If someone had asked me if I believed in God, I would have said probably not, but it was the last question anyone would ask anyway, it would have been so irrelevant to my life experience and the people I knew.
My story began about 18 years ago when I appeared to have everything going for me...
I had a good job Id progressed rapidly through the ranks at a young age; it was a year or so since marrying my childhood sweetheart; and we had a big group of friends with whom we played hard, and drank hard, at weekends.
If someone had asked me if I believed in God, I would have said probably not, but it was the last question anyone would ask anyway, it would have been so irrelevant to my life experience and the people I knew.
The reality was that life was hard. My job involved many nights away from home, I coped with homesickness by creating a hard shell, and by being driven to achieve. This affected home life; we were living in the same house but rarely seeing each other, the emotional distance I had created to enable me to cope with excessive time away in hotel after hotel seeped into every aspect of my life ... but we put on a great show at the weekends!
I was driving home on the M4 one late afternoon, feeling at a really low point, and not really knowing where I wanted to be. There was a beautiful sunset, and as I drove I heard God's voice clearly say Trust me and follow me, everything will be alright, and in that moment knew an incredible sense of peace. I had no term of reference for this, no context in which to understand it, but I knew without doubt that this was God's voice, and he was speaking to me. From that moment, everything changed.
I didnt tell anyone about the experience for a long time it was far too strange to try to put into words, and I had no one to tell anyway. A few months later, we found we were pregnant with our first daughter, and over the next year, God continued to give me nudges, and I found that I wanted to behave differently always in the context of trusting that everything would be alright.
We knew we wanted our daughter baptised, so went to a baptism preparation class with other couples who had also recently had babies. For the first time, I heard someone speaking words that began to make sense of all Id been experiencing in the last year or so. Words about choice, being sorry, forgiveness and transformation words about Jesus, words about love. I began to go to an informal family service, probably the Messy Church of its time, and make connections with other people who also knew about this stuff! I went to confirmation preparation classes, and met some amazing people who really helped me make sense of how life had been, and how I longed for it to be. They encouraged me to make a commitment, to say sorry for all that had gone before, and to say yes to a new way of living, following Christ.
Many years later, God has continued to do incredible things nothing was wasted from all that had gone before, but it has all been transformed, and I am now about to be ordained as a priest, 20 years after those first incredible women in Bristol Cathedral in 1994. We have two beautiful daughters, and will celebrate 20 years of marriage later this year.
My story began not because I believed in God, but because He believed in me I heard his call to trust Him and follow Him, and was found when I didnt know I was lost. The people I encountered in those early years of exploring faith accepted me, and joined in with the conversation God had already been having with me. I continue to be His disciple, trusting and following in that incredible gift of hope, and hoping I can encourage and enable others to do the same.
About the author
Becky Waring is Diocesan
Adviser for Lay Ministry Development and will be ordained as a priest at Bristol Cathedral on Sunday 29 June 2014 by the Bishop of Bristol.