A postcard opens the door for a woman and her family.

My husband, Walt, and I both share a common background in the Baptist church. We began attending at a very young age because our families believed in teaching us about the gospel of our Savior. We went to church because it was expected, and we respected our parents' wishes to attend. Our church was the center of our community functions as well. We got up on Sunday and dressed in our best clothes to go to God's house to worship and have fellowship with other Christian families.

Yet I felt a mountain of guilt as a young child because of the fear of hell. Although I attended Sunday school and vacation Bible school and was very active in the youth group and choir, I never felt worthy of salvation. At 13, I became a member of the church by public confession of faith and was baptized. But as a young adult, I began to go to church less, until I just stopped going altogether. I soon found myself with a broken marriage and a two-year-old daughter, Anita, to parent alone.

Then God sent Walt into our lives. We married, and Walt enlisted in the United States Navy and went to boot camp a short time later. Meanwhile, I worked and took care of our daughter. We had two sons in the following years and began attending a large church. Walt was baptized three years after we were married. We became very dedicated to the Sunday school class of our peers.

NAVY LIFE AND MOVING

Our lives took a different direction when a captain in the Navy recommended Walt for the Enlisted Commissioning Program. Walt completed college at Auburn University with the ROTC program. After going to Officer Candidate School in Newport, R.I., he chose to become a submarine officer. We moved our family to Groton, Conn., which became home for the next four years.

The submarine deployments took Walt away from the family for three months twice a year. So the children and I settled into the role of a Navy family. I quite liked the lifestyle of moving every three to four years. I always felt a restlessness if we stayed anywhere too long. But we were not attending any church. Mormon neighbors invited us to their church, but we knew that we did not want to attend their church or have our children taught the Mormon faith. Instead we began attending a nondenominational church where the teachings were very much like the Baptist teachings.

While serving on the submarine, Walt began losing his hearing in both ears and suffered from severe bouts of dizziness. The diagnosis was Meniere's disease. He was medically retired from the Navy about ten years after we were married.