Journey into Trust Day by Day Introduction - My Testimony

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Are you looking for encouragement? Someone who cares? Or maybe a Mentor-Mom?

In this video I share my backstory. I feel it is always important to get to know those who you allow to speak into your life, so you can know if they are trustworthy or not. Here is my salvation testimony and my testimony of surrendering my life to Jesus.

I trusted in Jesus to save me, and I trusted that He died on the cross for my sins when I was five years old. I was living in a little teeny town in Alaska called Metlakatla, on a small island called Annette Island. A pastor used to fly over with his family every Sunday to pastor the little church that we attended. His daughter was the one who actually led me to the Lord when I was about five years old. She taught me that I needed Jesus to be my Savior, and that He loved me, that He had gone to the cross for me, and that I needed Him.

I prayed to receive Jesus, and not too long after that, I was baptized in the bay, which was cold and rainy that day. But I was so glad I could follow the Lord in that way.

However, as my story went on, I knew—even at a young age—when people would ask, “What’s first in your life?” I knew that I was supposed to say Jesus was first in my life, but to be honest, I also knew that other things were first in my life.

It took a long time for that to really catch up to me and actually bring damage to my life. But in high school I really began to stray into serious sin and I got involved with a guy who was about four years older than me when I was 15, and he was about 19. That relationship got very serious very fast and I spent about four years with him. During that time I would be convicted a lot for my sin. Nearly every Sunday I'd go to church and every Sunday I was there the Holy Spirit would be really showing me that I was not living the way God wanted me to live.  He pierced my conscience over and over, working to woo me out of my sin, but I was very attached to this boyfriend and very attached to my sin really.  God was very patient with me—very, very patient with me. So eventually, though, God got my attention and opened my eyes that I really needed to let go of this relationship. The Lord helped me to see that the lie that I had been telling myself that everything I was doing was okay because one day we would be married—that lie had actually trapped me into staying in this relationship, even when it wasn't healthy. God helped me to see that I wasn't married to my boyfriend and I didn't have to stay in the relationship. I had made no vow before God or to him. I finally could break up with him and move on in life. There were still patterns that I really needed the Lord to help me break and I needed Him to grow me up spiritually.

I do hope that within our time together as I share different things from my life and especially from God's word that it will help you grow up and help you grow into the image of Christ because He loves you and he gave himself for you.

As I said God finally opened my eyes, and set me free from being in the immoral relationship I had been in for so long. After that I was able to go on two trips that were really pivotal in my spiritual growth, which He just really opened the doors for. I got to go to Europe first. My mom worked at a helicopter company at the time and Japan Airlines was offering a just special deal to anybody who was a dependent or worked at an airline in Alaska--any type of Airline even a helicopter place-- where they could go to Europe for $75 each way. So it was an unheard of thing that I was able to go to Europe for $150 round trip on JAL Airlines.  It was on that trip where I went with a friend of mine that I made over the summers working at a cold storage, and she and I planned to do Eurail around Europe, and we had it all planned out.

But during that trip, towards the end especially, my friend Kim went home a little before me. We had met some college students in Brugge or Brussels, who was from Holland. When I got to Amsterdam, I met up with him at a Christian youth hostel where we just had coffee and talked for a long time. In our conversation he said he was an atheist, but after talking a while, he admitted that he was probably more of an agnostic, which meant he really wasn’t sure what he believed.  He had so many questions that were really, really, hard questions that I couldn't answer and I wanted so much to help him know that God was real and that he loved him but I had been so far from the Lord for so long that I really didn't have good answers.  I felt like for him all I could say is, “I don't know, Jeroen, all I know is that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish that have everlasting life.” 

However, back on the train, after that conversation the next day, I was traveling through Germany to go back to Switzerland so I could fly home, and on my many hours on the train I had some really significant times with God where I started reading through the Book of Acts. I started really praying, asking God, well telling Him I was really sorry that I didn't know good answers to my friend’s questions. Amazingly, the Lord really met me on that trip. He showed me that all those disciples, talked about through the Gospels and Acts, He just showed me, and I guess revealed to me, that all these disciples who knew the Lord and would have known if what He had done on the cross wasn't real-- if He had not really resurrected from the dead— they would have been the ones to know because the Pharisees and leaders at the time had tried to blame them, saying that they had removed Jesus's body and that's why they couldn't find it. The revelation to my heart was that they would have been the ones that would have known if the resurrection really wasn't true, and yet they were the ones who were willing to be martyred themselves because they believed and knew that Jesus was real. He was their living Lord, and that they went all the way to death for Him. Peter to the point of being crucified upside down on the cross and John to the point of being boiled in oil and put on a an island called Patmos to be exiled in his elderly age. Out of all of them, none of them recanted, none of them said, “Oh wait, no. No, it wasn't true. Don't do this to me.” They all were steadfast to the very end, knowing that what they had lived for, what they had proclaimed, they were also willing to die for because it was true. God used that in a mighty way in my life to help me in my own heart know that my faith was built on Truth.

My Heavenly Father also had arranged that with this Japan Airlines trip I had to fly through Anchorage, Alaska. I was not from Anchorage, Alaska, and I had to fly there, but God had arranged beforehand that a pastor and his wife – a man who had been a seasoned Pastor for like over 50 years— had come and stayed at our house at my mom's bed and breakfast like the summer before. I had met them and they had told my mom and me that if we were ever in in Anchorage we should look them up and we could stay with them. Well, when I went on this trip I actually had looked them up and they were so gracious to let me stay with them. So on the way home from this trip I also had a night with this family.  God provided this elderly Christian couple that I could really discuss everything that had happened on my trip with, and especially my conversations with this friend I had made. I could tell them about all his tough questions that I felt like I just did a terrible job answering. This very wise Pastor told me that I might not ever have answers that would satisfy my friend even if I was the most learned person and I had been faithful to study God's word all these years, I still may not have been able to convince him, only the Holy Spirit can do that. But he encouraged me that God is not afraid of hard questions, and anytime I had difficult questions I could always go to God and God was always going to be faithful and He would answer my questions and he would help me know the truth. He told me if I was earnestly seeking then it would be enough to satisfy my heart and that if somebody was truly seeking to know God and seeking after him they could be assured that that God would meet them, too. That just was so comforting, and it was such a blessing that God had gone before me and made a way. He knew what was going to happen on my trip and he knew that on my way home I was going to really need to be able to talk to a really seasoned man of God and woman of God and receive this advice. It has stayed with me all these years.

The other thing God allowed is that after that trip, I had missed a semester of school. So I thought, "Well, if I'm going to miss school, I want to do it right." I had saved money and came back, working a few weeks at this cold storage. I saved up enough money to go to Australia, so I went to Queensland.

I traveled and came to a little town called Townsville. It was there that I met the most wonderful Christian friends I’d ever had. I had really never had Christian friends before, but I stayed in a youth hostel and ended up calling a church. They told me another church was closer, so I walked up the hill to that church. That's where I found a vibrant group of college and career-age students who loved God so much and lived full-on for Him. I got to experience the joy of life with God through them, and the Lord met me in such powerful ways during that time.

I had been so far from God during high school, and there were so many times that I felt very condemned, even though God wasn’t condemning me. I was living in sin, and that conviction—Satan was using it to hound me with condemnation, trying to convince me that God must hate me because I was living the opposite of how He wanted me to. God does hate sin, and He was grieving over my sin, but He didn’t hate me. He still loved me and wanted me to be His, and wanted me to follow Him.  I was His wayward daughter and He wanted me close to Him and right with Him.

Being with this group of college and career-age young people really changed my life. I got to see the joy of the Lord and understand what God had always wanted for me. I also saw why His heart was so broken when I was choosing sin over the abundant life He had for me. It was on this trip that the Lord showed me that His heart had been breaking for me all the time. He had been afflicted all that time that I had been afflicted. There's a verse in Isaiah 63:9 that talks about it. It's a verse I go back to all the time, but God the Father really showed me His heart for me through that verse. He set me free during that time to begin to share my testimony and just enjoy these new friends. It was a life-changing experience for me.

After that, I went to Southern Oregon State College, now Southern Oregon University. At that time, there was a wonderful college and career group called Impact, and I got to be involved with them. The college pastor and his wife, invested in me. They really discipled me and helped me grow in so many ways. God restored my life, and after college, He called me to the mission field. I went to Japan for two years, where I taught English as a second language through a church. I absolutely loved my time in Japan, and again, it was a refining time. God used it in many ways to grow me and use me.

After that, He led me in a very circuitous way, and I eventually ended up in Upstate New York and then in Illinois, where I met my husband Tim. God gave me a healthy, wonderful relationship with a Christian man who loved Him, and we got to know each other, got engaged, and were married in 2000. We’ve had two children, now 16 and 21, and we’ve been through a lot together.

Now, I can honestly say my relationship with Jesus truly is my lifeline. He is absolutely first in my life. During many years, we experienced our children having chronic illness while trying to homeschool them. My son became sick at age seven, and a few years later, we realized my daughter was also having a lot of chronic fatigue. It took us a long time to figure out what was going on with our kids and why they were sick, and even longer to help them get better. But ultimately, God finally turned the corner for them, opened the door for them, moved them in the right direction, and lifted them out of all that sickness.

Right about that time, I felt like I could live again. But then, I found a lump, and it turned out to be breast cancer. My journey in the last few years has been related to that and learning to walk with God through the tight places He has for me, to trust Him, and not fear, but know that He is walking with me no matter what happens. He’s with me all the way.

During those years when my kids were sick, He met me and kept me from drowning in depression. He lifted me up and gave me so many promises that kept me going, enabling me to pour into my kids when my heart was broken for them.

The Lyme disease that they had, I don’t think I had, but the mold illness they had definitely affected me too. We were all going through a lot together.

God helped me walk through the breast cancer this past year and a half. I did radiation in January and February of this past year. I’ve had great labs and everything since then. I’m really working on exercising more, eating the right way, and I work with the Block Center in Skokie, an integrative cancer center that I really respect. They’re helping me stay on track and will help me find any recurrence early if it happens.

So, that’s kind of where I’m at with my health. Because of that journey, I believe God helped me through getting cancer and learning about cancer. I learned how selfish cancer itself is, and it helped me really not want to be selfish, but to want to give back, love others, and encourage others.

I had been writing since about the year before, and I finally realized I had enough to put into a book that many people had been encouraged by. I wanted to share it with more people. So, Journey into Trust was born. It’s not all about cancer or chronic illness, though. There are some pieces about that, but it also covers a lot of different topics. It includes color pages, and the topics are things like relationships, sorrow redeemed, trust, sacrifice, and many others.

Thanks so much for your time.

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Are you looking for encouragement? Someone who cares? Or maybe a Mentor-Mom?