeful future are all things that
people want. Yet even these are temporary and eventually
pointless unless you have a living relationship with God, one
that is clear and certain - and will last for ever.

In the following pages you will discover why such a relation-
ship is so urgently needed - and how it is possible.

The questions that follow are the most serious and important
that anyone could ask. The answers are those that everyone
needs.

Please read these pages thoroughly and carefully - and if
necessary more than once.

You cannot afford to miss their message.
3

Is anyone there?
This is the fundamental question. If God does not exist,
searching for him is pointless: for he that cometh to God must
believe that he is.
1 While it is impossible to 'prove' God in a
mathematical sense, the evidence is very convincing.

Take the existence of the universe. To call it the result of an
'accident' raises many questions - and answers none. The
same is true of the 'Big Bang' theory. Where, for instance, did
the raw materials come from? Not even a 'big bang' can make
something out of nothing! The evolutionary idea is wide-
spread, but just as weak; how can 'nothing' evolve into
'something' let alone earth's amazingly complex life forms?
2

All other theories are equally fragile. The only satisfactory
explanation is this: In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth. Our world is not the random result of a gigantic
fluke involving ingredients that were 'always there'. Instead,
the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things
which are seen were not made of things which do appear.
Creation had a beginning, and it was God who brought it into
being. For he spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it
stood fast.
4

5
This is reinforced by the amazing order and design seen
everywhere and by the universal laws which hold everything
together, from the vastness of outer space to microscopic
organisms. But design demands a designer and laws a law-
giver - and God is both! God made the world and all things
therein, seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth.

But the strongest 'creation evidence' is man himself. Unlike other
living creatures, man has something we call 'personality'; he
makes intelligent choices, has a conscience and can distinguish
between right and wrong. He is capable of love and compassion.
Above all, he has an instinct to worship. Where did he get these
qualities? Neither evolution nor an avalanche of accidents could
have produced them. The clearest answer is this: And the LORD
God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Man is
not an accident; he is fearfully and wonderfully made by the
Creator of the universe.

1. All words in italic type (other than book titles) are quotations from the Bible as indicated
on page 32.
2. This is a major and complex issue, impossible to discuss here. If evolution is a genuine
problem to you, read From Nothing to Nature, by Prof. E. H. Andrews (Evangelical Press).

Is God speaking?
The question is vital. Left to ourselves we are totally ignorant
of God. Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find
out the Almighty unto perfection? God is beyond our under-
standing and we need him to reveal himself to us.

Creation is one of the main ways in which he does so. The
heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth
his handiwork. The sheer size of the universe and its amazing
balance, variety and beauty reveal a great deal about the God
who made it. In creation God shows his stupendous power,
awesome intelligence and brilliant imagination. For the
invisible things of him from the creation of the world are
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,
even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without
excuse.

When we communicate with one another we rely heavily on
words. God also speaks to men through words - the words of
the Bible. Nearly 4,000 times in the Old Testament alone (500
times in the first five books) you will find phrases like 'the
Lord spoke', 'the Lord commanded' and 'the Lord said'. This
is why it is claimed that Scripture came not in old time by the
6

7
will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by
the Holy Ghost.

In no other literature can we find scores of clear and detailed
prophecies made by men claiming to speak from God, and
later fulfilled to the letter. The odds against this happening by
chance are too vast to be taken seriously.

Then there is the Bible's impact on people's lives. No other
book has had such a life-changing power. Millions of people,
over thousands of years, have proved by personal experience
that the law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the
testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The
statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the
commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.

After 2,000 years no expert in any field has ever disproved a
single statement in the Bible.3 The reason is this: All scripture
is given by inspiration of God. We should therefore accept it
not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God.
3. If you have serious questions about the Bible read Nothing but the Truth, by Brian Edwards
(Evangelical Press).

WHAT IS GOD LIKE?

This is obviously the next question to be faced. To acknowl-
edge that God exists is one thing, and to acknowledge him in
the general sense that God speaks to us in creation and through
the pages of the Bible is another. But we need to know more.
What is God actually like?

The Bible gives us many clear and positive answers to this
tremendously important question. Here are some of them.

God is personal. God is not a 'thing', power, or influence. He
thinks, feels, desires and acts in ways that show him to be a
living personal Being. But he is not just 'the man upstairs' or
some kind of 'superman'. But the LORD is the true God, he is
the living God, and an everlasting king.

God is one. There is only one true God. He says, I am the first,
and I am the last; and beside me there is no God. Yet God has
revealed himself as a 'trinity' of three Persons - the Father, the
Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit, each of whom is truly,
fully and equally God. The Bible speaks of the glory of God
the Father; it says that the Word (Jesus Christ) was God; and
it speaks of the Spirit of the Lord. While there is only one God,
there are three Persons in the Godhead.

God is spirit. He has no physical dimensions. He does not
have a body, nor does he have any characteristics that can be 8

9
defined in terms of size and shape. God is a Spirit; and they
that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. This
means that God is invisible. No man hath seen God. It also
means that he is not confined to one place at a time, but is
everywhere all the time: 'Do not I fill the heaven and earth?
saith the LORD. Quite apart from anything else, this means
that God is fully aware of everything that happens everywhere.
This includes not only everything you do and say, but every
thought that passes through your mind.

God is eternal. God has no beginning. In the Bible's words,
from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. There never was
a time when God did not exist and there never will be a time
when he will not exist. God describes himself as the one which
is, and which was, and which is to come. And he remains
eternally the same: For I am the LORD, I change not. All that
God ever was he still is and always will be.
God is independent. Every other living being is dependent
on people or things, and ultimately on God - but God is totally
independent of his creation. He can survive on his own. He is
not worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any-
thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.

God is holy. Glorious in holiness, fearful in praises. There
can be no comparison with the holiness of God. There is none
holy as the LORD who is utterly without fault or defect. The
Bible says of him, Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil,
and canst not look on iniquity. And this holy God demands
holiness from every one of us. His command to us today is: Be
ye holy; for I am holy.

God is just. The Bible says that the LORD is a God of
judgement: and that righteousness and judgement are the
habitation of his throne. God is not only our Creator and
Sustainer; he is also our Judge, rewarding and punishing, in
time and eternity, with a justice that is perfect and beyond any
appeal or dispute.
10
God is perfect. His knowledge is perfect. Neither is there any
creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are
naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to
do. God knows everything in the past, present and future,
including all our thoughts, words and deeds. His wisdom is
perfect and utterly beyond our understanding. O the depth of
the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past finding
out!

God is sovereign. He is the sole and supreme ruler of the universe, and nothing whatever is outside of his control.
Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in
earth. With God there are no accidents or surprises. He writes
all the world's history and worketh all things after the counsel
of his own will God needs no advice or consent for anything he
chooses to do. Nor can anyone prevent him doing what he
pleases: none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest
thou?

God is omnipotent. He is all-powerful. In his own words
Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there anything
too hard for me? This does not mean that God can do anything
(he cannot lie, or change, or make mistakes, or sin, or deny
himself) but that he can do anything he wishes consistent with
his character.
These are just brief sketches of some of the things God has
revealed in the Bible about his own nature and character. There
are other truths about God in the Bible (and we will look at one
of these on page 22) though there are many things about him
we cannot possibly understand. He doeth great things and
unsearchable; marvellous things without number. In that
sense, we cannot find him out and no amount of human
intelligence or reasoning can change that. This should hardly
surprise us. If we could understand God he would be unworthy
of our worship.

Who am I?
12
The pressures and problems of modern living are driving
many people to a restless search for meaning and purpose in
life. We have seen something of who God is; what about us?
Why do we exist? Why are we here? Does human life have any
meaning or purpose?
The first thing to get clear is that man does not merely 'exist'.
He is more than an accidental accumulation of atoms which all
happen to fit together into a convenient package we call 'a
human being'. The Bible tells us that he was specifically
created by a wise and holy God. So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God created he him; male and
female created he them. Man is more than a highly developed
animal or refined ape. He is as different from other creatures
as animals are from vegetables and vegetables are from
minerals. In terms of size, man is minute compared with the
sun, moon and stars, but God has given him a unique and
honoured place in the universe.
This is seen in one of God's first commands to man: Have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Man
became God's personal representative on earth, with authority
over all other living creatures.

13
But man was also given special dignity. Being created 'in the
image of God' does not mean that he was made the same size
or shape as God (we have seen that God does not have 'size
or 'shape'), nor that man was a miniature of God, possessing
all his qualities in small quantities. It means that man was
created as a spiritual, rational, moral and immortal being, with
a nature that was perfect. In other words he was a true
reflection of God's holy character.

What is more, man gladly and constantly chose to obey all
God's commands and as a result lived in perfect harmony with
him. Man had no 'identity crisis' then! He knew exactly who
he was and why he was in the world, and he obediently took
his God-given place.
But not only was man totally fulfilled and completely satisfied
with his position in the world. God was satisfied with man! We
know this because the Bible tells us that when his work of
creation was complete, with man as its crowning glory, God
saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
At that point in history, perfect people lived in a perfect
environment in a perfect relationship with each other and in
perfect harmony with God.

That is hardly the situation today! What happened?

14
What went wrong?
The straightforward answer to the question is this: by one man
sin entered into the world, and death by sin.
The first man and woman (Adam and Eve) were given great
freedom, but also one serious warning: But of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. This was an
ideal test of man's willingness to obey what God said simply
because God said it. But the devil tempted Eve to disbelieve
and disobey God's words, and she did. And when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant
to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took
of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also unto her
husband with her; and he did eat.
At that moment 'sin entered the world'. By his deliberate
disobedience man cut himself off from God. Instead of loving
God, Adam and Eve were terrified of him: Adam and his wife
hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst
the trees of the garden. Instead of being assured, confident and
happy, their sin had made them ashamed, guilty and afraid.
But God had said that man would die if he disobeyed, and he did.
Death means separation, and in one terrible moment man became
separated from God; he died spiritually. He also began to die 15
physically, and now had a dead soul and a dying body. But that
was not all: the children of Adam and Eve inherited their
corrupt nature and sinful character. From then on, like pollu-
tion at the source of a river, the poison of sin has flowed to all
Adam's descendants, and so death passed upon all men, for
that all have sinned.

Notice that important word 'all', which obviously includes the
writer and the reader of this page. We may never meet on this
earth, but we have this in common - we are sinners and we are
dying. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and
the truth is not in us. and if we claim not to be dying we are
being ridiculous. Fooling around with the facts does nothing
to change them.
Many of today's newspaper, television and radio headlines
remind us of the fact that the world is in a mess. It is easy to
condemn violence, injustice, disorder and wrongdoing in
society, but before criticizing others ask yourself whether you
are perfect and living a life pleasing to a holy God. Are you
absolutely honest, pure, loving and selfless? God knows the
answers to these questions - and so do you! For all have
sinned, and come short of the glory of God. You are a sinner
by birth, by nature, by practice and by choice, and you urgently
need to face the facts - and the consequences.

EVANGELICAL PRESS
Faverdale North Industrial Estate, Darlington, DL3 OPH, England

© Evangelical Press 1987
First published 1987
Reset - 1988
Ninth printing 1998

ISBN 0 85234 329 9
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data available

All Scripture quotations are taken from the Authorized [King James]
Version

This booklet is also published in Afrikaans, Albanian, Bulgarian, Chinese,
Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hun-
garian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Polish, Por-
tuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Setswana, Slovak, Slovenian, Span-
ish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukranian, Welsh and Zulu.
Photographs reproduced by permission of the following photographers
and agencies:
John Blanchard (Pages 8,13,18,19,21 ,23-25,27,29,30)
Malcolm Boulton (Page 3)
J. Allen Cash Photo Library (Cover, pages 4,6,9,22)
Bob Obbard (Pages 10,11,14,16,20)
Pictorial Press (Page 12)
Rex Features Ltd. (Page 26)
Science Photo Library (Page 5)
Syndication International (Page 15) Clifford Tanner (Pages 7,17,28)

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