My Testimony

God Was There All Along

Yesterday, a pastor asked me for my testimony.

My testimony.

I paused.

Perhaps it was because the question came from a man of faith, someone who has known me through another season of my life, that the words carried a little more weight.

No one had ever asked me that before.

At first, I wasn't even entirely certain what he meant.

Then I sat with it.

I have written so much over this past year about faith, sobriety, healing, bread, prayer, grace, and beginning again that, in many ways, I suppose I have been writing my testimony all along.

Just in pieces.

A loaf here.

A prayer there.

A farmers market morning.

A broken oven.

A conversation with a stranger.

A stone gathered along the way.

Evidence of grace.

But when a pastor looks at the life you are living and asks you directly for your testimony, there is something about the question that makes you stop.

It made me ask myself...

What is my testimony?

I knew immediately what it wasn't.

There was no grand moment when I collapsed at the feet of God and suddenly discovered Him.

I didn't find God.

God has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.

Faith was woven into my childhood. Prayer was familiar. God was never an abstract idea I encountered after my life became difficult.

He was already there.

What has changed is me.

And perhaps more importantly, my relationship with Him.

It has deepened slowly.

Quietly.

Over time.

That is why I think of my faith as fluid.

Not uncertain.

Fluid.

Moving.

Deepening.

Changing shape as I have changed.

There have been seasons when I held tightly to God and seasons when I wandered farther from Him.

There were years when my prayers were mostly requests.

Please fix this.

Please change that.

Please give me the answer I want.

I think many of us begin there.

Then life happened.

Loss happened.

Grief happened.

My life changed in ways I never anticipated.

And eventually, sobriety happened.

Something began changing in my prayer life.

My prayers became less about asking God to change my circumstances and more about asking Him to change me.

Give me wisdom.

Give me discernment.

Keep me humble.

Show me where You want me.

Help me recognize what is mine to carry and what isn't.

Help me remain faithful.

And every morning, before anything else has the opportunity to enter my thoughts, I begin with gratitude.

Thank You, God, for another day of sobriety.

That prayer has become the foundation beneath everything else.

Not because sobriety is the entirety of my story.

Because sobriety gave me the clarity to begin seeing my story differently.

I began noticing.

That may be one of the greatest changes of all.

I started paying attention to the quiet ways God had been present all along.

Not necessarily in enormous miracles.

In ordinary moments.

People who appeared when I needed them.

Doors that opened.

Doors that remained firmly closed.

Prayers that were answered.

And prayers that weren't.

There was a time when an unanswered prayer felt like God's absence.

Today, I understand it differently.

Sometimes what has been withheld from me has carried as much grace as what has been given.

And then...

There was sourdough.

Even writing that makes me smile.

Because if someone had told me several years ago that flour and water would become part of my testimony, I probably would have laughed.

I didn't begin making sourdough because I was searching for God.

I began because I wanted to learn something new.

But something happened in the repetition.

Feed.

Wait.

Watch.

Learn.

Try again.

There was no rushing it.

No forcing it.

No pretending.

The dough told the truth every single time.

Slowly, the practice became grounding.

The grounding became healing.

The healing became purpose.

And what began as a jar of flour and water eventually became Art of The Crumb.

Then something else happened that I never anticipated.

People began gathering around the bread.

At first, they were customers.

Then they became familiar faces.

Then conversations began.

Stories were shared across my market table.

People came back.

Relationships formed.

Bread was donated.

People were fed.

And somewhere along the way, I began to understand that perhaps the bread wasn't the whole story.

Yesterday, that same pastor, someone who has known me through a very different season of my life, told me that he believes God gave me this bakery as a ministry.

I would never have called it that myself.

Even now, I hesitate.

Not because I don't believe God is present in this work.

Because the word feels much larger than anything I would ever claim for myself.

But he named something he sees.

And I chose to receive it.

Not as a title.

As a gift.

A God Wink.

A reminder that sometimes other people can see something unfolding in our lives before we have language for it ourselves.

And the timing mattered.

Because only hours earlier, I had climbed into my car after a difficult farmers market and said,

"I don't know if this is worth it."

I was exhausted.

The heat and humidity had taken everything out of me.

The market had been slow.

The energy felt different.

For a moment, I questioned the whole thing.

Then I came home.

And there was his message.

He didn't know what I had said in the car.

He didn't know what kind of morning I had experienced.

He simply told me what he saw.

I don't need to make more of that moment than I know to be true.

But I can receive it for what it meant to me.

Encouragement.

Confirmation.

Grace arriving on a day when I needed a little extra.

Another stone.

Perhaps that is my testimony.

Not one enormous moment.

Thousands of small ones.

A lifetime of God being present and a woman gradually learning how to notice.

I used to think faith was about having certainty.

Today, I think mine has become much more about trust.

Trusting when I understand.

Trusting when I don't.

Trusting the answered prayer.

Trusting the silence.

Trusting the open door.

Trusting the closed one.

Trusting this season without demanding to know what the next one will hold.

My relationship with God is stronger today than it has ever been.

Not because life has become easier.

Not because every prayer has been answered.

Not because I have figured everything out.

Quite the opposite.

I have become increasingly comfortable saying,

I don't know.

And increasingly peaceful adding,

But I trust You.

Maybe that's what all of this has been about.

The bread.

The bakery.

The writing.

The sobriety.

The people.

The stones.

The seasons.

The grace.

I thought I was learning how to make bread.

I didn't realize God was using bread to remake me.

And perhaps the most beautiful part of my testimony is that it isn't finished.

I don't know where Art of The Crumb is going.

I don't know what will happen with the book I've written.

I don't know what the next season will ask of me.

For once in my life, I don't need to.

I only need to remain faithful to the one I'm standing in.

So if someone asks me today for my testimony, perhaps this is my answer:

I didn't find God.

I began to recognize how faithfully He had been there all along.

And every day, I am still learning to notice.

Warmly,

Kathy
Art of The Crumb