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Grace said, "No, sorry, I can't make it," to Mary Anderson's invitation to come to her house for coffee. When Mary asked a third time, Grace felt that she could not put it off again. It just wasn't polite. I can always get up and leave, she thought.

"Glad you could make it," a cheery Mary said at the door. "It's been a couple of weeks since we last talked. I'm happy you could come."

After some small talk, Mary said, "How's your life going these days?"

That question surprised Grace. She expected a lecture. Mary seemed genuinely interested in her.

"Well, not so good, I guess. My dad is still very ill. The doctor says that he may not have long to live. It's cancer. I'm so fearful. I just don't know what will happen."

"You really love him, don't you?"

Grace took a swallow of coffee and cleared her throat. "Well, yes and no. I don't feel close to him, but I don't want him to die. Mary, he's been an alcoholic all my life. He's tried Alcoholics' Anonymous several times. He stops drinkin' for a while, but he keeps fallin' off the wagon. I feel sorry for him. Mom has been dead for three years now. He has no one but me and a few of his AA buddies."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. We have some alcoholics in our family, too. My ex-husband was an alcoholic. It's hard for the alcoholic. I really struggled with it, too."

The two women talked about alcoholism and their families for an hour.

Grace said, "I really have to go. I've got to get to work. I'm a waitress and my shift starts in a half hour."

As they approached the front door, Mary went to a bookshelf in her media center and pulled out an audio tape. "When you have time, you might want to listen to the story of Gert Behanna. It's quite a story. Gert was an alcoholic who recovered when she turned her life over to Jesus Christ."

"I'll be glad to listen," Grace said. "I must admit, I was hesitant in coming over. I was sure you were going to tell me about your conversion story. I'm not sure I was ready to hear it. Instead, you listened to my story."

"I will gladly tell you what happened to me, but I sensed that you were not ready to hear it today. When you're ready, I'll gladly tell you what God has done in my life. In the meantime, listen to Gert's story. You may want to play the tape several times. Please keep it. I got three copies when I attended a Field Seminary at our church several months ago."

"A Field Seminary?"

"Another story for another time."

When Grace got into her car, she glanced at the title on the tape, "God Isn't Dead" by Gert Behanna. She dropped the tape on the passenger seat and thought, I'll have to listen to that sometime.

When she got off work at midnight, she was "dead tired." It was a 45-minute drive home, and she wanted to be sure she stayed awake, so she popped the tape in her player.

The only reason that I have a right to stand up here and do what I do is because a man named Jesus Christ said to do this, Gert said. I'm no speaker; just a talker. In AA we call it "giving the pitch."

When I talk to an AA group I don't have to tell the people there what a miracle is. Every chair is occupied by a miracle. When I talk at churches, people think that miracles stopped with Lazarus. My life is a miracle.

When I tell my story, I have to speak about money, because I had so much of it. Money kept me from being aware of the poor. I was born to a group that thought they had a right to permanent and excessive privileges. We were separated from poor people.

Because I was rich, my excessive drinking, taking drugs, and the way I talked to people were all accepted. I know now all of these things were unacceptable, but they were accepted. My behavior was unacceptable, but it was accepted.

My father was brilliant; my mother beautiful. I was neither. How much this affected my later delinquency I don't know, but that it had something to do with it, I'm quite sure. My father was demanding. He expected me to go to the Sorbonne in Paris, become the U.S. Ambassador to England, and find a cure for cancer. The seeds of insecurity and shame, planted by these unreasonable demands, grew when I got my first divorce.

In my second marriage, after being a social drinker for years, I crossed the invisible line into alcoholism. Alcoholism is a mode of escapism. I wanted to escape from the life I had made for myself. Self pity was a way of life for me then. I could not blame myself because I wasn't willing to do anything about the problem and even if I had been willing to change, I didn't know what to do. I was a complete failure. I tried to escape into alcohol. Later I fled further from reality by using drugs.

After the third failed marriage, I tried suicide. I even failed in my attempt to take my life. A short time later a doctor said to me, "Gert, you are a very sick woman and there is nothing wrong with you. But make no mistake about it, you are a borderline case. Here are the names of two psychiatrists. See one of them."

I don't know where this came from, but I said it. "I don't need a psychiatrist. I need God." I didn't do anything about it, but I said it. The doctor who knew my spoiled behavior at the sanitarium where I was recuperating, replied, "God wouldn't hurt at all."

I went to New York and was dead drunk for six weeks. A friend invited me to come to her house and meet some friends of hers. "Why do you want me to meet them?" I asked.

"They were a lot like you and then they were converted," my friend said.

"Converted to what?" I asked.

"Converted to God," she said.

I went for the visit. How bad could it be to meet these people who called themselves Christians?

My first two Christians arrived. They ate their dinner. I drank mine. I bombarded them with questions. "So, you know God, do you? What is he like?"

After taking all my rude questions gracefully, the man finally said to me, "Gert, you do have problems, don't you? Why don't you turn them over to God?"

Stopped me cold. He meant it. Things that are meant can change us. "You mean turn my burdens over to God like I turn my suitcases over to a porter?"

"Something like that," he said.

He didn't try to correct me and tell me that our Lord is no porter. He let me have God as a porter. And he didn't quote Scripture. When you are talking to a Christian, it is okay to say, Leviticus 12:14, but when you are talking to a bum, you get nowhere by quoting the Bible.

When I got back home, I found a short note from this couple welcoming me home. That shocked me. They had seen me only one evening and I was totally drunk. They said that every morning they would sit down and pray for me. That rocked me. No one had ever prayed for me. They also said that they were sending me an article called "It's Never Too Late To Start Again" by Sam Shoemaker. They asked if I had time to read it. I had time. I rifled through the third class mail, found the article, and read it.

After twenty minutes or so, it was all over. It was more like a shower bath than anything. I prayed for the first time in my life, "I don't know who you are and I don't know anything about you, but if you are anywhere around, I surely could use your help." I felt accepted. I felt forgiven. I remember saying in my first prayer, "I will never take another drink again." And I haven't.

There was a prayer I had heard once. What was it? "Our Father...." Stopped me cold. Father. I who had a brilliant but demanding father now had a loving and accepting Father. Then I thought about all the people in the world who were my brothers and sisters. When I finished praying, I got up from my knees and headed for the phone.

I called my book man in Chicago and said, "I want two books: The Joy of Cooking and a Bible."

He said, "My God, what happened to you?"

I replied, "My God happened to me," and he had.

Next I wanted to find a church and a minister. I phoned an acquaintance of mine who was a Roman Catholic. I thought she might know of one.

"Do you want a go-getter or a man of God?" she asked.

"A man of God," I replied. Well, I got one. An Episcopal rector. You can warm your hands at the love that radiates from him. When I talked to him the first time, he told me about a man named Jesus who had died for a woman named Gert. He invited me to come to worship. That was the beginning.

Later I found that money belonged to God. The more I said, "Our Father," the more I realized that all this money I had didn't belong to me. It belonged to God, so I found ways to give it away. That was sixteen years ago. Since then, my life has been jammed packed. I'm 68 now and sometimes I get tired. I say to our Father, "Why don't you give me some time off?"

He replies, "You got onto this thing late, so just keep going."

My new life as a Christian boils down to two questions I ask myself daily:

1.
Gert, how are you doing with Jesus Christ?

2.

Is this for God or for Gert? If it is for God, I try to do it. If it's for Gert, I try not to do it. If I'm not sure, I wait.

I'm going to close now with a prayer. Don't close your eyes. Just listen.

Oh, Lord, I ain't what I oughta' be.

And, Lord, I ain't what I'm gonna' be.

But thanks, Lord.

I ain't what I used to be. Amen.

Grace found herself sitting in the car in front of her house, crying uncontrollably. This woman, Gert Behanna, was real. Grace couldn't believe in God, but she knew something had happened to her, something good.

At 7:00 a.m. the next morning she called Mary. "Where did you get that tape? I listened to it on the way home from work. When I got into bed, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about what Gert said. When you have time, I've got to talk to you."

"I've got time. Come on over."

"Gert really got to me," Grace said as Mary opened the door. "She's really somethin'."

"I thought you'd like her."

"Mary, I'm ready to hear what happened to you. I was afraid before. I thought you'd be preachin' at me and expect me to change. I just couldn't take some miracle story. Maybe I still can't, but I want to try. I'm sorry I put you off so long."

"No need to apologize. Do you have an hour or so?"

"Yes. I told Jake that I would be gone for a while."

"Jake?"

"Yeah. He's the man I live with. Nice guy. Doesn't believe in God or church or anything, but he's a nice guy."

"Okay," Mary said. "We can talk about Jake another time. Let me tell you about what God has done in my life.

"In some ways my story is unlike Gert's. I was not an alcoholic. She was. I was not divorced three times, only once. I was not rich. She was. I had a good, loving father. She had a major problem with her father. I had a good father. Although I thought about it several times when my husband's alcoholism got to me, I never tried suicide. Gert tried to take her life.

"But in some other ways our stories are similar. My conversion, like Gert's, started with an awakening, moved to a commitment, and continued with Christian fellowship."

"Slow down," Grace said. "Let me think about what you just said. Awakening, commitment, and fellowship?"

"Yes," Mary said. "The awakening came two months after my divorce when my mother died. We were very close. We talked all the time. Her death left a big hole in my life. My husband and I hadn't gone to church very often -- just once in a while on Christmas or Easter. At the time, I only knew a few people who worshiped regularly. I used to say, 'I'm as good as they are, so why should I go to church?'

"When my mother died, we needed a minister to bury her. I asked one of my Christian friends if she had anyone she'd recommend. She told me about Pastor Jeff Jackson. He's a little young, but he is a good man. He helped me a lot. He talked to me about alcoholism, divorce, death, and grief. He took my mother's funeral and then offered to continue to see me to help me with the adjustment. He even asked me if I might be interested in a grief group that his church had. I wasn't ready then, but later, after I worshiped a few times at Messiah Church I told Pastor Jeff I'd like to try it.

"It was in the grief group I met Sarah Williams. Sarah was a recent widow. She had a grandson who was always getting in trouble with the law. She told me the group really helped her overcome her worries and her grief. We became good friends. God used Sarah to help me discover what I have since come to call 'a hole in my soul.' "

"A hole in your soul?"

"Not a physical hole, but a real hole, nevertheless. Only God can fill that hole in the soul. You see, Grace, I had never been baptized. I had no religious training. My ex and I were good moral people, humanists, but there was no God in our lives. The alcoholism tested us beyond what we could handle. When I told Sarah about my lack of understanding and faith, she invited me to a Pastor's class at church. She even attended the class with me. After class one night, Sarah and I went for coffee and a talk. It was there in the coffee shop that I realized what was happening to me. Sarah gave it a name. She called it 'an awakening.' "

"Like waking up from sleep?"

"Something like that. It was like I had been asleep to God all my life. I started to go to worship regularly and last Easter, I confessed Christ as Lord and Savior and was baptized."

"In front of the whole church? I could never do that."

"There were three of us adults from the Pastor's class who were baptized. Ten other adults joined the church by transfer. Four babies were baptized at the same time. It wasn't embarrassing at all."

"I could never do that," Grace repeated.

"Have you been baptized?"

"No, I don't think so. I guess I could ask my father. He would know, but, Mary, I just couldn't stand up in front of the church and be dunked in a tub of water."

"At our church we don't baptize people by dunking them under the water," Mary said. "The pastor just puts a few drops of water on people's heads."

"I'm sorry, but I am scared to death of being in front of a group. I could never do that."

"Don't rush things, Grace. Just take it a step at a time. Come to worship whenever you can. Sarah and I will look for you. You can sit with one of us. We will help you understand the liturgy and the sermons. Maybe the time will come for you to attend a Pastor's class sometime in the future. That's how you can learn about God, the Bible, and the church."

"I'll think about it, but I don't think you understand. Before I could do any of these things, I would have to change a lot of things in my life. I'm not good enough the way I am. I'd have to clean up my act."

There was a tear in Grace's eye as she spoke. You don't know how low I've sunk with Jake -- sex, booze, drugs, lying. I have to clean up my act, but I don't think I can.

Mary put her arms around her. "Grace," she said, "we don't have to clean up our lives before God will accept us. We just have to come, warts and all, the way we are. God does the clean up work."

"I just can't believe that," Grace said. "I'm not acceptable."

"That's true for Sarah and for me and for all of us. Not one of us is acceptable to God. We are sinners. The miracle of grace is that Christ declares us accepted when we aren't acceptable. When you accept that you aren't acceptable but are accepted by God, you are on your way."

"That's pretty deep. I'll have to think about that one."

Questions For Personal Consideration
And/Or Group Discussion

1.
Like a lot of people, Grace Livingstone thinks she must clean up her life before she can come to God. What's wrong with this way of thinking?

2.
What were the turning points in the story of Gert Behanna?

3.
There are three stories at play in witnessing -- your story, my story, and God's story. How did these three stories play out in the relationship between Grace and Mary?

4.
How did the tape God Isn't Dead affect Grace's thinking?

5.
What did the alcoholism of her father have to do with Grace's receptivity to what Gert Behanna said?


Digging Deeper

1.
Alcoholism is a disease which some people say is genetic; others insist it is a learned behavior, and still others that it is a combination of these and other factors. The one consistent factor with alcoholics seems to be the practice of blaming others for what is wrong. The refusal to take responsibility for one's own behavior is present in many non-alcoholics as well as many alcoholics.

2.
Feelings of inferiority often keep people from faith in God. These feelings produce false guilt, the feeling of being guilty when a person has not done something wrong. Real guilt comes from breaking God's laws, hurting God or people, and acting in selfish and self-centered ways. Real guilt is resolved by confession and forgiveness. False guilt is overcome by genuine acceptance and love.

3.
What do you think about the outline of an adult turning to God: awakening, commitment, and fellowship?

4.
Many Christians say that they were baptized as babies, raised in Christian homes, and believed in God since they were children. Isn't this just as good as being converted as adults?