My Mother-in-Law's Mother's Day Request
This was the only gift she wanted:
My mother-in-law is in her late seventies. She asked for an unusal gift from her five children, five in-laws, and fourteen grandchildren this year in celebration of Mother's Day. She asked us to write our stories of how we came to know Jesus as Savior.
Everyone has their own story. Some don't have their story yet or they have a completely different spiritual story. But here's mine.
I so easily could have slipped through the cracks.
I was born a preacher’s kid, which meant I was in church every time the doors were opened from Day One. In fact, prior to Day One. My Mother sang in church the morning before I was born less than twenty-four hours later. I have no doubt the first time I heard the name of Jesus - my Mother was singing it.
Southern Baptist churches in small towns in Kansas in the 1950s didn’t know what a children’s ministry or preschool program was. To them it was sitting on your mother’s lap for hours on end and being “shushed” every few minutes. I have a vivid memory of a multi-colored bead necklace my Mother used to wear. It only dawned on me recently that the reason I so vividly remember that necklace is because it was my one source of entertainment during church.
One day a very well intentioned lady asked me if I believed in Jesus. Of course I did. He was all anybody ever talked about. So at the age of five I was baptized and was put on the list of believers. I could very easily have spent my life as one of those faithful church members who knew all about Jesus, without knowing him at all. But when I was a teenager, Jesus came after me. He pestered me for over a year until I was so frustrated I finally just called out to him and asked him to forgive me and come into my life. If he never had before, I wanted him to now. When the Bible talks about how Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished” – on April 20, 1969, standing by myself on Lucky Street behind the Eastside Baptist Church, it was finished for me.
I haven’t become all God knows I could be. But I so easily could have slipped through the spiritual cracks and never known Him at all. The ways He has used me for His purpose over the years have been the genuine blessings of my life. I regret the times I ignored His voice and missed out on so many of those opportunities. But I pray to become the woman of God that my mother-in-law is and that He can imagine me still becoming.
