Heather Costello

I Have Always Loved God and Jesus

As a little girl I remember writing a letter to Jesus telling him how much I loved him. I was raised Jehovah's Witness and attended the Kingdom Hall several times a week. I loved learning about God. I remember thinking "Why would anyone turn their back on God?" I also remember never wanting to have children because of the terrible state the world was becoming. At age 10 I asked the elders questions they were unable to answer. Instead, they sent the question to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. An "Awake" magazine was published with my answer, but it didn't make sense to me. In high school I realized I was happiest serving God but I didn't like the terms of the Jehovah's Witness religion. We eventually stopped going to the Kingdom Hall because the people there were too judgmental. We never stopped loving God, though. We always prayed and talked about him.

In 1992 I went away to college and I went to a few Christian Fellowship meetings. I even went to a few small group Bible studies. I was really hesitant, confused, and afraid to believe anything anyone told me, especially religious people. Then one service they had one of the Alumni come and talk, he said the Jehovah's Witnesses were a cult. I couldn't handle that. I felt like I was being personally attacked, after all that was my identity for 18 years. I stopped going to Christian Fellowship.

Just before college I started dating my husband Frank. God really let me see his heart and I fell in love with him. However I still struggled with marrying him and went to bed crying many nights because I thought I was disappointing God. I was still confused in what to believe. According to the Jehovah's Witnesses I shouldn't marry him because he wasn't a Witness. After graduating college, Frank and I moved in together, even though I wanted to get married first. However, Frank's parents were divorced when he was young and he was scared about me leaving him, too. I agreed to live with him. After living together about six months, Frank asked me to marry him. I was so shocked! I would have fallen over if I was standing up. I thought the day would never come. We had been together for 4½ years at that point. We got married seven months later. Before the wedding many people tried to talk me out of marrying Frank, including my mom. At eleven o'clock the night before the wedding she told me she wasn't coming to the wedding because she couldn't be part of this. I told her that I understood her concerns but that I was still marrying Frank. No one saw Frank's heart like I did, they all saw the bad in him, but he only acted awful when people were around. The next day at the wedding, when my dad showed up to escort me down the aisle I asked him, "Did she really not come?" and he told me she wasn't there. So I still went on. As you can imagine our family nearly split us apart years later, because I started listening to them and all the mean things they said about Frank.

Two years went by and we had a baby, a baby that I had prayed for because I was not happy in our marriage. I had a hole in my life and nothing seemed to fill it. A year after our son was born Frank and I almost got divorced. Frank was spending more and more time with his friends and not helping me around the house. I felt so isolated and alone, like no one understood me. So one night I started chatting on the internet. I found someone who was as lonely as me. We would talk night after night but we were both married. An inner voice kept telling me this was wrong, but I didn't care. I wanted to feel loved. I wanted Frank to leave me so I could start over. I thought if my family will finally be happy with my spouse maybe I will finally be happy too. It didn't work because Frank wouldn't leave me. So I decided if this was going to work we needed a change so we moved to Florida.

In Florida we went through many more struggles the enemy was really trying to break us. Many nights we spent crying, fighting and wanting to die. Then a friend of Frank's invited us to church. I was against it and tried any persuasion not to go, but then the friend gave us a tape of the pastor's sermon. I was impressed this guy seemed real, so we went to church. We filled out a card and told the pastor we wanted to know more.

The pastor came to our house and explained salvation to us. He said that we are separated from God by our sin and there actually is a heaven and we can get there by faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the perfect Son of God and died for our sins. "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9)". Frank cried and said he didn't think he was worthy to be saved. We both said the prayer, but this time I really believed. I got a Bible and started reading God's word. I was so excited. I did all I could to learn about God. I didn't feel empty inside anymore, before finding true salvation I tried to fill the hole in my life with so many things but none of them worked, only Jesus can fill that void in your life too! God Bless you today!