In 9 days, it will be 12 years since the day that I decided to wholeheartedly follow Jesus and let God be the God over my life.

“Picture it, Sicily 1922” …just kidding, but if you know, you know.

Around late March, early April of 2013 Dustin and I had went thru one of the hardest trials of our marriage. One of my most painful memories is storming out of our home, getting in my car and leaving and telling myself that this was over. We had been living in Ed Hughes’ block home at the end of the roost at the time (I just LOVE when God makes full circles out of life). When I had made it to the end of pigeon roost, I pulled over and just sobbed. I had broke my husbands heart and walked away from our marriage of 4 years. I was 22, Rilee was 3 and Elijah was 2.

I knew getting married at 18 would be no easy task but I loved Dustin so fiercly and the moment I saw him at Ingles in Spruce Pine for the first time since he had graduated high school in 2007, I KNEW that boy would be my husband. Just ask my Mama, lol. Her and I had just come out of the bathrooms and we rounded the corner in front of the lunch meat and here came Dustin on his way to the bathroom. He said “Hey, are youns?” and I was smitten. My Mama said, “who’s that?” and I replied with, “I can’t remember his name, so we’ll just call him beautiful.” and proceeded to tell her in that same conversation that I was going to marry that man. 9 Months later, we did just that.

Now there we were 4 years later and we were crumbling. Work had become number one priority in Dustin’s life, we were neglecting each other, and we had given up on church and Dustin was barely preaching. It all came to a head one day and it was just awful. I didn’t know at the time why I stopped when I was driving down the road because I had every intention to call it quits, but I now know that was a divine intervention because God had better plans for our lives than what we were doing. The rest is kind of fuzzy for me, but I do remember us sitting down and talking about everything and deciding to make this work. Then, 2 months later, I got pregnant with Sadie.

Fast forward to late November 2013, I was 5 months pregnant and I had just awoken from a dream that was not just a normal dream, but it was a warning from God of my current soul state. I remember being in a field, not a beautiful one but a gloomy one with dead tall grass everywhere and the feeling was so heavy. Walking thru the land was like trudging thru “Miry clay” these 2 words I remember so significantly being important in my dream. It’s like I could see and feel those words. I suddenly was sitting at a table with 3 other people. One in particular was a young woman that I knew who had just passed away recently and she lived a very rough life. Now, I am not passing Judgement. I just remember seeing her sitting there and thinking about the life she lived and that it seemed to “fit” that she was there with me. Please understand this was my state of mind while I was dreaming. I suddenly heard my mama calling my name, so I turned around and seen a door and realized she was calling me from on the other side of that door. As I approached the door it started to close and as it was closing, I could feel the love and presence of God leaving me and the atmosphere around me. It was so awful feeling. As soon as I woke up, I called my dad and told him about it but told no one else.

In early January 2014, Dus and I had been somewhere, I am around 29 weeks pregnant. We get to the top of the driveway (We had moved to Buladean in Dec) and before He gets out of the car I turn to him and I say “Dus, I’m not saved.” His face falls immediately, he starts to cry and I remember him saying, “but I want you in heaven with me, what can we do? Let’s fix this now!” But I explained that I needed to do this on my own, that I didn’t want to serve God just because someone else wanted me too, but I wanted to do it on my own accord, with the right mind about it and I just left it at that.

On February 26th, I was 35 and 5 days pregnant. I was folding laundry, miss Rilee was helping me when my back started hurting so bad. I decided to sit in a hot bath and call my doctor just to ask for some advice on how to ease this pain. When I told her what was going on, she told me to call Dus and get to the hospital ASAP. When we arrived and got hooked up the nurse came in and looked at my paper and realized I was in active labor. When the operating room finally opened up for us, we welcomed the sweetest little 5 lb 15 oz, baby girl. She was beautiful. When I was able to go back to my room after recovery, they handed my little swaddled up baby and after a few minutes I asked the nurse if she was supposed to be that purple. She in fact, was not. They took her into the nursery to see if they could get her oxygen up and stable enough to stay in spruce pine. They had kept her all night because she just wasn’t improving. The next morning, they wheeled me down to the nursery and as I came into the room, I heard the doctor say to another nurse, “It was the hand of God that these 2 are with us, her uterus was so paper thin I couldn’t believe that it had not ruptured and killed them both.” That statement just took all the air out of my lungs. When I went back into my room, I asked if I could try to shower myself (I had been getting help since I had still been recovering from my 3rd C-section) and I just shut that door and cried so hard. I could not believe that I had come so close to death and yet God decided to spare me. The realization of where my soul was standing with God at that moment just put that realization in my mind that I was not ready to meet Him.

We finally got to go home the first week in March and all that was on my mind was my soul condition. I had started searching the scriptures diligently about being saved, not by man’s standards but by Gods. I have heard it preached but I wanted proof of what God wants of me. I wanted to see it for my own eyes. Truthfully, it was so much easier than I thought it was. Growing up it had always sounded so complicated and God’s word clearly states that it is not. That salvation was easy to obtain and free. I reached out to Scotty Jenkins, a beloved preacher in the area that has since gone on from this world. I asked that he pray for me because I wanted to have a relationship with Jesus, but I wanted that moment that was from God that way I could never doubt it. Sure enough, about a week after that I was in the shower, I felt so heavy burdened about my current soul state that I just couldn’t bear that anymore, it had become too heavy that I just fell to my knees and I could feel the presence of God and I told Him that I believed in Him, I believed He sent Jesus to die for me and that I was a sinner in need of saving and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life living for Him. It was such a truly beautiful moment.

My mama had stopped by earlier to get Rilee and Elijah, so it was just Sadie and I when Dustin got home from work. Miss Sadie was napping and as we started talking about his day and small talking, he stopped mid-sentence and said “Elizabeth? Did you get saved?” He said that he could just see it all over my face, almost like a glow.

From that moment on, I wanted to be a woman of the Word. My love for studying came and I just couldn’t get enough of the Bible. Being a stay-at-home mom, I was able to invest so much time into learning and reading and for that I am so grateful. It was the foundation on my studying that I pray I never lose the zeal of.

I know it was a long testimony, but it truly is such a special time in my life. I love how God can take a desperate situation and turn it and use it for His good. I can never thank Him enough for being so merciful to me.

“He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.”

Psalm 40:2-3

(You can share your testimony in the comments, if you’d like)