...a music ministry of Liberty Baptist Church
Throughout my high school years I spent a lot of time away from home, what with school, basketball practice and baby-sitting the children of a nurse while she worked the night shift. This gave me a lot of opportunity to make my own choices and, unfortunately, I made some pretty poor ones.
When I graduated from high school I had another choice to make; go to college on a music scholarship or marry this boy I was dating. As usual I choose the easy way out and jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I was married at 18, pregnant at 19 and divorced at 21. Talk about poor choices.
Out on my own again, I was living at home, my Mother was raising my child and I was having a good ole time. My friends and I would work during the week to make money to party and drink on the weekends.
It was at a local dance hall that my friend met this guy who had the smallest wrists of any man I know; but, was a really good dancer. That night as we were leaving he ask if we would give him a ride home. He seemed like a nice enough guy so we got in my car and headed for Moberly. Since he lived in Centralia, and we lived in Moberly, it was decided that he would ride to Moberly with us to take my friend home and then I would take him back to Centralia. Well, it was getting pretty late by the time we dropped my friend off so this guy and I decided we would stop and have a cup of coffee before we headed back to Centralia. Little did I know how that late night cup of coffee was going to change my life.
By the time we got back to Centralia, we had decided that we liked talking to each other and maybe we should go out on a date. I knew after the first date that this was the man I was going to marry. I didn't find out until later that he had four children from a previous marriage; but, by then it was too late, I had made my choice. So when he looked at me "Through the Eyes of Love" and asked me to "Walk Through this World with Me" I accepted. I had "High Hopes" that this person could give me that unconditional love that I had been searching for.
We were married soon after that to the tune of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" and became a combined family of his, mine and ours. You know how the bible says "time is but a vapor" well it didn't seem like that long before we found ourselves with a whole house full of teenagers. Bob and I felt like "Two Sparrows in a Hurricane".
One day I has having lunch with some people at work and we were discussing the problems we were having with raising our children. There was a man at the table who kept talking about his church and the fact that he taught the teen class there. He invited us to bring the kids to church the next Sunday. Since Bob and I were both raised in church, we decided the children should be too and we took him up on his invitation.
That is when we started attending Liberty Baptist Church. We had not gone there long when had the "Visit from the Pastor". He wasn't in the house long before he popped the question, "Do you know you are a sinner?".
Well, I immediately assured him that I had been a "Christian" all my life and that I had never done anything really bad, like rob a bank, or murder anyone. Apparently that wasn't the right answer and I had made another bad choice.
Life went on as usual. I worked a lot of overtime and then went home and worked some more. Bob was so much better at handling the kids then I that this arrangement worked out pretty well for our family life. We continued to attend church at Liberty and I continued to profess that I wasn't a sinner.
Then one evening we went to a meeting where the speaker was a man by the name of Jerry Johnson. He was the youth minister at a church in Kansas City. He was really good. He was able to answer my question "Who Am I that a king would bleed and die for". It was there in that hall, with beautiful rays of sunlight shining through the windows, when I realized that "You've Got to Stand for Something" and that "Without Him I Would Be Nothing". "I Saw the Light" and admitted that I was a sinner and asked Jesus to come into my heart. "He Touched Me" that night with his unconditional love and I began my "Life's Journey" with the Lord.
I was baptized shortly thereafter at Faith Baptist Church because Liberty did not have a baptismal at that time.
You know that part of the story about how you are now a new babe in Christ and that you need to continue to take the milk of the word and grow in the Lord. Well, what did this mean, Egad!!!!!! more searching.
Though I do not remember the exact day that I got saved I do know that I know that I know. And I know because I have been though some pretty difficult times since then. Times that without him I would not have made it through. Remember that song "He Was There All The Time"; well, He has always been there for me.
He was there when my Sister said "Janie, Mom has committed suicide."
He was there when my son told me "She has taken Katherine (that's my granddaughter) and we don't know where she is".
He was there when the Doctor said "the lump in your beast in cancer".
He was there through a relationship my husband had with another woman.
He was there when the Doctor in the ER said "I'm sorry Mrs. Hayden, we were not able to bring him back, he is gone".
Am I still searching, yes.
Am I still making poor choices, yes.
But, I now have the assurance that "Though There Are Times I've Been Out of His Will, I've Never Been Out of His Care" and "I Have a Hope" that he will "Save the Best for Last".
Jane Hayden:02/23/02
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"I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding." 1 Corinthians 14:15