Donna Griego's Tear Jerking Testimony

I was born and raised in the church, my father being a very humble and godly man. He was a Southern Baptist preacher. He had a very hard life, working full time in a cotton mill and pastoring a church.

My mother left us when I was four years of age, and my beloved brother was nine. Our father had left for work that day, and she packed up all her things and left us crying in the living room. She left with my father’s brother, my uncle. My father had opened our home to him, because he had been injured in an accident. I remember that day clearly, I remember my brother crying and I was crying although I did not really understand why at the time, mainly because my brother was hurting. Later on that evening my father came home and he wept.
Life was hard after that, we lived with family, and we lived in rundown shacks with no plumbing. We wore the most horrid hand me down clothes. Both my brother and I grew up always fighting others, for we had to, as pretty much everyone picked on us.
All through this time I watched my father, live his life for God, and although God provided, He never seemed to make it easy. My father spent much of his time either working, ministering to the needs of others, or on his face before God. He was a very simple man.
My brother and I can recall many a breakfast on a Sunday morning, as our father prayed, he would tell God, “Lord, I only have 25$ for this week, and you know our needs”. Then we would go to church, and many times someone was in need, and we would watch, shocked and afraid as our father would draw a 20 dollar bill out of his wallet and place it in the special needs collection plate. “What is he doing? He said this morning that we only have 25$, what will we eat?” And then after church as we stood waiting for the very last person to leave, so we could leave, someone would walk up and shake his hand, and say pastor Clyde, God put it on my heart to give you this, and it would be 100$. We would be able to buy groceries and pay bills. So many times I saw these things but they never truly clicked in my mind until much later in life.
Being the child of a pastor as I grew up I also witnessed many times the ugliness of the church. The backbiting, the backstabbing, and the bickering. I was often angry because I saw the pain these things caused my father. This bitterness and the bitterness I harbored against my mother and my uncle, festered within me, and I began to blame God, and to hate Him.
I loved my father, but thought of him as a simple man, without much education, I knew he believed in God with all his heart and soul, but I truly believed that his was a faith caused by ignorance.
I became very rebellious as a teenager, running away from home, experimenting with drugs and basically being stupid. Throughout this period of my life there were many times where God preserved my life, but I was too stupid at the time to recognize it.
At the age of 18 in a strong urge to get away from the small town where I was born, I enlisted in the United States Air Force. I served 6 years and lived all of them in Europe. I traveled a lot. I still harbored a disdain for God, and would often argue with Christians, I was well versed in the Bible, better than most Christians and I was a master with words, twisting them and confusing them. I was pretty darn awful with the few Christians I encountered who attempted to witness to me.
While stationed in England I met my husband. He was raised Catholic but God really was not very important to him when we first met either. We were more concerned with having a good time (or at least what we thought was a good time).
We returned to the states as civilians and started our life. Our first-born son was born. I was scrambling to try and find a trusted baby sitter and ended up calling a lady who posted in the paper. Her name was Willa. She turned out to be the most awesome baby sitter. Sure it was irritating to hear her constant banter about God, but I felt my son was safe, and I could see he was happy there.
One day as I was dropping him off we had a conversation, the topic of which I cannot recall, someone had died, and I made a comment “ well you can’t take it with you when you go” in response to something said, and Willa paused a moment…and said this” well there are some things that you can take with you when you go”…amazed at this, I responded with “whatever can that be?”…And she said “well the life you live, will be the life your children will follow, and should you live that life in such a way, that you die forever separated from God…well chances are, you will take them along with you.”. I snorted, and left for work.
For weeks, this phrase would pop into my head, and many things taught me by my father would pop into my head, out of the blue, for no good reason.
I began to listen to a little Christian radio, and I began to read the Bible. I spoke with my father on the phone, and at some point, the date of which I cannot recall, I fell to my knees and asked for forgiveness.
I was grateful that my father lived long enough to see me come to Christ. It was only a couple of months after that he passed away.
At his funeral, God showed me the beauty of a life that I had always thought as sad, and hard, without much love or hope in it. A life that for many years I had thought wasted poured out to a God that was not real. My brother and I stood next to the coffin containing my father’s remains, as hundreds of people filed by, each one shaking our hand, and saying things like “ I came to Christ under your fathers preaching. “, “Your father ordained me as a minister and I now pastor a church.” “Your father baptized me.”, “Your father came out to the hospital and prayed for me when no one else came.”, “Your father taught me how to be a Christian.”, your father, your father, your father….over and over and over again. At last I could see the beauty of my father’s life, a hard life, he never had much, he always struggled to make end’s meet, he died alone, his mate having abandoned him for his brother, and yet what a life he lived. If I can live my life a 10th of the way he lived his I will die knowing I did well. I now know what true treasure is, it is not money, nor possessions, it is the fruit that we bring to God at the end of our lives. 
I have walked with Christ for 22 years now, and not one time has he abandoned me, not one time has he failed me. Life is tough sometimes. Sometimes it is the hardness of life that makes it so beautiful. Perhaps not many will understand what I mean when I say that. It is not something I can truly explain, I guess you will either understand it or not.
I grew up with the teaching of Jesus Christ, I knew the gospel, I had seen God's power and yet I chose to walk away from all this, I did not believe, I even mocked those who did, although love for my father prevented me from ever mocking him. I worked against God, and I hated God, and yet by His grace I was saved and He took out the heart of stone that I had created and He replaced it with a heart full of love for Him. 

That my friends, is my testimony,
Donna Griego