My faith, it was rather simple. From reading my story you can see, I was pretty young when my life took a turn. I didn’t live long enough to become confused with a lot of “religious” ideas and what other people thought.

What I did know is that even at my young age, I needed something or someone to place my hope and faith. It seems that my dad was preaching this all the time, not only at church but at home as well. Man, he was a trip. I couldn’t always understand what he was talking about, but I did make a connection between what he was saying and the little song we sang in Sunday School,

“Jesus loves me this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to him belong,
They are weak but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

Jesus loves me! He who died,
Heaven’s gate to open wide;
He will wash away my sin,
Let His little child come in.
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me!
The Bible tells me so.

Pretty neat, I believed that. I can’t tell you that I saw flashing lights or had a special vision, and I still had some questions about sin. Were some bigger than others, and just how did Jesus handle them? What did He do with them?

My faith actually began from my early days as a child, but I remember that specific moment when I said, “yes Jesus, I want you in my life.” It was at our breakfast table when my mother and dad prayed with me. It was a few weeks before Easter. On that next Easter, my dad baptized me in our church. That was quite a day. I never forgot that.

I remember that my dad had this class for all of us who were to be baptized. He said, “all the water in the world would not make anyone a Christian if he wasn’t one already.” He said, “if you baptize a frog, he’s a frog when he goes under and he’s still a frog when he comes up.” I kind of smiled when he said,”when we finish, you’re going to be either very wet without Jesus, or a very wet person excited to tell everyone about your faith in Jesus.”

I remember he helped us understand something one of those men said in the Bible, “when you are placed under the water, you are identifying with Jesus in his death. At first, that sounded a little funny. How could that be? Back then I hadn’t died, so how could I identify with Jesus and his death. Then my dad said, “when they took him from the cross they buried his body in a cemetery. When you are baptized, that becomes a beautiful picture of what Jesus did for each of us.” At first I didn’t understand, but finally, this is how I understood it. You see the stuff in all of us that isn’t good gets buried, just like Jesus was buried, Dad called that sin, but the good stuff in Him gets put in us and we receive His life. That’s what all that going down and coming up out of the water is all about, RESURRECTION. At least that’s the way I saw it. I took that to mean, something got buried that God doesn’t like, but on the other hand I received a new resurrected life because of my faith in Jesus. Isn’t that pretty neat? You can’t go wrong with that deal.

Now don’t get me wrong. I didn’t become the perfect preacher or Jesus Kid after I got baptized. While I got pretty wet, I didn’t become a little celestial saint. But I can say that I began to think differently even though I still liked boys, especially one.

Well, that’s about it for my story of faith. After my accident, I completely lost the ability to decide what I would do with my life, or even how I would live. For the next 31 years, those decisions were pretty much made for me, but I do remember the hundreds of times when my parents would hold me and we would pray. Even though I could not speak, God was able to hear my heart. My parents always seemed to have this quiet calm. I know it was hard for them, but God always seemed to meet with us in those times when we prayed together. We didn’t always get what we prayed for – until now.

I’m not going to try and tell you what it’s like here if I did you would have difficulty believing me. It’s not that I don’t have the ability to explain, the problem is you don’t have the ability to understand, but you’ll find out soon enough. I definitely recommend this place. I pray you will join me.

Renee