How I Learned My Testimony Isn't About Me

I’m delighted to share the story of how I came to know Jesus over at the Heart of Flesh Literary Journal. With this story, I hope to communicate the message of the gospel. It’s also my desire to specifically encourage those who may feel they don’t have a grand, jaw-dropping salvation story. If you accepted Jesus as Lord at a young age, as I did, or if you’ve ever wished your testimony had more drama to bring more glory to God, you’ll be able to relate to my story. I’ve learned to see the power of God at work in my testimony, and I hope that by sharing it, you’ll see the wonder-working power of God in yours too. Below is an excerpt. You can read the full piece over at the Heart of Flesh Literary Journal.

“It runs right through their house.”

I was remembering my mother’s words when she told me about a relative’s property that straddled a county line. I sat on a swing looking out over the field I knew as my backyard. If a boundary line ran through one person’s house then maybe I could find one on our property too. The possibility seemed likely to my five-year-old mind. Rocking gently on the swing, I looked down at the toe of my shoe scraping through the dust. No grass could survive here where my rubber soles dragged daily. My gaze landed on a large crack in the earth, and I followed its trajectory. I detected a path that seemed to extend from between my feet, into the grass, and through the yellow buttercups and dandelions that dotted the landscape. Farther and farther, my eyes followed this line—real, but also imaginary—until it reached the towering trees that stood as sentinels at the back edge of our property. I gasped. I’d done it. I had discovered a dividing boundary in my own backyard. Elated, I traced over the line with my eyes convincing myself of its reality.

Inspecting the crack between my shoes once more, my delight began to wane. In its place, a sense of foreboding fell over me. I considered that a dividing line such as this may be prone to splitting the earth in two. What if the ground beneath me cracked open, and I found myself stranded with one foot on either side of the divide? I felt compelled to pick a side. I shuffled my left foot over to my right while watching the ground suspiciously.

Time passed, but I’m uncertain whether it was days, weeks, or months. The timeline of childhood memories becomes easily scrambled. I do know I wasn’t thinking about county lines and cracking earth on another afternoon when I returned to my swing. Left to the quiet of nature and my own thoughts, I considered a different type of division, a spiritual one.

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