AMANDA SMITH

I’ve been a Christian for six years now but in terms of intensity, sense of purpose and fulfilment, it feels as though my walk with God has been far longer than the twenty-seven years I walked alone.

My life before Christ, although filled with many experiences, suffered from a sense of the pointlessness of life. I couldn’t see what was the meaning to life, why we were here at all. My constant search for answers to those age old questions led me into nearly all the dark corners of life and drove me to suicide attempts and psycho-analysis, to drugs and sex, from Buddhism to hypnosis to witchcraft. I was filled with hate and anger, not only at the world but at myself as well.

My biological father left my mother and me when I was nine weeks old and my mother remarried when I was just over a year old. My stepfather, haunted by his own ghosts, was never faithful to my mother and life at home was not, to put it lightly, defined by a sense of love and security. I felt rejected and largely ignored by my stepfather as I was not his real child, and no matter how hard I tried to earn his love, I still failed to make the grade. I also blamed myself for my real father leaving as he hadn’t wanted children. However, it was left to me, as the oldest and most responsible of the three children to fill the supportive and responsible father/husband role and also to deal with the emotional trauma that was the result of my father’s absences, drinking and infidelities. I learned very quickly to be self sufficient and independent from needing others. I ran away when I was seventeen and contact with my family became sporadic. I moved from relationship to relationship, always making sure that I had someone lined up before I broke up with whomever I was living with at the time. I was rarely faithful to any one man myself, and would never be with anyone long enough for him to be unfaithful to me, so great was my fear of not only that pain, having seen what it had done to my mother, but also of yet more rejection. I couldn’t allow myself to trust anyone or feel anything, especially not love. Love was an ugly word to me.

It has been very difficult for me to learn that God as a father is not the same as our earthly fathers. For the longest time I projected the character of my stepfather onto God, and was wary again of being rejected as not good enough. It took some hard lessons to learn that I did not have to earn God’s love, that he loves us regardless and unconditionally. He is still teaching me every day that He is trustworthy and is capable of fulfilling our every need. It has been so hard for me to give up control of my life to Him as from an early age I have had to be in control, to sort out all the problems on my own. Every now and again He gets someone to remind me with those simple words ‘Leave it in God’s hands.’ He will never be unfaithful to us.

During the eight years after I left home, I started doing drugs and drinking a great deal. My relationships were defined by my consuming jealousy and suspicion, and I ended relationship after relationship. I slept around a lot. My promiscuous life style was a pathetic attempt at trying desperately to find someone to just accept me and love me the way I could not love myself, to give me a sense of self worth, which I felt I could only get by giving men ‘what they wanted’. But I felt very dirty and ugly inside, and every loveless liaison would leave me feeling even filthier. And the dirtier I got, the more I hated myself. I was convinced that there was no chance for me to redeem myself, even if I stopped sleeping around, because the level of filth could not be reversed and I would remain soiled for the rest of my life. So I just stopped caring. But Isaiah 1:18 says ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow’. God made this verse so real in my life. There are no words to describe the feeling of being scrubbed clean when for so long I had felt so dirty. Although growing in God is a process, this act of grace is instantaneous. One day I was unclean, not only in the sight of God, but in my own eyes as well. And the next day, I was clean, just like that, in both God’s eyes and mine. To me it felt to me like a physical sensation.

Anyway, it was during these eight years that I started searching for some answers to the point of it all. But the more life couldn’t supply the answers, the more destructive my behaviour became, and the more depressed I was. My experimental ‘research’ into different religions and beliefs, like witchcraft and Buddhism, became more of a quest to see how far I could push the limits of sanity and how far I could degrade myself. Christianity wasn’t an option – I made the mistake of judging God by the people who represented Him, and anyway Christianity is based on faith and how could I believe in something I couldn’t see or touch when I had enough problems trusting in real people.

Everyone has a Jesus shaped hole inside them, and it doesn’t matter how we try to fill that hole, with all the things the devil holds out to us, only Jesus completes us and makes us whole. All the men in the world, all the drugs, fame and riches, or whatever it is people are into these days, cannot meet the need that exists in us at a spiritual level. God created us to live in relationship with Him and no other relationship with any other thing will satisfy us for very long. False religions and beliefs are lies that tie us to Satan. The devil’s promises are conditional and are all about corruption and power. Only God can offer the love that grace, that underserved gift, springs from. Only God has no ulterior motive behind His promises and blessings.

Anyway, at that time I detested myself so much that I would pretend to be someone else entirely for long stretches of time. Once, for several months, I became someone I called Storm who was a strongly confident and very cold person. I, or rather, Storm, became the leader of a gang of drug addicts. I started to have blackouts and would come to and discover that ‘Storm’ had taken over and I wouldn’t know what she had done. I started to hurt myself during the blackouts, scraping my knuckles across gravel sidewalks over and over again and cutting myself with broken glass. This led to another suicide attempt, and I decided to escape to another part of South Africa, a pattern that had developed every time things got too bad. I was 22.

I hated myself so much that I couldn’t bear to be myself, but when I became a Christian, I saw God loved me regardless and He showed me how to love myself, through His love for me. He showed me the potential of who I am in Christ and although this regard for self has been a work in progress, the first day I gave my life to Him, the work began. Now, every time I lose my nerve and try to be someone I’m not, God gently guides me back and reminds me that if I abide in Him, He will abide in me, and if God is for me, then who can be against me. It’s whom I am in Christ that makes me who I am, acceptable in God’s sight.

Eventually I stopped caring about paying bills and or even eating and I hit rock bottom at age 24. I was involved in a very destructive relationship with an equally disturbed guy. We’d lie, steal and cheat to get money. I already had a criminal record for shoplifting and a 5 year suspended sentence. I’d beg for leftovers at restaurant kitchens, and he’d sell stuff door to door to make some money for booze and cigarettes and drugs. Our arguments would always end in violence, and we’d beat each other up on a regular basis. I’d get some twisted satisfaction out of that – I felt I needed to be punished. I was drowning in debt and ended up working in a casino, where I’d cheat punters out of their money and then spend it all in the back street bars. On one occasion, when a drug deal went wrong, my boyfriend and I were chased by knife wielding members of the Portuguese mafia. On another occasion I was held for questioning as a suspect in a robbery at the casino, not a pleasant experience, especially as for once I was innocent! But through it all, I still searched for something – anything – to fill that empty hole inside myself, to help me understand our purpose here on earth.

My mother, who until now had not been aware of what a mess I was in, rescued me and dragged me off to Cape Town to live with her. There I met a wealthy older man who in turn dragged me off to live with him in his mansion. It was a typical Cinderella story. I lived with him for four years and let me tell you something… money can’t buy you love! He had a very high-powered, high profile job and I had to fit into the appropriate image. Fake tans, fake nails, fashionable clothes and a conservative manner! Just not me! I felt a bit like Julia Roberts in ‘Pretty Woman’! When he was around, which wasn’t very often, I tried to live up to his version of me, but when he was away on business, I would sink again into depression, alcohol and drugs. I was alone a lot and suicide started to become an attractive option. I had bulimia and had begun to practise self-mutilation again. My long-term companion, jealousy, began to torment me even worse than it had before. I was convinced my boyfriend was having an affair, but I couldn’t leave because depression brings its own form of apathy. And where was I to go? Then my brother came to stay with us for a while. He had just become a Christian, and offered me the first glimmer of hope I’d had for years. But I was too lost in my dark world to nurture that hope. I thought it would be yet another let down and my resources for bouncing back were running near empty. But my brother kept talking about how the Lord had changed his life and although my eyes were turned inward, I listened and the seeds were planted, but I still couldn’t believe it would happen to me.

I have found that God never forces us to be someone we aren’t. He brings the real us to the surface and works with the raw material to design the person we were always meant to be. He is faithful to complete the work He began in us but never leaves us without a choice in the matter. When we decide to let God have His way, we grow and blossom, but when we choose to fight God’s plan for us, that’s when we begin to wither and die. God created us, and formed us in our mother’s womb. He knows who we are really, and it is pleasing to Him. The baggage we collect on our walk through life can be put down and left behind, if we choose to believe in His promises to us, and not in the devil’s lies. God peels us like an onion, one layer at a time, to get down to the heart of us. And peeling an onion always brings tears. But when we give Him permission to have His way with us, He builds us up again into with the character of Jesus. I love the saying that when life squeezes us, Jesus juice should come out. And when we fail, we have the knowledge and hope that God doesn’t give up on us, even if we sometimes give up on Him.

Anyway, one night in 1997 I was driving home very drunk and very depressed. I stopped the car and staggered out into the middle of the road. At this point, looking back, I can see that even then God was in control, moving things into position. The possibilities for tragedy were endless, but instead of the evening ending in road kill or rape, a man stopped to help me and I got home in one piece. I didn’t know it, but he was a Christian, and when I phoned him on Monday to thank him for his assistance, he mentioned that perhaps I should turn to God for help. I humoured him and didn’t think anymore of it, but then I received a note in my post box with the name of a councillor, Adolf Shultz. I needed to talk to someone anyway, as my depression had intensified, so I decided to go and see him.

Adolf was able to answer the questions I had about Christianity in a way that made belief and faith seem so simple and so right. He had the proof I needed that the Bible was not just a big con, and that Jesus did and does exist as the Son of God. I didn’t really care that Jesus loved me – I’d been ‘loved’ by so many, those words didn’t have any effect on me. What did make me sit up and listen was that in Christ were the answers to those questions I’d been asking all my life. Suddenly I had hope that there was some meaning to life, there was a point to it all – that God had a plan for each and every one of us. That blew my mind. Imagine realising, after a pointless and aimless existence that everything that happens, everyone you meet, everything you do, has a reason! Even if that reason is not clear, just trusting in God, knowing that whatever happens, is part of His plan for you… WOW! For the first time in my life the chance for an enormous burden to be lifted off my very tired shoulders had presented itself. I could finally give up the responsibility of trying to be in control all the time, of trying to sort out all the problems on my own. But still I fought. There was so much to give up – living with my partner and our materially comfortable life. I had no money of my own, no car, not even a bed. I had nothing without my partner. Give it all up? On faith that God would provide? Yeah right!

But God always gives back far more than we could ever give up. Not always on a material scale but in the important stuff that really counts.

For two weeks I tried to run, but just about every day something weird, almost supernatural, happened to me. Things too strange to just be circumstances. People I’d pass in the street would be talking about Jesus, acquaintances revealed themselves to be Christians – it just kept popping up in the strangest ways in the strangest places. Finally two things happened that made me take that final step.

First I told Adolf that I was going on an overseas trip in four or five months and I would think about becoming a Christian when I returned. I wanted to have uninhibited fun whilst on my holiday (I was going on my own) and Christianity would only get in the way. I wasn’t ready yet, I said. Adolf suggested I try going to church, so I did. The pastor gave a sermon from John 4, where Jesus says ‘Do you not say, ‘It is still four months until harvest time comes? Look! I tell you, raise your eyes and observe the fields and see how they are already white for harvesting.’ God was speaking directly to me!

Well, that threw the fear of God into me, I can tell you! But still I hesitated. Then the second thing happened. I was at an automatic teller machine when I saw two young people, a boy and a girl, walking down the street. He was playing his guitar and quietly singing to her. I thought it was so romantic – I smiled and turned away. I was busy at the machine when I heard that guitar start up right behind me. And those two nameless children of God started singing to me – ‘Jesus loves you, this we know…’

Well, I rushed over to Adolf’s and demanded to be saved, right there and then. When God calls you that loudly, you don’t stop to ask stupid questions, I can tell you. So Adolf and I prayed together and asked the Lord to come into my life. I was totally transformed almost overnight. It was as if my perception of life shifted, I looked at things differently and reacted differently to situations and circumstances that would previously have got me really riled up. These things just didn’t seem important anymore so emotions like jealousy and anger and depression disappeared. I stopped smoking and doing drugs without any withdrawal symptoms. I stopped swearing without even realising it. I learned to at least like myself, which was surprisingly easy once He had stripped away the filth I had collected and washed me with His blood. I stopped living in sin, found my own place, got a bed and a car…. I kept handing it all to the Lord and He kept coming through for me. Because the Lord does provide, if you take that step of faith. He will never forsake you. He began making me a whole person, with a mind that is not twisted by fear, anger and hate, but filled with peace and joy and love.

My walk with the Lord has been hard. It is easier to be bad than it is to be good. That’s why we need His strength. But God always pulls us out of the pits we dig for ourselves when we reach for His hand again.

In South Africa for the two years of my toddler-hood in Christ, my hunger for the Word was consuming. I stuffed my head full of knowledge and learnt everything I could about our God. I even began teaching Bible study classes for new Christians. But the next two years, after I had moved to the UK, this knowledge turned into a form of legalism and I lost that beautiful natural relationship with the Lord that I had had. My heart grew cold and my faith stagnated. But once God showed me what had happened, I prayed about it, and He returned to me the joy of my first salvation, with the added bonus that everything I had learned became truth in my heart.

When I moved to the UK, I suffered badly from culture shock, on a spiritual level too. I couldn’t find a church or any fellowship and I got mixed up with the world again. I began a relationship that stopped being celibate after six months and I became pregnant. I couldn’t forgive myself for ‘letting God down’ and turned from Him in shame. I was advised by a Christian councillor to move in with Chris, the father of the baby, as she said we were already married in the eyes of God. Scared and pregnant, I ignored the obvious error of this statement and began again to live in sin. After Joshua was born, I began to forgive myself and started to look to God again. I found a church and began to have fellowship with Him and with other Christians. God then told me very clearly, almost supernaturally, to move out from living in sin and He would provide. And when I obeyed Him, scared as I was and with the added responsibility of a baby, He provided so well, and blessed me so much for obeying Him, that my cup literally over flowed. I had to ask Him to stop as I had no more room left in the house He had given! He also worked it so that Chris and I are able to remain in a relationship that does not compromise God’s Word and yet be full time parents to Joshua. Romans 8:28 says ‘All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose’. Joshua, my gorgeous son, has more than anything bought this verse to life for me, because even though he was conceived in sin, it is through my love for him that I have been able to grasp the concept of how much God loves me. And what with my past experience in the love department, this has been an unbelievable revelation for me.

God is faithful to continue the work He started in me, and I am grateful to Him for His patience with me and that He can see potential where I see only failure. Only recently He has revealed what path He wants me to take in ministry, and He has done it at the only time when it could have been possible for me to follow that path. I can only stand back in awe at this amazing God we serve, whose timing is always perfect and whose plan for us is always the best possible one.

And the answers to those original questions of mine? What’s the meaning of life? To love, of course. Why are we here? To spread the joy of His salvation to as many people as possible. And the point? Eternal life with Jesus!

Amanda