My Salvation Testimony by Holly D. Sands
Jesus – the name that rings in my ears as the sweetest of melodies.
“For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.” – Romans 8:29-30
Both of my parents were deeply wounded people. My father was an abusive alcoholic and drug addict. My mother's pain showed up differently, through verbal and emotional abuse and constant criticism. She deeply resented my closeness with my grandparents and severely controlled my interactions with my father's family.
Home was unpredictable. I never knew which version of my father I'd get, or what would set my mother off next. I learned early to read the room before I opened my mouth, and I carried that instinct long after I left that house.
We belonged to the Roman Catholic church, but it offered no true knowledge of God. We were taught to pray to Mary and the saints, to confess to a priest instead of going straight to God, and to trust in ritual and works to make us right with Him - none of which brought us any closer to actually knowing Him. It was religion without truth, idolatry dressed up as devotion, and it left us just as lost as if we'd never darkened a church door. To put it bluntly, we were at the mercy of the devil. Ours wasn't just a home without truth, it was a home with a supernatural darkness in it. I grew up around things that had no natural explanation, and I came to understand later exactly what I'd been living with.
By the time I was old enough to understand what I believed about myself, the answer wasn't good. I believed I was hard to love, that I had to earn approval I would never quite reach, and that God, if He was watching at all, wasn't especially interested in me. I learned to be funny as a way to survive. If I could make people laugh, maybe they'd want me around, maybe they'd love me. Humor became armor long before it became who I actually am. That was the soil I came from.
Yet from my earliest years – five, maybe younger – I felt drawn to Him. I remember looking up into the heavens and longing to know the One who made them. But I had no way of finding Him out — no one around me knew Him, as far as I could tell. When I was eight, I asked my parents for a Bible for Christmas. I wanted nothing else – no toys, no clothes – only that Bible. I remember unwrapping that gift and holding it as if it were the most precious thing in all the world. I smelled the pages; I ran my finger over the words – but I could not understand what they meant. I tried to read it anyway, but it made no sense to me. It became something more like a relic I kept close, hoping it would somehow protect me and lead me to the truth I longed to know.
“They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” – Ephesians 4:18
At eleven, I came to a turning point. I sought answers about the crucified man whose statue hung at the front of our sanctuary. Who was He? What had He done to be crucified? Was He dead like all the other statues of saints? My questions proved too insistent for the nuns. One of them grabbed me and dragged me to the statue of Mary, demanding, "Bow to the Blessed Mother and ask for forgiveness!" I hadn't cursed, hadn't rebelled — I had only asked who Jesus was. When I refused to bow, I was put out. The system that should have led me to the cross left me standing on the steps instead, angry and confused.
Unable to find truth, I turned to darkness. If the church had no real power — nothing but rituals and demands and a God I still couldn't find — I knew where power actually was. I'd seen it with my own eyes, in my own home. Darkness moved things. Darkness was real. For four years I walked in the deepest bondage — in the occult, to the hidden things I thought would give me power. But the enemy I thought I commanded held me captive instead. The terror was relentless. The hopelessness, suffocating. I lived in continual fear, tormented by the very spirits I believed I controlled.
“Take no part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. It is shameful even to talk about the things that ungodly people do in secret.” – Ephesians 5:11-12
If you are reading this and walking in darkness yourself – whether occult practices, addiction, hidden sin, or rebellion you think you can manage – hear me: you cannot. Your enemy is craftier and crueler than you imagine. He will let you believe you hold the reins, but before you realize it, he will have the power over you. The torment at his hand is unimaginable. You are no match for him on your own.
“Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, fiercely hungry, seeking someone to devour.” – 1 Peter 5:8
At fifteen, I was planning on running away from home, but the Lord put a stop to my rebellion. We had an invitation from my aunt to speak with her pastor and he came to our home. I thought this was all a big joke, until he began to pray. When he said the name “Jesus,” I looked up and sucked in my breath — I was astonished he hadn't mentioned Mary or the saints. He was speaking to Jesus as if He were a real person. As if He were alive! My curiosity rekindled — but rekindled curiosity and a changed heart are two different things. I was still hard and cold underneath it. I was four years into the occult by then. I couldn't even look in the mirror at my own eyes — something looked back at me that wasn't good, and it terrified me. Most people kept their distance from me. I was darkness, and on some level, they could feel it.
Around that same time, my cousins and I went to buy fish tackle from an elderly couple's home. When the wife came out to greet us, her face shone with a light I had never seen. Joy bubbled from her – genuine, unexplainable joy. She invited me into her home, and as I sat and talked with her, the stone wall around my heart began to crack. I told her everything – the darkness, the fear, the wickedness I had embraced. She did not recoil. She looked at me with a love I had never known and said, "If you really want to know what to do, go home tonight and pray. Ask the Lord Jesus to help you, and He will."
That name –
Jesus.
It sounded like a song on her lips, the most beautiful word I had ever heard. Could I really speak to Him? Would He help me after everything I had done? But I felt it – that irresistible pull toward Him, like when I was a child.
He was calling me.
That night, I prayed for the first time in my life. I stumbled through the words and went to sleep. When I awoke the next morning, I felt peace – real peace, for the first time I could remember. I wasn't saved yet — I didn't even understand what that meant — but God was drawing me, and I could feel it. I was so undone by that peace that the first thing I felt compelled to do was end a relationship I knew wasn't right — I wrote a letter and never looked back.
Every day, for the next two weeks I walked a mile from my school to the church, laying question after question before the pastor who had prayed in our home. To my amazement, he had answers. He took me through the Scriptures, showing me who Christ was and is. He explained what sin was – that it was against God Himself. The weight of it hit me, and I felt a certain sorrow I had never known.
"Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight." - Psalm 51:4
He warned me that to become a disciple of Christ was not something to decide flippantly. It was a life-long commitment, one sure to involve suffering for His name. He told me to count the cost. This was no forced ritual before a statue, no empty demand for penance — this was truth, and it cost something real to receive it.
"For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it — lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple."- Luke 14:28-33
"Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution." - 2 Timothy 3:12
I expressed faith to believe on Christ. I desired to follow Him with all my heart. We knelt together on that dirty parsonage floor, and he guided me in prayer. I repented of my wickedness. I renounced the hidden things of darkness. I received the Light of Life. My soul became clean – washed from the filth I had carried, light where there had only been weight, pure where I had been sure something looked back at me that wasn't good. I became a new creation in Christ Jesus – justified by the faith He gifted to me. The old was gone. The new had come!
“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” – 2 Corinthians 5:17
Coming out of the church that day, everything looked as though it were in technicolor! The air was crisp and clean. All creation seemed alive and rejoiced with me. I was overwhelmed with indescribable joy! I felt so clean. So absolutely free! I could have danced down the street!
I went straight to my grandparents' house — after everything, they were the first people I wanted to see this way. My mother happened to be there too. When I came through the door, she looked shocked. "Holly, is that you?" she asked. "Yes, Mom!" I said. "What happened to you?!" "I got saved!" Everything about me had changed — even the way I walked. It was a transformation the whole town noticed.
“For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.” – Ephesians 5:8
I had an insatiable hunger for Him. Relishing in my new understanding of the Scriptures, I read the entire New Testament the first week I was born again. I carried my Bible everywhere. I burned everything from my occult days and dedicated my life to the worship and glory of God. Many days and nights were spent on my face before Him. I was like a starving person finally set before food – I could not get enough time with Jesus. He meant more to me than life itself. I had found the One my soul desired.
“Your words were found, and I ate them, and Your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by Your name, O Lord, God of hosts.” – Jeremiah 15:16
“As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for You, O God... How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.” – Psalm 42:1; 84:1-2
I immediately set out to share what the Lord had done in me. I could not contain it. I felt if I had kept silent, I would have exploded. I went all over our town, knocking on doors and asking the residents if I could share with them about how Christ saved me and how He would do the same for them if they would call on His Name. Everywhere I went and to whomever I met, I would recount the wonderful saving power of Christ the Lord.
“Go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you.”- Mark 5:19
“If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” – Jeremiah 20:9
As mentioned, word of my transformation had spread through our little southern town, and it eventually reached my great-uncle — my grandfather's brother, Sicilian and devoutly Roman Catholic. I ran into him at the library, and he approached me gladly at first. "When are you coming back to the church?" he asked.
"Uncle, I am in church," I said.
"No. The Catholic church."
"I'm not. I got saved, and I attend a non-denominational church now."
He grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard, his voice rising loud enough for the whole library to hear. "YOU ARE A CATHOLIC!"
I raised my voice back. "No. I am a CHRISTIAN!"
He shoved me back, exasperated. "Then I no longer know you."
He never spoke another word to me again. Even years later, if he saw me walking down the street, he would cross to the other side rather than pass near me. He kept that vow until the day he died.
I understood, even then, that I hadn't lost a relationship over something small. I had become, in his eyes, a traitor to everything he held sacred — his church, his heritage, his family's faith going back generations. Jesus warned that this would happen. He said He did not come to bring peace but a sword, that following Him would set family against family, and that a man's enemies would be found in his own household. My great-uncle loved his church more than he loved me, and when I chose Christ over Catholicism, I lost him for it. It was a small taste of what Jesus meant when He said anyone who loves father or mother more than Him is not worthy of Him — and I was beginning to learn that the cost of following Christ was not hypothetical. It was real, and it was personal, and it had a face I had known my whole life.
That was the first time I understood what it would cost me to follow Jesus, but it wasn't the last. The cost has shown up in more than one place over the years — sometimes over leaving the church of my heritage, sometimes over choosing sound doctrine when it wasn't the popular choice, even within the church. I've lost relationships I wish I hadn't. But every time, the choice has been the same, and I've never once regretted making it. He has always been worth it.
And that's exactly why I'm choose to tell my story. I don't tell it so you can be entertained, even as dramatic as it is. I tell it because every part of it — the wreckage and the rescue — belongs to Christ. If it points anywhere, it should point past me, straight to the One who did the saving. Because He gave me this testimony. He has become my song. Jesus saved me, kept me, and is keeping me still. I have no story worth telling apart from Him.
If you know me at all, you don't really know me until you know this: I am His, bought at a price I could never have paid myself, and I would not trade one day of walking with Him for anything this world has or ever will offer.
He saved me. He has kept me every day since. And He is not finished with me yet.
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