Taking her mum to church, Vicky received an unexpected blessing
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
TESTIMONY
Vicky Brown has been a soldier at Newcastle Corps for the past 15 years and volunteers two days a week, including assisting The Salvation Army Emergency Services (SAES). Here she shares her story for Salvos Online*.
Thirty-three years ago, my father had just died, and my mum was distraught. She decided that she wanted to go to church and wanted me to take her, which I did [to a Salvation Army corps.] And every week I would just take her to church, sit there and listen.
[At the time], I was angry. When I was only 13 years old, my parents split up, and for quite a lot of years they were separated, and from then every little thing that went wrong in my life was all God’s fault, never mine.
I got married, I had children, and I have a good married life and three children, but I never really thought about it – still, everything that went wrong was still God’s fault. But you know, you just live life and time goes by and then when my father died, our family fell apart all over again.
After a year of going to that corps, my mother decided that she wanted to change churches, and I found that I didn’t, I was happy where I was. I realised I wasn’t going to church just because I was taking my mother; I’d found God again.
It changed my life. It made my life more positive. I didn’t dwell on the negatives anymore. I found that it was never God’s fault; it was always my attitude.
I started to see things from a different perspective than what I normally had. When you’re helping out with welfare and things like that, and giving out toys at Christmas, I realised that my life is pretty darn good compared to a lot of people and that instead of being grateful for what I had, I was just being resentful for what I didn’t have.
There was never this flash-in-the-pan moment. It was just a gradual awakening; it just happened slowly, bit by bit. I didn’t look at the problems in my life as problems anymore; I looked at them as learning experiences.
I believe in The Salvation Army’s work. Whatever needs doing, I’m in for it! It gives me something to do now that I’m retired. I come in here two days a week, and if the emergency services [SAES] need me and I can fit it in, I’m quite happy to do that.
I got a phone call at home one Sunday a few years back saying the emergency services needed people who can do SAMIS [Service and Mission Information System], so I said, ‘Yeah ok,’ and the next thing I know I was out Cessnock way when they had that major fire, and I was doing emergency relief and I saw a whole new side of things.
I went to Queensland when the tornado went through there; I was on Tambourine Mountain with people who had lost absolutely everything. They would come in, and they would be crying and not knowing what was happening. They would walk out, and sometimes they would run back and throw their arms around you. Just sitting for 10 minutes talking to them just changed how their day was. That’s a big something.
We are just loving them into the Kingdom of God. I found that really rewarding.
Now, when things do go wrong in life, because believing in God and loving God does not stop the bad things from happening, but when they do, I have a whole community around me.
All the church praying. Normally, bad things would ‘wipe me off the face of the earth’ nearly, but now I’m choosing to remain positive, and I know God has me in his hands.
*As told to Lauren Martin
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