"Accepting Christ" is the language of the culture I grew up in. Even if I hadn't left that tradition, I would still have had trouble answering the question, because I "accepted Christ" several times in my childhood. I suppose I could say it was when I said the "sinner's prayer" at my church's VBS program when I was about 7. I said that same prayer several times over the course of my childhood. But my life didn't start to reflect the change of the gospel until I was 17, despite always being very moralistic.

I decided to have a believer's baptism when I was 19. But even after that, I came to a very dark place in college where I wasn't even sure God existed or Christianity was even real. In that, same time, I met my Calvinist husband, and I was constantly arguing with him about faith and doctrine and whether any of it was real, to the point where we nearly called off our wedding.

It wasn't until a year or two after my wedding and attending a covenantal* church that I started to see where my husband was coming from in his theology. Since then I have come to see my life, not as a reflection of what I have done in relation to the Lord, but as a reflection of what God has done, over the course of my entire life, to draw me and rescue me and work me into His story.

So answering a question of when I accepted Christ is complicated, and doesn't fit within my doctrinal framework anymore. 🙂

*Covenantal theology says that the children of believers are specially marked by God as participators in his covenant from birth (to believing parents), or from conversion of parents (if they were unbelievers before). It's a very dense doctrine that I haven't fully wrapped my mind around yet, but I do know that it makes it difficult for believers to pinpoint a time when they began believing, because they can't remember a time when they did not believe. (Like my husband's story. 🙂 )

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