What I've Lost vs. What I've Gained

When I was 24, I asked Jesus into my heart. This was on a Sunday night. The next Monday my girlfriends and I went to our favorite lunch place from our jobs as legal secretaries. As we sat around this huge booth, one of the girls was so excited she was practically foaming at the mouth when she announced "my attorney won a huge case for Chip N Dales and has given us tickets to so that we can go see these men strip for free on this Wednesday night!! Now, as embarrassing as this is to admit, I was always an anything goes kind of girl and had this happened a week ago...who knows. Around the booth they went to see who was in....when they got to me, I simply said that on Wednesday night I am getting baptized. Not only could you have heard a needle drop, but I don't ever remember in all the times we had been going there, the check coming and being divided that fast! Off they ran as if I had told them that I was having a procedure to get rid of a hideous contagious disease! I laugh now but I must say, I felt alone. My friends were gone and I hate to sound paranoid but when I entered a room, this hush came over the place and people left. I don't remember one Christian coming along side to tell me this was not only normal...but a good thing. So, the Lord delivered me, promoted me and put Godly friends in my path. I worked at the Bank now and Christians were everywhere. My first day after Thanksgiving, the Executive prayed at the table before we ate. We had weekly bible studies and saw prayers answered. For 20 years, the Lord allowed me to witness and even lead people to Him. This chapter of retirement I find myself in has blessed me with the greatest friends ever! My Aunt and Uncle and I have never been closer, I have a Godly mother in law who is a prayer warrior even though she just lost two sons in six months. I thought God was going to turn me into a robot, but all He has been doing is sanding off some of the rough edges around me and my heart. I love deeper and I cry easier (which I sort of don't like), but it doesn't matter. What my cousin Shawn wrote before he went to be with the Lord was "the only thing that really matters is our personal relationship with God." He was right!