I felt a connection to God, and all things spiritual, from my earliest years. My spiritual life was born the day my daddy told me, when I was 4 or 5, that I didn’t have to be afraid to die, because when people die they go to Heaven, and he had heard that Heaven was a pretty nice place. This experience had a huge impact on me and set the tone for the rest of my life.
When I was a little older, I was driving with my dad in his truck on a Sunday morning, and we passed some children on the steps of a church. I loved how they were all dressed up. When I asked about them, my dad explained that they were going to church, and when I got home, I told my parents that I wanted to start going to church. My parents didn’t know what to do! They decided that they would take their little red-headed girl to the Lutheran church a few blocks from our home, and sign her up for Sunday School. I attended there a few years. On Sunday mornings my parents would drop me off then pick me back up, and I was perfectly content with this arrangement. At church I learned about Heavenly Father and his Son, Jesus Christ.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped going, but as I grew older I continued to be spiritually hungry. As a nine or ten year old child, I would sometimes get my Bible out at night in my bedroom, open to any random page and read some of it. It just brought me a feeling of comfort and safety, a feeling of home.
When I was about twelve, I was laying on the couch in our living room, watching TV late into the night. My parents and older sister were in bed. It was around Easter time, and a commercial came on for a movie that would soon be aired on TV – King of Kings, starring beautiful blue-eyed Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus. Seeing a live portrayal of Jesus Christ, even in just a brief 60-second commercial, touched my heart. I felt compelled to kneel down in the darkness of my living room and say a prayer, asking God if he still was really there as I had thought all along, and if he really had a son by the name of Jesus Christ. As I prayed, a feeling came over me that felt like I was being wrapped in a warm blanket, and enveloped in love. It was very powerful – so powerful, that I’ve remembered it to this day. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I know now that the Holy Ghost had been sent to me that night from an anxious Parent to say, “YES!! I AM HERE!!!
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