VONNA MCGUIRE
It wasn’t very long ago that I would have told you that all my life I had been searching for something or someone to make me feel truly loved.

When I was a baby my family started going to church and when I was very young I decided I wanted to go to heaven. However, since I didn’t feel very loved by my family, by the time I graduated High School, I had begun to look for love in all the wrong places. I tried alcohol, minor drug usage, boyfriends, sex, and a disastrous first marriage to fulfill my inner need for love and acceptance.

I was so focused on me and what I perceived as my needs that I was unable to rely on God, nor was I patient enough to wait on His timing for my life, so I went my own way, in disobedience, always searching for love.

Well, I made more mistakes than I can count and didn’t turn to God for my answers. Then I met Kevin and we fell in love, but we both brought a lot of “baggage” into the relationship and we had no time for God, so of course our marriage began to suffer. After spending what I felt were too many years trying to get my needs met, I decided to give it up and divorced Kevin. See, I was still trying desperately to feel truly loved.

Then came the turn around! Kevin began to call me, pursue me and talk to me about God. We both became sure that the only way we could make it was to put God first in our lives; that our efforts wouldn’t do it alone. We decided to try it again.

I felt really bad about all that I had done wrong. I told God how very sorry I was and that I really needed Him. I knew from childhood that I wanted to spend eternity in heaven, not the alternative, and that Jesus had died on the cross to pay for all the times I’d broken God’s laws! So I prayed and asked God to forgive me and take control of my life and straighten out the mess I had made of it.

Kevin and I remarried and started going to church regularly. We became more involved in church and less involved in the world and it’s answers for happiness. I heard a lot of lessons that I needed to hear and now I’m even deepening my commitment more as I study His word, the Bible, in more depth.

My life will never be perfect, but God gave me the husband I needed and showed me what and where real love and happiness is. He is the giver of all good things. And the most important thing of all is that I know I’ll spend eternity with Him.