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Sandy's Story 
My name is Sandy. I am the wife of a wonderful man, to whom I have been married for over twenty years, and mother of two beautiful daughters. My family is one of God’s greatest gifts to me. But the greatest gift is something I received when I was fifteen years old. Before I tell you about that, let me tell you a little more about myself.I am the middle child of three born to my mom and dad. My parents immigrated to the United States when they were in their early twenties, along with my maternal grandmother. They were married in a Catholic church in a suburb of L.A. They quickly learned English, got jobs, and started a family. By the time I was five, we were living in our own home in a nice, middle-class neighborhood, and still attending the church in which my parents had been married. My parents were good, moral people who raised me to be a good, moral person also. They knew the basic teachings of the Catholic Church, but they left it up to the church to teach me. There I learned that God had created everything, that Jesus, his Son, had been born of a virgin, died on a cross, and rose again three days later. That, along with the "Our Father" and "Hail Mary", is all I remember learning in my catechism classes. At seven years of age, I partook of my first communion, and after that, I never attended any more classes. When I was about eight years old, my mother got very sick. She was bedridden for weeks and was weak for months. It took her many years to recover completely. Our lives changed right around the time of her illness. We moved to a city about twenty miles away. My mother looked for a church to attend but could not find one she liked, and my father wasn’t interested in attending church. My mom took us to a nearby Catholic Church so that my younger brother could attend catechism classes in order to make his "first communion." After that, we stopped attending church altogether. By the time I was ten years old, and I had a sense of spiritual emptiness, even though I didn’t know to use those words to describe it. You wouldn’t think a ten year old would feel things like that, but I did. I sensed that God wasn’t a part of my life, and I wanted Him to be. I had no idea how to make that happen. I did all I knew how to do but imitating what I had observed. On the nightstand in my room, I built a little altar where I placed a crucifix, a little statue of the Virgin Mary, a rosary, and a candle. There I knelt and prayed the only prayers I knew, the "Our Father" and the "Hail Mary." I tried to pray the rosary every night though I often fell asleep while doing so. I still felt empty. I hadn’t drawn any nearer to the Lord, and it felt like He was still a stranger to me. It wasn’t until several years later that I had a breakthrough. My older sister and her boyfriend begun attending a Christian club called Campus Life, an outreach to high school students run by a ministry called Youth for Christ. Soon my sister began inviting me to these meetings. I was reluctant to go because I was painfully shy and uncomfortable in crowds. But eventually her persistence paid off. The first meeting I attended was at a neighbor’s home. The staff members were friendly and encouraged me to come back. I did. A few months later there was a district meeting which included the clubs of all the high schools in our area. I was not anxious to go be dreadfully uncomfortable with hundreds of unknown teenagers. But I decided to go, despite my fears. At first they seemed warranted. The evening began with hundreds of unfamiliar teens, some of them rowdy, playing lots of organized group games. But when the guest speaker was introduced, things quieted down. My attitude changed as he began relating what Jesus went through on the day he was crucified. He thoroughly had my attention. I had never heard anyone describe Jesus’ torment so vividly. More importantly, no one had ever explained that He did it me! I remember thinking, "Why would he go through all that pain just for me?" I knew I was a sinner and didn’t deserve the benefit of His love. I was not a notorious sinner, but I knew was certainly not perfect and deserving of heaven. But Jesus was perfect, and he gave himself for an imperfect sinner like myself! According to the Bible, he was the only one who could have paid the penalty for my sins. His death on the cross wasn’t just a martyrdom or an example of a good man dying for a good cause. He died as a sacrifice—for me—to pay the price for my sin! I finally realized that the only way God would accept me and I could come close to Him was through the forgiveness that Jesus made possible on the cross. At last I had found the secret! My parents had taught me to be a good, moral person. I thought I could know God better by doing everything right and pleasing Him, but I knew deep inside that I wasn’t succeeding. The only way I could truly know God was by acknowledging that I was a sinner and accepting the fact that Christ paid for my sins on the cross. Titus 3:5 describes this truth when it says, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us…" Another verse of Scripture which talks about this is 2 Corinthians 5:21, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." That night I thanked God for His gift of salvation through Christ, asked Him to cleanse me of all my sins, and received Him as the Lord of my life. I couldn’t have chosen a better best friend, and I’m really glad He chose me! My life is dramatically different from what it might have been. Instead of wandering through life wondering how to find God, He found me. Now my life has a new purpose and goal—not to find God, but to grow in the love of the Lord who found me. |
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