If I gave you my testimony even twenty years ago, I probably would have told you that I “was heavily into the occult.” I wasn’t.

Yes, I had a tremendous enthusiasm for astrology, as well as an interest in paranormal phenomena. Occasionally my sister and I played with the Ouija board that our mom gave us one Christmas, and I have vague memories of trying to hold a seance (presumably to conjure up the spirit of our daddy, who died when we were 7 and 10).

And yes, Mom took us with her to yoga classes. She hoped yoga would help with my breathing. To her disappointment (and maybe to mine), I just couldn’t get the meditation thing to work.

Looking back, I was actually fairly typical of many 12-year-old girls growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1966. Back then, interest in the occult wasn’t that unusual.

Truth be told, I mostly wanted my horoscopes, Magic 8-Ball and Ouija board to tell me if Larry would ever like me.

Larry faded out of my life when I was 13, replaced by a succession of other equally hopeless crushes that all kept me consulting various fortune telling devices. Somewhere between 1966 and 1971, however, I became interested in astrology for its own sake.

Although I was mainstreamed interest regular public school by the fall semester of 1967, I continued attending Marindale School for the Orthopedically Handicapped until ! graduated high school in 1973. I think sometime in 1970, my class at Marindale held some sort of fair for the young classes. My teacher permitted me to have a fortune telling booth.

Hiding my little book on the zodiac behind a crystal ball, I’d ask people their birth dates and quickly consult the book for traits associated with their “signs.” From there, I’d concoct probable predictions.

That experience made me wonder if I could learn enough about astrology to actually be a legitimate astrologer. Oh, I understood that I was pretty much faking it at that little school fair. And yet I felt a sense that maybe there was something real mingled in with the pretending.

Mercifully, the Lord brought me to Himself in January of 1971, and very soon afterwards had faithful Christian friends take me through Scriptures about the occult. He gave me a hatred for the very practices that I embraced only months earlier, graciously letting me feel disgusted at the thought of being an astrologer.

I see now that, though I might have pursued my dream of being an astrologer, the Lord took me out of the occult long before I could get seriously ensnared by it.

Please understand that I feel shame that I dabbed in the occult at all. To the mothers reading this article, I beg you to warn your children — your daughters especially — against even toying with this stuff. Magic 8-Balls and newspaper horoscopes are not innocent fun!

At the same time, I marvel at God’s faithfulness to protect me from any serious occult involvement. I regret fiddling with it at all, but I know that it could have been a lot worse. All glory to my Savior Who kept me for Himself!