I didn’t have a Christian upbringing. I don’t know what my mum and dad believed; religion was something we just didn’t talk about. My sister became a Christian in her early teens and went to a local mission hall where she met her future husband and occasionally they would try and get me to go and I did. I think it lasted about three weeks! Sometime later they talked me into going to a Christian event at the Royal Albert Hall, which must be about forty years ago now, so I can’t remember whether I enjoyed it or not. And that, really, was the only Christian influence I had as a youngster.

After that I just wanted to do my own thing, normally thinking of number one and just going along on my own merry way. I had what I thought was a normal life. I had a habit of swearing like a trooper, I found it easy to lie and I used to tell dirty, wicked and sick jokes.

Then in 1992 I became unemployed and I used to have good and bad days. The bad days were normally a mixture of being moody and depressed and usually very short tempered. During this time, I developed what I can see now was an unhealthy interest in horror. The only books I ever used to read were horror books and I never missed any horror films on television.

Then along came Christmas 1994. I spent it alone, I was ill with the flu, which meant I spent most of that Christmas asleep and when I was awake I was depressed. On the Boxing Day afternoon, I was actually sitting down reading a horror book, but, I just couldn’t concentrate on it. So I put it down and for some reason unknown to me I decided to pray. I’d never prayed before, I didn’t know what to say, but I found myself asking the Lord to come into my life and take control of it because I didn’t know what to do with it anymore. I went to bed that night still feeling pretty rough and the next morning I woke up feeling bright and breezy for a change, because I didn’t normally, in fact, I was so bright and breezy I was on a high.

Having known I’d been ill, my brother in law rang to find out how I was and I told him that I had prayed and asked the Lord into my life and that I was now ten feet in the air. He said I’d been born again, whatever that meant, I didn’t know. I just knew that something good had happened and he told me to find a church. I know there was one just up the road from me. I had no idea what sort of church it was and it wasn’t until I went that I learnt that it was St Luke’s.

Since then the Lord has changed my life in so many ways. A few months after I became a Christian I realised I’d stopped swearing, then if I happened to slip up I was so shocked I used to have to pray for forgiveness. All the dirty jokes have stopped, now I just tell bad ones. The lying has stopped; I’ve got a conscience now. The short temper has gone, obviously I’m not perfect, I still get wound up about things but I’m not as bad as I used to be and I don’t even know where the horror section is in the library.

My life as a Christian hasn’t always been easy – the lady vicar we had at St Luke’s went home to be with the Lord after an accident on holiday in Africa; I lost my sister to cancer; I’ve been on anti-depressants and I struggled with Him when He wanted me to change churches, but the Lord’s always been there for me and has given me the strength to do things which at one time I could never have done, like standing up and talking in front of a group of people. Praise the Lord!