My Story

I recently met up with an old friend online from high school. She read my profile and being from the mid-west, in what is known as "The Bible Belt", she didn't know what a messianic Jew was. Then I realized that I take a lot for granted and perhaps there are many people who do no know what that is. I love talking about my faith and especially the way we choose to live out our faith in my household. So I decided to write a little something on the subject here.

Jewish?

God gave me a Jewish heart many years ago. He placed a deep love in me for Israel and the Jewish people, as well as for learning the Jewish roots of my faith. I also had a question in my mind about whether or not I myself have Jewish ancestry. Ya know, God keeps track of the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He knows our DNA. He is in covenant with them due to His love for our father, Abraham. But being Jewish is more than a religion. It is more than a race. Those many years ago when I questioned if I had Jewish ancestry, I received a dream in which God spoke and answered in the affirmative. Although I do not have any proof in the natural realm to prove this, my heart is plain....I love the Jews and if you were to peel back my skin and peek inside or look in my heart, you would see a Jew.

In The Beginning

My story is not one of great triumph and a life of privelege, although I am blessed. I had an unhappy childhood, spotted with domestic displays of violence, divorce, adultery, alcohol and drug abuse, and rejection. When I was 15 years old, I almost took my own life. I was at the bottom of a pit of despair and I did not love myself. Nor did I think that God loved me. When I was a freshman in high school, I moved to live with my mother and former step father who were living in northern Kentucky.

My life seemed to get better. I had a stable home life. I liked my school. Soon my brother joined us and we had a sense of family and some good times. I went off to University and it was there I met a representative for Campus Crusade for Christ. She shared the love of God with me from the scriptures and God's plan of salvation. I believed on Jesus Christ as my personal savior based upon God's Word. I had never heard of a Jew for Jesus. I didn't think such a thing existed. But my best friend's mom got us tickets to the synagogue in Evansville to see a musical group. I loved the music. I remember feeling that I didn't want to leave that concert!

I was a psych major in college. My Childhood Psych professor saw talent in me and she took me under her wing. As a freshman, I headed up research teams that did studies for graduate students to do their theses and dissertations. I had a road of success mapped out before me. My professor, upon learning of the bad news of my mom's divorce even offered for me to stay with her so I could continue my studies. (I later realized my psych professor was Jewish, as was her husband. They were from New York). When my mother's marriage ended in divorce and she convinced me to move back to California where we were from, I was devastated. College went down the drain. And so did all my dreams.

Back in California, we stayed with family as we had no home, no jobs. I soon gained employment, but I sank into a deep depression. My brother fathered a baby at age 17. He had moved back in with our dad. I thought if you loved me God, how could you let all this bad stuff happen? I walked away from the path He had for me. I walked away from God. But He did not walk away from me. I tried to drink and go out and party with my friends. It did not matter. I would be cornered into a conversation about God even at parties. I can remember sharing the gospel with friends over a drinking game! Nevertheless, I was hurting, and soon I felt God drawing me back by His unconditional love. I repented and turned back to the Lord and He led me to a church where I made friends, He gave me good jobs (working in special ed, nontheless, using the background in psychology.) He restored my dreams, even gave me new ones, and He restored my self worth.

It was then that God began to stir a deep love in me for the Jews. I would cry on my face before Him in prayer for them. I read "the Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom and cried for a week. I would cry out during worship services, "God, I love your people". I read every book I could get my hands on. I enetered bible college and went on a missions trip to Russia where we helped Jewish people escape persecution and move to Israel, fulfilling a vision the Lord had given me while I was on my face months earlier. Up til that point, I never knew such a ministry existed. As a young woman nearing her 30's and wanting a family and children, I knew that I had to marry a Jewish person, or in the least someone who loved the Jewish people and would share my burden for them.


The Messianic Movement and a Marriage


I would read about ministries such as Chosen People, Jews for Jesus, and Jewish Voice. I devoured the teachings about the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith. I read how the church got disconnected from the nourishing sap that is Israel and the Torah and the prophets. I learned how centuries of Christian anti-semitism turned off the Jewish people to Jesus; how many crimes were horrendously committed in His name. I wanted to ask the forgiveness of every Jewish person on behalf of my Christian spiritual forefathers for how they treated the Jews. I attended my first messianic congregation in Indianapolis (Rabbi Jeff Adler) with my best friend from college (I can remember wanting to marry Rabbi Jeff, but the Lord had to give me a dream to show me it was not His will). The friend in Indianapolis whose congregation it was was the same friend whose mother had taken us to the concert at the synagogue. I read books and articles about the pioneers of messianic Judaism in the 60's and 70's and I would lay on my bed and cry for hours on end feeling a deep connection with them.

I had a prayer partner and some friends from church I found out the husband was Jewish and we all began to celebrate the feasts of the Lord outlined in Leviticus 23. This grew out of a group of people that prayed together. We started attending MJAA conferences (Messianic Jewish Alliance of America) and we found commraderie and strength as we assembled ourselves together with others who were like-hearted. I also began sensing when people I would meet or people on tv were Jewish.

Then through the advice of a friend, I met my husband through a messianic Jewish singles website. He was 14 years older than I. He was born in San Francisco and raised in Berkeley. He did some work with Jews for Jesus. He had 2 sons. During our first phone conversation, I remember telling him that I wanted to raise my children to know who they were (meaning that they were Jewish...the audacity! I did not even know at that point whom I would marry, I just figured it must be somebody Jewish). I told him how I felt that it was important for Jews who follow Yeshua to keep their identity, for they have a specific destiny in God and promises given to them by God that have never been taken away- land, abundance, spiritual blessings tied to Israel. My (future) husband agreed. On our second date, I remember not wanting to leave- the same feeling I had at that Jewish concert years before. We courted for about 2 months and were engaged for about 4 months. We prayed to seek God's will for our relationship. Never in that time did we ever kiss. (We had a secret handshake!) The first time we kissed was at the altar (under the wedding canopy) after saying our vows. During our wedding ceremony, I took the vow of Ruth which was an outward expression of what God had already done in my heart and it was an official vow to God. "Where you go, I will go. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God".

We lived in Berkeley the first couple of years of our marriage with my husband's older sons (at intermittent times). It was rough in the beginning. Then we moved to Hayward where our son Benjamin was born. Now we live in Patterson where we bought a house. We are close to the friends who were with me from the beginning and who celebrate the feasts with us. I call them the "Modesto Mishpocah"- mishpocah means family in Hebrew- for that is what they are.

So my journey has taken quite a few surprising turns, but the pilot has always been Yeshua HaMaschiah, Jesus Christ. I may have stepped out of the vehicle along the way, but one thing that cannot be denied is that His hand has been with me every step of the way. And the journey is not over. To people who ask me if I will one day move to Israel, I say that I might. After all, my son is Jewish and the land belongs to him too. And I made a vow that I intend to keep.

And so to all my friends here and in the mid-west where I went to high school and college, I say, "Shalom y'all!"

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