"God MUST Be Real”: From a Hippie to Saved at 21 Years Old

“It was really the first evidence I had seen in the 21 years of my life that God was real.”

Below is a snippet of a conversation with Sue Otten, a 68-year-old Christian woman who shared how she came to the Lord after being part of the hippie movement, how she's learned to deal with fear and anxiety, why our daily choices matter, what it means to wait on God, and so much more. If you prefer listening, you can listen to the full conversation on Apple or Spotify or watch on YouTube.

Katharine: So I want to start by just asking you to introduce yourself a little bit. Tell us a little bit about who you are and your background.

Sue: Yeah, so I grew up in Chicago, grew up Catholic and grew up in a home with two parents that had alcohol problems. So needless to say, I had some challenges in my younger years. And really through my teen years, you know, it was during the seventies, so got involved in the whole drug, alcohol hippie scene and kind of headed down that road. So by the time I met the Lord when I was 21, I had definitely had some wounds and some very disillusioned, you know, it was during the time of the women's liberation movement, which was really hot and on the front burner. And so I had a lot of conflicting viewpoints on what a woman was, what was I supposed to be? Where do I find my identity? So I think by the time I was 21, when I finally did meet the Lord, I was a pretty confused young woman.

Katharine: Sure, yeah, and so what was the process like of coming to the Lord? Like how did that happen?

Sue: So I got saved my third year of college. I was 21 years old. So I'm 68 now. So that was 47 years ago. And I got saved through a really good friend of mine named Katie. Katie and I knew each other before we were saved and, you know, lived the lifestyle that I was currently living together.

Katie was really a strong women's lib, had that ideology, and I think kind of influenced me quite a bit in that direction. But one summer in between semesters, Katie went home one summer. She grew up Catholic also. Her whole family, when she went home, was born again. So all summer long, they're giving her books to read, and she's reading them, trying to figure out what has happened to my family.

So by the time the end of the summer came, Katie had decided not to go back to school. But I went to visit her one weekend where she was living and I brought some brownies that I had made that had pot in them. And we're sitting there eating these brownies, getting stoned. And Katie started sharing with me everything she'd learned about God from reading these books. So we got up the next morning and went to church, went to Catholic Church, which was the only church we knew. And that really kind of started my process.

It wasn't long after that Katie got saved and, of course, came and shared her testimony with me. In our friendship, Katie really began to influence, once again began to influence me. And I think the thing that really opened my eyes was how dramatically she changed once she got saved. And it was really the first evidence I had seen in the 21 years of my life that God was real.

And I had gotten to the point, you know, where I was just didn't believe in God, didn't believe He was real, saw no evidence of Him anywhere. So Katie was really my first evidence that I thought God must be real for her to be changed as dramatically as she was. And so it was shortly after that that I got saved and there was a Catholic Youth Center in downtown St. Paul. I was up in Minnesota getting my occupational therapy degree and I started going to the Catholic Youth Center and it was during the Catholic Charismatic Renewal.

So all the priests that were there were born again, filled with the Spirit. They would do these Friday night meetings that were not the typical Mass, but just a meeting where they would worship and then one of the priests would stand up and deliver a message. And so that is kind of where I got introduced to what it means to be born again and started getting taught and discipled.

So after I graduated from college, Katie had gone to a Bible school, Christ for the Nations in Dallas, Texas. And after I graduated with my OT degree, I decided I wanted to go to Bible school. So I went up to Bible school to the horror of my parents. They thought I had, you know, just gone off the deep end.

And when my mom dropped me off at the airport, she just said, ‘You are on your own,’ kind of threw my bags out of the car. So I went off to Bible school, spent two years there, transformed my life. During the time I was there, my mother went to AA and Al -Anon. She got sober, went in for treatment, and I think, and kind of pressured my dad, also went in for treatment, got sober.

And I think they, in that experience, realized that I had had what AA calls a spiritual awakening. So they were much more embracing my spiritual journey at that point. So yeah, that's kind how I started.

Katharine: That's amazing. And so many interesting points. One, I just want to touch on the transformation that you saw happen in Katie. I mean, isn't that so true, though? It's like when you really meet Jesus, everything changes. That's so amazing. And I love that you were like, that's proof that God must be real.

And then, I also just want to touch upon your own life transformation. And so can you talk a little bit about sort of how your life did change since being, from being saved? Especially, I think it's interesting with being in the Women's Liberation Movement and that sort of time period, like how did your perspective and thinking change?

Sue: Yeah, I think the immediate changes were, it probably took me about six months, but about six months into my walk with God, I stopped doing all the drugs I was doing and stopped sleeping around and got rid of all my albums, changed the way I dressed because I dressed really to identify with that culture. So changed the way I dressed, my friends circle changed dramatically. And I think one of the things that really surprised me when I first got saved was all of a sudden I had friends who weren't like me. And you know when you're growing up, I was a part of this culture in the 70's and you always could identify those people based on kind of how they dressed, the way they talked

And so all my friends were a part of that culture. And once I started attending the Catholic Youth Center and really started building some relationships, I became friends with people that I never would have been friends with before. And people, not just my age, but people from all generations. And I think one of the things that really surprised me when I got saved was the whole idea of this community of people that felt like family. And I was now building relationships and spending time with people, number one, who weren't like me, who weren't my age, who, know, all varieties and walks of life. And it was a whole new experience and community for me that really became, I think, a healthy foundation and seedbed for me to begin to grow in God.

Listen to the full conversation on Apple or Spotify or watch on YouTube.

Thank you for being here,

Katharine