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Converted at School

11:34am Friday, 16th July 2010

Lea Carswell

At 14, I was a Year 9 student at a low-end private school, the eldest child of parents who finally divorced after a long separation. When I was 13, my dad remarried and I hated everything about it: having to share him with my insipid stepmother in a new house and, most of all, the two horrible stepsisters, one of whom took my crown as the eldest which relegated me to second place.
Everyone loved me but somehow I didn’t feel it. I did well at school, eagerly sought and received the approval of teachers and had a lot of friends. I was interested in boys literally to the point of distraction. There was a lot happening around me but there was an empty space that could not be filled.
It was a church school and regular Chapel and Divinity lessons were part of the curriculum. Like the rest of my family I had no real interest in God. I tolerated these fixtures in the weekly timetable without enthusiasm.
My parents had sent me there strictly as a way of avoiding the flush-your-head-down-the-toilet local school, with the hope that I’d get a better education and nicer friends. However my parents didn’t figure on me meeting Jesus.
A Christian teacher arranged some after-school seminars. One guest speaker, a Bible college student named David, told us his story, about how Jesus had been with him during the most tragic and physically painful period of his life.
He spoke of how Jesus had suffered everything that we can suffer – we can’t possibly experience pain greater than the agony Jesus endured during his life and death. The two things that struck me: Jesus totally understands my pain and he suffered for my sake.
I stayed in touch with David and his colleague who gave me a gospel tract called A Bridge to Life. (To be honest I probably had a crush on David’s friend though I can’t recall his name.) I spoke to his friend again on the telephone and he shared how he had become a Christian. He explained the little booklet and it all made great sense.
I hung up, went into my room and prayed that God would make me a Christian, that he would forgive me and put his Holy Spirit in my heart to help me to live his way.
Other girls at the school were Christians and many were involved with the lunchtime Crusaders group. I became part of that group and better friends with those girls (even though I thought they were a bit ‘daggy’). I had no church background. I didn’t know the songs they sang (or even why they sang them) or what the Bible meant. But the most obvious gap was my lack of knowledge of Bible stories and parables.
I felt silly and foolish with my non-Christian friends and with my Christian friends as well but I went each week to the Christian group and to holiday camps and soon started to learn the “rules”
At 16, I decided I wanted to go to church. My mother was against it and gave me a hard time. She once said, only half-joking, “Why can’t you just be like normal girls and get pregnant or something?” Dad just humoured me.
I joined my local church and within a year or two was entrenched in life as a Christian, being part of a fantastic home group and going to two services when I could. I made choices based on faith, hungered for knowledge and tried to spread the gospel with those around me.
That would have been the end of the story except for one little problem.
By my early 20s, I was at university and ready for life to happen. I yearned for a richly creative, adventurous, romantic existence instead of being a straight, live-at-home, reasonably obedient student. I was sick of being a “good girl”. The world offered so many other possibilities! Many Christians I knew were just a little bit boring and I wanted more. I longed to be bad, even just a little bit. And I wanted love.
So I was bad. I became involved in a sinful relationship with a Christian man. It was destructive, often miserable and guilt-ridden but never dull. It hurt so many people. The affair lasted a couple of years but left me in a spiritual wasteland where I wandered for ten years, kind of wanting to know God again but not really sure.
At 14 I had accepted Christ based on his love but didn’t understand what it was to be forgiven. For me, guilt over my sin was just head-knowledge, and didn’t resonate in my heart. Instead I felt cheated that I’d missed out on all my chances to be disobedient. I just didn’t get the meaning in Christ’s death.
After a decade of partying and wasting myself in bad relationships I was high in anger and low in self-esteem. I was also full of sin and guilt. I always thought that I had to make amends and convince God I was worthy of forgiveness. Everything changed when I realised instead that Christ had already forgiven me. He wanted me back – even though I’ll never be worthy.
That was 12 years ago. Life isn’t perfect, but I have a wonderful Christian husband, those daggy schoolgirls are my closest friends in the world and God’s grace is sufficient for me.