The Mustang Story

The 1966 Mustang is a car whose legend looms large in my life. In the late 70’s I drove a candy apple red classic whose left back bumper sported a sticker reading, “Uppity Women Unite.” I was an art major in college and a “Ms. Magazine” subscribing, self-avowed, men-hating feminist. I was an angry woman but anyone who lives on the basis of “rights” rather than “doing right” – always is.

Now I must also tell you that the sticker on the other side of my back bumper read, “Without Jesus, You Ain’t Living.” I grew up attending a church whose only semblance of Christianity was the cross on the steeple. Given that, I did have a distant idea that there was a God, so I thought I might need to cover my bases. After class one morning, I found a note left under the windshield. I picked up the note and was transfixed on the spot. Someone, upon observing my two bumper stickers and their obvious polar contradiction, had just written one simple word: “DECIDE”

In that parking lot, I did just that and fell to my knees crying out to God. I knew I had to choose between being “uppity” to all authority or submit my life to God. He heard.

The very next day, I was invited to a bible study and discovered for the first time that Jesus Christ died for my sins and offered me complete forgiveness – a stunning revelation for someone who had lived a perverse and godless life. For the very first time, my fist relaxed and my hand opened to the free gift of eternal life.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem once said of Christianity, “It’s an incredible con job when you think about it, to believe something now in exchange for something after death.” To Ms. Steinem I would say that I haven’t been conned, I have been converted. And now my entire mission in life is to proclaim to women their need to “decide” – self or Christ, life or death, heaven or hell.