Core of Conviction : My Story (9781101563571) (7 page)

On Halloween night 1972, my friends and I heard that our local church was holding a Halloween party, and so we decided to check it out. We soon discovered that there was no party, but the church doors were open, so we went inside. I was with three of my friends, and we all, at the same time, felt the same need.

We were all good kids, but none of us had a close relationship with God. At that stunning moment, we knew that we needed more. I had seen enough pain in my life. I had seen how darkness had afflicted my own family. Now I knew I wanted all that behind me.

So on that Halloween, something was nudging the four of us away from the goblins and the spiderwebs, away from the candy and soda pop—and toward the church sanctuary. We felt pulled. Later I learned that it had been the Holy Spirit that had lovingly led all four of us to our Savior, to our knees in prayer.

My Bible study had taught me that I needed to confess my sins and put my trust and faith in God's redemptive power through his son, Jesus Christ. I had read about that. Now I truly knew what it meant.

I remember saying, “I believe that Jesus is the son of God, I believe that He is true, I believe that I am a sinner, and that Heaven is where I want to go, to be with Him for eternity.” All four of us poured out our hearts to Him, proclaiming that we needed Him to come into our hearts. Not just on Sundays but always. Each and every moment.

And that's how it happened. I went home that night, and in my bedroom I prayed again at the foot of my bed to the Lord. And this time, really for the first time, I sensed His peace and His presence. I took the wisdom of Thessalonians to heart: “Pray without ceasing.” And ever since, I have been assured, as written in Hebrews 13:5, that He would never leave me nor forsake me. I had radically abandoned myself to Christ, and that's when my life truly began. I was born again. I was a new creation, thanks to Him.

You know the famous line from the hymn, “Was blind, but now can see”? That's exactly the way I felt. The next morning, November 1, 1972, I woke up with a new vision—not because of my contact lenses but because Jesus was lighting my path. I had a new heart; I was a new person. The difference was like the moment in
The Wizard of Oz
when everything shifts from black-and-white to Technicolor.

Now I felt real confidence. Profound confidence. Finally I felt armored and equipped, ready to confront the world and its many challenges. I knew that I belonged to God and that He loved me, and so I no longer had to depend on the approval of others. My cheerful childhood outlook had been damaged by the move away from Iowa, then more damaged my parents' divorce. And while I had kept plugging away through my early teen years, learning and working, I had felt a gnawing insecurity—an insecurity that is common, I realize, among children of broken homes and blended families. Maybe that's why I had joined every club, thrown myself into every activity.

Now, looking back on my life before Christ, I realized that I had been searching for something and not finding it. I had sought approval from teachers and classmates, and while they were almost always nice, they could never fill the real void in my life. What I needed was a close personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. It was upon the rock of that revelation that I would build my life, and if I kept faith with Him and His Word, even the gates of hell would not prevail against me. I was one with Christ, and I knew I would be one with Him forever.

From that day on, all the ordinary fun of high school—even cheerleading—seemed far less important. It wasn't about me anymore. Now it was about Him. I had to listen, through prayer and Bible study, for His plan for my life, and how I could use my talents and my abilities to glorify Him. That next summer I joined my dear friend Barb Norbie—my sister in Christ, as well as my sister in life—as a counselor at a Lutheran Bible study camp in Bay Lake, Minnesota, way up north. We all did the usual camp things—swimming, boating, arts and crafts—but every morning and every evening we learned about the Lord.

I had always been hardworking and success oriented, but now I felt an inner motivation. I was going to work even harder and aim even higher. But I would not labor for the sake of material possessions; I would labor to follow His precepts and was profoundly gratified for God's grace and mercy in my life. Tests and challenges, to be sure, come to everyone, but they are never more than we can handle, with His help. By trusting in God and His Covenant Word, we can find the strength to overcome. The world may buffet us, but the Word bolsters us.

So now, more than ever, I looked forward to being happily married someday, surrounded by a lovingly united family. That was my commitment to the Lord: In addition to following the Lord, I wanted to be a good wife, a good mother, a good citizen, and a good American. And with God's help, I would do everything I could to leave the world a better place.

Yet as I grew older, I came to see forces at work that were making America a worse place, not a better place. It was hard for me to comprehend that certain forces in society were seeking to undermine the family, to undermine the traditional structures of our society, and, indeed, to undermine all the moral and political achievements of our Judeo-Christian heritage. It was an onslaught against the goodness of the American tradition. And the worst of all was the devaluation of human life. Life, I realized, was losing its value.

I had always loved children, and yet well into my teens, I was naive about abortion. I guess I had a hard time even imagining that a mother would not want her baby. I was sixteen at the time of the Supreme Court's
Roe v. Wade
decision, and I will admit that I didn't quite understand what it was all about. But then a Catholic friend explained it to me, the full disastrous dimensions of what the Supreme Court had just done to our culture and to our nation. I was shocked by what she said, and I immediately realized that I was completely committed to a pro-life position. Why would our government legalize taking the life of an unborn baby? Why should an abortion-minded young woman not be told of the negative emotional and physical repercussions she would face as the result of an abortion? How could anyone kill a little baby? How could such a crime be allowed? I have enormous sympathy for unwed mothers, to be sure, and for those who live with doubt and fear of the future; it is the duty of the rest of us, of course, to help them. Which Marcus and I chose to do. We reached out to offer counsel and friendship to women in unplanned pregnancies. We drove them to an adoption agency nearby. I went through child-birthing class with an unwed mom and held one woman's hand as she gave birth to her daughter—that was nearly thirty years ago. It takes courage for an unwed mom to see her pregnancy through to birth, and I thank the fathers who stand by the mothers of their children and do all they can to support the mother and the children that together they brought into this world. But at the same time, we have to stand up for the unborn. And with God's help, we can do both; we can keep faith with the mother
and
with the child, seeing it not only to term but to a good life beyond.

And yet in our efforts to protect the family and to preserve what Pope John Paul II called the “culture of life,” I began to see that our government was often on the wrong side. Government officials were praising, even subsidizing, the worst kinds of behavior—not just abortion but also idleness, dependency, and delinquency. The pundits of the era, speaking down to us from their high perches in their ivory towers, called it “justice” and “liberation.” But here on the ground, in real-world America, where I was living, the rest of us could see that the government was fostering injustice and anarchy. Indeed, in the seventies the bad trends were moving steadily up and the good trends were moving down; abortion, crime, divorce, drug abuse, and venereal disease were on the rise, while test scores, the purchasing power of the dollar, and traditional family values were drastically falling. And of course, the nation's morale and standard of living were stagnating, even declining. That's when I came to see that if the average household was suffering, then the country was suffering. Good moral behavior, I realized, is not just the path to a virtuous civil society; it is the prerequisite for economic growth. A healthy society, a healthy economy.

In other words, America needed once more a firm foundation. It needed a framework for good living; it needed sturdy walls against wickedness. I had felt safe as a girl in Waterloo in the sixties; why did I not feel as safe as a teen in the Twin Cities in the seventies? And yet Minnesota was safer than most parts of America. The problem, then, was national, not local. Something had hardened the heart of America. Our defenses against evil had weakened. Some Americans applauded that weakening, to be sure, and many did their best to ignore it. Yet a few of us wanted to do something about it.

So I came to appreciate and venerate Nehemiah of the Old Testament, the Jewish leader who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and restored the city to goodness. In today's terms, that task would mean restoring the moral foundation and framework of America, so that we could once again have a country in which children grew up safe and well educated, in which husbands and wives loved each other and stayed true to their vows, where they fought to make the marriage work despite less than ideal circumstances, and in which work and faith were honored, not scorned.

Such is the great work before us today. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: “And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.”

As for my own role, I esteemed and identified with the men of Issachar, one of the Twelve Tribes. As we are told in 1 Chronicles, they were “men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” And I like to think that the women of Issachar too knew what to do. Now, thousands of years later, it is my generation's turn to do our part to rebuild the foundation, to reestablish the framework, to help repair the walls. After all, in the time of the Twelve Tribes and in the present time, we worship the same eternal and unchangeable God.

My struggle to change those destructive government policies would ultimately bring me into politics. But first I had to get through school, to see what else life held in store for me.

In 1974, during my senior year in high school, as I was beginning my walk with Jesus, I wanted to see where He walked as a man in His brief life on earth nineteen centuries ago. I also wanted to see all the other places of the Bible, the storied places where godly men and godly women had done His work here on earth.

The more I studied and the more I learned about the Bible, the more I wanted to go to Israel.

I was involved in a Christian ministry, Young Life, when the group decided to arrange a trip to Israel. This was to be no junket; we would be students in the Holy Land—and yet we would also be working on the land. And that's a good thing; as Proverbs tells us, the souls of the diligent will be made rich.

But first I had to raise money to get there. The trip was nine hundred dollars. The mother of a good friend of mine, known for her excellent skills as a baker, went to work and sold her creations at a bake sale and donated the proceeds for my trip. Another anonymous businessman donated money, and I came up with the rest.

Our departure was slated for the day after I graduated from high school. It was to be a moving and memorable experience. I remember the sweaty intensity of Ben Gurion Airport when I landed; I remember the heat, the customs officers right there on the Tarmac, the soldiers with their guns. Indeed, the whole country seemed poor, dry, and dusty; I saw chickens roaming, and there was noise and action everywhere. It was a stark contrast to the placid tranquillity of Minnesota. But of course, the Israelis had bigger things to worry about than making a good impression on visitors.

Just the year before, in 1973, during Yom Kippur—the sacred Jewish day of atonement—Israel had been sneak attacked by Arab armies; for a few days, it seemed as if the Jewish state might be lost. But then the Israeli Defense Forces rallied, and, aided by the United States, they turned the tide of battle. Zion was safe once again. That was a lesson to me: Whether the country is Israel or America, a strong defense and national security must come first. If a nation doesn't have military strength, it could lose everything.

We Christian lovers of Israel were going to work at Kibbutz Be'eri, in the Negev desert in the south of Israel. Our youth housing—a bare Quonset hut—was really just a barracks. It was dubbed “the ghetto.” Bugs and lizards crawled and slithered everywhere. Our hosts would wake us up at 4:00
A.M
., put us on a flatbed truck pulled by an old diesel tractor, then drive us out to the cotton fields. Armed soldiers provided an escort; before we began working, they scouted the fields for land mines. I will never forget their stoic good nature, even their ironic black humor. For us Americans, this was an eye-opening adventure; for them, safeguarding Israel against terrorism was a weary necessity for the whole of their lives. Our work involved mostly pulling weeds from the fields, but occasionally I was allowed to operate the rig; it was my first experience driving with a clutch.

We would work till noon, then ride back to the communal kitchen; then we'd go to sleep. In the afternoons and evenings, we'd study the Bible, maybe learn a few words of Hebrew from some of the girls in the kibbutz, including my new friends, Ziva and Hagar. In a mix of languages, we would swap stories, tell little jokes, and do girly things, such as braiding one another's hair.

It was hard work—sunburn, blisters, sore joints—but it was a wonderful experience. After that, we traveled to Jerusalem, where we stayed for a week in a quaint little hotel in the Old City, just inside the Jaffa Gate.

I felt closer not only to Jesus but also to all the great figures of the
Tanach
and the Gospel. And I was able to do my small part to help Israel build itself up. The area had been sorely underdeveloped when the Jewish settlers defiantly declared Israel's independence in 1948. And after surviving a terrible war and winning a miraculous victory against invading Arab armies, the gallant Israelis had made the desert bloom. I thank God for America's thirty-third president, Harry S Truman, who backed Israel immediately after she declared her sovereignty, extending diplomatic recognition to the newly independent Jewish state, helping it to gain needed legitimacy. More than sixty years later, Israel today is still gravely threatened, and yet it is by now not only an agricultural powerhouse but also an economic tiger, a citadel of high-tech development. Its advanced technologies provide both prosperity and security—a lesson too for America.