Where did I start and where am I going? Questions I hope I can eventually answer...My journey began over thirty-seven years ago. Sadly, that is not when I was born! Rather it was thirty-seven years ago that I experienced a major paradigm shift. Let me explain.

I was raised in a family where believing in God was never a question. My parents were fairly regular in their church attendance, although inclement weather or not having one's hair washed was a quick excuse not to go. However, there was never a time in my life that I wondered if God existed. While I was no brainiac, it wasn't much of a leap of faith for me to believe that the universe was complex and came to be by a being far more intelligent than me. Believing that the earth just evolved was a far greater leap and one that asked me to believe in nothing but man's own musings/theories about how the world began.

None of that is really important to my journey except to say that believing in the existence of God was an acknowledgement of truth I never did, or have since, grappled with. But the real story comes with, what I referred to earlier, a paradigm shift.

At a stategic point in my life, I was challenged to think about God and the Bible in ways I had never before. I had to reevaluate everything I believed about God and what the Bible promised. Because even though I believed in God and thought I was living a pretty moral and decent life - which means I was a good person, did kind things, was generous, loving and compassionate - I had never realized that I was living a life in direct contrast to who God was and what he promised. My hope had been that if I followed the rules (I have no idea what rules I was actually following) God would be pleased with me.

I was like all the millions of people who think their personal goodness is what God gives a "thumbs up" to. The problem for me was, I was a pretty good person. I went through all the normal rebellions as a teenager but never went to extremes even in that. But even in all my self-perceived goodness there was an emptiness as wide and deep as the Grand Canyon.

There certainly were many things that contributed to my emptiness. You know the "if my life were different and I had..." "if...were out of my life I could be happy". But even on the very best of days the emptiness gnawed at me. However, instead of acknowledging the ache, I ran away from it as fast as I could filling my world with things I thought would give me life. The funny thing about "running away" was I couldn't get rid of me. Nor could I evade God, and believe me I tried.