A young woman's unusual journey to grace. Published by Pacific Press To order, go to our product page. Testimony of a Seeker is also available through the Adventist Book Centers. Call 1-800-765-6955 or go to www.adventistbookcenter.com.

Chapter One

Little Martyr

Spring 1968. Afternoon recess at Bayside Elementary School, an upper-middle class suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Some of the hundred or so playground occupants are doing what one would expect, jumping rope, playing tether ball, shooting baskets. But there are others, gathered off to the side of the building beyond the baseball diamond. They are circling around a golden-haired adolescent girl wearing a bright green and blue sweater dress. She looks calm from a distance, but zooming in one can see the sweat of panic on her upper lip.

"But why?" says the frightened young girl, looking imploringly at the crowd.

Beside the brick wall of the building, an unseen being stands, the noble form of which trembles with compassion.

"Your ways are past finding out, oh God," says the noble being, "but may I ask why I can't protect her?"

"Because you're a boyfriend stealer!" shouts a lanky girl in a short, tight skirt, apparently the ringleader of the group. Taking a step closer, she cuts loose with a string of profanity as her long arms jut out from her body and shove the golden-haired girl to the ground. The girl offers little resistance, almost as if she accepts the unfair sentence this young judge has passed upon her. Crashing backwards, she feels the long arms of the ringleader pin her shoulders to the ground.

"Yeah!" several voices in the crowd cry out, "you're such a slut!" The crowd circles closer to her like wolves closing in upon their prey.

*****

I will begin my story at the point when life lost its simplicity; those pimple-ridden teenage years I would in some ways rather forget. Oh, there were redeeming elements- like music, something that has always been able to take the edge off of lives harsh realities.

I always wanted to be a songwriter. As a teenager, I idolized Joni Mitchell, the poet-muse of the flower child generation. Her ballads were set to acoustic guitar with the likes of James Taylor crooning in the background. I could sit in my room for hours whining along with "Blue" and "The Last Time I Saw Richard" until my older brother would come to my door and impersonate me, after which I would sit in silence and wish I could write a song. Oh, how I wanted to be a songwriter.

The fact was, I did not know what to say. I had no burning interest in politics and I was too embarrassed to write a love song. So I learned her songs, plucking my guitar and singing softly for friends. I went on to learn a Neil Young song about the National Guard killing four teenage protesters at Ohio State University. "Ohio" even made me famous with a few people! "For a freak you're a good kid," one fan wrote in my yearbook, "you got a nice voice and you play a mean guitar." Little comments like that set off sparks in my soul. I wanted more than anything to express myself, whatever myself was, in music and words.

I have learned since those days that I often admire people who do things that I will eventually learn to do. I was awed by Jonas gift partly because I had the same gift, although it was buried within me. Between those awkward teenage years and now my gift has been cut loose, giving birth to hundreds of songs. Maybe even a thousand. And there was a time when I couldn't write so much as one.

But this story is bigger than the saga of a songwriter. More than just liberate my poetic gift, the Lord God has freed my soul. He has made something beautiful out of my life. In this respect my story is the story of every persons potential in Christ. If God can take a bewildered teenager like I was and transform me into a servant of God, He can do anything. And that means He can do anything with you. I have no hopes of impressing you with my being exceptional; I am not. The encouragement you receive from this journal will not be from a great person, but from a great God working through an average person.

*****

I was born into a picture-perfect, white-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant family. There was a beautiful lady who married a strong man. The man got a good job and they settled into a pretty house. Then the children came; a boy, then a girl, then another boy, and then another girl. They were all healthy and cute. The beautiful lady stayed home with the children and the strong man went off to work every day. The snapshots of those years are like pages out a Norman Rockwell portfolio-sparkly Christmases and vacations to Florida, laughing faces around a brimming table. Life was idyllic, and I was a simple, contented child.

Then reality hit.

We had moved from a small town in Ohio to a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin - a much more cosmopolitan area. There I experienced ridicule and rejection for the first time in my life. My first day at the new school, I wore little white ankle socks, and found most of the other girls had graduated to nylons and mini skirts. In the sometimes cruel mind of an adolescent, deviating from the norm of fashion is a crime worthy of public humiliation. I was ignored, teased, and taunted. I went home after school and cried every day. My mom tried to get me to befriend girls who were like me -unpopular - but I could not rest until the "brat pack" allowed me admittance. Something within me blazed ahead even when I knew the territory was not safe because I wanted to run with the fast horses.

I have often wondered why it is so. We tend to crave acceptance from the people who are the most reluctant to give it. It seems we want to earn acceptance because then we can take credit for it, feeling we did something to deserve it. At this point in my life I had no way of comprehending that true love was unconditional, and so becoming part of a clique became a way of finding self-worth.

Finally I gained a measure of acceptance, but it was always tenuous, and it wasn't long before a strange phenomenon began to take place. The group would pick a person they wanted to hurt, and they would turn upon them like sharks in a feeding frenzy. From the moment this poor individual entered the school doors until they boarded the bus to go home, they suffered a continual stream of ridicule and abuse. I watched for the most part when this occurred, too tender-hearted to join in the abuse but too cowardly to stick up for the person. Then one day it was my turn.

Many long weeks passed during which my "friends" harassed me hour by hour, in the classroom, on the playground, in the halls. There was no specific infraction I was guilty of, just a general malice that decided I was next. Day by day I endured my crimeless punishment, and just when I thought the malicious treatment would end, it got far, far worse than I ever thought it could.

On a sunlit playground, at an age when we all should still have been playing hopscotch, these "friends" instead formed a plan to repay me for a crime I never committed. Under the pretense that I had tried to steal another girls boyfriend (I never even spoke to him!), they pinned me to the ground and viciously molested me. A crowd of kids watching, I was a little martyr without a cause. The worst fear of any person-public ridicule and abuse-was heaped upon me at an age when that very fear is at it's most acute. It was an adolescents nightmare, a young lifetime of terrors fulfilled in one twenty-minute recess.

Our teacher, Mrs. Manns, saw my mud-streaked cloths and disheveled hair as I sat trying to recover from the ordeal. "I know who did this, and it's just horrible!" she yelled at my abusers. She couldn't punish them, though, because she knew it would bring on even more resentment of me, and possibly more torture.

Abuse is an improvident thing. Still, so many of our lives are littered with instances of suffering at the hands of our fellow creatures. Strangers, relatives, friends, line up in memories hall of infamy, weapons of sexual and physical mischief in their hands. Why is it so, when we were created for harmony? It must be that sin has caused "most people's love to grow cold" (Matthew 24:12). Mercy and compassion die out of the Christless heart, and people harden in unbelief.

But for those of us who have those bitter memories, I can say without hesitation that God can use it all. I know how this has worked for me. Because of that day when a mocking crowd surrounded me, I can imagine better how Jesus felt when. He said, "many bulls have surrounded me . . . they open wide their mouth" (Psalm 22:12,13). Because I have been humiliated before jeering onlookers, I appreciate more the fact that Jesus, "endured the cross, despising the shame" (Hebrews 12:2).

Our mind's eye has largely accepted the rendition of the cross that masterpiece paintings have given us. Beautiful as they may be, they are not accurate. Jesus hung naked before the people whom He died to cloth with His righteousness. During His trial He "received every indignity." "Never was criminal treated in so inhuman a manner as was the Son of God" (Desire of Ages, 700,710). Every species of abuse was heaped upon our Jesus. Certainly His wounded side holds a refuge for those of us who are victims of the same.

There is hope and light in this for the walking wounded, because "of all the gifts that Heaven can bestow upon men, fellowship with Christ in His sufferings is the most weighty trust and the highest honor" (The Desire of Ages, p 225). My own small sufferings have brought me into fellowship with the crucified Christ. I can't imagine a better resolution to the painful dilemma of abuse.

*****

Eventually we all became more civilized. I found a friend or two, and became the captain of the cheerleading team. I had the distinctive honor of being the first girl in fourth grade to go steady with a boy. I had earned the respect of my peers, and I was happy for it.

And this served to replace what I really needed, which was God's acceptance. I had no knowledge of God except what I heard at church, which basically went in one ear and out the other. The kind of church I attended advocated the "social gospel" but didn't focus much on personal salvation. No one ever approached me in regards to my own relationship with God or shared a personal Savior with me. The youth leader was fond of New Age ideas, and once read my aura*, but never talked to me about Christ. The pastor, a charismatic man who was greatly admired by his congregation, divorced eventually, and the choir director left his wife to marry the lead soprano. All of this touched my idealistic young heart like pins to a balloon. Cynicism began to take root as I saw the faults of professed Christians, and I came to the conclusion that Christianity was just a culture and the church a country club.

My parents had high ideals. My dad was a hard-working, honest, faithful businessman. My mom trained as a speech pathologist and always encouraged me to do good and help people less fortunate than myself. They tried their best to keep me on the "straight and narrow," but I don't think they realized how much the world had changed since they were young. For me to live by their standards in the social circles I ran in was like asking me to swim up Niagara Falls. I was a very curious kid, and one that wanted to try every thing every other kid tried. So during those pre high school years I ran as wild as I could run and not get caught. Then one day God looked down upon me from heaven and said, "She needs a wake-up call."

*The supposed energy force surrounding a person that is detectable to the naked eye only when special psychic powers are employed.

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