Growing Up
I’m a nerd. I’ve always been a nerd. I sometimes play the role of musician or athlete or something that seems much cooler, but, no… still nerd. And I’m ok with that. Its pertinent for me to paint a picture of how I came into this full-grown skin I’m in, and my family has to be a key part of that. To help you understand, I come from a family where my father is a doctor, my two sisters are doctors, both of their husbands are doctors, and my mom was a lab tech before she became a full-time mother. I also went to a high school where National Merit was mundane and it seems about a third of students ended up in Ivy League schools. Let’s say growing up reading Nietzsche and Jung was commonplace. Amidst all this academia, I feel in love with math and science, creating a very rational creature out of me.
I was hardly an easy child. From what I hear, I threw some major tantrums growing up, ate all the time, and was very stubborn. I was so difficult, I think my parents must have thought God was evil, and we never really attended church growing up. Growing up in South Florida, my understanding of religion was what I learned from going to my weekly bar/bat mitzvah’s through middle school and from my best friend Ron’s orthodox Jewish family. My experience was if you weren’t Jewish, you weren’t really anything.
Unlike Leah, I never moved throughout any of my childhood. My parents still live in the house they moved into when I was born. Come ninth grade, I changed schools to make some new friends and to play football. Sports always came very naturally to me, so I picked up football quickly, as well as played for the school’s soccer and baseball teams. My two older sisters were over-achievers, and I wasn’t much different. Pam and Cheryl both played multiple sports, participated in debate and other extracurricular activities. Well, in addition to sports, I picked up drama and dance. I loved musical theatre and dance… I was a little worried it might give my parents the wrong impression of my sexuality. It has always been a theme in my life to be a jack of all trades, but a master of none. I like having some knowledge of just about anything.
College
One thing I didn’t have much knowledge of was Jesus Christ. I even started dating a Christian girl before I left for college but still lacked any understanding of who Jesus was. Upon finishing high school, I went off to Washington University to play football and get a good education while there. Up to this point in my life, I was pretty much an atheist, even arguing against the few Christians I knew in high school. You can ask my best man about that one. Well, early on in college, I was exposed to a non-Christian physicist who argued for intelligent design. A non-religious scientist arguing for the existence of God was really intriguing and I truly ate up a lot of the arguments he had. It was just what I needed to hear, but little did I know how much this simple presentation would change my life.
So, I moved from the atheist camp to some form a theist, but I figured, “If a god cares enough to tweak everything just so that life forms can exist on this planet, wouldn’t he want to care for them or desire to interact with them?” I started really investigating various religions, and eventually came across Josh McDowell’s book Evidence That Demands a Verdict which answered all my questions about why believe the Bible and Creator and the Cosmos, a book by a Christian physicist who examines how science relates to God. All this led me to accept Christ into my life and things haven’t been the same since.
The first change happened when I decided that I just wasn’t enjoying my time at Wash U and chose to transfer to the University of Florida. So, like Leah, my life at my first college only lasted a year. At Florida I got involved in Campus Crusade for Christ, where I was finally exposed to individuals interested in real discipleship. I got involved in the worship band and started growing as a leader in the ministry. I spent ten weeks in the summertime on a Summer Project through Crusade and really grew up in my faith, finally understanding just what it meant to be a new creation. Up to that point I still felt like some sort of hybrid of who I used to be and who I was called to be, and now I finally understood grace and the obedience that follows it, which allowed me to grow.
With this growth came some great challenges, including trying to figure out what I am supposed to do with my life. Up to this point, I was still following in the footsteps of the family, on my pre-med tract, starting to think about which medical school I would attend. Well, after fighting with God for a while about my calling, I gave up the fight (because… really… could I actually win the argument?), and knew God wanted me in vocational ministry. I applied to seminary in Atlanta and ended up moving up here upon graduation from college.
Post-College
While in seminary, I came across a church-based college ministry that was looking to hire someone. Having become a Christian in college, I really have a heart for college students and student discipleship. It was a perfect match for what I wanted to do and started working at a ministry focused on Georgia Tech and Georgia State students. This is where I met two of my groomsmen, since they were former students of mine. I really loved the ability to teach students, evangelize on campus, and participate in the leadership of the church. It was also during that job that I met JB, whose birthday party was where I first met Leah.
After working there for a few years, I started working as a web designer and marketer for Crown Financial Ministries. It has been a great outlet to participate in a creative job, and a nice change from a fully relationally focused job to a bit of a hermit job for a while. Although I currently enjoy my position at Crown, my coworks, and love the creative avenues I get to pursue, I know my calling is really to be in relational ministry full-time.
One great thing that seems to have happened, whether it’s the distance or the fact that I’ve finally grown up, it seems my family is closer now than it has been. My sisters are older than me and close in age to each other, so I never felt like I was very close to either. Now that we’re all in different cities, it seems like we connect easier than we have before. It has been refreshing. The same goes for my parents, who now seem to be in daily contact with me. There would be weeks in college and I wouldn’t call them, but now we all communicate about what is going on in each other’s lives.
I should be finishing seminary this year and I look forward to seeing what God will do next.
Conclusion
So, what can I say? I’m a nerd. I’m a rebel. I’m never quite what I want to be. Though, amazingly, I’m someone whose life has been bought at a great cost. I love my Savior. I seek to glorify Him with how I live, speak, act, think, and love. If it weren’t for Him, this page wouldn’t exist, this site wouldn’t exist, and I hope that everyone who reads this has a grasp of how important He is to me.