My Testimony – How I came to know Jesus It was the mid 1970’s. I was in my twenties, already a young wife and mother. Married at 20, I had my first son at 21 years old. Two more boys followed quickly afterwards so we needed to find a house and move out of our apartment. We found a cute house in a nice suburban neighborhood that shared a driveway, had a fenced-in backyard, three bedrooms, and two baths. It was a perfect first house for a growing family. My now ex-husband and I were still young and had become parents at a young age. So we went a little crazy when we first had a real house of our own. As you might guess the first thing we did, besides getting a dog, was to throw some extreme parties...something you can't do in an apartment! Our community was made of ‘out to work and school during the day, and home early at night’ type of place. Well, when our children were in bed, we often had friends over to the wee hours of the morning. And sometimes we had huge bar-BQ’s. And one New Year’s Eve we rolled up the rug in the dining room and had a full rock and roll band play all night. I still don't know how we weren't reported to the police! I heard from my neighbors later that you could see clouds of pot smoke pouring out the windows.
Personally though, I was going through a lot. My husband at the time, was not the person I thought he was when I married him. The turmoil between us was a bad undercurrent, but I never gave up hope that we could work it out. I began to be restless with my Catholic church too. I had always had a hunger and a drive to know and understand God and the whole supernatural realm. It was my main interest. You could easily see that in the huge collection of books I had, whether fiction or non-fiction. Most were somehow connected to the supernatural or the spiritual. As a little girl and in my teens, I was a daddy's girl. I followed my dad, who was a physician, into his investigation into the occult. And I know it was his desire to just find out the truth in life. He was not interested in gaining occult power; but wanted to know what God really was like, and what was behind the world we could see with our eyes. In the 70's the occult was huge. Everything from ESP, Edgar Casey, mind reading, paranormal activity, astral travel, transcendental meditation, and on and on. I read all his books and more. I was drawn to everything mysterious, other worldly, and even scary. I know now that God had his hand on me even then, because many times I was at the brink of going too far into the occult without realizing exactly what it was.
In my private Catholic college (I was there for pre-med), I took a course in parapsychology. Looking back, I’m sure the teacher was a witch. She was extremely haughty and prideful. I didn’t like her. But the class intrigued me. I remember one that stands out in my memory where we arranged our chairs in a circle and were told to ‘send the blue energy/light from one to the next around the circle.’ The goal was to be able to actually see this blue light in the room going around us. She closed the shades to make it dark. I never did see the blue light (thank God!) and remember thinking that it was a huge waste of time. I also failed at clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and ESP. However, back while I was still in high school, I came home exhausted one day and flopped on my parents’ living room couch. No one was around, and I dozed a bit. Next thing I knew I was fully awake and looking down on my body from the ceiling. I remember being shocked, and then scared, then I was instantly back in my body. After that time I had several vivid dreams in which I know that I was being invited to astral project. To fly through the night, so magical and so free. But I knew in my spirit there was a warning, “Don’t accept this invitation!” Thank God, I never did. I knew it was real, and it scared me. I know now that this would have opened a door into the spirit realm that would’ve been hard to close, and the enemy could have used this to stake a claim on me and wreak havoc in my life.
So that first year in our first house, a lot happened in my life. I became pregnant with our third son. I also had one of the most amazing spiritual experiences of my life that July. It was life changing. This was an encounter with a real demon. I have done a YouTube video explaining this whole story titled, “Demon Possession at the Party.” Please watch it if you have time. I believe God was leading me into faith that can not be shaken by this world. You’ll understand when you watch it.
I had been a very devout Catholic all my life. I really wanted a relationship with God. But after that, my unrest with the deadness of the Catholic Church really became unbearable. I had to find the real thing, no matter what! All I really knew at that time was that the Bible was supposed to be the final word on everything about God. I didn’t know anything about it, being Catholic, but I determined that I would get a Bible and search and search until I got some answers. So I picked one up at my local Catholic book store. I still remember… it was a good, ol’ St. Joseph’s bible. I was excited to get home and start my investigation. I had written down a list of things that I had doubts about such as: was it ok to pray to Mary and the saints as well as God and Jesus? Was the Catholic mass the right thing to do? Was the host (the white wafer bread) really the real body and blood of Jesus Christ absolutely, physically present as I was taught all my life? (that is the doctrine of the Catholic church even now, though they may down play it). Was it right for me to go into a little closet in the church and tell a strange man (a priest) my most intimate sins? Is this what God wants? Is the priest the only way I can get absolution and become clean again in God’s eyes? Do we all have to go to Purgatory anyway and burn off the sins we haven’t been forgiven by a priest? (This is also their doctrine) I also wondered why, if you didn’t like what one priest told you, if you could find another priest that told you something you did like, that made it ok to do. I couldn’t reconcile how God could change His opinion on something from priest to priest.
What a horrible religion! You really have no hope except that you might die suddenly after getting cleansed by a priest in the confessional, before you have time to accidently, or purposely, sin again. No one could tell you how long you’d be in Purgatory, which was exactly the same as hell, only temporary. Your only hope was that someone still on earth would light candles and pray for your soul to get out sooner. That in itself was a constant guilt trip, knowing your poor relatives were burning right this moment because you haven’t prayed enough for them. Whew! That basically put the burden of their salvation, not on Jesus, but on me!
So when I got home and cracked open that Catholic bible, God was directing my hands because it fell open and my eyes went straight to this verse, “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” 1 Timothy 2:5 I stared at that verse in shock! Here in one sentence was the answer to almost every question I had! Truly God had opened that Bible for me! That answered my questions about Mary and the Catholic saints and the priests! I could hardly contain my excitement!
Next, I wanted to talk to that neighbor lady across the street. She had brought me a banana bread when we first moved in, and welcomed us to the neighborhood. Once in a while she’d stop and talk for a few minutes. Once it came up that she used to be Catholic, but now she went to a church that just based everything on the Bible. I figured I would ask her my list of questions and see what she had to say about this. We talked in her living room. I asked all my questions, and she answered each one by opening her Bible and pointing to a verse. Each verse answered my question perfectly. I noticed her Bible was quite worn looking. I was so impressed by her knowledge of it. At the end of our talk, I felt like I was let out of a cage! I put down my list and declared, “That’s it! I’m done with the Catholic church! I want the truth! I want the Bible!” I don’t remember if I prayed to receive Jesus into my heart and life that day, but I had done that many times before. I think this was just the last step I needed to take to seal my rebirth, my salvation. God in His love gave me an amazing sign, which I didn’t seek. When I went home, the rest of that day and night and on to the next few days I had the feeling of walking three feet above the ground! Like I was floating. My heart was singing! I was so incredibly happy on a level I had never experienced before. The sky was bluer, the grass was greener, everything was more vivid and alive! I was clean and free of all my sin. The floating feeling seemed to be linked to the fact that I was fully aware that the burden of my sin was GONE! I had no idea I had been carrying such a weight of sin and condemnation on my back all my life. But now it was absolutely gone! Only Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for my sin and the sin of the whole world could do this for me! I fully knew that Jesus was the one and only sacrifice for sin that God the Father ever needed to reconcile anyone to Himself. It was once and for all as the Bible says. It is not a sacrifice that needs to be re-enacted day after day for sin, as the Catholic mass supposedly does. No, that is false and dead.
Jesus gave me another beautiful, wonderful confirmation that this was all from Him. That I was on the right track, finally! My dear neighbor across the street shared with me that her Bible study group that met every Wednesday night at her house, had claimed the house we bought across from her, while it stood empty. They all prayed every week that whoever bought that house would become saved and born again in spirit and in truth!! Hallelujah! That turned out to be me and my children. Thank You, Jesus! And thank you reader, if you got this far! Please check out the video I mentioned above. It is my first, and it’s terrible and amateur. So just listen to the audio if you want to! God bless you all! And don’t forget to join me on my podcast, Spirit With Us, for new, or eager-to-grow Christians over at Anchor.fm/spiritwithus, or Apple Podcast or Spotify or Google Podcasts. Search Julian Palumbo. See you there!