My heart was dark with sin
Until the Savior came in
His precious blood I know
Has washed me white as snow
And in God's Word I'm told
I'll walk the streets of gold
To grow in Christ each day
I read my Bible and pray
I well remember this little ditty, sung a cappella by an elderly woman and a roomful of students at Mildred Perkins Elementary, the school I attended from kindergarten to third grade. I was five years old in the first grade when I began to attend the little after-school evangelism meetings. The song was sung as Miss Evangeline (I cannot recall her real name) placed different colored-felt hearts on a pale blue flannelgraph. First there was a black heart, dark with sin. As we sang of the blood, a red heart was placed over it. A white heart covered it next, symbolizing the purity of snow, which as a child growing up in the San Joaquin Valley of Central California, I had seen perhaps twice in my life. As we sung of the street of gold, a yellow heart took the place of the white one, and finally a green heart was laid over the yellow one, to symbolize continued spiritual growth.
Much of what was taught in those meetings passed over my head. I absorbed the messages of Jesus, but none of their meaning. I understood the principles, but none of their purpose. Much of my experience with Jesus and the gospel was a list of rules to be obeyed and rituals to be observed. Before first grade, I remember attending my great-grandmother’s Episcopal church, my legs dangling over the edge of an austere wooden pew, reciting the Lord’s Prayer from memory as sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows and dappled the sanctuary. I remember solemnly going forward at the prescribed time to kneel for communion, the priest blessing the wafer before placing it on my tongue, and wiping the rim of the goblet before allowing me a small sip of the wine. Everything to do with God was rich and meaningful; this much I understood. God was holy. He deserved respect. He was not to be trifled with. And I was not good enough for Him.
This attitude of futility and frustration stemmed from my home life; my parents divorced when I was three, and there was enough strife and contention between them that I learned very quickly to keep out of the way and create as little trouble as possible. To my young mind, so long as I did what I was supposed to do, when I was supposed to do it, in the manner it was supposed to be done, all tension and unrest could be circumvented. This was, of course, an erroneous belief. But I regularly observed all the trouble that came of my father’s attempts to disobey court orders and avoid responsibility, and I was determined not to cause trouble. I learned very quickly the habit of guilt, and responsibility for my own actions. I learned to berate myself for doing something wrong—or something that I perceived to be wrong—and to effectively stifle my desires and feelings, considering them dangerous. To want or need too much was to create trouble. I learned not to want or need what was beyond my power or capacity to obtain on my own.
My view of myself was further distorted by sexual abuse at the hands of my father; I learned not to trust, nor to love deeply. To be close to someone was to invite pain. Though reading had been a love and an interest before, it became an obsession. Through this and other solitary activities, I effectively distanced myself from people and learned not to need them. When I was seven years old, my mother remarried after becoming pregnant with my sister. My step-father’s unpredictable rages, illogical demands, unrealistic expectations and verbal abuse only served to reinforce my belief that the only way to avoid trouble, pain and heartache was to do no wrong. I believed that I was deserving of his insults, and that his expectations were entirely reasonable; I believed that I was somehow blowing it, and that it was impossible for me to do anything to the satisfaction of another person. Consequently, I became a driven child, never even self-satisfied, believing that perfection was somehow attainable if only one had enough self-discipline.
When I was nine, a cross-country move from Modesto, California to Concord, North Carolina was planned as a result of my step-father’s job transfer. We made it as far as Lubbock, Texas before the Federal Bureau of Investigation caught up with him and arrested him for grand theft. When my mother cooperated with authorities in complete honesty, my step-father divorced her, saying that the one thing he hated about her was that she always did the right thing.
Because my maternal grandparents and my mother’s younger sister had also made the recent move to North Carolina, my mother packed up what little we still possessed—a Ford pickup truck, a twenty-foot Weekend Warrior and enough cash to purchase gasoline for the trip—and drove the long remaining miles to Greensboro, North Carolina. When we arrived, my mother, brother, sister and I moved into a two-bedroom rental house with my grandparents, using the Weekend Warrior for a third bedroom. We knew no one; my mother taught us at home and worked the night shift at a part-time job, and I was a ten-year-old from the California suburbs learning to live in rural North Carolina; for the first time, our neighbors were not within shouting distance, and those few within walking distance had no children.
My mother quickly found a church; though she had been saved when she was thirteen, it seemed that the nightmare of the arrest and the move had reawakened her faith and dependency on God. However, despite regular attendance, my spiritual state was miserable. The experience of abandonment by my step-father, another man who did not do the right thing—who behaved less than honorably—strengthened my determination to adhere to the rules and regulations, to never put a foot wrong, and thus avoid trouble and tension. I latched on to Sunday school lessons that dealt with the dos and don’ts of the Christian life. I didn’t cuss, play violent video games, watch R-rated movies, or dress immodestly. I read my Bible, memorized verses, and prayed.Involvement with my church’s Bible Bowl team afforded me an arena in which I shone, but which also afforded me another opportunity to shut myself off from social activities. Because I was respectful and reserved, with a sharp mind and a natural gift for remembering anything ever printed in twelve-point Times New Roman font, I gained the reputation of a pious know-it-all. I was admired by adults and ridiculed by my peers from church, my sole social interaction. I was desperately lonely. Despite my achievement of outward excellence, inside I was dying.
Shortly after being baptized at age eleven, a decision made due to the felt pressure of others’ expectations, my outward legalism and inner darkness hit an all-time high. I was perpetually depressed and angry; my journal entries from this period of early adolescence make frightening reading even now. For a short time, I turned to self-mutilation; I used to prick my palms and fingertips repeatedly with a pin or needle, deliberating keeping the wounds small and inconspicuous, so as to avoid major concern or intervention. This self-inflicted punishment gave me a savage pleasure, because I believed that bad things happened to bad people; because I felt so terrible, I believed I must have done something wrong, and that people who did wrong things needed to be punished.
Between the ages of twelve and thirteen, I discovered my ability to coerce and manipulate the opposite sex. I pursued young men with calculating exactness, knowing precisely what to do in order to encourage them to fulfill my desire for physical affection, which I equated with love.These pursuits, however, were not satisfying, because I was not being given love and attention as a gift; I was still operating under the assumption that in order to be appreciated and valued, one had to perform some action or provide some service. In other words, love was a commodity to be haggled over and traded. I was also contemptuous of those that I pursued, because they were merely bashful boys, when what I wanted was unconditional, sacrificial love. Despite all that I knew about Jesus, and His sacrifice at the cross, I continued to chase after all that the world promised for fulfillment and happiness.
My conversion was sudden, violent, and passionate; I have compared it to Elijah’s meeting with God on Mount Horeb, or the conversion of Saul on the Damascus road. There was a thunderstorm on the night of August 25th, 2005. It was rolling in from several miles away when my mother and I took our argument—over an explicit letter I had written to one of my love interests—out onto the front porch. There was no way for me to hide the shame I felt at my sin being found out. I remember the turning point in that argument; as I continued to blame one person or set of circumstances after another for my depression and rebellion, my mother threw up her hands and said, “I’m not angry with you, Danika. I’m just disappointed.” That statement hit me like a punch in the stomach. My mother left me standing dumbstruck on the porch as a steady downpour drenched me from head to toe.
No sooner had she shut the door than I exploded in a furious rage, shouting at God until I was hoarse, demanding an explanation for the misery of my nearly fifteen-year experience with what barely passed for life. The wind picked up as I shouted, bringing the thunderstorm in more quickly; I have never experienced such a storm before or since. The thunder literally rattled and shook my house; when lightning cracked, the bolts seemed to be mere yards away, illuminating the night with blinding flashes. I remember that the hair on my arms stood on end, the air was so charged with electricity. It seemed as though God was shouting back at me, as though we were locked in combat. I was determined to blame Him for all that was wrong in my life; He was determined to wrench my soul away from Satan.
However, as the storm quieted and I lost the vocal capacity to shout anymore, my ranting gave way to sobbing and I sat down on my front porch steps, put my head in my arms and cried. The pelting downpour gave way to steady rainfall that streamed over my cheeks and washed away my tears. I tasted the droplets on my lips; I knew that God was embracing me, then, and trying to kiss away the hurt, because only He could. My natural reaction was to resist His ministrations.I remember shaking off the helpless feelings and whispering furiously, “All right God, have it Your way.” My surrender to God’s will was in earnest, even if my confession of faith sounded more like a sassy retort.
I applied myself to prayer and to Scripture, seeing it with new eyes and understanding with a renewed mind. Two days after my conversion, I awakened in the dead of night, sat bolt upright in bed, and proceeded to quote from the book of Revelation: “Behold; I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, and will open the door, I will come in.” Through hours of daily prayer and communion with God, I learned of His desire, not just for my obedience, but for my love. I began to pray fervently for a restored and compassionate heart; I prayed for the ability to love and trust completely again.
Within a fortnight of my conversion, a representative from what was then Roanoke Bible College came and spoke to the youth group on a Sunday morning. While I do not remember the name of the representative, nor what was said, I well remember his discussion of the missions program of study. I picked up a brochure, fully intending, even as a sophomore, to look into the school. That very same Sunday, I received a phone call from Paul Goodart, an out-of-state Bible Bowl coach I had met over the summer. Through observations he had made of me during the summer tournament season, he determined that I had the ability and potential to be a top-notch player, and so I was invited to stay with him and his wife at their home in Florida for two weeks following Bible Bowl National Finals, in order to study intently and memorize the text for the upcoming year. I had not seen Paul in over a month; but on that particular Sunday, he was calling to invite me to attend the National Missionary Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, all expenses paid. Provided I could find a ride, he said, I was more than welcome to take advantage of this offer.
Clay Perkins, who at that time was the Senior Associate Minister at my church, and his wife Sandra were traveling to the National Missionary Convention that year, and when they discovered by way of my mother that I wanted to attend, they offered to give me a ride. I distinctly remember talking about Roanoke Bible College for the majority of the six-hour ride from Kernersville, North Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia. The following year, Dr. Perkins accepted the presidency at Roanoke Bible College. It is strange to me, the lack of coincidence in circumstances.
The National Missionary Convention was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was a week of intense spiritual growth; I was inspired to live a radically different life. During an exclusive screening of the 2006 film End of the Spear, I heard a still, small voice questioning me: “Would you do that for Me? Would you accept a difficult and dangerous task? Would you die for Me?” A confident assurance settled in the depths of my soul in those moments. My answer was an unequivocal “Yes.” Though I knew not where, or when, I understood that God was calling me to missions, and that my entire life up until that point would serve its purpose in preparing me for the mission field.
Upon my return from the National Missionary Convention, I became convicted of the need to be baptized. On Wednesday night, November 30th, I pulled my youth minister aside and asked if he would baptize me when everyone else had gone. He agreed, and when I took my first breath coming up out of the water, I understood that I was a new creation. I was filled with the Holy Spirit, all of His passion and power, and I received my spiritual gifts of wisdom, discernment, prophecy, teaching and encouragement. God took me on a whirlwind adventure in the year that followed. He inspired me to attend a summer conference called the Big Picture, a week in which God removed from me my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh.
In the fall of 2006, the year of the first revival my church had conducted in ten years, God inspired me to organize a day of fasting and prayer for the youth. This met with intense opposition from my youth pastor, but it had the blessing of God. Six speakers, three hours of worship, six hours of fasting and intense prayer for revival, and eighteen attending students were the fruit of my faith-leap. I have never done anything like it before or since; it was a task God set before in that moment, simply because I was listening. I well understood that Fast and Refuel was not my doing, but God’s.
In the years that followed, God blessed me with great success in Bible Bowl. In my final year of eligibility (2008), I played for Towne South Church of Christ, and my teammate and I won first place in both the Round Robin and Double Elimination tournaments at Roanoke Bible College, third place at both Milligan College and Johnson Bible College, and third place at Bible Bowl National Finals. These victories afforded me the opportunity to attend Mid-Atlantic Christian University on a full-tuition scholarship. The knowledge of God’s word gained through Bible Bowl will be invaluable throughout my life.
I was also invited on several international Christian leadership training seminars conducted by Dr. Phil Johnson through both Joshua Expeditions and Global Next Research Institute. My final trip to Krakow, Poland to study the Holocaust—in combination with the testimony of a peer whose sister serves as a missionary in Israel—served God’s purpose in tugging my heart toward the apple of His eye, the Jewish people, and narrowing my missionary focus to the Middle East, specifically Israel.
During my first semester at Mid-Atlantic Christian University, the fall of 2009, God saw fit to use an extremely difficult set of circumstances to teach me about grace, and His unconditional love. It has been said that the most difficult thing to do is forgive oneself; I have found this to be true. God worked through my spectacular failure; He removed from me every shred of self-righteous and pride and unmasked my true person. Though I trembled to stand naked before God, and to reveal every flaw and wound to my peers, I learned for the first time in twelve years to truly trust and allow others to love me with the same deep and abiding love God had enabled me to bear towards them. It is still a fearful thing to be so open and vulnerable, but God is teaching me to overcome that fear.
Within the next year, it appears that God is going to walk beside me during another season of difficulties and growth. I look forward to summer ministry opportunities; recently engaged, I also look forward to learning to walk in step with my future husband, Joshua Kroger, as we both walk in step with God. The opportunity to serve two months in Israel shortly after being married has presented itself to us, and we look forward to working hard at what God has for us to do now, and watching His plans for later unfold.
