WARNING! This is going to get complicated so grab yourself a cup of coffee and get comfy. Also, all the church-jumping I’ve done through the years feels a little embarrassing but I’d rather be open and honest and show how God has been my Captain and steering the ship the entire time, even when I thought I was in control. But before I get started, let me make this announcement: all names and specific locations have been withheld to protect the guilty (myself included)! So here we go…
I was raised in a Catholic home until we stopped going before my teen years because, as I was told by my aunt, our Monsignor was caught in one of the first Priest pedophile scandals that made national news. My folks didn’t feel comfortable continuing to attending there so we just stopped. But that did not suppress my interest in God and the Bible; I had questions about God and Jesus throughout my childhood and into my young adult years. Understand my parents tried to tame me, but without the influence only the Bible can provide (to those who listen), I ran wild throughout those teen years. And that got me into some trouble.
Let’s start with impregnating one of my high school girlfriends! Yeah, that was a kick in the pants! Unfortunately she miscarried about two months in, literally the day before I was gonna tell my folks. At the time, shamefully, I felt relieved. “Why tell the folks and get in trouble now?”, I thought. As the years have passed, though, I have come to miss that kid. I often wonder what he/she would be like. It’s hard for me to grasp the fact that he/she would be 40+ years old now and likely with his/her own kids! Some have said that God was protecting her and I by taking the baby home early. I can’t speak to God’s reasons for what he does so I will leave that there. But I do believe He used the tragedy to teach my hardheaded self how sometimes the consequences for our actions (sins) are paid by people we never intended to hurt.
I also decided back then (with my many years of life experience 🙄) that high school had no practical value in my life since it interfered with me having fun. So I skipped a lot of classes, attended a lot of keg parties and, as you might guess, got kicked out of high school because I didn’t have the credits to graduate with my class. A deservingly draconian-level chewing out from both my folks knocked some sense into me and I ended up graduating from our district’s adult high school one year behind my class with a GPA of 3.95. I was offered valedictorian but turned it down because of my deep-rooted fear of public speaking. I can’t help but ponder how God allowed me to make the mistakes I made. How much easier my life would have been had I not made those mistakes and followed a better path? Would I have the faith I have today had I not made those mistakes? I guess I will never know, but the one thing I do know: He had a plan all along; I just didn’t know it.
Even after my wild years, which tapered down in my twenties, those questions about God and Jesus were still lurking inside my head. And finally, in the early 90’s, I reached a point that I had to get some answers. I had only one friend at that time who went to church so I asked him if I could go with him and I was baptized there in March 1995. As I read my bible and learned, I started seeing some things I didn’t agree with in that church, so I sought a new church due to those differences in beliefs. I landed in a SBC church but was never a regular attender. I was still holding on to some wild trappings from my past.
I met my first wife in April of 1996 and we were married the following year. Although we were married in her father’s Church of Christ (because he insisted on it), we joined a wonderful SBC church shortly thereafter in the town where we were living. We both became fairly active in serving there and loved our friends we’d made there very much. But with California starting to get weirder and weirder, we decided we didn’t want to raise our two kids (at the time) there. So in 2003, we left California for Alabama and joined a SBC church there. About that time, I started to find a connection to reformed theology and moved to a different, more reformed, SBC church around 2005. After that, I found I agreed more with Presbyterian theology than those of Baptists and moved to a PCA church in that same town in 2006. God was definitely guiding me through these times. I caught some balking from my ex-wife for the church-hopping, but the Holy Spirit was definitely guiding my decisions.
In 2009, my now ex-wife announced she was an atheist, a year after kid number five arrived. (Yes, we had five amazing kids!) I stopped going to church as well partly out of embarrassment and partly in what would turn out to be a futile attempt to save our marriage. In all that, I somehow ended up in a wonderful LMCS church and even got the ex to go with me for a time, but that didn’t last either and she quit church again around 2010. Her mental breakdown, subsequent diagnosis and upside down life ran me into the ground for 6+ years. I stopped going to church, though I still believed in God and considered myself a Lutheran. After 6+ years of misery for both of us, I finally reluctantly left in 2016 and moved back to California. The divorce was finalized in 2017. These were tough times. I was mad at her. I was mad at God. But what I didn’t realize was I was mostly mad at me! It wasn’t long after I landed back in California that I realized I had failed her and the kids, I had failed God and I had failed myself. How? By not being the husband/father God intended me to be. But what I didn’t realize was that God was working all along. Yes, she played her part in the destruction of our marriage. But equally true was that I hadn’t been the husband/father God had in mind for me. I was as guilty of failing her as she was at failing me. God knew that about me before I was even born and He also knew where He was guiding me. So in 2017, I found myself single and alone. I wanted to go back to church but lacked the motivation to go, was embarrassed about the mess my life had become and still secretly embraced some of those demons from my past.
But, as I have stated before, God has had a plan for me my whole life. And He started to reveal that plan to me by ushering in who would become my beloved wife, in 2018. In late 2018, I decided I needed to get back to church and reconnect with God. I guess I’m guilty of being clueless at times because when my beloved wife learned of my intentions to go back to church, she dropped several subtle hints that I was oblivious to. She finally had to tell me straight up that if I wanted her to go with me, she was game. She did and it was life-changing for both of us! Our first day back was, ironically, was Easter Sunday 2019. We got married in that LCMS church in 2020, relocated to Tennessee shortly thereafter, joined a local WELS church and successfully sought custody of my minor kids (the reason for the move). It was at this time, for the first time in my life, I started to see God really did have a plan for me.
In late 2023, I started to have issues with the Lutheran “life”. Now I am not going to speak negatively about my experience because it is only my experience and may not convey the absolute truth about that of which I am speaking. But in my experience, members only seem to see each other on Sundays for service because there were no men’s groups or other similar functions. I needed more connection to other faithful men to deepen my connection with God. So I decided to seek a new church in late 2023. We landed at a non-denominational mega-church in late spring 2024 and loved it at first. The preaching was (is) expository and excellent, the music was amazing, but admittedly different than I was used to. And that would play a role in my faith journey in late 2024.
But some major things happened while we were there. I knew I had been avoiding my demons all these years and I knew I could not move forward in my faith journey without facing them. I finally broke down and admitted my beloved wife my deepest, darkest secret. For the first time ever in my life, someone other than myself knew just how depraved I really was and that made me feel very exposed and vulnerable. Without getting into details, a lot happened in that window of time but we came out stronger than we ever were and I felt more driven to get back on the path God had for me. And that took a lot of prayer and meditation.
After a little over a year at that mega-church, I started to feel a little weird about them using CCM music as worship songs. The thought occurred to me that those songs were never written to be worship songs, but chart-climbing radio hits. Oh, they sell them as worship songs but that’s not entirely true when you’d never hear them without them being on the radio first. Also, the mega-church crowds were wearing me down. I just could not worship the Creator of the universe by singing Top 10 CCM hits from Elevation and Bethel Music with 1,200+ other people around me. Worship is partly lifting those around you up with joyful singing. How is that possible with that many people and rock concert level decibel music? Anyway, I also found a lot of the lyrics, although catchy and fun to sing, lacked theological depth and substance to them. In the meantime, I was also noticing my growing interest in reevaluating reformed theology. I realized I’d left my favorite church (that PCA church in Alabama) for the wrong reasons. I left with my ex-wife, foolishly convincing myself I left because the teachings must have been wrong or my ex would not have decided she was an atheist.
In December of 2024, my wife and I started our own tradition of attending a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. Our mega-church did not do them. (I’m guessing 1,200+ people all holding little fires in their hands inside a building may not be the safest thing to do…) So, this past December, as we did in 2024, we sought out another local church offering candlelight services. And what do you know? A local PCA church was on that list! We originally had plans to attend a different candlelight service, but something seemed off about the church we originally chose. So Christmas Eve morning, I started looking again. I talked to my wife about it and we decided to go with the PCA church service.
I kid you not, it was like coming home. That candlelight service encapsulated everything I’d been missing! And it didn’t take long after that service to make the decision to check out that church more thoroughly. And although I am fairly certain we will end up placing membership there, we are still in that “investigative” mindset. The Holy Spirit has undoubtedly lead me back to the set of beliefs1 2 I can completely hold to as the best description of Biblical truths, second only to Holy Scripture itself.
So there you have it. You know more about me than I am comfortable with, but if we’re not honest with each other, how can we truly trust each other, right? Thanks for taking the time to read the Cliff-notes version of my testimony!
~ Shalom! Shalom! ☧
