Christian Poetry Books Christian poetry book publisher. Semi-Annual Christian Poetry Contest. Provides publishing services to poets whose work glorifies God's words. Sharing the words of God through poetry. Standing for Something : 10 Neglected Virtues ''Virtue is too often neglected, if not scorned or ridiculed as old-fashioned, confining, unenlightened,'' laments author Gordon B. Hinckley. Even as he enumerates all of America's social ills Hinckley believes there is a remedy. Chapter by chapter Hinckley presents 10 old-fashioned virtues that will return America to the glory envisioned by its founding fathers. These virtues include Love, Honesty, Morality, Civility, Learning, Forgiveness, Thrift and Industry, Gratitude, Optimism, and Faith. In his glowing foreword, Mike Wallace (of 60 Minutes fame) writes that Gordon Hinckley is an ''optimistic leader of the Mormon Church who fully deserves the almost universal admiration that he gets.'' The Greatest Miracle of All Drive Time Devotional Audio CD collection of SheLovesGod study lessons on the topic of Christ's ability to transform your life and help you become the person He knows you can be. Written & read by Marnie Pehrson.

FROM A POTHEAD TO A PREACHER'S WIFE

HE HEARD MY CRY

He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. Psalm 40:2

As I stood there in the dark, dingy bathroom of a friends home

where we had been partying most of the night, I caught a glimpse of

my reflection in the mirror. It seemed like I was looking at someone I

did not know. The constant drug and party lifestyle we had been

living, left my body nothing but a shell of what it used to be. My face

was gaunt and sunken. I lost so much weight because of the

amphetamines I had been taking for several months.

As I continued to gaze in the mirror that night, it seemed like

there was an evil presence and a good presence in the room with me

as I contemplated suicide. Oh I wasn't actually hearing voices, but

the negative thoughts came like, "You're a terrible mother and wife.

Why don't you just end it all?" Then there would be thoughts of, "

No! Don't do it. I love you!" The battle went on and on. I felt like I

was losing my mind. I now know what I was experiencing that night

was the conviction of the Holy Spirit and Satan waging war for my

soul. My thoughts then turned to my three year old son playing in

the next room. He had no idea his mother was about to take her

life. I always said I'd never raise my child in an unstable

environment. My thoughts then raced back to my childhood. I

remembered laying in an open field in the woods behind my

childhood home. I would lay there looking up at the big blue sky and

talk to God. I don't know why as a child I would talk to God. My

family did not go to church or talk about God. The only time I would

hear His name was in a curse word. I do remember going to a near

by Baptist church at Easter time. My mother would buy my sister

and me a new dress and patent leather shoes if we went to church

on Easter Sunday.

My mother would always make holidays a big deal at our

home. She would let us children help her color the eggs for the

Easter Bunny so he could fill our baskets that evening when we

went to bed.

The next day we would go Easter egg hunting and come home to an

Easter ham with all the trimmings. Christmas time was also a big

celebration with all the family. We would have a big meal fit for a

king, but we didn't celebrate the birth of King Jesus at Christmas. I

just thought the holiday was about Santa Claus and presents. Through the years things started to change around our home.

My mother went to work at the local tavern as a barmaid. My father

was a mechanic and I remember every evening when he came home

from work he would take a shot of whiskey from the bottle he kept in

the kitchen cabinet. It wasn't long before my parents would spend

their weekends going out leaving me with my older siblings. It

seemed like overnight my parents started fighting.

When the fighting got so intense, I would run to the woods to cry

out to God and escape to my fantasy world. I would daydream of

when I would be a mother and how my home would be a peaceful

place. Suddenly my thoughts were back in my friends bathroom

staring in the mirror. I don't know how long I stood there. I heard

my son crying and my husband call my name to say it was time to

head home. Our home was nine miles out in the country, and as

often was the case, my husband and I drove in silence. We weren't

very good at talking to each other. We would often drive in

companionable silence. Tonight that suited me just fine, for as we

drove, I began to play out in my mind how I would carry out my plan

to end my life.

I would tell my husband that I was going to stay up a little

while and watch a late night movie. It wasn't unusual for me not to

go to bed when he did. Not only was I hooked on "speed," but my

husband and I were on the verge of a divorce. Our lives had been

going in two different directions for months. He had his drinking

friends and I had my druggie friends.

I hated everything about alcohol, the smell, the taste, and the

memories of my parents drinking and fighting. My husband was the

one that introduced me to marijuana. He came home from work one

night with two "joints," and I started to smoke one of them. I fell in

love with the feeling it gave me. It didn't take long before my

husband and I were growing and selling marijuana from our home in

the presence of our son.

My life was steadily spiraling out of control. I soon started

popping all kinds of pills and snorting a white powdery substance up

my nose. I was on a destructive path that was not only destroying

me, but also the ones I loved.

As we pulled into the driveway of our home, I began to

implement my plan. I encouraged my husband to go on to bed. I

told him I was going to find a movie on TV or something to unwind.

My husband murmured something and staggered toward the house.

Before he made it to the house he had to stop to throw up in the

yard. He never could drink much without throwing up.

One time he got sick while driving home from a party. He didn't

even get the car pulled over before he threw up all over the steering

wheel and driver's seat. Even though I was eight months pregnant, I

had to drive us home because as often was the case, my husband

passed out. I tried to clean the vomit up as best as I could. It was

cold outside, but I had to leave the windows rolled down to air the

car of the stench.

We thought we were having so much fun even though our

evenings would end up in a fight, or my husband would pass out

somewhere. " What kind of life is that?" I thought as I moved toward

the television to find a movie.

I waited for my husband to go to sleep so I could carry out my

plan to end my life. I just knew everyone would be better off

without me. Let's face it, I failed as a mother.

Once again I found myself thinking back to a time in my

childhood when I was around eight years old. My mother yelled at

me for using my older sister's fingernail polish. I did not know at the

time that my mother was suffering from depression and her and my

father were having marital problems. But as an eight year old little

girl, I felt I had disappointed my mother. I remember I went to the

kitchen and pulled out a butcher knife from the drawer. I

put the knife to my stomach wanting to kill myself for being a

failure as a daughter. This was my first memory of wanting to commit

suicide. There would be many more times in the years to come that I

would contemplate suicide.

This time I had every intentions of carrying out my plan. Once

my husband fell asleep, I would get in the bathtub, slit my wrist, and

slowly drift off. Death seemed so desirable. so peaceful. I was only

twenty-one years old, but I felt like a tired old woman who had seen

and done it all.

As I turned the channel this way and that way, I suddenly

heard the voice of a man say, "You may be out there strung out on

drugs thinking your life is hopeless and useless. What you need is

Jesus Christ." " Who is this guy?" I thought. I moved closer to the

television and heard him say it didn't matter what we had done, God

would forgive us and He has a plan and purpose for my life.

As I continued to listen to him, my thoughts went back to a

time when I worked at a local meat market. The woman I wrapped

meat next to shared Jesus with me everyday. I did not have a clue

what she was telling me. She talked about being "saved" and "born-

again." I now know the reason I did not know what she was talking

about was because it says in the Bible in First Corinthians 2:14,

"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come

from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot

understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." (NIV)

Although I did not understand what she was talking about that

day, I did know that she cared deeply about my husband and myself.

For some reason God gave this lady such a burden for our souls

that she would pray for us every morning.

Now everything she had been telling me made sense. For the first

time in my life that cold winter night in my living room I understood

I was a sinner and I needed a Savior. I continued to listen as the

tears rolled down my cheeks. These were different tears; tears of

sadness for how I had been living my life; tears of repentance. I

Asked Jesus to forgive me and to come into my life and make me the

person He wanted me to be. I then raised my hands to heaven and

told the Lord if He could do anything with my messed up life, it was

His because I could not handle life anymore. I did not know what I

had done at that moment. That in the church world I was now

"born-again." All I knew was that a peace came over me that I have

never know before.

No longer did I have the plan to end my life that night. I went

to bed and slept all night. Because of my amphetamine use I did not

sleep or eat much, but that night I had the most peaceful sleep.

A few days had past when in the wee hours of the morning I

woke up to find my husband sitting up in bed and writing. I asked

him what he was doing writing at four in the morning. He said he

was just writing down his thoughts. I asked him if he cared if I read

what he had written. He handed me the notebook and I began to

read things like; You need to get new friends and new activities. You

need to get on a better road to life.

After reading what my husband had written I turned to him and

told him what had happened to me a few days earlier. We both knew

someone was trying to get our attention and tell us something.

Now in the years prior to this, we had Christians and pastors

come to our home to share the Gospel with us, but we did not want

anything to do with them. Not only were we drug using hippies,

but we had a six foot Boa Constrictor that frequently slithered

around freely in our home. Needless to say, we never saw those

Christians again!

On this night , though, when it seemed like God was trying to

get our attention, we wondered where are the Christians now that

we wanted them? After we talked about what was apparently going

on in our life at that moment, we decided what we needed to do was

to go to church. At that time we both thought going to church would

solve everything. Of course, now we know it is not religion, but a

relationship with Jesus that makes the difference.

Since my husband's parent's and my parent's did not raise

either of us in the church, we did not know where to begin. This was

a whole new world to us. We laid there tossing our thoughts back

and forth trying to decide what we should do and where we should

go. We finally came to the decision to try a little church I attended

when I was fourteen years old. I'm ashamed to say, but the only

reason I was attending this particular church was to get the attention

of a young man who went to that church.

This time though I was going to church to "find God." When

we walked into the church I saw new faces and some old familiar

ones. Sitting to the left of the auditorium was the young man I tried

to pursue when I was a teenager. I noticed he had two little girls

sitting next to him. I later found out his wife had left him and he

was a broken man seeking God's forgiveness and grace too.

As the service began it all seemed so different. The warmth

and friendliness I remembered as a child did not seem to be there. It

was down right cold. For some reason this church had become cold

and uninviting. Maybe it was because my husband had long hair and

a scraggly beard. Or maybe it was because of the way we dressed.

We did not have church cloths. All we had were bell bottom jeans

with patches and tye dyed t-shirts.

We left there feeling depressed, displaced, and dejected. That

whole week we continued our quest to find the answer to this pull

toward God and the longing to serve Him. We did not do our week-

end partying as usual and our hippie friends wondered what had

happened to us.

The next Sunday we tried another church. Still the religious

well seemed to be dry. We went another week discouraged. We

began to wonder if we would ever find a church where we felt

welcomed. The following week we decided to attend a little Baptist

church in Lonedell Missouri where we lived. The part time pastor

there had been my husbands seventh and eighth grade teacher. He

was also the pastor that married us in 1970.

When we walked into the church that Sunday morning, we

were surprised to find that the pastor we were expecting to see, no

longer pastored at this church. The present pastor was someone we

had never met before. He was a middle aged man with blonde hair

combed back. He wore a bright colored sport jacket and looked like a

TV evangelist.

In his sermon he talked about how he used to be a

salesman constantly on the road. He talked about how he became

depressed , lonely, and dependent on alcohol. He went on to say

that one night in a motel room he turned on the TV, mostly for

background noise. Suddenly he heard the voice of a famous crusade

preacher talking about the void that everyone has in their life. The

TV evangelist went on to say that people often try to fill that void

with things like alcohol, sex, and drugs. Jesus is the only thing that

can fill that void. Jesus said he is the way the truth and the life. The

pastor went on to tell how he gave his heart and life to Jesus that

night. Sitting there I was thinking, "That is what happened to me.

That was the same experience I had." In this little church unlike the

others we had attended, the pastor gave an invitation at the

conclusion of the sermon. People were invited to come forward to

pray , join the church, or whatever the Lord was leading them to do.

Everyone was standing and singing an old familiar hymn, "Just As I

Am."

It did not take long before my husband and I had tears

rolling down our face. It was though we both had a death grip on the

pew. We stood there crying wondering what we should do. The

preacher looked right at us and said," You want to come, but the old

devil says to wait until next time," It wasn't the fact of waiting until

next time as it was that neither my husband or myself were raised in

the church and we did not know what would happen or what was

suppose to happen when a person went up in front of the church.

The invitation finally came to a close and we got into our car

to leave. We had gotten into the habit of asking one another after

each church visit what the other one felt about the church service.

We both agreed we liked the service and we both wanted to come

back the next Sunday.

We did return the next week. Again we had the same

experience when we got to the invitation. This time though the

pastor could see my husband needed Jesus. Leaving the service that

day as my husband reached to shake the pastor's hand, the pastor

looked my husband in the eye and asked if he needed to talk about

something. My husband told the pastor, "Man I need to talk to

someone. I feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders."

The pastor excused himself from the rest of the congregation, and

took my husband into his office to share with him from the

Bible. He told my husband that we all have sinned. The pastor told

my husband that Jesus died for his sin and all he needed to do was

to ask Jesus to forgive him and come into his life. There in the

Pastor's office In December of 1975 my husband gave his heart to

Jesus. That evening we both went to church. This time when the

service came to an end, my husband and I did not hesitate to go to

the alter during the invitation. We let the congregation know what

Jesus had done in our lives. A couple of weeks later we were

baptized together.

I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams that my

husband and I would one day be standing side by side in a

baptismal pool in a little country Baptist church; me the former pot-

head and him a future preacher.