Faith Stories with Naomi Reed

“I was born in Pennsylvania, US, and I came to faith at a young age, but it’s been my involvement in Christian missions that has shaped my faith the most. My dad was a sergeant in the army in WW2. One day he was in a dangerous place and he made a vow to God, […]

Trigger warning: This article discusses suicide. “When I was ten years old, our teacher asked us to write a poem. The words, the images, flowed from me. I was in the zone. From then on, I wanted to be a poet. But our family life was traumatic. I was up and down, prone to episodes […]

“I grew up in Rhodesia, which is Zimbabwe now. We had four different types of mango trees and I climbed all of them and ate the mangos as soon as they were ripe. We were Celtic by background and we always went to the Methodist church. Mum insisted that we go. That’s where I heard […]

“I started with nothing. I was the eldest of five and my father was a boiler maker in the shipyards in Glasgow, Scotland. We didn’t have hot water and we didn’t have much food. My grandmother was a strongly religious woman, though, and we always went to Sunday school as children. We migrated to Australia […]

“As a child, I was sent to a strict Catholic boarding school in Wales. There were 40 of us in a dorm. You could hear people crying. We had church every morning, but it seemed to me that if God was real, he was distant and impersonal, so I put my ear plugs in and […]

“I had a terrible upbringing. My first mother was an alcoholic. She tried to drown me in a 20,000 gallon drum when I was a baby. She died when she was 33, and I was 10. My second mother was a work of art. When I was 16, I remember coming home from playing in […]

“I grew up going to Sunday school and church. But the picture I had of being a Christian was someone who knows things. It was about getting information about God, rather than being relational. When I was in year 8, I moved to a high school where I made some Muslim and Hindu friends. Did […]

“As a young person, I’d always wanted to help people and lead a purposeful life. I volunteered at St John Ambulance as a teenager and I really enjoyed it, so I applied to do nursing at university. It made sense, and nothing else jumped out at me. But then a friend invited me on a […]

“I grew up in a loving home and I had a great childhood, full of friends and hobbies. I think it’s important to say that. When I was in Year 7, I started to get bullied pretty badly, which turned to self-harm. By the time I was 15, I was drinking and smoking pot. One […]

“In 1974, I was an army officer, posted in a regiment in Brisbane. One night I was having a beer in the Officer’s Mess with the Catholic chaplain. I’d been brought up in the Catholic Church, but it was hard to maintain faith in the military. That night, I asked the chaplain, ‘Why don’t we […]

“We always went to church, growing up, so I knew that Jesus was important. But the rubber hit the road when I moved out of home, at 18 – the day after I finished my HSC. I moved from Oberon [in the NSW central tablelands] to Sydney, to work in hospitality at the Regent Hotel, […]

“I was brought up in the Salvation Army and my parents were pastors, so I’ve known Jesus all my life. I accepted Jesus at age seven, but I’ve always been on the journey. I started a cricket career when I was young and I had ambitions to represent Australia. I got picked in some representative […]

“After finishing high school in Surrey (UK), I took a gap year. I went to New York City and worked as a nanny. Back then, I was always looking for meaning in life, and I thought that travel might be the way. After NYC, I studied in Yorkshire, and then I got a job in […]

“At 16, I suffered a mental breakdown. I left school with no dreams, visions or prospects, and I drifted into various technical jobs. During this period, I loved cycling and I began to organise long rides with mates. It ‘saved’ me in many ways and led to competition cycling. It was also a catalyst causing […]

“I first met James in 1998 when he was leading a Bible study group at my parents’ house. I was 17 and still at school and he was well and truly not in my age bracket of potential boys to like. He spent a lot of time at my family home, but I was rarely […]

“I was never a bad kid, but I was cheeky. In year 11, a cloudiness came over me and I found solace in running in the bush and listening to music that would take me on a journey away from the world. Music was my escape. The cloud was grey. And life felt hard. At […]