Lydia's testimony

We are so thankful that God has worked in our lives. As children, both my husband and I grew up in Christian homes. In college we met each other and in two years we were married. At this time we knew the Lord, but we were not walking closely with Him or going to His Word for guidance. We were following the wisdom of the world instead. Soon after we were married we had a very stressful year.

Clint, my husband who is a deputy sheriff, responded to a domestic call. While on the call, the man fighting with his wife shot at Clint with a shotgun. Clint called for back up and soon the whole department was in a stand-off with the man who shot at Clint. Twice, Clint almost shot the man, but each time the situation changed and Clint didn’t have to shoot him. We believe this was God’s providence so that Clint would not have to deal with killing someone. This experience caused some trauma symptoms in Clint for about a year. He had nightmares and didn’t go anywhere unarmed. He still does not like to go anywhere unarmed, but thankfully the nightmares have stopped.

Shortly before this he ended up on a call where a young man, whom Clint knew, committed suicide. The combination of these calls and some other traumatic ones were very hard on Clint and our marriage as many people in law enforcement and the medical profession will testify to. I, on the other hand, was very sick with morning sickness (all-day sickness more like). I was not much of a help, I am sorry to say, at this time. It was hard to know how to deal with these sorts of things. It was painful for both of us to watch the other person we loved suffer. We had taken some marriage counseling before we were married, but it did not come close to talking about the things we were dealing with. The thought of people fighting over where to hang pictures or who squeezed the toothpaste tube wrong really seemed stupid in the mist of what we were dealing with. A week after our daughter was born the department moved us to another town in the county because they needed Clint to work at one of the other towns. We then had to get use to a new town, new house and new baby. It was the grace of God that kept us together that year. We figured, if we could make it through that year we could make it though anything.

The day after our first anniversary I discovered I was pregnant with our second baby. It was another very hard pregnancy. Because of our challenging first years we started to depend more on God and we started to read the Bible more and church was becoming more and more important to us. God was starting to move us on the journey to Himself, but we still had no idea what He had in store. After our son was born Clint felt we should not have anymore children. Our families also felt the pregnancies were too hard on me. I resisted doing anything and after about a year and a half I was pregnant again. Clint was upset that we were going through a really rough pregnancy again. I ended up in the hospital and the doctor did not let me out until I had someone to care for me full time. Clint picked me up from the hospital with the two children and drove me over 500 miles to my dad and mom’s to stay until I was better. I stayed with my parents about 2 months. This was very hard on the kids, me and even harder on my husband. After our second son was born our marriage was starting to go down hill. I was disappointed in how Clint was dealing with the stress at work and home. I was not being the wife he needed. Because I felt I needed to fix him, I became harder on him and started to nag him. He thought my problems were stupid because of the extreme problems he was dealing with at work. On top of all this, as our daughter was getting closer to school age I began to feel a real tug on my heart to home school. This did not go over well at all with Clint. Instead of going to God and letting God deal with this, I began to fight with Clint about home schooling. I was also upset because I was the one reading the Bible to the kids at night while Clint would watch T.V. Our oldest son had a really bad attitude about the Bible because it was not important to his dad. Finally one night Clint confronted me about my disappointment in him. He felt he would never be able to live up to my expectations. This really hit me!

I didn’t realize how I had been hurting my husband with my demands that he change to be what I wanted him to be. I realized I didn’t know how to be a godly wife or mother. I needed some help. I started talking to a mother in our town who was home schooling and she started to mentor me. God also lead me to No Greater Joy Ministries. I found out I was not submitting to my husband the way God wanted me to. I was trying to be in control while nagging my husband to lead. I didn’t realize how much feminism I had accepted as truth. He was not deceived and knew I would never really let him lead, so he refused to pretend to be the leader. I also learned that I was not my husband’s conscience and that he was God’s son. If I had a problem with him I needed to ask God to deal with him. I started to learn to trust God and my husband.

At first, it was really scary not to be in charge. I realized I really didn’t trust God as much as I thought I did. As God helped me to let go and trust Him and my husband, my stress level went down. I was then able to really minister to my husband and his needs. I began to pray about home schooling instead of arguing with Clint about it. Through God’s grace, my husband agreed to go to a home school conference. There we met Doug Phillips and he helped Clint to see the awesome responsibility God had given him as a father. Clint agreed to home school and to “try it” for one year. We have been home schooling now for five years and we plan on going all the way through. During this time I became pregnant with our fourth child. Because God had worked so much on us individually and in our marriage we handled this pregnancy much better. I stayed home and Clint took more time off to help me. After our third son was born we found I had additional health problems. Clint decided I should not have any more pregnancies. I had learned to trust God and my husband on this. We still struggle with our decision and I pray that God will forgive us for cutting this part of our lives off. I think if we had the decision again we would do it different. We made a decision at the time that seemed the best to us. We are now looking at adoption and feel God is moving us in that direction since we can’t go back on our decision.

I had been praying that God would give Clint the desire to read the Bible to the children instead of letting me do it. It took three years of praying, but now Clint doesn’t often miss a night to read the Bible to the children and sometimes he reads the Bible two times a day to them. When I quit trying to lead and usurp my God given roll, Clint became more receptive to God. Clint has become the true leader of our house and has grown in his faith more than I ever imagined. I have also grown in my faith and love of God. We still have a long way to go, but I am excited about what God is doing in our lives.

About this time we started listening to history CDs and DVDs from Vision Forum Ministries. Finding out about the providence of God in history gave us so much hope for the future and a vision for our family. Instead of a doom and gloom look at how bad things were getting, we realized we were not alone in history. Many people before us overcame insurmountable odds with the providence of God. We are not just a family that is here today and a new generation tomorrow, but we are a continuation of our heritage. Finding out Clint was a direct descendant of William Bradford gave us a real sense of responsibility to continue a multi-generational faithfulness to God. Life has now become exciting with a fresh vision and hope for the future.

Our desire now is to glorify God by helping others to know His providence and principle. God does not have a cookie cutter plan for everyone, but He has a design and purpose for our lives. We can find His desires for family life, work, education, relationships and every other part of our lives in the Bible. The Bible really does deal with every aspect of life, not just the religious area. The Scriptures really do give us all that we need!