Train Up a Child

By Sara Lynn Mills

From the Archives: Winter 2013

“Chasity is going to get baptized,” my mom said to me as I crawled onto her lap in the big La-Z-Boy recliner one afternoon. I was nine years old, and Chasity was seven. We had been inseparable best friends for over a year. “Oh! Well, can I get baptized too, then?” I asked Mom. She looked at me very seriously and asked me if I had Jesus in my heart. I responded with a vigorous, affirmative shake of my head. It was true. Mom had taught me to pray every night before bed when I was very young. “Thank you dear Jesus for this nice day, and thank you for all the things you’ve made and done and given to us.” Then I would fill in with my various childhood worries and requests, “Please be with people traveling, that their planes and helicopters won’t crash (in the wake of the deaths of NASCAR drivers Alan Kulwicki and Davey Allison in April and July of 1993), please don’t let our house burn down tonight, please keep my kittens safe as they play in the woods, etc,” and then we would end with “and God bless Momma and Daddy, MaMa and Papa, God bless Granny, and God bless me. Amen.” After I was old enough to say my bedtime prayers by myself, I would add every night, “And please come into my heart, and forgive me for my sins, if you haven’t already, because I want to live in Heaven with you, I don’t want to go to Hell.” Every night. Just in case. Being nine years old and Southern Baptist, I was scared to death of Hell, and knew that the only escape was to have God and Jesus in my heart, but I wasn’t quite sure how to get them there. I didn’t tell Mom any of this, but assured her that I was ready for baptism. 

Chasity and I were baptized a few weeks later, but I still wasn’t sure it was enough to keep me out of Hell, so I kept praying my prayer each night. I went to Sunday School and “Big Church” every Sunday, and was involved in all the activities offered to the children and youth. I listened to my parents and teachers, and followed all the rules to the point of being obnoxious. Mom, Dad, and I started going to a new church when I was fifteen, and I finally began to feel like God and Jesus were in my heart. I gladly went to church every time the doors were open, didn’t say bad words or lie, didn’t drink alcohol or do drugs, and piously strove to “save myself” for marriage. Our youth group was closely knit, especially after the unexpected death of my father when I was sixteen, and the reasons for going to church seemed to start to make sense. 

Then I went away to college. 

I became one of those tragic statistics, one of those young adults who grew up in church, then went to college and drifted off. I still went to my home church on holidays and weekends when I went to visit my mother, but I didn’t get plugged in to any of the activities offered through the university and the local churches nearby. I still didn’t say bad words or lie, didn’t drink alcohol or do drugs, and piously strove to “save myself” for marriage. I wasn’t “bad,” but I wasn’t really living with a purpose, either. I met a boy and fell head over heels for him my first week at college. He asked me to marry him, and after almost two years with him, we got married. Like many twenty year olds, I was certain that I was grown up enough, and had everything figured out. It worked for a few years, but by the time I was twenty-three and he was twenty-eight, we had each changed so much that our differences were vast, and apathy, selfishness, distraction, and lies crept into our marriage, which eventually crumbled beyond repair. I moved out, permanently, three days after my twenty-fourth birthday.

A friend of mine, to whom I am eternally thankful, asked me to go with her to her church after I left my husband, and I readily accepted her invitation. Since I was starting fresh with a new apartment, and a new job, in a town where I had few friends, I knew going to church might get me back on the right path. I started going to a Sunday School class and Sunday worship, and after a couple of months, I joined the choir, even though I’m a mediocre, at best, singer. My life was still a mess, but I was finally starting to see God. I remember lying on my bedroom floor one night, crying out and flailing my arms to God, rambling, “God, I’ve messed up so much. I’ve hurt you, I’ve hurt other people, my friends, my ex-husband, my Mother, and I’ve been hurt by others, I’ve made so many mistakes, I don’t know how I even got this way. I’m so confused, I’m a mess, I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, and I need you now because You’re the only one who can fix it. I’m so sorry, please come back into my life, please come be with me and lead me and help me learn to make good decisions and be the person you created me to be.” Then I collapsed into incoherent mumbling and pleas, and God came into my life, for real. I finally realized what it meant to “have God and Jesus in my heart.” It wasn’t just about “being saved” from Hell. It was about a real relationship with a real God. He created me and loves me, and He wants to see me happy and healthy. He wants to help me and show me how much He loves me. Beyond that, He wants me to love Him back, and love and help other people. For the first time in years, I felt peaceful, forgiven, and encouraged.

I joined Boone United Methodist Church later that year, and suddenly, that’s been over five years ago. There have been pain, grief, confusion, chaos, and even some haphazard wandering through my life, even since that life-changing revelation in my bedroom floor that night, but God has always been beside me, even when He took my mother home in 2011, after a horrific eight month battle with cancer. People often ask how I deal with everything that has been thrown my way in my thirty short years, and for me, the answer is simple. In Philippians 4:6 (NLT), we are commanded “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all He has done.” It has taken years, well, all of my life, to get to this point, but for whatever reason, God has finally given me the grace to go through life freely, without fear. I simply live one day at a time, knowing that, while there are struggles and problems in this life, I am never alone. I am surrounded by friends and family, and a God who loves me, and I don’t have to have all the answers. However, there is one question that I definitely have the answer to, the question that my mother asked me over twenty years ago. My answer, finally, is “Yes, absolutely, God and Jesus are in my heart!”

Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”