Nancy Wilson: From Shattered Pieces to Stained Glass

The sun was shining through the stained glass window, bringing to life the scene of Jesus with the little children gathered around him. The sound of small voices filled the room as the Sunday school kids learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me.”

“Yes, Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so,” went the chorus.

Three-year-old Nancy believed these words as she sang them, but didn’t fully realize their meaning until later in life. Meanwhile, she continued to attend Sunday school and sang in the choir throughout her childhood and high school. 

Now 65, Nancy Wilson said what she had to learn 30 years ago, through grace, is that “it’s one thing to believe, another to accept Christ into your heart.”

“It is only when I had spent my life in sin,” she said, “and realized that this world offered me no peace, no hope and no future, that I finally asked Jesus to be Lord of my life.”

She can recall several times in her life when God tried to get her attention, but she said the most vivid of these memories is of the moment she was “a bottle of pills away” from ending her life. A televangelist was on TV at that time inviting people to come to God, and she decided to accept and pray with him. 

Shortly after she prayed, she said she got a phone call from a Christian friend, and told her what she’d just done and had planned on doing. They then prayed together. 

“Only weeks before, I had been in her home cursing God for my life,” she said. “Divorced, two teenage sons who wanted to live with their father instead of me, soon to be unemployed, I certainly did not feel like God was in charge of my life.”

But from then on, she said God was in full control of her life. 

She found a job and moved to New York, started attending church, and made many new Christian friends. 

“Today, I am so thankful for His loving kindness to me, His Grace, His forgiveness and the knowledge that His work is not complete. I look forward to Heaven, but I am learning to live in the joy of knowing Jesus as my Lord and Savior.”

She said if she was speaking with someone who does not know this joy, the one message she would want to leave with them is this: “Christ died for you and wants you to know He loves you. He wants you to accept His sacrifice as a gift so that you might spend eternity with Him.”