Stories
Real stories from real people - an honest look at Alpha.
Rachel's Story
(Rachel is now married to Kevan, who's story was on the previous link)
When I look back on my childhood it was a troubled time. My father left the family home when I was six years old. After a long and difficult time for my mother, they were finally divorced a few years later.
I went to a Christian school, but it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. As a family, we never went to church or talked about religion at all. I joined the brownies with a friend for a while but left when I realised it involved the occasional visit to church. I even joined the choir a few years later, but was much more interested in earning some pocket money than finding out about God.
I hated high school and any memories of it are clouded by the fact that my father died of a coronary heart attack when I was twelve. Although I hadn’t seen him since he left the family home, I’d spent years putting him on a pedestal dreaming about when I would see him again. I felt cheated and angry when he died, but above all else, a seed was sown in my mind that I would never be able to trust any man again.
I left school at sixteen and followed a career in hairdressing. At nineteen, I became disillusioned and travelled for a short time before settling down with my boyfriend in Bath. At twenty-one I had my daughter, Rhianna. Unfortunately, the relationship didn’t work out and we parted when Rhianna was eighteen-months old. I continued to live in Bath, but at times it was a struggle to make ends meet. After another failed relationship, I decided to visit a clairvoyant. This led to a long fascination with occult practices; from crystal healing to tarot cards to eventually attending spiritualist church. The more depressed I became, the more time and money I would spend on different New Age therapies. It became a vicious circle; each time believing that it would bring me closer to feeling secure and fulfilled.
When my daughter started school I got a job as a part-time stylist for a magazine publishers. Two years later I was working as a wedding stylist at various hotels around Bath on a freelance basis. My career life seemed to be taking off in a new and exciting direction, but my emotional life was still unsettled.
In my spare time, I devoured as many self-help books that I could lay my hands on, all of which promised to heal my life or empower it. Through endless searching, I certainly became more independent but had taken on an almost warrior-like stance on my life. It gave me the sense that I could probably take on anything that life threw at me, but my heart had hardened in the process.
In the summer of 2000, I met the man of my dreams. After a heady and intense few weeks, we hastily decided to move in together. Up until that point, I had been living in a flat with my daughter in the centre of Bath. At the time, everything in me screamed ‘yes.’ I finally felt that my life was complete and dreamed that we could be a proper family. The reality was very different. The shock of the change affected us all, particularly our children. Although Kevan’s daughter lived away, she stayed at the weekends and both girls struggled to get used to the new arrangement. Equally, as a new couple, we hadn’t discussed how we were going to manage any of the difficulties we would inevitably face. Needless to say, our relationship over the next five years was turbulent. But even through the worst times, the deep love that we’d felt for each other in those heady few weeks was still there, and that kept us together.
Three years later, my daughter was invited to a Christian camp with two friends from school. When she returned, she was very enthusiastic and asked if we could start going to church. Neither of us were keen, particularly me, as I was in a very different place.
Over the next few months, I began to notice her reading her school Bible at bedtime and she started keeping a journal. At the time I suppose I felt pleased that she was getting something out of it, but it certainly wasn’t something that I wanted to explore.
The following year, she returned to the same camp and when she came home I could see how important her faith had become. After a long talk I decided that I would try one of the Sunday services at our local church. Rhianna’s friends from school were there and it busy and lively. I remember looking around thinking how happy everyone seemed and we were made to feel very welcome. Although the whole atmosphere felt very alien to me, I liked the warmth from the people there. After the summer break I decided that I would go back to church with Rhianna, purely because I knew how important it was to her.
Around that time, we’d made friends with a new family in the village who had returned to England having spent a number of years leading a church in South Africa. Their daughters started at the same school. A few weeks later I arranged to start running with their mum, Jo, in the mornings. It was on one of our runs that Jo told me about the Alpha course. As I was still going to church I couldn’t see what difference it would make in my life, I guess I was just comfortable going through the motions. But over the next few weeks I started to notice leaflets and posters advertising the launch of the new Alpha course starting at the Guildhall, where Jonathan Aitken was the guest speaker. I eventually decided to go when I was invited by another friend, whose children my daughter had gone to camp with.
Jonathan Aitken’s talk was extremely powerful. I thought that if what he said was genuine, then I had been missing the point for most of my life. I am not saying that I necessarily accepted everything he said because for someone like me, it meant looking at my life through a completely different lens. But I was prepared to start the course with a view to finding out more. It’s quite hard to explain the sense of unravelling that took place on the run up to hearing the talk. But at church, I’d already begun to feel more open to what was being said in the sermons; it was as though a light had been switched on somewhere inside of me. I also looked forward to the worship part of the service, something which I’d originally felt quite uncomfortable with.
At Alpha, the talks made a lot of sense. In our small groups we were able to discuss any issues that came up and very quickly it became a safe place to talk about our experiences. The more I thought about my life the easier it became to see how empty it had felt without Jesus in it. I knew I had made a mess of things and wanted the opportunity to start again. I knew in my heart that God existed, so it was more a question of absorbing all the information the course provided.
The most helpful talk for me came in week seven, which focused on how to resist evil. The speaker talked about the dangers of having unhealthy interests in occult practices. It was as though it was the two of us in the room and I became extremely restless and uncomfortable. It wasn’t that I felt condemned, it was just that I knew what I needed to do. It was as if God had dropped this sudden realisation into my head and as soon as the talk was over I left. By the end of the evening I had cleared the house of all the books, charms and videos associated with occult activity, all of which had been such a big part of my life. I then repented of them and committed my life to Jesus.
Although I felt a huge sense of relief, I was also burdened with guilt. Kevan was away overnight and I had made a point of not talking to him about Alpha, because he wasn’t interested. I didn’t know how I could begin to describe to him what was happening to me. Our relationship was going through another difficult patch at the time and I desperately didn’t want to make it any worse.
Life at home became increasingly difficult because the more I began to change, the more withdrawn I became. I had also signed up to be a helper on the next Alpha course, which caused an extra strain on our relationship. Around that time I picked up a virus which resulted in me having to stay in bed for a few days. In between sleeping, I read the Bible and prayed a lot. I wanted God to show me if the relationship was right. I was scared at the prospect of being on my own again, but I didn’t know how our relationship would survive if I couldn’t talk about my faith. I felt God say to me during that time that I needed to be honest and tell Kevan everything.
When I’d fully recovered, I told Kevan we needed to talk and we planned an evening out. I told a few friends from church and I knew that they were praying for me. The evening was surprisingly calm, and Kevan listened to everything I had to say. But it became evident that things were not going to change. He didn’t want to do the Alpha course and couldn’t see how it would cause problems in the future. The fact that our relationship was in need of help didn’t enter the equation. By the end of the evening I felt confused and disappointed.
Our lives continued to move in different directions and it got to the stage where we ran out of things to say to each other. Our relationship reached its lowest point ever and I could do nothing but hand it over to God. There was nothing left for me to do but trust in Him to carry me through the rest. It was a miserable and exhausting time.
A few weeks later, when I was getting ready to go to church I felt compelled to ask Kevan if he wanted to come. It was an odd request under the circumstances, but to my amazement, he said yes. I thought at the time that perhaps he was just making the effort for the sake of our relationship. But I didn’t mind, I was just happy that he agreed to come at all. A friend of ours opened the service with a prayer inviting the Holy Spirit into the church. I don’t really remember worrying about what Kevan thought, everything just felt right. Halfway through the worship I turned to Kevan to see tears streaming down his face. Quite unexpectedly, it was as if that day God began to put the scaffolding up and rebuild our relationship. But that only became possible when I reached a place in my life where I was totally dependent on God and trusted him completely.
Since that day, Kevan has completed the Alpha course and committed his life to Jesus. In June of this year we were baptised as a family, and on September 1st we were married at Holy Trinity church in Combe Down. Our lives have been completely transformed by God. Everyday, I am thankful for what He has done in our lives. For Rhianna, it has been an amazing journey. It started with a prayer that she wrote in her journal three years ago asking that Kevan and I would become Christians. We have experienced the power of prayer changing our lives. Having Jesus at the centre has cemented us together as a family. We are now on the road of an exciting journey together, safe in the knowledge that God is in control.