Hello. If you made it to this page, you must be either really interested, or bored. Either way...here we go.

I am an author, a veteran, a father, and a Christian, among other things; and right now I am presenting to you all who are willing to watch, my novel, Imago, the Red Castle. I will be doing dramatic readings of my book for free, for the whole world to see and hear.

 

First, a more complete bio seems appropriate, and I was wondering what the best way would be for me to introduce myself and to start this whole odyssey. This is rather a big project, and I am doing this all on my own, and I think you should know a little about me and my motivations first. And the more I thought about it the more I realized that since, being a Christian affects every other aspect of my life, then the best way to start out would be to begin with my testimony.

So this is my testimony, about my Christian journey, how I nearly lost my faith, and why I am here before you today.

 

When I was very young, I remember going to the Methodist church here in town, particularly Sunday school. I don’t remember exactly when the family stopped, but it was very early in my life, 1st grade or so. My dad was a farm kid; he was actually born in a sod house [if you don’t’ know what that is, look it up] went to a one room schoolhouse until high school, actually rode a horse to school when he was little, believe it or not. And like a lot of farm kids, I think church was a part of his growing up. And I think that’s why we went. We never spoke of church outside of church, prayer was never mentioned or performed individually or as a family; we never spoke about God or Christ or the importance of trying to get closer to God. And I don’t think that’s unusual for families like mine. And even though I was a big reader from a very early age, I didn’t even own a bible, not even a kids bible. I can’t imagine my father ever gave more than 20 dollars in the collection plate at any one time; at least, that’s all I ever saw. This is not an indictment of my father; I loved him and admired him in so many ways. But this was our church history, growing up.

Now I did have a very happy and normal childhood, but it was without any real thought toward Christianity or what it meant and implied.

So my first real interaction with true faith was with my friend Carter Schultz. Carter was an actual Christian, and he walked the walk, even from a young age, more so than anyone else I knew growing up, from grade school thru high school, he was the real deal. We became friends in 2nd and 3rd  grade playing summer baseball, and I went to church with him, sometimes, when I would spend the night at his house. And because of that, because this bolstered my curiosity, I started reading my dad’s bible, which was given to him by his sister, in 6th or 7th grade. That was the first time I ever really started considering God. Because of this and because of Carter, I came to understand and believed in the holy trinity, that Jesus was the son of God, that he died and was resurrected for our sins, and that was the first time I made a conscious, adult choice for God. Thru grade school and into high school, Carter remained one of my closest friends. However...when I got into high school...

I don’t know how real my conviction was... I was a jock, after all. And I was more concerned with being one of the cool kids than I was with being true to faith. I wasn’t a bad kid, or a wild kid. Any teacher of mine you would have asked would’ve called me a ‘good kid’. I never smoked or did drugs, never stole or set anything on fire, never got in trouble with the law, but I did drink and participate in the kind of shenanigans that most American high schoolers got up to; the type of stuff that, shall we say, fueled the teen movies of the 80s. I was 10 in 1980, by the way, and turned 20 in 1990. That’s my time frame.

Now all this time I still believed in God and in Jesus, and the resurrection, but my faith was weak and watery. I could and did easily discard any conviction I had if it got in the way of a good time, like drinking or having sex or just behaving like an idiot. Heaven forbid I would ever defend Christianity to anyone, or any of my peers. I could talk the talk, at the right place and time, but that was it. I even went to church a bit during my high school years. I thought I was a good Christian, in spite of my actions.

After high school, I went to college, but got bored with it, and joined the military in the early 90s. I was trained as a combat medic, but fortunately I was never in combat, and my four years in the service were interesting but uneventful. I did find a church to attend, and went sporadically, and made some friends (true Christians) whom I still have contact with. And although while I may have been getting closer to true faith, I was a loooong way off.

 

I got out of the service, came home, and very soon met a girl who was in America on vacation. We worked together on my friends ranch for the summer, taking tourists on cattle drives, just like in the movie City Slickers, and we fell in love and got married. Now she wasn’t a Christian, and I knew that, but I wasn’t looking for that. I thought it would be all right; I mean, I was in love and  I thought we were an eternal match. And she would fall in line with my faith, right?  Can you see a foreshadowing here...

She was from Holland, and after 5 years in America, and the birth of my first son, she decided she wanted to move back to Holland. I thought it was a bad idea; I mean, after all, I didn’t speak the language, we had a toddler, we would both have to find jobs and a place to live, but she talked me into it...or you could say that I lost that argument, and we moved to Holland, where we lived for five long, long, terrible, horrible years.

Holland is a very secular country...well, apathetic to Christianity, a mix of spiritual-but-not-religious, and pagan/atheists, to be honest. I have never had as many people in my life ask me what my zodiac sign was as I did in Holland. As I said, my wife wasn’t a Christian, and though she was sympathetic to my beliefs, she wasn’t really interested, and obviously therefore no help. Of course she wasn’t...she had no belief in the truth of Jesus and his resurrection. She, like most people, believe that if you are a mostly good person then you end up going to heaven, or the happy hunting grounds, or whatever. And the faith that I thought I had, that was always in the background, was challenged deeply.

I was confronted by atheist co-workers and an atheist boss who would laugh at the very idea of god. They asked a lot of questions that I had no answer for. If there is a god, why is there evil? Evolution and science have disproved god. Oh all Americans are bumpkins who believe there’s an old man in the sky who created the earth. Americans are simple, unsophisticated, and gullible, and Europeans are much more worldly and cultured. Now looking back, that’s a bigger laugh than anything else, but being surrounded, and constantly bombarded with these ideas, was beginning to batter down my defenses.

Because I never had a deep faith, and I was never challenged in it but just drifted along, I never had any reason to seek real answers to these questions. My second son was now born in Holland, and I realized how important these questions were to me, how important an actual belief in God was, and I had no anchor.  And it began to affect me deeply. I had never felt so alone and adrift in my life. I really had no friends to talk to, certainly no Christian friends, I was still a stranger in a strange land, a fish out of water. If there was no god, what was the point to life anymore?

I fell into a deep depression. On top of that, I had developed some sort of condition; my right knee kept swelling up like a grapefruit, my right foot was killing me, and my right wrist had become so painful I could barely use my hand. I couldn’t even pick up and hold my sons. I could barely hobble around. After seeing doctors for nearly a year, and having all kinds of tests, not one doctor, not one, had any clue what was wrong with me. I was literally afraid that I had some degenerative disease and I was just going to end up in a wheelchair, slowly dying, wasting away. I was afraid that’s how my sons would remember me, if at all. A feeble cripple who couldn’t even play with them. It was the lowest ebb of my life.

I got fired from my job, and that might have saved us, because it gave us the impetus to move back to America after 5 years. (Work is very hard to find in Europe, and I talked my wife into returning because I could easily find a job in America.) and when we returned, the strange problem with my joints began to heal, although slowly. And being separated from the atheist landscape and the gravitational pull of pagans was also good; I was on the mend spiritually as well. And although it was a near thing, I had never lost my faith completely...in fact, a dogged part of me was thinking that I should be determined to hold on to my belief like a terrier holds on to a rat—maybe just to be a gadfly to those who thought I was a fool. I was determined not to ever give up on the belief that God was real, though I was still full of doubt; and it was tormenting me.

But things began to get better being home again. My sons, 4 and 8, were thriving in America. I was certainly happier, and found work immediately. But...after two years back in the states, my wife decided she didn’t want to be married anymore, and left.  And this also was devastating, worse than anything else I had ever experienced. I had reached a new low.

I didn’t know what I had been working for if I didn’t have a whole family. Thoughts of suicide traipses through my head, though I never actually came close to it. On top of this,  while still trying to deal psychologically with my divorce, my father, whom I had been taking care of for a couple years, died. Even though I knew it was coming, it affected me more deeply than I thought it would..things were not going well for me. I was now questioning my own mortality.

And somehow, in spite of all that had happened, I began to re-discover my faith. But not the watery faith of my youth, but a true strong faith. On YouTube I discovered the kind of Christianity that I really needed. I found brilliant Christian apologists and philosophers like  apologist Frank Turek, philosopher William Lane Craig, Oxford mathematician John Lennox, Pastor Greg Laurie, brain surgeon Michael Egnor, chemist James Tour, Stephen C. Meyer, the founder of the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery institute, among many others. So though we all know the that the internet is a portal into a world of darkness and perversion, there are some good things to be had there as well. It all depends on where you look.

I now had answers to my questions, and arguments for my faith. My belief in God was planted in fertile soil, growing in sound argument and logic, and  I had answers for those questions that befuddled and nearly destroyed me.

Now, after years back in America, I can say that in my new-found, born-again faith I am happier than I have ever been in my life. My two adult sons are also committed Christians who go to church with me every Sunday, and my days and nights are full of peace and a love and reverence for God and his son Jesus Christ. I was baptized in the river that flows near my house on Sep 22nd,

Now I hope that, as I begin to record and present my novel to you, it can bring you joy and entertain you. So stay tuned because next week you will be getting Chapter 1 of Imago, the Red Castle. And it’s all because I sought God, truly and deeply, and, as it says in

 

 

 

 

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