Marilyn Budd
I was born to an unwed mother in the 1950’s and adopted by my parents through a private adoption. I am very thankful that I was adopted into a Christian home where I heard the Gospel from my earliest days. Had I not been would I ever have heard the Gospel?
My parents were older, my mother not healthy, and my maternal Grandmother and paternal Grandfather lived with us. My grandfather died when I was two. Since my mother was not well I often went and stayed with my Aunt and Uncle who lived next door as they had a daughter called Marilyn who had died a crib death. I was daughter for both families and they were saved as well.
My Nana who lived with us had been widowed at a young age and raised a family through hard times on her own and saw them all saved. She was a great influence on my life. She had a desire to spread the Gospel. She would get lists of names and addresses from the post office. In her little bedroom she would spend hours addressing envelopes to send out with tracts all over the Maritimes. I would help her and she would talk to me about being saved as we stuffed envelopes and she addressed them with her shaky but neat handwriting.
I had unsaved cousins and every Friday after work my Uncle picked up a car load of them and brought them home to his house for supper. Then we were taken to Friday night Children’s meeting. They stayed over the weekend so they could go to Sunday School on Sunday with us. After Sunday dinner my Uncle took them home. The object was to get us all under the sound of the Gospel.
I always wanted to be saved but never made it #1. I was not a real bad little kid but I knew I was bad in God’s eyes and needed to be saved to go to Heaven. I did not like being alone, I liked to be with my cousins or friends. Being given up by my birth mother gives one a feeling of not being wanted, you often feel you are lacking, not loved, alone. It was a blessing as God had a plan for me. He saw that I went to a Christian home where I could not have been loved more. I later realized He loved me enough to die for me.
I had very faithful Sunday School teachers that faithfully told me that I needed to be saved. I memorized lots of verses and loved to go to Sunday School. I spent much time with my Nana who was a great witness of God’s love.
One Saturday in November my cousins were visiting for the weekend as they often did. My Nana had baked cookies with us that day as she often did. She did not feel good around supper time, we prepared for bed and when I went down stairs to say Good night my Nana was sitting on the chair in the kitchen with the door open and she was sweating. The ambulance had been called and she was going to the hospital. She had never been in the hospital before. I was very upset, my uncle tried to assure me that she would be ok. The next morning I awoke to be told that Nana had went home to Heaven. It happened so fast and I knew she was in Heaven but if that had been me I would not be. On the way to the Cemetery after the funeral there was a car accident. My uncle was not hurt and that shook me as well as it happened so fast. It could have been me and it could have been worse.
There was now a great influence in my life missing. I no longer had a Nana that talked to me about my need to be saved. I wanted to know that I would go to Heaven like she did when I died. I knew I was not ready to die. I wanted to be saved but did not make it my priority.
At our Sunday school treat at the start of 1967, Canada’s centennial year, the speaker talked about it being Centennial year. He talked of the projects that people were doing for centennial year. He said that we should make it our Centennial project to make it our main objective of the year to get saved. The Lord could return at any moment and if we were not saved we would be left behind. That made me stop to think that if the Lord returned I would be left behind. I was going to hell and I needed to saved. My Nana had died suddenly and I could too.
I could not put it out of my mind that I needed to be saved. Even at school the Gideon’s came to give out Bibles to Grade 5 kids. Since that was Centennial year there was a special gold edition. They told us that we needed to trust in the Lord Jesus if we ever expected to go to Heaven. They told us there was a place in the Bible to write down the date when we did trust the Saviour. Each person needed to have a time when we trusted in the Lord Jesus. We were all born sinners
I did not want to be alone I was afraid of dying and going to Hell. I wanted to go to Heaven like my Nana did. I knew lots of verses that I had memorized, I knew the Lords Prayer that we said everyday at school but I did not know how to get saved. I wanted to be saved more than anything but I did not know how. I thought I would just have to go to Hell. It was then I realized that I did not have to go to Hell that Jesus had died for ME. Jesus had died for ME! He loved me and would never leave me nor forsake me. My birth mother had but it was a blessing she did.
As a girl of 11 I trusted Christ as my Saviour simply believing that on the cross Jesus died for me. “This is my boast and this is my song Jesus died for ME”.