After meeting with Roni a few times and learning that she didn't mind if I emailed her, things started to happen. I began emailing her long emails full of questions and emotions and fears. I was slowly starting to see that God put me at White Oak Christian Church for a reason and I believed it was to meet Roni. He was using her to talk to me, to bring me back to Him. He was teaching me to trust again. She and I continued to meet to talk and pray fairly regularly the remainder of the year as I tried to work through the issues at home. I was slowly realizing that what I had at home was not healthy for me or my children. But the question still remained, what do I do? I was really wanting someone to give me that answer but the answer was within me. I needed to get to God for help and no one else. And He was using Roni as his mouthpiece.
As I began to open up to Roni I began to realize that she really was someone I could trust. I believed her when she told me early on in our conversations that whatever we discussed would remain with her. She also said she would walk along side of me during this time as long as I wanted her too. These two things were so foreign to me. Trust was so very hard to come by in my life and people generally didn't stick around for long. So, I put myself out there and believed her. I began telling her things that I wouldn't tell anyone else. I began to unfold my life so that she could possibly better understand why I was the way I was now. What struck me was that no matter what I told her, no matter how bad I thought it was, she always said there was nothing so bad that God would not love me. Everything we talked about she grounded with scripture.
I was learning so much from her just from listening and reading her emails. She would send me scripture references that coincided with the feelings or issues I was having at the time. I was learning that the Bible was not just a bunch of words written years ago by people who just could not understand what I was going through. These were words written by real people with real feeling and real questions for God just like me. I think one of the very first scriptures she sent me that has stuck with me ever since was Psalm 118:5 (I think) "In my anguish I cried out to the Lord, He answered by setting me free". That verse had hope in it.
Things began to happen inside of me. I was changing. I wanted to learn more about God. I wanted to learn more about prayer. I wanted to read all I could get my hands on to try and better understand my feelings.
Things here at home continued to deteriorate to the point of mostly silence between Eric and I. I spent my time cleaning to get away from him, reading, typing novel size emails to Roni or sitting outside alone praying. He could not understand what was going on with me. I wanted to be at church all the time. Roni began talking to me more about what the Bible said on marriage, divorce, sex outside of marriage and I was thinking I was a terrible person for all I had done in my life and my life with Eric. She then slowly began to explain Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness. These would be conversations that would come up frequently between us and spawn huge emails from me to her.
As I was reading more and more in the Bible I started having more thoughts on baptism and what it really meant. I talked to Roni about it several times. I would ask things like-if I was baptized as a child (12yrs) and was in church until I was about 16 but didn't really take alot of it in and then I dropped out of church for 18+ years how then could I come back into church the way I was? After doing all I had done in my life? She kept telling me God is a forgiving God and he wants me to come back to him. If I ask for forgiveness then he will give it. Period. I began asking have people ever gotten baptized for a 2nd time or was that just dumb? She explained that it wasn't necessary for my salvation, I already had that from my 1st baptism. It would be an outward expression that I would re-commit my life to God. I kept this in the back of my mind and would ponder it every now and then.
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