My Faith Story

Hello everyone.  As most of you who read this blog know, I am a Christian.  An amazing person asked me to share my testimony with her and because if what she said to me after I told her, I thought I would share my personal testimony with you.  After you read this, I would very much love to hear yours.  Please, please, please right back and tell me your testimony.  They are such a blessing.

I have edited it a little but this is what I told her:

I think I was saved when I was four or five. The reason I say this is I have always thought that Jesus was my Lord as long as I could remember. Living like he was Lord was a different thing growing up. We went to a non-denominiational church that believed in the baptism of the Holy Spirit with evidence of speaking in other tongues. The problem with the penticostal denomination is there are some very wierd people doing extremely strange things that make everyone else look strange. I attend Eagle Mountain Church now and it is a non-denominational church. 

Anyway, let me go back in time. Growing up I had a drug problem. My mom drug me to church every Sunday and I hated it. It interfered with watching the Cowboy games and even when they weren't playing I liked to watch wrestling on Saturday night which put me up late.  Hey, I was just a kid.  I didn't know it was fake back then.  I watched local wrestling and really go into it.  Anyway, after I got out of children's church, my brother and I sat at the back of the church in a strategic spot that would allow me to put my bible under my right arm and keep my head straight up and down while I slept. The only way you would know I was sleeping was if you were sitting in front of me and turned around or if I snored.  No one ever woke me up so I guess I didn't snore too loud.  We were also far enough away from the pulpit that the pastor or preacher couldn't see us either.

Back then we went to Calvary Cathedral which is a non-denominational church near downtown. So I slept every Sunday and Pastor Bob Nichols would always end his service by saying, "Father, we have heard the word of God today...." I always felt bad because I hadn't heard it. I slept through the service and I didn't want to lie to God so I wouldn't say that part. Then I finally started staying awake and listening to the word.

That's about when I started TCU. At TCU I was in ROTC and was pretty excited about doing a "varsity sport" called Ranger Challenge. I was in the hunt to make the team when I had an accident at church softball practice that caused me to miss making the team (it was just a bruised thigh but by the time I could run again, I had missed it). That sent me into somewhat of a depressed state. To cut the story a little short, I ended up getting "kicked out" of ROTC because I couldn't hold my weight down and ended up moving in with a girl. This is probably the lowest point in my life and what happened next was truly terrible.  I got her pregnant and she had an abortion.  At this point, I was as far away from God as I ever remember being.  But here's something amazing.  I was far from him but he was never far from me.  The bible says he will never leave me nor forsake me.

While I was going through this period of my life, I obviously quit going to church. I thought up all kinds of nasty things to say about the people who went there. I said they were hypocrites, unfriendly, not real, etc. Word of what I was saying got back to the church I am sure but I never heard anything ugly in response. So, I was living in a one bedroom apartment with this girl and her parents came down and broke us up.  I met her parents before the pregnancy and I remember going for a walk with her dad.  Since we were in college, dating was serious and he wanted to know what my intentions were with his daughter.  I told her dad I wanted to marry her.  It's a wonder he didn't shoot me right there!  I was a complete disaster.  I had been kicked out of ROTC, I was barely able to stay in school, my grades were terrible and I lost my job because I was too lazy to go to work.  If my daughter brought me from back then home, I would have been horrified. After they broke us up, I ultimately got evicted from my apartment because I was too lazy to work and moved back in with my mom and dad. I was either 21 or 22 at the time. At this point, I knew something was desperately wrong. I could not figure out what to do so I would go sit in the bathtub with my bible knowing something wasn't right but not knowing what to do.

Finally, I decided I needed to get right with God (Maybe I got saved for the first time at this point. Honestly, I am not sure). So I decided to go to church with my brother who still attended our church in the youth service. I was prepared to be shunned and rejected and I deserved it but I needed to get right with God and I knew he would be there whether or not the people received me or not. The youth pastor's name was Mark Carillo and I know he preached a sermon but to this day, I have no idea what he preached. As I sit writing this, I am listening to a song called, "The Lighthouse." It couldn't be more appropriate. So Pastor Mark was preaching and it was all I could do not to yell at him to shut up and open the alter. I needed to get right with God and I wanted it done right then. The thought of just going to God on my own was something I could not quite understand yet. Anyway, as soon as he opened the alter, I was the first one down. Then something truly amazing happened. Those people who I had bad mouthed just gathered around me and loved me. They hugged me and prayed with me. It was living mercy that still brings tears to my eyes.

When I stood up, I knew I was right with God and it was a great feeling.

That's the testimony of the Minion 

My Friend Stays at the Mailbox

Today I want to talk to you about something that was a bit of a revelation to me.  I have to give credit for this analogy to my cousin AB.  Cuz, I know you told me where you got this but I forgot.  But I want to talk to you today about friendships.

Now you may find this hard to believe because I have no problem writing about myself good, bad or indifferent on this blog but I am a shy person.  I'm not super shy to the point where I won't talk to you but I will probably not just walk up to someone out of the clear blue and introduce myself or talk to them unless there is a specific reason to do so.  If introductions are made, I will probably talk to you about you and I really don't like to talk about myself.  When I started writing this blog, someone came up to me who knows me pretty well and asked where all this stuff comes from that I write.  The answer was it comes from inside my box.  I spent years closing the lid on my box and not sharing what was inside it because I didn't value it enough to celebrate it myself.  However, I do not share my inner most thoughts and feelings with everyone especially if I don't think they will appreciate it.  Guess what, I realized that's a normal thing.

I have met people who are on both ends of the spectrum when it comes to there inner most self and neither of them are healthy.  If you will not tell anyone anything about you ever, you are destined for a lonely and unfulfilled life.  I know that some people would say that they like being an introvert and that their life is just fine.  I seriously doubt that because of how we were created.  On the other hand if you are the person who tells everything to everyone, you are destined to get hurt more than you should because some people will not value what's down deep in your Box.  It's unfortunate but true.

I think too often we let our friends and relationships happen by default and never take the time to evaluate them.  That is a bad place to be.  Think about it for a minute.  You can spend hours deciding on what college to go to or what house/car to buy.  These things are important but a house is just a building that you live in.  It's not a home without relationships.  A car is just a way to get from point A to B.  Don't get me wrong, I drive a very nice car and I like it.  It is comfortable, etc. but understand this.  If I drive a real nice car and the guy driving beside me drives a beat up piece of junk and we both drive for one hour at exactly 60 miles an hour, will I go farther than him?  Nope, we will travel the exact same distance.

Now if we spend that much time deciding on things that are important but not of supreme importance, why don't we spend any time evaluating our friendships?  For me, part of the answer was I didn't like being alone.  It hurt and I hated it.  Now I haven't really evaluated my friendships lately so if I haven't talked to you and you are a personal friend of mine, don't take this to mean that I there is something wrong with our relationship because that's not true.  I am really thinking about this more as I move forward.  When I meet someone where do they belong in my life?

See there are some people who I meet that really should stay out at my mailbox.  So when I go out in my front yard to get the mail I can talk to them.  Please don't take this to literally.  When I say out by my mailbox, I mean that I will not let them get too close to me personally.  I will talk to them about life in general and I will listen to them but they are not meant to be closer.  Also, just because they aren't meant to get closer to me doesn't mean that they shouldn't be very close to someone else.  They should be at the core of some one's friendship circle, just not mine.  I am not saying that their is anything wrong with them, just that they are not supposed to be super close to me.

Then there are some people who I would let up on my front porch.  We might sit in the swing or in a chair with a cup of tea or coke and talk.  I might let them know that I write a blog.  I might tell them that I am writing a book but it would be talk about things that are pretty common knowledge in my life.  But it wouldn't be the super deep things in my life.  It wouldn't be the most important things to me.  Also think of this as a funnel.  There may be many people who are mailbox friends and their would be fewer people that are front porch friends.

Then there are living room friends.  These are people who I invite into the living room.  We eat dinner together and we hang out.  We watch TV and our kids play with each other.  There will probably be very few living room friends.  I only have a few.  You can probably count them on two hands.  They are people who I trust and who I would talk to about almost anything.  I might tell them if I was struggling with something or if I was trying to make a major decision, I might want to talk to them.  They are close friends.  These people you must choose carefully.  They don't represent a building or car, you are in trusting them with a special part of you.  You must make sure that you can trust them with that part of you.  Don't let just anyone into the living room.  That is a hard thing to do.  If you cannot trust them then don't let them past the front porch. 

Lastly their are bedroom relationships.  Now before some of you go where I think you will go with that, it has nothing to do with sex.  The bedroom is where you lay down at night and sleep.  It is the place that you feel safe enough to become completely defenseless while you sleep.  You turn off everything that would be a defense.  You stop actively listening, you close your eyes so you cannot see danger coming.  You lose consciousness and it would be extremely easy for someone to hurt you without you being able to stop them.  This place is a place where you only let a couple of people.  If you are married, your spouse should be one of them.  Ask yourself if he or she really is.  If not, why?  I recently had dinner with a friend and she was telling me that her perfect mate would be another friend of hers who is a girl.  Again, pump the hormone brakes.  She isn't gay, she's just saying that this person accepts her completely and that she can be totally defenseless with her friend.  Many of you have a best friend like that and it's important to have someone like that.  I don't really have anyone in my life that I am completely comfortable with becoming totally defenseless with yet.  I have people that I know love and support me but I don't have a bedroom friend right now.  That's OK too because that part of me that I let be so helpless and exposed is worth protecting.

Let me ask you, do you have friends in the bedroom who should not be there?  If so, you are destined to endure pain.  Do you have any friends who can get past the front porch?  If not, you are destined to be lonely.  You have to find the right balance and work from there.  Also, let me tell you this.  You will have friends that move from time to time and that's OK.  If someone hurts you deeply, they might get locked out of the bedroom or even out of the house for a while.  That can be a good thing.  I recently was involved in a situation where someone in my life had to go out to the mailbox.  I don't hold that against that person and I don't think that person holds it against me.  It was just what needed to happen.  Those things are OK.  People will move around and it's OK.

That's another Opinion of the Minion