One evening I was wandering home with friends from Ranger Guides. Normally, in South London where I lived, you never got to see the stars because of the glow of street lamps. That night there was a power cut. It was pitch black and as we talked about our Astronomy lessons I was aware of how insignificant I was in the universe. But suddenly, as my friends chatted beside me,—with all the impact of being punched in the gut—I was sure that I was not an accident of nature. It was too mind boggling! There had to be something that was in control—a God who had a master plan. And I was part of it.
My spiritual journey started that suddenly. My family was not religious. I had not been to Sunday school, though after my moment of wonder I soon linked up with the teenagers who were involved in what seemed to be exciting if totally foreign ways of doing church. Soon after I went to college and my spiritual journey seemed to stall for three years, until I was settled in a job and began to build an adult life, though I was still aware of God and sometimes linked up with my church friends when I returned home.
Looking back from the perspective of being slightly older (about thirty years) my journey now makes sense. As a teenager I was seriously lacking in confidence—large, frumpy and miserable. It’s been a long journey, with a broken engagement and health problems along the way. Today—at an age when some women feel it is all down hill—I have a growing sense of my worth to others as well as to God. Though I have my moments, my life is in lots of ways fulfilled and fulfilling.
Sometimes people ask me how I can believe in something I don’t understand. That’s no problem. There are millions of things that are beyond me. I don’t understand mobile phones or antibiotics. I just rely on the evidence of them working. It’s the same with God. I believe the evidence of my eyes as I see him working in my life and other people’s too.
[Carole at a Christmas event in 2000]
My Journey 
