Yes, I believe that Yeshua - Jesus - is the eternal Word, through whom everything was created, who was born as a human being to lead a perfect life of love and sacrifice. He confronted evil by giving up his life for mankind and entering the heart of evil -death - where he confronted the rebel forces and opened the way out of death for those who would follow him out.

I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were translating the New Testament into a minority language in a non-Christian country. I met people who were risking everything to follow Jesus. I grew up among people who had left their comfortable lives and given their best years to a painstakingly slow process of translating old texts to some obscure small language. There were lots of those languages in that area of the world.

When I was two I became seriously ill and was urgently transported to my parents’ home country for treatment. Some time earlier a church member had told my parents that they would soon go through difficult times, but that God had promised to be with them every step of the way. I was treated in the ICU, one night I had a cardiac arrest. That same night a Christian woman in a far away town, who had heard of my illness but didn’t know my family personally, woke up in the middle of the night and felt the Holy Spirit urging her to pray intensely for me, not knowing how very close I was to losing my life. There were also numerous other Christians who knew my parents, that were praying for me. After that night I got better. For years afterwards I was know as the “miracle child” and people would become emotional seeing me. I felt very uncomfortable.

As I grew up and we moved permanently to my parents’ home country I met all shades of Christianity, from legalistic fundamentalists to progressive intellectuals and social activists. I did notice that in the company of some Christians I felt a special, attractive presence. I know now that it was the Holy Spirit, but I didn’t have a clue back then.

I was baptized at the age of 15, in the cold sea on a youth camp in an early summer day. I was the first one to be baptized. I had been instructed to leave the shore after my baptism and go to my room higher up to change, while the baptism service would continue. I got up from the water and started on the garden path towards the buildings. Suddenly I was filled with an intense joy. It was like a hug from the Almighty. My friend, who had been next in the baptism line, soon caught up with me and seemed to be experiencing the same. As young people we enjoyed the moment and the memory stuck with me, but I never thought more about it or tried to find out about what had happened. I didn’t get nearer to God, though he had met me there. I wanted more knowledge and read the Bible quite a lot. But I lacked understanding.

When I moved away from home I was surrounded by secularists, atheists and agnostics. I studied history. The institute of history was reasonably neutral about Christianity. Then I took on comparative religions. It was probably the most anti-Christian institute in all of the university. I began to see my church in a different light. I thought I knew better. I looked down on pastors who had little education and who made daring and maybe unwise interpretations of the Bible. But instead of confronting them about the things I observed, I just silently withdrew. Everything I had heard from committed Christians in my childhood I reduced to psychology and forgot anything that didn’t fit in my understanding.

What made me leave my faith was a step in a direction I knew my parents and their church would not accept. I had met a guy online in one of those early internet groups on email lists writing on different topics. Ours was a cross cultural childhood and how it had affected us. I decided to go meet this guy. He lived in another country. As I was telling about my travel plans to my dad a voice in my head, or more like a loud thought told me "don`t go" but I ignored it. I met the guy, and in a matter of months I moved to his country and moved together with him. I was sliding further away. I tried going to a church but didn't feel at home there. One daring woman, with whom I spoke during that period confronted me about living with my boyfriend. She was very polite, but I felt uncomfortable and stopped going to church. My boyfriend was on his way out of his faith, too. I wanted to do my own thing and had to adapt my picture of God accordingly. There were other Christians who did accept my choice, but strangely enough they didn't attract me at all.

It was difficult to settle in a new country. I was finishing my studies at my old university, working on my dissertation, which I luckily found ample material for in my new home city. But working on the dissertation the next year and a half on my own at home, I became very lonely. I did make friends with other students at the language school which I was attending, but most of those contacts didn't last and those that did were either very loose contacts, meeting occasionally, or ended up moving away.

We had a dream of moving to India for a couple of years. My boyfriend was a journalist, so he could live on writing articles about South Asia. I told him that we would have to get married, otherwise I wouldn't go. As secular as I had become in my personal life, I knew how conservative the culture in India was and I didn't want to add to the poor reputation western women had. I wanted to be respectable.

We got married. I finished my studies. We headed for India. Our plan was to stay there for two years. We came home after six months.

Half a year later my husband announced he wanted a divorce.

For some time I rented a small room. At my work place I met a guy whom I soon fell in love with. I was hanging on to a very weak faith, but did try to read my Bible every now and then. I fell upon the place where Paul warned about partnering with non-believers. I ignored it.

To make things easy and comfortable I moved together with my new boyfriend. I hit 30. Suddenly it dawned on me that we could actually establish a family and have children, something I hadn't given a thought to before. We got married. Our first daughter was born the same year and another daughter followed soon after. Now that I had two small kids, I had to take life more seriously. Looking at them I was also re-living my own childhood and analyzing it in the light of my present circumstances. I was also full of worries and doubts as to how to best bring them up. I contacted a pastor and had a confidential talk with her to ease my mind. She was a young Lutheran main stream pastor. I was shocked to find that she really couldn’t offer me anything with real substance, only vague words. As doubting as I was, I remembered that there was a lot more to Christianity, something that this pastor seemed unaware of. I began praying a little from time to time. Once, in discussion with my husband, I quoted for rhetorical effect from a famous hymn “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” Strangely, I felt an instant peace out of nowhere.

My husband’s work took us to my childhood country for some months. I got to attend the church I used to go to when I was a kid. One day in the church they told everyone to pray for the persons sitting next to them. I sat at the end of my row, I had one lady sitting to my right. We were to hold hands and pray silently or in a low voice, it was not meant for others to hear the prayer. I prayed for her in a low voice in my own language. She was bent forward and was praying intensely for me and the one to her right. After that service I felt that something had changed. I had “come in from the cold”. It was like Paul says in Romans 10:10: "“ —it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” I had already slowly begun to believe in the story of the Bible, now I had put in words and uttered my faith aloud. I am pretty sure that something shifted in the spiritual realm.

Back home again I began working for the local church. I soon found out that the church was at the same time very secularized and traditional - which made me starve spiritually and feel like an outsider socially. But God guided me through every phase - through my failures and shortcomings as well as through moments of success, connection and satisfaction.

During the pandemic I lost my job. I was strong enough in my faith to trust God and not panic. In a couple of months I found a new job. Not in the church, but as a personal assistant to a handicapped lady. I descended into a very quiet period in my life, where I could disconnect from the hype and beat of the world, as I had 24 hour shifts with several days off in between, and my only task was to do what the lady asked me to do for her. She led a quiet life and I had plenty of time on my own to reflect on things and especially to spend time with getting to know Jesus. After a couple of years there was an opening in a small faith based NGO which I knew beforehand. That’s where I am now.

God has been faithful. My growth in faith has been painfully slow. It is partly because I really want to chew through everything, I am full of doubts about what God wants. I want to understand where our Christian values come from. But I'm not in doubt about God’s existence. Just a look at the horizon on a clear morning or a walk at the seashore makes it abundantly clear that no amount of random changes could have produced all that. Not to mention the vast universe out there or the universe of cells that is me. With a library of information in every single cell. I am just awestruck.

I want to know more about the God who has been active in history. And I want to know Jesus more. Spending my day talking to him, asking him questions and so often getting a wonderful, direct reply even before I finish my sentence. Sometimes a brutally honest answer. You have to be honest with Jesus about everything. And you end up being honest with yourself in the process, as well.

Reading the Bible has also been an ever enriching experience. I’ve read it all through many times, but I can still find new aspects in the familiar passages. A new life situation can bring new things up in a familiar passage.

Getting to know Jesus more, I wanted to introduce him to others. People around me don’t seem interested, so I thought maybe I should share about him in a bigger pond.