By Bethania Wonagseged —
Vanessa didn’t date her husband. She dated her husband’s family.
“They were really hospitable people, having me over literally every single night for dinner,” Vanessa says. “Their food was delicious so you bet I did not turn down a single invitation. I dated him for three years, but I felt like I was really dating his family.”
Her boyfriend was deployed across the country, so Vanessa hung out with her future in-laws who told her about Christ.
“I wasn’t a Christian at the time,” Vanessa confides. “They treated me with such grace and kindness and warmth. They kept inviting me to church.”
Their testimony worked on Vanessa’s mind, especially as they stood on the brink of poverty.
“The peace they had during turbulent times didn’t make sense to me,” she admits.
Without guidance in her life, she had fallen previously into drugs. A prior boyfriend had broken her heart and she turned to marijuana to cope.
“I was a weed head,” she surmises. “I was trying to numb myself from that relationship.”
She was smoking everyday and getting drunk on weekends.
The exuberance of her boyfriend’s family amid “everything crashing down on them” made Vanessa want what they had.
She was high when she realized, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to live like this.”
“I came to Christ in a moment of highness,” she says.
Since then, she married her military man, and it’s been 15+ years of serving Christ.
