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Pam says:
After
my 5th year of elementary school my family moved to Oklahoma. There
was no nearby Catholic school, so we attended public school.
However,
my parents still took us to Sunday Mass and to catechism classes each
week, so the teachings of the Catholic church continued to be reinforced
in my life.
One such teaching is that the Catholic church is the only true church and that it is a sin to leave the Catholic church.
We were also taught that "lay people", non-clergy, should never read the Bible for we could misunderstand it.
They said that priests and nuns would teach us what we needed to know.
***
Although I didn't refuse to go to church or catechism class, I had little interest in anything to do with God or religion.
I was just waiting until I graduated from high school and left my
parents' home at which time I planned to live as wild as I could until I
was 30 years old (too old to care about having fun, I thought). Then I would settle down and do religious things.
I had everything planned out ... I thought ...
Then
one day during the first week of my sophomore high school year, one of
the boys in our class, Tommy, didn't show up for school.
Before lunch we learned that Tommy had been killed in a motorcycle accident on his way to school that morning.
I was very shaken by this news.
It
had never occurred to me that someone my age could die and I was
terrified, knowing that if I had died that morning there was no way I
would go to heaven, that I would go to hell.
Somehow I "knew" very strongly that none of the things I had been taught in the Catholic church could help me.
My only hope was God.
***
So I wanted to pray and ask if God would somehow help me, but then realized that I didn't know "who" to address this prayer to.
(We had been taught in the Catholic church that there is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, but which one should I pray to?)
This matter of asking God to somehow help me was so important that I wanted to make sure the "right one" received this prayer.
So I began my prayer saying "I
know there is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, but I don't know
who to pray to. So please get this prayer to the right one."
Then I asked that if there was any way to save me from going to hell, to please do so.
I didn't know anything else to do. My fate was in God's hands.
***
There was a bookmark inside the cover of a large Bible that was kept on a coffee table at our house.
(We didn't read this Bible; we just dusted it each week.)
My attention was drawn to that bookmark and the following scripture on it stood out to me.
Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus says: Come unto ME, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take MY yoke upon you, and learn of ME; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For MY yoke is easy, and MY burden is light.
Reading this was a comfort to me.
***
Then I found that I began to have a strong desire to read the Bible.
Although I didn't have a Bible of my own, my younger sister had been given a small "New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs" which she had put in a drawer and never used.
I found that New Testament and would read from it with a flashlight at night.
Although we had been taught in the Catholic church that "lay people" should never read the Bible, I don't remember being afraid to read the Bible.
However,
I thought my parents would worry if they knew I was doing this, so I
would read at night using a flashlight after everyone else was asleep.
***
Over the next several months I began to be aware of something I could only describe as "something of God was in me". I had no idea what this was, but I knew it was real.
At all times I was aware that God was with me, and I would talk with HIM at times during the day. And sometimes I was given information which I knew had to be from God.
For example, one day while waiting for class to begin I was visiting with a few other girls in the class. One of the girls said, "You'll never guess where I went yesterday afternoon". I was surprised that from within me I knew where she had been and I said "You were at the cemetery at Tommy's grave." She said that was right and that I must have seen her there. I told her I had not seen her there, but she had gone on talking and didn't seem to hear what I said.
(spiritual gift: "word of knowledge" I Cor. 12:8)
I knew this was something I had no way of knowing, and that this information must have been given to me by God.
Another example was
during my senior year of high school. There was a high school
basketball game one evening, but I wasn't able to go to it because my
parents wanted to go visit my older sister who was away at college. When we returned home, one
of my mom's friends called to tell her there had been a serious car
accident involving two of the boys from our school who were going to the
basketball game. That
night I was given a dream in which I was shown the two boys who had
been in the accident and that one of them, Steve, had died. Like me, Steve was a senior.
The following morning my mom came to my room to tell me who had died in the accident, but I told her that I already knew that Steve had been killed.
I knew that God had given me this information by that dream.
***
Jesus says:
John 16:13 Howbeit when HE, the Spirit of truth, is come, HE will guide you into all truth: for HE shall not speak of Himself; but whatsoever HE shall hear (from God), that shall HE speak: and HE will shew you things to come.
***
When I started attending college the next year, I
met a young woman who told me she was a Christian. Connie Jo and I
became very good friends and enjoyed talking about things of God. She
gave me a full-size Bible for my birthday and I enjoyed reading it very
much.
One day while reading in 1 Corinthians, I saw scripture that explained exactly what I had described as "something of God in me" ...
I Corinthians 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
I Corinthians 6:19-20 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.
It is the Holy Spirit that is in me!
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