[Faith-talk] miscellaneous, again

Mon Jul 24 16:18:11 UTC 2017

Hey Sandra, thanks for sharing your testimony. It's great to hear how God is working in your life, and how you are striving to mature in your faith and in your growth as a human being. I hope that this continues for you and I will be praying for you. Well I'm really tired we had quite an evening last night. There were over 3000 Catholics gathered to pray last night it was an awesome time of unity and the presence of Christ was very much there. Well I've got to go, but God bless you and all of your endeavors.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 24, 2017, at 6:25 AM, Sandra Streeter via Faith-Talk <faith-talk at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hey, everyone,
> 
> Ericka, normally, the phrase “community organizer” raises some hackles for me, but if you’re involved in that one and it’s inoffensive, it must be (thankfully) not the kind I have problems with! I’ll have to check out that org., as well as the blog Kevin was talking about.
> 
> Kevin, would you be willing to share that testimony with the list, too? H’mm, that’s a thought—we could all—any who are comfortable, I mean—share our testimonies, just for grins.
> 
> I grew up in the Congregational church, and occasionally, my mom would read little-kids’ books with Christian themes aloud to me. Also, once I learned Braille, I got exposure to Christian themes through Christian Record Foundation via “Tiny Tots” and some print-Braille children’s books. When I was nine, God continued tailing me through the new kid in school, a PK who asked if I wanted to invite Jesus into my heart. Anyone who has attended New England Congregational churches knows that, generally, they steer clear of evangelism, but—and I can only attribute this to the Holy Spirit—I knew exactly what Naomi meant and assented. However, there wasn’t much follow-up, so I never got input as to how to keep that relationship with God going, so kinda drifted out for a while. During my early teens, I ended up going to a junior high where I knew very few people, and the ones I had known were in different academic tracks than I, so other than occasionally sleeping over, I didn’t get much time with them; as a result of that unexpected dynamic, I became terribly, painfully shy (of course, not recognizing then that some of that reaction to change could be directly attributable to mild autism), my grades dropped (another issue there was that the material had become far harder to master than during elementary school, of course, which I don’t think I had expected either). All of this triggered deep, dark depression, untreated, because in my family, you didn’t go get counseling. Well, when I started high school, I had the same situation where I was parted from previous peers, but this time, it worked for me, because I hadn’t been close to the “in-crowd” with whom I had been taking classes. Several of my new peers were trying to reach out to me, and their warmth began to give me hope about a better social environment. In February of 1981, when I was 16 and still in that sophomore year, another new kid approached me and, gradually, over time, would drop remarks about God, Because my life had been so dark for several years, I began thinking, “She is so kind and open—there has to be something different about her, and she keeps mentioning God...” In March, I got the courage to invite her overnight, and, although I don’t remember much of the conversation (beyond the classic question about, “what about those people no one reaches—are they going to hell”, by 1:00 in the morning, I really saw the beauty of Christ, and the truth and value of what I knew about the “historical Christ”, and that He and I needed to be a team in life. Well, I went to school a very different girl two days later (a Monday”"), starting to volunteer answers during class, to read aloud (I had been refusing to do that for a couple years), gaining confidence academically so that I could apply for college, hanging out with the artistic kids (yes, I, who had been a social misfit now had a clique); it wasn’t easy, I still had to make the right choices and all that, but Christ enabled me to get the courage to start overcoming. .
> 
> So, I started out in a social work degree as a college freshman, locally, then, again through my high-school friend, discovered Christian colleges, and spent my next year at Barrington College, in R.I., in a youth ministry program; unfortunately, the school, due to fiscal issues, ended up merging with another New England Christian liberal arts school, so my final 2 years in my BA were at Gordon College, in Wenham, MA. After graduating, I took a job at a photo processing plant for a year and a half, which I only lost because of transportation—not worth spending most of what I made on cab-fare (in the days before we finally got Paratransit). After a couple more years not getting new work, I asked myself, “What else can I do,” and went to study blind rehab at Western MI U., and found out that I’m really not made for that (as I’m not made entirely of youth ministry stuff). Having a losing various jobs since has not been a cake-walk, causing me, for a while a few years ago after an especially-painful loss to kinda lose touch with God, but since then, I have had another job and another loss (which I was determined to handle very differently than the previous one—not to let it shake my faith or cause me to disengage from other people as before). I’m again looking for work and possibly thinking about returning to school for a counseling degree geared especially toward those with eating disorders—that’s if the medical software can become compatible with access programming; we shall see. Failing that, if again compatibility  with sighted software can be assured, I might consider something in the autism field. Right now, I’m working on finding some volunteer pursuits that might work, and I’m going to have to trust God with that. I’m part of a UM church here that has, in the main, offered me more involvement as a blind person than other churches (sometimes a church-structure issue rather than anything where previous churches were resistant to accommodating a blind person, thankfully, though). I don’t agree with a lot theologically, but I believe I’m partly there to minister, not to be ministered to; I’ve always had the goal of being able to stick around when not everything was stylistically or theologically in parallel with myself, so I see this as hopefully a mark of growth, for me. Hopefully, that tea-party thing will become another outlet for my proclivities; the meeting I heard about conflicts with a Bible study but I may just skip one night to attend if transportation does work out, because I believe it is so important, as some of you have said, to do what we can to bring our country back to some semblance of Godly values and behaviors—I’m not one for a government-run theocracy, but at least to return to true Constitutional integrity.
> 
> So, now you have it—and, I’m sure, you can see all the faith influences mentioned above coming into play, now, when I bring up or contribute to topics here. It hass certainly been a wild ride, and whatever didn’t get covered here, I’m sure, will be mentioned in passing as I continue to respond or otherwise make remarks here. thanks for listening!
> 
> 
> 
> Sandra
> 
> One can never consent to creep, when one feels an impulse to soar.
> (Helen Keller)
> 
> 
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