An Introduction

Hey, there! So, like it says on the main page, I had an interesting relationship to faith growing up. I harbored a great deal of resentment towards God as a teenager, and even after professing faith as a young adult I still clung to a lot of things that really only hindered me and set me up for failure over the last seven years. I put on a good front, partially helped by the fact that my dad was pretty rigorous in making sure my family had scripture put in front of us; my internal catalog was well-established enough to give me a false sense of security, even though I was leading a very hypocritical lifestyle in between weekly services.

My complacent attitude and habitual sin led to many poor decisions, though I got good at finding ways to spin them to be “less” bad- most of the time, at least. I was dulling my conscience, and it was badly skewing the perception I had of my trajectory. I thought I had the sense to identify when I had really crossed a line, but even then I was overlooking a million other things that were just as bad.

This summer, I was fortunate enough to experience a bit of divine correction in the form of a series of increasingly distressing panic attacks, migraines, a lot of inexplicable abdominal pains and distresses, and a sudden, very strong awareness of my mortality. It terrified me, plain and simple. I thought a lot about hell and about the lifestyle that I had been leading for years, and was reminded of a very uncomfortable truth: I would be called to account for all of it if I didn’t repent and seek forgiveness, which is exactly what I did.

Fast forward to today, where I have had my faith, love, and fear of God very vigorously shaken awake, and have spent the last several months wrestling through and studying various topics and issues across the Bible in hopes of settling my own faith and encouraging faith in others. I have been blessed with many opportunities to share the gospel with others and am privileged to daily serve as the spiritual leader of my own little family. My hope in sharing this blog is that maybe some of the lessons I am learning and topics I am studying will be of service to someone else who is struggling, or that it will at least be thought provoking enough to encourage your own individual reflection. I am NOT a biblical scholar by any means and have no formal training in scripture study or biblical history; I’m just a prodigal come home who loves Jesus and wants to share the grace of God with whoever will receive it. I love you and look forward to going on this journey with you!