I went to church as a child, but my parents didn't go on any kind of regular basis and eventually I stopped going also. Even before I married my husband I was attending an Independent Baptist church with him because his parents were the kind of people who were in church "every time the doors were open." In 1984 I went to a Wednesday evening service and when I got in my car to leave I couldn't leave the parking lot because I had this overwhelming fear that if I did I was going to get into a car accident, die, and end up in hell. So, I went back in and the assistant pastor led me in the sinner's prayer. For the next 20 years I was in and out of church, backsliding, repenting, and in all honesty, judging the "unsaved" unmericfully.

In 1990 I had surgery to remove fibroid tumors from my uterus and my gyn told me that I would never be able to conceive a child even with the help of invitro. Note at this time I was in the good graces, I felt, of God even though I wasn't attending church on a regular basis. To make a long story short, I prayed for and believed with all of my heart that God would give my husband of 10 yrs. and me a baby. Five months later this same dr. told me that my pregnancy test had come back positive. There was no doubt in my mind that God not only existed, but that he loved me. In March 1991 after getting no response from my baby, whose due date was still a month away, during a non-stress test and being sent to the hospital for an ultrasound, an emergency C-section was performed. My daughter was born lifeless and it took drs. 12 mins. to resuscitate her. The end result was cerebral palsy & mental retardation. To this very day at 13 she is still not able to swallow, walk, talk, or do any

When I started taking over my daughter's care from the home healthcare nurses, I was watching TV and channel surfing when I heard a well-dressed man say, "you don't have to be sick anymore. God wants you well." To this day I remember his exact words. That man was Word of Faith preacher Kenneth Copeland. For the next 12 years I devoured everything he and his co-horts put out. I'd watch their programs multiple times a day because they're on so many different channels and I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything important they had to say. I'd buy their tapes and play them over and over, I had notebooks filled with their daily teachings, I even started recording their daily programs and writing down word-for-word everything they said. I "named it & claimed it" many times a day for 12 long years. When my daughter's healing didn't come I would blame myself for not having enough faith to bring it to pass or that it just wasn't God's timing. I lived in this spiritual hell on ear

I finally "woke up" one day and realized this wasn't working. I stopped watching these hucksters & money fiends on TV and I started attending an Assembly of God church on a regular basis - they believed God could heal but sometimes he chose not to heal. The people in this church had anointed my daughter with oil and prayed over her numerous times during the 3 yrs. I attended this church. When she was in the hospital for a month last spring the pastor or assistant pastor came to visit & pray for her on almost daily basis. These people are kind and caring and I do thank them for their time and effort. However, I could no longer pretend that God was going to heal my child and I just couldn't understand why a loving God would give me the child I so desperately desired and then basically take her from me leaving a shell of a little girl who'll never grow up or be able to care for herself. I just can't reconcile a loving Father and an all-powerful God who refuses to heal a child whos

The end came when I faced the contradictions and discrepancies in the Bible that can't be explained away by the most brilliant theologians - it just doesn't work. I read Lee Stroebel's The Case for Faith and I really wanted to be able to accept what he'd written, but so many of the answers the so-called experts gave just didn't cut it. Some of the discrepancies are just so gaping like the two different versions of Noah and the flood in the same book plus the fact there is no scientific evidence for a world-wide flood. And now an even older version of this story has been found.

So where am I today? Agnostic? I don't know. I look at creation and I can see the possibility of a divine creator. I also see two very different Gods in the OT and the NT. OT God is harsh while the NT God is loving, forgiving, and patient. If there is a divine creator and he did inspire the writers of the bible by the holy spirit then why all the discrepancies and contradictions? The bible says God isn't the author of confusion yet the bible is filled with confusing accounts. I did what the bible said to do, I asked for in Jesus' name and believed I received it, but I didn't get it in the end. In my own personal experience what the bible said would happen didn't happen and the only conclusion I can draw is that it doesn't work and therefore it must not be true.

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