Testimonies are wonderful things to lift our hearts and bring hope to all. It shows the hand of God working in our lives.
This testimony is about one friend that has endured 27 years relationship with ups and downs and by all standards should have passed away years ago, but did not.
I met Carolyn 27 years ago through a card that I had placed on a board that was outside a Vons store. I advertized baby sitting with big red letters NO BOYS.
What motivated Carolyn to take my card anyway I do not know, but one late afternoon I received a call from her asking for me to baby sit as her regular person had an emergency and this was the last night of her class she was attending with her husband and needed someone to baby sit her three boys.
She sold me that they were good boys and there would be no problem so I said ok. The boys were good for the most part accept her husband brought home from his job this abandoned black kitten. Keeping the boys from killing this thing was a job in of itself.
She called me again to take care of her youngest son from her second marriage. His name was James and he was a wonderful boy. All boy in activity, but with a heart as gentle as a lamb. So our friendship grew over the years.
In that first year I stumbled onto the Seventh-day Adventist Church and became a member, but not without protest by Carolyn with books about cult and fellow pentecostal friends trying to deture me which did not work and I was baptized into the church on December 7, 1976.
She became sold on the Adventist faith and six months later became member along wth her then husband and oldest son. She was to live in the same area for about another nine years and then she and her family moved away.
Carolyn stayed with the Adventist church for about a year and went back to her Pentecostal churches never to return to our church. Yet our relationship and friendship continued.
I saw her go through things that Job would not even want to endure. It seems like Satan keeps staying at her feet in ways that one would not wish even to an enemy. Yet she held on with her love for God.
For years Carolyn had wanted me to move near her and time after time I would say no. With my hearing loss it was hard enough to keep a job no less find one and being in the big city I felt I had a better chance to do so.
So last October things changed in my own life with my job. There was a downsizing and people laid off, but I was not one of them. The job had turned into a nightmare right from the first day after the lay off of five people. I was called in for two reasons. One was my hearing service dog and their feelings about her. The next was the change in office hours was about to affect my ability to worship on Sabbath.
My boss told me that I was going to have to choose between my job and my faith. These days became stressful days for me and illness insued. I developed ear infections that took away 10 to 15 percent of my hearing from an already bad hearing loss situation.
I developed sores in my ears that made it impossible for me to wear the ear mole so I could hear. So on December of last year I took a medical leave of absence in hopes that I could heal both in body and mind.
The big turning point came when I no longer could understand words on the phone and I had to make the big choice to go to the TTD type of phone. When I called Carolyn for the first time on the TTD phone I did not realize what impact this would have on her.
The next day she called me back and said that she had talked to her husband and son James and they agreed that I should move out of Los Angeles and move up with her. By this time the doctors and I agreed that I was not going to be able to work with the more severly hearing loss that I had acquired and now was applying for SSDI.
So I said yes to Carolyn and it took five months before I was able to move there. Why? Because she was putting on her property a new mobile for me to live in.
Looking back I could see how God went from 27 years ago that brought a friendship together to a friend who was going to help me have a safe place to live. Not even my own family was willing to do that. Her love for me was gentler, kinder than any human could be and I have been blessed with a new life for myself and my hearing service dogs.
Well last week I got an interesting turn of events. My new pastor came over to visit me and we talked. He knew of Carolyn from his wife who works at the same place that she does. They had become friends.
My pastor now knowing that Carolyn had been a former Seventh-day Adventist member because of me asked if she would let him have some Bible studies with her only about Jesus. I told him I did not think she would, but he could ask her.
Well the next day Carolyn came over to my place and we talked. For some reason I felt the urge to bring up the pastor and what he wanted to do. At first she was against the idea, but as we talked Carolyn started opening up and things I did not know started coming out in tears.
I learned she was not going to church and the pain she was in was far worse than I had realized. We kept talking, crying and holding each other. The threads of abuse by Satan had taken its toll on her.
It now dawned on me that God did not do all this for me, but for Carolyn. She was in need of someone to be close to her. To talk to her of Jesus and His love. She needed someone to keep her close to Jesus and to support her in love and help her get through her pain.
Yes Jesus knew what He was doing 27 years ago. His love for us transends time and space and brings about relationships that reach far into our future.
I do not know if she will come back to the church, time will tell that, but I do know that my hatred for Satan has reached the point that there can be no pity for him.
The way he destroys lives and causes so much pain in this world is going to end and so will he.
Liane
