29 years is enough

What'd I miss?

The past two years have been a whirlwind, and have seen the biggest changes in my life. This blog became unimportant. It may still be. But I'm feeling drawn back to this so maybe I'll figure out what this is supposed to be.

My daughter being born is indescribable. Our minds boggle every day at how she changes, grows, and develops personality. She's 21 months old and unstoppable. She's her father's daughter, heaven help me.

After something impossible happened, and as a result, my wife wanted to go to the Pentecostal church her mother was attending. Having been spiritually adrift after my hippie church failed to meet its own standard, I was open to the idea, though it's not something I'd consider under normal circumstances.

Hippie church to Pentecostal church is a bit of a swing. But it felt like the right thing to do, and I didn't understand what had happened or how or why, so I didn't argue.

The presence of God cut through the culture shock I experienced. All the hand-waving and tongue-talking in the world could not overshadow the power in that tiny church, nor the love and warmth that came from each member.

We went back the next week. And the next. And the next. To this date we've missed only a handful of services and all due to illness or being out of town.

Over the preceding years, I had begrudgingly come to acknowledge that God existed, and that he was personally interested in me and my life. The evidence mounted too high for me to argue. Like the wind, I can't see the invisible, but I can see the results of the invisible force.

Until then God was a mysterious force pushing and prodding me in different directions for questionably benevolent reasons. It was like he was speaking a different language, and I was perpetually trying to divine his intent.

Turns out there's a manual for understanding him, and it's a best seller.

After a few bible studies I began to break down my preconceptions about organized religion. Had I not cultivated a "question everything" mindset before now I probably would have shut it out, but checking primary sources myself meant doing things that took me out of my comfort zone. I'm glad I did.

Suddenly, things started to make sense. Why this bad thing happened, why that good thing happened, the mountain of coincidences, the still small voice which never demanded, but always asked.

He had always been pushing me in the right direction, but I was facing the wrong way. Only when I turned around did I realize how close I was to Him. Years of questions were answered, and I realized that this was what I had been looking for my whole life. What I had been walking circles around without without ever realizing what was at the center of so much of my life.

After some hard questioning and some serious soul searching, I gave my life to God, and He filled me with the Holy Ghost. I asked to be baptized in the name of Jesus immediately after and was.

Then radical change started in my life.