Carmen Paul - Horse´s Hoof and Heaven

The pastor arrived and greeted us all warmly, but then announced that the Lord had ‘told him’ that we should be reading a different chapter from the Bible than he originally planned. What, I gasped to myself, was all this about God speaking to human beings, and human being actually hearing ‘words from up on high’?

I managed to get a grip of myself though. The pastor opened his Bible and read a passage out loud – this was a story about Jesus, of course, and some woman, seemingly without a name. I sat there and simply could not believe what I was hearing! What on earth was this story that he was reading? I began to boil over with rage and felt like escaping there and then; what a nerve this man had, this story was actually about me!

Images were flashing across my mind, things which up to then I had just accepted as normal, but by now I just couldn’t restrain myself any longer. Up till that point in my life I had been playing fast and loose with my own body, having casual sex with anyone who took my fancy, no matter whether they were married or not. Not only did this pastor appear to be holding a mirror in front of me, that was bad enough, but on top of this all these old women lapped up details of what was being read out.

The pastor continued unabated, and I just had to stomach it all, whether I liked it or not. Once he was finished with this text I leapt to my feet, yelling “that’s quite enough from you” and stomped out. It was icy cold outside, and where I lived was right at the other end of town, but I didn’t feel the cold then, I was so livid over the whole situation.

I did not know at that stage with whom I was most angry. Was it with myself, because I ran away? Was it with the old women there, because they now knew the lifestyle I had? Or was it with Hanna, for getting me here in the first place? She had surely briefed the Pastor with every detail of my life beforehand! How on earth would he have otherwise known about me? I lay awake the entire night. I would preferably have wiped this day out from the calendar altogether, I had never been quite so embarrassed in my entire life up till then.

“Nothing mentioned about you at all”

The following day I marched up to Hanna and immediately took it out on her. She listened patiently at my ranting, even wanly smiling when I told her that I found it quite abhorrent that she’d supplied him with everything about me; that was simply none of his business whatsoever!

I stood looking at her, my face as red as a beetroot with rage. Once I had stopped ranting and raving at her she calmly informed me that what the Pastor had read out from the Bible was written two thousand years back. She told me that “I shouldn’t take it all so personally, nothing in that passage was aimed at you”.

I was rendered quite speechless at this. I arrived at the conclusion that “if that is really true that you had not informed on me how on earth could he have possibly known about my lifestyle?” Then Jesus must have really been there.

Hanna’s answer to that came straight to the point “That’s right”. She did not elaborate on this at all. “So, what do I do now?” I mused. “Surrender your whole being to Jesus Christ” came the answer “and the rest he will take care of himself”.

That is exactly what I did – in the middle of this milking parlour, I knelt down in one of the aisles, and issued Jesus with this short prayer: “ Jesus, come into my life, and take me by my hand ”. Once I had finished this short prayer, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of pure joy that I simply cannot even begin to describe. I was laughing and at the same time crying for joy, and indeed this joy became my companion for years after that.

Later I gathered that what I had gone through was called “conversion”. By the way, the lady I brought with me to the meeting was converted on that same evening, but because I ran away, I wasn’t to know that until the following day.

Everything new now

From that moment onwards, once I had surrendered my life to Jesus, my entire life changed. I would almost go as far as declaring that everything became as clear as crystal after that. I realised that I had made many mistakes in my life.

The change in me was so dramatic that I didn’t really grasp just what was happening. It resulted in me dropping my previous unsavoury lifestyle as a matter of course. This became quite plain to my other work colleagues that I had to put up with their rather sarcastic comments like “she doesn’t talk to us anymore, she’s become holier than thou”, and “She’s too busy with praying “Our Father from dawn to dusk”. This was not remotely true, but it was quite clear that they simply couldn’t grasp what had happened in my life.

Things weren’t that easy for me after my conversion; now I appreciate just how much Jesus protected me from the worst of their ignorant platitudes, so I never took things as personally as I could have done. On the contrary I was so filled with utter elation at what had happened to me that I just wanted to tell it out to the entire world, regardless of whether I had an audience or not. Of course, “one’s mouth speaks from the overflow of one’s heart” [Luke 6(45)]. Now at the tender age of nineteen I felt that I could convert the entire world!

Several months later I was baptized, and I was well instructed by my now former pastor, Pastor Karl-Heinz Kluge, understanding much more as my life in the Lord progressed. After a year I was in a position to lead a youth group within our church, and I attended weekly the youth Bible evenings in that church.

An added bonus to all of this was the discovery of my talents as a guitar player, and I was a fast learner. Whether I learned to read sheet music I am not sure. Our pastor gave me as a present a small folder, with all the various positions on the strings of the guitar. Within weeks I learned to accompany worship with the guitar.

The best aspect of church life was the retreats during the school holidays, and it wasn’t long before I was in a position to play a leading role. Church life really brought out the best in me, due to getting to know many Christians, as well as some non-Christians, and this was indeed one of the most fulfilling times of my life.

Experiencing North Korea second hand

In the summer of 1979, I travelled for the first time up to the Baltic Coast. My cousin Uwe had managed to rent out a bungalow for two weeks with his wife and two children, and they invited me for several days holiday up there.

Being on the Baltic Coast was the other great aspiration of my life. As a schoolgirl I cut out pictures of the Baltic Coast from every magazine I could get my hands on, and decorated the sloping wall of my bedroom with them. That was years ago! However, the longing for the unknown, exotically beautiful and up till then inaccessible Baltic coast remained.

My dream was now about to become reality, I was actually going to see the Baltic for real! The train left Dresden station heading straight for Rostock. This train would be stopping in the big towns only. The train was jammed packed solid, which left me wondering whether the entire of my part of East Germany was heading that way too. It wasn’t that expensive to get there but wasn’t that cheap either – I had a good idea of what the average family earned in the former East-Germany.

I had time to ponder as the train rolled along from Dresden until we reached the Central Station in Berlin. On arrival there I was aware of an overall commotion on the platform, such that I never experienced before. Police in uniform were running around and calling out to each other on arrival on the station even before the train had ground to a halt.

Things happened quickly after that, but in an orderly fashion too: uniformed personnel came into my coach, turfed all the passengers out and redistributed them all into the other coaches. Within a very short space of time my coach was completely empty, but with me sitting there alone!