Tawnya Stumpf: From Hoodoo to Hallelujah, an Unexpected Journey of Faith

justtalkingaboutjesus

Episode 18
Jan Johnson and Marti Darcangelo share the heartfelt story of Marti's sister Tawnya and her father's unexpected journey back to faith. 

Despite growing up with a father who dabbled in tarot cards and other mystical beliefs, Tanya's commitment to prayer and a well-loved study Bible helped her father rediscover his Christian roots. 

This episode explores themes of forgiveness, redemption, and the unending pursuit of God's love.

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Transcript

[00:02] Tawnya: Welcome to just talking about Jesus. I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talking about Jesus.

[00:12] Jan: Okay, so, Tanya, tell us how your. Our dad got his Bible.

Do you want to say anything about having a rough upbringing?

[00:22] Tawnya: Well, I. For a long time, I had a Bible Niv. Bible that I took notes, and it was my Bible. Everything in scripture talks to me. It's God's love story to me. And so as I would read different passages, Old Testament, New Testament, I could hear God speaking directly to me. And so I would write notes inside of what it meant to me. And pencils were the best because they were the sharpest. And then I would highlight some of the captions that were there, and so the book was ripped up. 

I remember watching a little girl one time. Her name was Linnea, and she decided she was going to help me turn some pages and ripped out some of the psalms for me, and. And who knows what notes were in those. And then my dog got a hold of the back concordance and ripped out some of those. So this Bible was well used for 15 years. Had all my notes in it for 15 years. Different sermons that I loved, how someone had taken the scripture and brought in ideas that I hadn't even thought about. And that's how I knew that God's word was truly very active. 

And I was loath to give up the Bible, but it got to the point where the bindings weren't any good anymore. And I wanted to read some of those psalms that I couldn't read anymore because they had been ripped out. And every time I went back to the concordance, you know, there some of the words that I wanted, they weren't there. So I looked and looked and looked for a study Bible and finally found one. And it was three times as thick as what my Bible had been because it had the whole thing. Not only did it have the whole thing, but it had different notes at the bottom to help a student who was studying the Bible understand maybe what was going on, what a wedding was and why it was seven days long, or why the Lord would have so many more Thanksgiving celebrations than he did day of atonement, which was only one day. 

So what were all these things going on? And I started highlighting different sections and prayers in pink and yellow for future revelation time and green. So I just really started highlighting it. But I started going back and looking at this Bible with fresh eyes, wanting to write down what God was telling me at that moment, not what he had been telling me 15 years ago, because I was different. What were these new, wonderful insights that God had told me that I should write down? And this was my Bible. This was personal, my Bible. 

And our dad, who had chosen tarot cards and all sorts of weird hoodoo voodoo stuff to choose to believe in when we were growing up, was searching. He had been sick for a long time and estranged from family, and it was very difficult. But we had been praying for him for a long time. And he would ask me questions, text me questions about the Bible. And I always took an opportunity to share about the forgiveness offered in scripture, because a lot of the time, I think, and I felt that people think they're good enough, or if they don't admit that they've sinned, then it didn't really happen. 

Not realizing that God knows it all, even before we do it, he already knows. 

So we need that forgiveness, but we also need to know how scripture speaks to each one of us. 

 And so he kept asking me questions, challenging me, not rudely, but he would challenge me and ask me, what does this passage mean? What does that passage mean? Why would you do this? Why would you become baptized? Why, if you become baptized, does that mean that you're baptized into a church? What are these things? 

Because he had been told human ideas, humans thoughts, human's explanation of scripture, and not what God would tell each one of us individually. 

So as he was really beginning to search, it was put on my heart that maybe he needed that Bible, that new Bible. And so I sent it to him, and I wasn't sure how he would receive it. If he'd laugh at it, if he'd, you know, this is a book I'm just going to put on a coffee table and it's going to get all dusty. I didn't know, but I knew he was asking questions, and I knew that he needed to be forgiven. I knew he needed a savior. 

And I also knew that I needed to love him. 

 And so I sent it to him. And one day we were, I think we were on the phone. He could have texted me, but somehow we ended up talking and he asked me if I put all those notes in the side columns for him.  Because they were what he needed.

 And it wasn't, I told him, no, that was for me. That was what God was telling me and showing me scripture for me and what I need in my life. And he was very quiet. 

So it wasn't, I was loath to give up that Bible, but I was really glad to do that. And I certainly didn't have anywhere near the amount of notes I would have liked to have had in it, knowing that he felt like I had been writing that just for him and I wasn't. 

But God obviously knew that what I was putting down there, he needed to hear, even though. 

So, like God, right? 

So that's what was happening, and that's how that Bible ended up not in my possession anymore and went to my father, who turned his life back over to the Lord. 

I didn't realize that he knew the Lord. When he was about 13, he had put his faith in God at a summer camp, but I don't think he had ever shared that with anybody. And he certainly didn't live that way. 

And he lived his life that he didn't need the Lord and forgiveness. 

And so I had always been praying that he would receive the forgiveness found in Christ. And when I found out he had been to camp and that he had turned his life over to God, even though he chose to walk away, I knew that there was a difference there, that as an adult, he needed to recommit his life for the Lord because he was already the Lord's. We're all given the right. We can walk away. But then we're told that the Holy Spirit will woo you back and woo you back and woo you. 

And so I think, through his word and maybe the human frailties of his kids, he was wooed back to turning his life back over to the Lord. And now, hopefully, he will use that Bible to learn what that means to walk in the love of Christ. 

What's your story? How did you come to faith? 

Well, our parents had got a divorce when I think I was about 16, and they split up. And there wasn't a whole lot of family life, a lot of anger happening. And our mom found the Lord. And I think we were all curious. We had grown up knowing about religion, but I don't think any of us knew about the Lord. 

And I found myself as an adult after I grew up and graduated and found myself behaving in ways that I shouldn't behave in as a married woman. And got a divorce because of my behavior and realized that I had alcoholic tendencies and was self-destructive as someone who used alcohol is a drug. 

And found myself in an AA program learning the first three steps of scripture, that I needed to admit that I was powerless, that I needed to realize that a power greater than myself could restore my life to sanity. And then the third step, basically saying that I wanted God to turn my insanity into sanity. 

And what did that look like? 

And the Lord sent me to the scripture in two Corinthians 517 that says, the old is gone, the new has come. And I didn't understand that, but I grabbed onto it because I knew that my old behavior was destructive and I'd hurt a lot of people with it. But what did new look like? I didn't know what new looked like. And so it was one literally 1foot in front of the other. And some days they weren't even the stride. It was a shuffle. And I found myself one day in a strange house, and it was at night, and I heard a knock on the door, and I got up and I went down to the door. There wasn't anybody there. There was. And I went to the front of the house and looked at the front door, and there wasn't anybody there. So I thought, oh, somebody's playing a joke. So I went back to bed and I got up and I went to the back door, and there wasn't anybody there. I went to the front door again and looked out all the windows, thinking, who's. This is weird. Is this like Samuel? Samuel. It's just like Samuel. 

 And I got up and I looked the third time, and there wasn't anyone there. And I went back into the bedroom where I was at, and I said, okay, lord, you're knocking at the door. There's three times. And literally what Samuel was to say, okay, speak to me, lord. I'm listening. I'm listening. 

 And I knew that my life would never be the same again. I didn't stay at that home where I was at. I found myself homeless after that. And shortly, I don't know, four, six weeks after that, I met my husband, and he asked me to come stay with him. But I was a Christian at that point and was really concerned about it. So I shared with him that I couldn't live with him. Couldn't. And we just met each other, but I told him I couldn't do that, that my faith, it maybe was small, but it was important to me and I couldn't do that. And so he looked at me and said, okay, let's get married. And so I met him back at work that day at 02:00. We went down to the courthouse and signed the papers, and I paid my $50, and we got married on the courthouse lawn.

[12:53] Jan: And how long ago was that?

[12:55] Tawnya: 33 years ago. 

And he didn't believe in the Lord, and I knew what scripture had said about being unequally. Yoked. And I wanted to dismiss that, but I couldn't. And so I started going to church early in the morning so that it didn't affect our Sundays. And he asked me one time when I got back from church what it had been about. And I said, well, next time, why don't you come with me and listen? And he never asked me again. Cause he wasn't gonna go to church. And I thought, oh, man, I totally blew it. Totally blew it. I had an opportunity and I blew it. 

He decided that he was gonna show me that Christianity was a farce. It was made up. So being history buff, he went to the library and found every old book he could find, dusted off the cobwebs. And lo and behold, every book that he opened up had Jesus in it. And so he learned that Jesus was real, was a real person. He was a real person. He was a real person. And here he was. And so the historians that wrote about him after his life and his death and the ministry of the Apostles, the history that went forward and is in the world now. I think there's over 5000 articles of Jesus that he was a man and he was, they were, they were history. And he was buried and he was raised to life after the third day. This is in these history books and you gotta get the cobwebs off. 

And he looked at me on a Super Bowl Sunday, 1993, and said, I'm ready. And so I got on the phone and I called up our pastor. I said, you've got to get over here right now. He's ready. And he said, I'll be over after the Super bowl. Oh. And so I'm thinking, oh, no. But knowing that it's real. Yeah, it was gonna be okay. And so the pastor came over after the Super bowl and I left him alone. 

I didn't wanna be part of it. Leave him alone. Let him do and say whatever he's gonna say. Cause I'm his wife. I needed to make sure that he had his privacy with the pastor. And so I don't know, about 30 minutes later, I went back in there and he stood up and he put his arms out like this and he said, meet the newest Christian. It was awesome. I didn't start bawling. Yeah. So I don't know what I did, but I just, I know that I'm never going to forget that story because that's usually when, when my husband makes up his mind to do something or becomes something, he does it. Not after. There's no turning back. There's no second guessing. There's none of that. And so that was. So. Knock on the door, Super Bowl Sunday, books in the library. So who.

[16:23] Jan: So, I'm listening to you, and I've never heard any of this before, and I'm your sister.

[16:32] Tawnya: Is that funny? So this is.

[16:34] Jan: This is. This is good time.

[16:36] Tawnya: Yeah.

[16:36] Jan: Good times.

[16:37] Tawnya: We were running that hotel, and we called it the Sin bin Inn, because the first night we were there, there was hall walkers with knit stockings and red dresses. My gosh. And what were you gonna say? That was exciting?

[16:51] Marti: Oh, I was just gonna say after my sister had told me about sending our dad that Bible and the response that my father had had. And last year, I was talking to my stepson's girlfriend, and she was talking about how she struggled with grace and had a whole lot of anxiety. And, of course, I have lived with those things, too. So I got a bible from our church, and I highlighted and marked all of the scriptures that had helped me realize what a merciful lord was and how he wanted me to have peace. And he provided a way for me to have peace. And I marked it all up and posted it all up, and I sent it to her. And yesterday, I got a text from her, and it says, been thinking of you recently and hope you're well. I've been particularly grateful for the Bible you gave me with all your notes and special verses. Thank you so much. It is a gift that continues to bless me. So dad and my sister and me. And now Warren, it's all being blessed with, you know, the word of God. So that was my story.