What Are You Reading - Day 16 - Photo ADay May

©2012 LaDena Campbell aka justateacher

What I’m Reading

This is what I am reading today. It’s a version of the Bible with daily quotes from Joel and Victoria Osteen. I have read the Bible before. The summer I was fourteen, my best friend and I decided that we were going to read the Bible from cover to cover. We didn’t make it all the way through, but we did read a lot of it. After a while we decided that we didn’t need to read from cover to cover, so we flipped around a lot and found passages that we liked. It was a cool way to spend the evenings. Back then, I knew how important the Bible was, but I didn’t know how much it would come to mean to me.

I didn’t go to church a lot. We moved around way too much to find a good church. My mom was raised in the Church of Christ. My dad’s family went to Baptist churches. As a young girl, I remember a neighbor lady that taught Sunday school, and my sisters and I would go over to her house for Bible study many Sunday afternoons. When I was fourteen, I met my best friend Cassandra. Her father was a preacher and they attended a Free Methodist church. That was the church I spent the most time at. I became a member of their youth group. I attended that church every Wednesday and twice on Sunday’s for three or four years.

That church was where I found my faith. I accepted Jesus Christ into my heart. I began to know what the word of God actually meant. I believed that Jesus had died for my sins and that because of that I would someday go to Heaven. But it still wasn’t where I truly began to really believe.

It wasn’t until I had children of my own. I still didn’t attend church. But I taught my children the word of God. I taught them that they had to have faith. I read Bible stories to them. My children didn’t believe in Santa Claus – they believed that the Three Kings brought their gifts. One Christmas when everything was going wrong, my children prayed that they would have a good Christmas. They didn’t want much. Just a couple of toys and a good Christmas dinner. They prayed with all of their little hearts and then came to me to tell me that they would get a Christmas. I didn’t want to dash their hopes, but I knew money was tight and their would probably be no Christmas gifts. Later that day, I went out to check the mail and there was a card with a hundred dollar bill in it. It was signed “Santa.” My girls told me that it was just God that sent us the money. We had a good dinner and the girls had a couple of gifts under the tree.

As I endured a long and abusive marriage, I learned more and more about the miracles that God could bring. God was with me when I cried late into the night. He was with me when I decided to go to college to make the lives of my children better. He was with me when I almost failed a class that I desperately needed to take and could not afford to take over – at the last minute, the professor had a change of heart and I passed his class. He was with me when I was led to the third school I applied to. The position at that school had been filled, but knew that a principal down the road still needed a teacher. He was there with me when I went to that school, unannounced and actually had the courage to talk to her. I was offered a job in special education, if only I agreed to further my education. He was there with me when this same principal told me that at that time, the district would fund my further education.

He was with me when I finally found the courage to leave my emotionally abusive husband. And He was there again when I met my new husband.

God has been with me through all of the toughest times in my life – and shown me the miracles of children and then grandchildren. He showed me that true love did exist.

For all of that, I am reading the Bible once again.