My journey as a Christian and my relationship with God has been far from easy. It has been a complete and utter roller-coaster, taking me to either ends of the extreme, from extreme highs, to the darkest depths and it has even seen me loose my faith completely on not one but two occasions. But hey, God didn’t promise us an easy ride and this journey has seen my relationship with God taken to a whole new level.

 I haven’t always gone to Church every Sunday. When I was little we went to Church on Christmas Eve and special occasions. Then when I was 10, I started going to Guides and we started coming to the family services here at St John’s. The seed was sown and my curiosity stirred.

Shortly afterwards I started secondary school and I soon found the subject I was good at and thoroughly enjoyed was R.E! I had two of the most wonderful and inspirational teachers. Their enthusiasm and excitement about God and what he can do just spurred my curiosity on and that seed that had already been planted just wanted to grow. I didn't realise it, but it was God having a hand over my life even then, as it was a release and escape from the bullying I was experiencing.

As a result of Guides and R.E., I started to attend St. John’s on a more regular basis. Then in 1997 when I was thirteen I was confirmed. I can remember feeling on top of the world. I was so happy and it felt like this was the start of something, something big. Little did I know then how much my faith was going to be tested and lost twice.

Over the next eighteen months or so I started becoming more and more involved with church life, and the more I became involved the more Mum and Dad got roped into things. This was the start of my relationship with God. With hindsight I can see it was superficial compared to what I’ve got now, but nevertheless God was continuing to grow that seed, a seed that I was going to rely on more quickly and more heavily than I ever thought possible.

You see, at the vulnerable and very impressionable age of fourteen I was to experience the evil and darkest side of human nature. I was to experience something, which no person should ever have to encounter. In the immediate aftermath which was to follow, how I questioned and argued and doubted God! I didn’t think God was hearing, let alone listening to, my prayers because in my eyes, he wasn’t answering them, and that only meant one thing: he didn’t exist after all, and that was it, my faith had gone. How wrong was I!

I’ve now come to realise that just when I thought God had abandoned me, he was in fact right beside me, and most importantly, he was in control. He knew I wasn’t strong enough to cope with the reality of what I had just experienced, and he answered my prayers by putting me in denial till he knew I was ready to face that reality. A denial that when it was at it’s strongest, right in the beginning, in that immediate aftermath, lasted 6 weeks but a denial, which in total was to last nearly seven years.

During those seven years, even though I was still in denial, the strength of that denial had weakened slightly and I had began to question my faith once again but this time I had begun to think that maybe, just maybe, God was the answer. I can see now that throughout those seven years, God was quietly at work, weaving his plan for me into my life. I just didn’t know it.

It was also during this time that I started at Uni doing my degree in Children’s Nursing. This in itself proved a tricky time and what should have been a three-year course took nearly five years to complete due to health complications. But then at last, in May 2007, 4 years and 8 months later, I qualified as a Children’s Nurse.

I’ve since realised that God taught me a lot during this time, as there were many times when there was some real doubt over whether or not I would actually complete the course. But I’ve learnt that even though there were what felt like never-ending obstacles in my way, God was using them to find out how determined and committed to a nursing career I was, because it would have been so easy to give up. It re-iterated to me that Children’s Nursing was all I ever wanted to do and God had given me the skills to do it. I learnt that my plans and my timing weren’t what mattered, because God has his own plans, and it is only when his timing is right that things will come together and there’s no point fighting that!

Backtracking slightly, it was during my time at Uni that, wham!, God acted, the time he had planned had come; he obviously thought I was ready to face the reality of what had happened when I was fourteen. He lifted the denial and opened the floodgates to the sea of emotions and thoughts that had been safely locked away for seven years. I didn’t know what had hit me. The force and extent of these emotions and thoughts were too much. It was overwhelming. What was God playing at?

As God allowed me to remember for the first time, then the battle with God really commenced. Over the space of a year, as I gradually began to realise the full extent of what I had experienced and the consequences of this, the little bit of fragile faith that I had ever so slightly started to rebuild was once again shattered. But God doesn’t do shattered! Even then he was still at work, weaving his plan for me, guiding me, watching over me. This time he worked through Gary and then Helen. He was going to use them to restore my faith to a stronger, deeper, more live faith than ever before and better than I ever thought possible. But this was going to be no miracle healing. Oh no, this was going to be tough work with bucket loads of tears shed in the process! And the worst was yet to come.

As the full after-effects began to emerge and I started the very difficult and painful journey of specialised counselling, life became very dark, very dark indeed, and my fight with God very real. But then, slowly but surely, all the love, care and time Gary and Helen had put in started to take effect, and my faith started to return. Very fragile and delicate at first, but then with each passing day it became that bit stronger and I began to see that God really was the answer.

During this time I did the Alpha course, and it was the best thing I could have done. It convinced me once again that God exists and he cares for me and is there for me. During my time on Alpha God spoke to me and told me that I not only needed to forgive the person who had hurt me so much when I was fourteen, but also to release the anger towards that person. After a lot of resisting and battling with God I realised that as usual he was right. Little did I know when I prayed that prayer on the Holy Spirit day, asking God to show me how to forgive and let go of the anger, that God was going to lead me on yet another painful roller-coaster of a journey, which was to last a year.

It was during this time of attending Alpha that I started going to a Fellowship Group, which also helped re-build and strengthen my somewhat fragile faith. And as the months went by, my faith just continued to grow and deepen and I learnt that I needed to start to rely on God rather than myself, but this in itself proved to be far easier said than done.

This was no miraculous healing, and even though I had found God again, I was continuing to battle with the after-effects of what I had experienced. The fact that I had found God again, in some ways made things more difficult to deal with, because some of the emotions and thoughts I was experiencing actually conflicted with my newfound faith.

This, coupled with the after-effects, meant life was still very dark and rapidly spiraling out of control.

Eventually God brought it all to a head and I was hospitalised due to the darkness I was experiencing. It was on that night that I can honestly say I encountered God so profoundly and tangibly that it moved me to the core, and even now when I think about it, it can still move me to tears. That night I knew I had to trust God wholeheartedly. I surrendered totally to him and allowed him to swoop down and gently pick me up and carry me, because I couldn’t go a single step further. On that night God reached down and responded in a way that reduced me to my knees, in floods of tears. On that night, for the first time, I truly understood what it meant to feel a peace which surpasses all understanding. It was on that night, that my relationship with God took on a whole new meaning and took me to a different level completely, from which I’ve never looked back.

God spoke to me a lot during my time in hospital and I decided the time had come to truly forgive the person who had hurt me so badly when I was fourteen. Once again God astounded me with his presence. It had been absolutely pouncing it down with rain all day, and the sky had been so dark and heavy, but within minutes of forgiving the sun shone so brightly that it lit up my room and dazzled me. I knew then that God had heard and I had forgiven. My anger just melted away like snow and despite everything that was going on, for the second time in a matter of days, I felt a peace which surpassed all understanding. Not everything was instant, but over the coming months I began to feel the difference that true forgiveness brings.

Over the last 12 months my relationship with God has just blossomed and gone from strength to strength. One of the highlights was Spring Harvest. The worship was like nothing I’ve ever experienced and the atmosphere of singing with thousands of other Christians my age was electric! I’ve come to realise that life without God is impossible, but with God by my side then anything is possible and miracles do happen. I’ve realised the power of having God in my life and what it really means to trust the Lord. I know that without a shadow of a doubt that God loves me. He won't abandon me, and when things get tough, really really tough, He will carry me until such a time that with His help I can stand on my own two feet again. I know He is in control and He has a good plan for my life, which includes my nursing career. I know He won’t let me down.

I trust Him completely and depend on Him more than I ever thought possible and together we are a team. Yeah okay, He might not always answer my prayers in the exact way I wanted Him to, but nevertheless He always answers them, and He is always faithful.                     

Rachel Walker