Susan Klinkert

My story really starts from a position of non-believer.

When I was a child, we were not a church-going family. My mother grew up religious and went to a Catholic convent school, however, by the time I was born, neither of my parents were practicing Christians. In my late teens, after a life-changing episode which affected both my mother and father, they returned to church.

I did not have the same spiritual change of heart, and although I was Christened and confirmed at 17, this was more to do with my parents’ expectations than my commitment and my faith.

After leaving school, my first serious boyfriend - who later became my first husband - was very religious. He was Dutch and his family were very observant of the laws of religion but not very expressive of the love of Christ.

They were prudishly strict and severe - they were always going to church, and they never did ANYTHING on a Sunday, etc. I always felt that they were judging everyone around them and finding them lacking in Christianity. I was very young, and this led to a constant feeling of not being accepted and not being worthy of their son and their family.

Ultimately, their rigid observation of Biblical rules isolated me to such an extent that I divorced and left my husband and moved back in with my parents. This was my first real experience with Christian people.

I found it very confusing and it started my belief that Christians were fake: full of outward airs and graces, but lacking in love and substance. During my first marriage, I tried to find God, but my path was not clear. My fear of doing or saying the wrong thing or never being good enough really held me back.

I have always lived a decent life. I have tried really hard not to be a bad person, to think about the needs of others, and to be responsible. I have included the concept of God in my life, but I just never had a real connection. I know now, in hindsight, that He had a connection to me.

Like a broken telephone, it only worked one way. I asked God, and when He answered, I couldn’t hear him. I remarried, had children, and carried on living. When I was about 40, my mother was diagnosed with a degenerative autoimmune disease. She was given a maximum life expectancy of 7 years.

I was shattered! She was only 70, and my children were so young. I needed her in my life. As my mother got more and more ill, I did not understand why she was being allowed to suffer. I kept asking God why He was allowing this to happen to her.

I guess I was angry with God, but I still continued to pray, not really expecting an answer. My mother lived another 12 years, and the last few years of her life were not pretty. She was on oxygen and couldn’t do anything for herself - I washed her and fed her, and loved her. I nursed her with all my love, but it broke something inside me, because I could do nothing to fix the problem.

Her last week of life was incredibly tough on everyone, and just before she passed away, she was calling out to her mother. She called out to me to help her. She knew she was dying, and I could hear the fear in her voice. Eventually, she passed away. I still miss her to this day.

During the last 2 years of my mother’s life, my middle sister and I disagreed on how we should run our joint business. This sister is a big “Christian” who spends all her time at church and serving, but behind this façade, she is a vicious manipulator of people. She is constantly sowing discontent and poison, spreading lies and breaking up families and friendships.

She drove both her daughters away, and even our dying mother could not reconcile with her. We have parted ways. I removed myself from the business and from anything to do with this sister. It was such an incredibly painful betrayal of my trust and my belief in what family stands for. My sister’s spite and hatred added to my dislike and distrust of Christians. I had now reached a stage where I viewed most Christians as false, manipulative, and self-serving.

I saw churches as places to harbor weak and malicious people who used God as a weapon and the church as a cover. This was not a good place to find myself. When my mother died, I was so mistrustful of everything religious that I had no real avenue to turn to in my grief.

On her deathbed, my mother made me promise to take care of my father. She need not have worried, because I loved my father, and taking care of him was always my intention. After she passed, he retreated into his dementia, and life was so sad for him. His mind had failed, and, very slowly, his body failed.

He just withdrew until he was gone. Just his body was left. I hated to see this happen to my father, whom I loved dearly. I was again angry with God for not taking him and sparing him this indignity. It ate at me to see him being fed and changed like a baby, staring off into another world, not talking, just existing.

One morning, I woke up between 4 and 5 o’clock. I had no reason to wake up, but when I did, I just started to pray with deep emotion. I asked God to please take my father; that his time was done, and he needed to go and be with my mother. During this prayer, my caregiver phoned me and urgently asked me to go down to my father.

When I got to his bedroom, I saw that my father had passed peacefully in his sleep. A very strange feeling came over me, and I felt very calm inside. I was so thankful to God for answering my prayer.

For the first time in my life, I felt like a direct prayer had been answered - directly. With both my parents gone, my first feeling was almost one of relief. I had been caring for my sick and elderly parents for 10 years. Between my children, husband, parents, and my work, I never had time for anything. Now I felt a bizarre sense of freedom.

It wasn’t long before I started feeling guilty for feeling relieved. Eventually, when my grief did kick in, I had been holding everything together for so long that I didn’t know how to be out of control. I loaded all my pain inside and carried on. I abused myself by not resting, eating badly, not exercising, and not seeking spiritual comfort.

I became short-tempered, angry, and stressed. I fought with people I shouldn’t have fought with. I was not in a good place at all. Finally, life had beaten me down into this really dark place of despair. While I was in this dark place, my business started to fail.

I am the sole breadwinner in my family (my husband doesn’t work), so the responsibility of my entire family falls onto my shoulders. I wasn’t coping, I was getting physically sick. I started to notice signs that something was not right with me physically. I tried to deny it and cover it up, but in my mind, I knew there was a problem.

I had all the signs of diabetes: increased urination, feeling very thirsty and hungry all the time, blurred vision, extreme fatigue, tingling in my hands and feet, dry skin, etc. I literally had every symptom of diabetes. This was the last straw.

How could this be happening to me? What had I done so badly in life that everything was just falling apart all around me like this? In my anguish, I prayed to God to heal me. I begged him to take this affliction from me and to make me well again.

I stopped eating anything with sugar, and I started to exercise. I lost weight, and physically, I felt so much better. I prayed for God to help me stay on this healthy pathway. Eventually, after about 3 months, I plucked up the courage to go and test for diabetes at my GP.

He did a full set of blood tests, and my results came back clear. I did not have diabetes. I know that it was God’s grace that helped me to help myself. God gave me the courage to change my lifestyle, and it is God’s intervention that has kept me from being diabetic and kept my blood sugar levels down.

Something was stirring inside me - a hope, a quest - to know the living God. I was still in the dark place, but I could see light now, somewhere ahead of me. You can only appreciate the light if you have known the darkness.

In December, I went to EL with my family, as my daughter was playing in a water polo tournament. At the airport, our flight was delayed, and we were waiting in the heat in a poorly ventilated area. I started to struggle to breathe. I couldn’t get air. It was weird. The feeling didn’t go away even when we landed in EL.

About 2 days into our holiday, I fell asleep early but woke up to a terrible sensation of not being able to breathe. I was having severe pains in my chest and down my arm. I had pins and needles in my hands. It was terrifying. I sat on the couch trying to catch my breath, and eventually, I had to wake up my husband, Richard.

I truly believe that I was having a heart attack. While we rushed to the hospital, I prayed like I had never prayed before. I didn’t want to die. My children were so young and they needed their mother. I have never been as afraid as I was that night.

When we got there, the doctor was convinced I was having a heart attack, and they rushed me in. They put me on oxygen and started all kinds of tests. Inside the hospital, a strange sense of calm came over me. I just ran out of everything. I had nothing left. I gave everything over to God. I let Him have the final say, and I accepted that whatever would be, would be.

I stabilised and they kept me overnight for observation. In the morning, when the doctor came to speak to me, he told me that they found nothing wrong with my heart. He didn’t have an explanation for what had happened to me the previous evening. The only explanation he could offer was that I had had a severe panic attack.

I know I was having a heart attack just as surely as I know that today is Monday. God had reached in and saved me the second time. It was this event in my life that really started my relationship with God.

I started to read the Bible systematically and pray more often. I asked God to help me have faith and not to worry about the problems I am having with my business. Having faith and giving your problems to God is so difficult. I have no parents, and my husband doesn’t work, so this was especially difficult for me as I have no safety net at all.

I struggle with this even now, but I started truly praying for God’s help and direction. We decided to sell our townhouse on the South Coast in an effort to reduce our costs and bring money in. I prayed so hard about this, as my plan was to retire to the South Coast and live happily ever after. I was devastated! It may have been my plan, but it was not God’s plan for me.

We put our townhouse on the market and sold the unit for our asking price within 24 hours of putting it there. That was an actual miracle, as properties are not selling right now, especially on the South Coast. Property values have plummeted there. God has a plan for me, and it’s not playing out on the South Coast of KZN.

I’m working hard at my relationships and my spiritual growth. I’m taking each day as it comes, and I’m in love with learning about God. I feel like an infant with so much to learn. I am still struggling to trust Christians, but I have reached out to one of my mother’s friends from church, and I’m hoping to overcome this and become a part of this church community.

This is my story, but it’s not really about me; it is about God’s grace prevailing in a very human life. I am an ordinary person with a very ordinary life. I have the same stress and worries as most 55-year-old people that I know.

I have been through dark times, and I have discovered the Lord along this path. When everything was too much for me, God was there. He picked me up and held me in his hands so that I could find my feet. Even though I’m still working through all my life’s problems, God holds my hand.

I realise that all the things that were so important to me are not as important as my relationship with God. My worries about my future are less now. I know that God has a plan for me.