A few days were spent in utter suspense, awaiting the school board’s decision-to kick me out for good or not.  To my mother’s great relief, and mine, the vote of the school board was in my favor to give me ONE LAST CHANCE.

The sentence, punishment, was nothing short of brilliant. Mr. Grimes, Pioneer Principal of our school, called me in to his office to tell me what needed to happen if I was to stay at the Christian School where I was caught with Marijuana.

My assignment was as follows. Mr. Grimes, would assign a bible verse to me each week. On Wednesday of that week, 30 minutes before the lunch break, I was to present a written speech to my classmates on the scripture and how it applies to our lives.  It had to be at least 150 words and I had to read it during our class devotions. Now they would all see if this was for real or not!

I had such a radical conversion that all my friends who I hung out with and got in trouble with didn’t want me because of my newfound faith. The church kids, at first, didn’t want anything to do with me because I was such a troublemaker! I was the talk of the town and bets were probably out on the outcome of this wild child.

During this time in my life, I had a pretty bad self-image. My hair was long and I tried to cover as much of my face as I could with it. I wore heavy makeup and lots of jewelry. I guess you could say I was hiding behind it all. Don’t get me wrong. I thank God for makeup! Like our Pastor, John Osteen used to say, “if the barn needs paining, paint it!” But I was a 14-year-old girl and I needed more than paint to fix what was broken inside. Change doesn’t happen overnight. The miracle of Salvation is that the inside is brand new! But the outside can take a bit of time to catch up! I still smoked, had a bad habit of cursing and overall needed some work!

The words of the bible are transformational when ingested by the whole person: spirit, soul and body. My first assignment was on the subject of women:

1 Peter 3:3,4 (kjv)^“ Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”

Busted! How was I going to continue to look like I did and talk to my classmates about this scripture and how it applies to our lives? No one likes a hypocrite. I didn’t want to be one!

Something really cool about that verse is not that you can’t wear clothes and fix your hair and wear jewelry. It is saying to focus on the inside person. When I gave my life over to the Lord, to let him be in the driver’s seat of my life, it was like I was driving a dirty ‘ol dump truck full of dirt and baggage at the back, driving down the road of life. When I saw a man on the side of the road waving at me to stop. He asked if he could take over the wheel now. When I looked in his eyes, I knew I could trust him. I slid over to the passenger seat and the first thing he did was press a button and the back raised up and all the dirt slid out. He pushed another button and the whole truck became sparkling clean and new! He put in in gear and we started off. Along the way, I noticed things getting put in the back, these were gifts he had given me and people, and provision for the road ahead.

Even my personality started to be transformed. People didn’t even recognize me after a while. The scripture above says to have a “meek and quiet spirit”. It didn’t say I had to have a meek and quiet PERSONALITY! God didn’t ask me to be a robot. I get to be me!

I was in a whole new world. The passenger of the truck (me), has tried to take over the wheel at times and say, “hey, let’s go this way-my way.” The results were not always good on that one. I came to know and understand that if I follow the Lord close, my dreams, desires, gifts and all, will be discovered and developed along the way.

Little by little, every day, Jesus is changing me! The next 2 weeks of my assignment were crazy! You won’t believe it. I’ll tell you more tomorrow on day 9 of

 

 

http://goinswriter.com/my500words/ challenge.

Thanks for following my challenge-Today is Day 8