Leigh-Anna Barbieri – Baptism Testimony

Leigh-Anna Barbieri shares her testimony of salvation during her baptism service during Sojourn Gathered, this past Easter:

Like many people, I was brought up in a Christian family. I went to a private school, attended church on a pretty regular basis, played church sports, attended the lock in’s, skate night…  heck, I was even a pink octopus in the Noah’s Ark play! Our church was our school, so we were there all the time. Childhood was pretty sweet.

As I grew older I began to see things in our church that I did not agree with. I felt the judgment and saw the hypocrisy going on in our church, and knew something was wrong. This made church life seem pretty phony to me then.

Around the time I was beginning to conjure these thoughts in my head,  trouble began to hit hard on the home front. It was like something snapped in my dad’s head, and his behavior became pretty erratic. The doctors got him to take medicine for a while for his mood, but once he thought he was cured, he stopped taking it and must have decided somewhere along the way that a new Harley would suit his needs better.

My father drank a lot before I was born and decided to take that back up. He began treating my mom badly, gallivanting with female “friends”, and seemed to not be bothered by what he was doing to our family. This quickly led to separation, followed by divorce, which was very shortly followed by his death.

I was 15 when all this took place and I was utterly confused and positively angry at my father. This led to depression and introversion, which eventually manifested themselves through lots of partying, way too much drinking and absolutely no church. I rebelled to the fullest.

In May of 2004, the Lord put my husband in my path to calm me down. What made Nicholas stay with me at that point would still have me baffled, if I didn’t believe that the Lord places every detail in place for a reason. Once we were together, my brother Drew began encouraging us to get back into church and asked us, many times, to come to Sojourn. We were slow at first, but the Lord was beginning to do big things in my heart and Nicholas and I began attending more regularly. It was not until then, that I began to really feel passionate about pursuing the Lord. I actually wanted to turn away from my old lifestyle and fill that empty void in my life.  At Sojourn, I felt I had found the right church that spoke truth to my heart and so straightforwardly taught the Gospel. I had not experienced this before. Since then, the Lord has only grown that passion and I relish in the moments where I can sit back and admire Christ’s awesome grace!

The Lord is so good. He has blessed us with a beautiful daughter, Audra, He has given me the motivation to get back into school and He continues to work on my heart on a daily basis. Also, through his awesome grace, I have been able to let go of the resentment I harbored toward my father for so long. Without the Lord, I would have none of this!

I truly do not deserve what Christ has in store for me… but still- he has A LOT in store for me- like eternal life! Christ never gave up the battle to win me back! I praise the Lord for the truth he has put before me and for softening and moving my heart closer to him. Proverbs 22:6 speaks a lot of truth to my heart: “Teach your children to choose the right path, and when they are older, they will remain upon it.”