Testify
6 The Well Magazine / Spring 2013
Searching for God Her search for love led her to the love of the true and living God
W hen I was a little girl, I truly loved the Lord. I would pray every night and every day. I was raised in the church. I also genuinely loved people. I can remember meeting people and they would ask me, what do you want to be when you grow up and I would say with a big smile,“ Me and my husband are going to go to Africa to save all the starving people.” I was very serious because I believed with all my heart that was my purpose. As I began to grow, I was very much in tune with the feelings of others. Somehow, I would always know what someone was thinking and if they were sad or happy. It was as if something from the inside of them was speaking to my mind. For a long time, I didn’ t know how to handle others feelings and emotions, especially when they were sad, distraught or troubled.
I had to grow up fast. My parents divorced. My mother found herself a single mother with five children to raise. I was the oldest. At an early age, I had to help raise my sisters, which I felt took away from my childhood. There was a void inside of me that I tried to fill by looking for love in all the wrong places. I tried to fill the void with promiscuity and partying.
My issues were spiraling out of control. I was having sexual relationships with different men, drinking excessively and partying. My mother and I stayed at odds. My junior year of high school, she sent me to live with my father. My father, who was an ordained pastor, supported me and began teaching me about God. My deepest desire was to know the one and only living God. I began a search to find this God that led me down a dangerous
By Latasha Williamson
road to New Age religion. When I went to college for my undergraduate degree, I attended church sporadically. Things in my life continued to get worse. By the time I was in graduate school, I stopped attending church all together. I had decided to forget about Christianity and Jesus. I wanted a new way of life. I wanted to know the one and only living God. I had a big void in my life and I was searching for fulfillment. I just assumed that I tried Jesus and He wasn’ t enough.
A spiritual journey
I was introduced to a series of New Age books titled,“ Conversations with God.” The New Age religion does not believe that Jesus is the truth, the way and the life. The New Age religion believes that Jesus is on the same level with Buddha, Krishna and Muhammad, that He is just one of the prophets. They also believe that the devil is a man-made creature and intellectually he just doesn’ t exist. When I received my first book, I was very excited and scared all at the same time, but I truly believed all of the above. In addition to receiving my first book, I packed all of my bibles and study guides and delivered them right to the garbage. I walked away thinking that I was making a fresh start, that I was making a spiritual journey, only to find that I was making a fresh start to death, destruction, heart ache and pain. The next two years of my life would be the most devastating. I was broken physically, spiritually, emotionally and financially. I met my son’ s father while in graduate school. I moved with him from St. Louis to Kansas City, Missouri in 2004 and we bought a home. The first month we were in Kansas City, I conceived my son. My dream quickly became a nightmare. I realized that I was sleeping with the enemy. Every day we were ver-