Hi there! I’m Charity Lynn, but you can also call me Charli. I’m a Christian, 40-something college student who loves to listen to music, watch movies, and read – especially the Bible!
My story starts with my wanting to go to church as a child because my friends all went to church. My dad wasn’t a believer, but he took me to the type of church his family had always gone to – the Methodist church. To be honest, I loved it – I was an acolyte (we lit and extinguished the candles on the altar) and a member of the children’s choir there. But then we moved across town from the church, so I stopped going. A year later, my family and I would move to Iowa – where I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka the Mormons). I spent 35 years as a Mormon – even going through the temple to receive my endowments. However, not too long after, I started to feel as though I wasn’t where I should be. So, I left. That brings me to where I am today – at Friendship Assembly of God in Colorado Springs, CO (oh yeah, before I left the Mormons, I moved to Colorado).
My Testimony
God has been watching out for me my entire life. I was born a month early in an attempt to prevent both my birth mother’s death and my own (it worked). However, I had to spend some time in the NICU under the blue light because I was extremely jaundiced with a high bilirubin level. Fortunately, God was on my side and I pulled through that. But then my grandparents1I lived with them at the time as my birth mother couldn’t care for me due to her illness. noticed that I didn’t crawl. At all. I rolled until I started walking.
But when I started walking, I’d turn blue, plop down on my rear end, and pant. A visit to the doctor ended up with my grandparents taking me to a pediatric cardiologist, who determined I needed heart surgery sooner rather than later. The problem was, my birth parents were getting divorced, my birth mother didn’t have the money for the surgery, and neither did my grandparents. But my grandfather was retired Air Force, so they decided to see what could be done. Once again, God was on my side, watching over me, as the commander of the hospital told them just to get the adoption paperwork started, he’d make sure everything was taken care of. The heart surgery went well, everything was fixed, and the adoption was finalized just before my 2nd birthday.
Now, there were some trials in my childhood. My birth mother became increasingly more ill and then my grandfather had a stroke and passed away a year later (1987). My birth mother passed away two years after that (1989), and my grandmother started to become ill in 1990. She passed in 2005. Along the way I had three foot surgeries between 1992 and 1994. After my grandmother passed away, I had to have surgery to fix my acid reflux in 2015, plus three more foot surgeries in 2018, 2019, and 2022.
But God has been with me every single step of the way. Even when I didn’t feel Him there. Even when I didn’t think He was there. Even when I didn’t believe, or didn’t want to believe, He was there. And even when I came crawling back to Him, wondering if I’d screwed my life up so much that He’d never take me back, He did.
You are never too far gone! You are always loved by God! His love is unconditional. You may not feel Him with you, but trust me, He’s there.