This is my personal testimony of how I came to accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior and the trials and tribulations that I have endured as a Christian and some of the miracles that He has performed in my family. I hope that my readers will gain some inspiration and if this helps you to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ, then I will feel that in some small way I have helped as a vessel of God to shine light to others. God bless you all.

I was born and raised in the state of Louisiana which makes me a certified and genuine Southern Belle. But more importantly than that I was brought up in the Baptist Church and was well informed about Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Father. I was baptized as a child after accepting Him as personal Lord and Savior but as a child I don't know how much I really was aware of what I was doing. At any rate I continued to grow but moved away from the church as a young adult.

After sustaining some serious and permanent injuries to my neck, back and head after a car accident at the age of 21, I became more aware of God in my life again and that He had saved my life. So I knew that there had to be some greater purpose in life that I had not fulfilled. So I returned to the church and once again became active but still feeling unfulfilled somehow. My father's death 9 months after my accident threw me once again into turmoil and conflict with God. My father had found God near the end of his life and admonished me to pray. Still I only gave lip service to Him.

I guess through all this time I considered myself a Christian because I had accepted Christ as my Savior and had been baptized as a young girl but I didn't do anything to promote God or to be the kind of woman He would want me to be. I mean I didn't go out and do anything deliberately wrong or breaking laws or anything such as that but I just didn't think about Him or pray to Him. I married at the age of 24 after having known my husband for only a few years through letter writing. I certainly didn't pray to God for guidance in this most important of matters. But I did marry my husband and we have had a tumultuous and stormy relationship because of my husband's dependence on alcohol and substance abuse which I knew nothing of. We went on to have four children together, all boys who range in age from 17 to 12.

Another breaking point in my relationship with God came when I realized at the tender age of 9 months that my second oldest son Kurtis (who is now 15) had something very seriously wrong when he suddenly started having seizures. By the age of 15 months he was not talking and we started the rounds of doctors, evaluations and tests. And the doctors gave us different diagnoses; epilepsy, profound deafness, cerebral palsy and finally mental retardation. Thank God that some of them were not true. Yes my son did have a seizure disorder which has now been controlled by medications which he is off of. And yes he is mentally retarded and we did finally get a true diagnosis of autism at the age of 4 1/2. But he is not cerebral palsied or deaf. We do sign language with him as he does not have any verbal skills. And through all of this for most of his young life, I waged an internal battle with God blaming Him for my problems and for the fact that if I hadn't of been abused as a young child by my mother and then marry a self-destructive and abusive man, then I wouldn't have had a seriously disabled young child.

Click here to visit and read about my autistic son Kurtis and our incredible journey with him.

I battled with serious clinical depression for years over my son's disability and indeed the days were long and dark and for me there was no light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know how or why but there had to be plenty of people who were indeed praying for me mightily for over time I gradually ceased to be angry at God and eventually like a melting iceberg, my faith restored slowly as God rebuilt my life one piece at a time. I accepted my son's disability (although please don't think that I don't still have my moments of 'sadness'), then God started working in my life and the Holy Spirit moved in me and I found myself wanting to grow closer to God and for the first time in my life I earnestly began seeking Him out. I began to attend church regularly and taking my children and teaching them about the wondrous love of Our Heavenly Father. Finally after years of being in the dark, I renewed my faith in Christ Jesus publicly in church and was baptized as an adult on Sunday August 10, 1997 at the age of 34. Isn't God wonderful? And that's not all!

After years and years of being in the dark with his alcoholism and dependance on illegal drugs my husband finally found his way out with God's loving help. And since July of 1997 he has been clean and sober and continues to be so to this day. In fact he will celebrate eight years on July 17th of this the year of our Lord 2005.

I hope that you my readers have been inspired by what I have gone through and hope that it helps lead you to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through whom all things are possible and I truly do know for I have been at the depths and have slowly come up and out and into the light. And yes dear friends - there is light at the end of the tunnel - God's glorious love. Amen.

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