My Testimony - Part 1

As you may have seen on my ‘About’ page, I’m a follower of Jesus.  I wasn’t born into a Christian family.  I didn’t go to church every Sunday as a child.  I wasn’t christened as a baby.  I became a Christian just two days before my 31^st birthday.

Almost a month after being saved by the Lord Jesus, I was baptised alongside a few other new Christians, in a fantastic baptism service and had a day that I will remember for the rest of my life.  As part of the baptism service, I was asked to give a brief testimony describing my path to Jesus.  This post is intended to be a fuller account of that testimony, free from my nervous, tearful self standing in front of masses of people (I’m not a great people person), stuttering through.  So here goes:

As a child, we didn’t talk about God much in our house.  The closest I ever got to theological discussion with my Mum was when I was little, and I’d ask the really, really irritating questions that some kids constantly ask, like why is the sky blue, who made the moon, why don’t Australians fall off the earth (I was that sort of child).  She would answer just because.  I would reply, but why.  She’d eventually get fed up and answer ‘Because God made it that way’. 

As I grew a little older, there was no time for theology.  My mum was seriously ill, and in autumn 1989, when I was 9 years old, she lost her fight with cancer.

My Dad, my baby brother and I made the best of life without Mum.  My other brother lived with my grandmother for a while.

My Dad was my hero, but he suffered with depression, making him sometimes difficult to live with.  When I was about 11 or 12, he attempted suicide.  He and I were in the living room.  My two brothers (the older of the two had returned home by then) were tucked up in bed.  Dad lay on the floor, knocking back his pain killers.  I said to him, Dad, I’m tired, I‘m going to bed now.  He said ‘No, get Bob’ (the man from next door).  The outcome was that my Grandmother watched over us for the night, and I saw my Dad being taken by the ambulance men to have his stomach pumped.

Some years later, when I was almost 18, my Dad’s depression was properly diagnosed when he attempted suicide again and was sectioned under the mental health act.  My two brothers were taken into social services care, and I stayed with my step-mum (Dad remarried not long after his first suicide attempt.)  He was soon released, and him and my step-mother reconciled shortly after.