In the Beginning...

"Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start..."
-Good ole Sound of Music.

Well, I've already shared a snippet of my baptism, which I suppose is (or should be) the beginning of my story, but that's not where I'm going to start. I was born and raised going to church and taught to do the right things, but somewhere along the way the path that my parents, friends, teachers, and adults around me paved turns into gravel; leaving me to do the paving.

And I'm sure there were many devos and individual talks that stirred something in me, but nothing quite like the story I'm going to tell. (Which, by the way, I will go ahead and say that I don't believe that any one person or "talk" can all of a sudden turn me to God. I believe that God plants the seeds and uses other means to get my attention sometimes. Matthew 13).

And so it begins. I hesitate to share this story just because of the ego this person will probably get ;)
This past summer I met a guy. I'll leave it at that. One night, he came over to my house to spend some time with me. He brought with him a movie by Rob Bell, one that he wanted to get my opinion on. He sat on the couch, and I sat on the edge of my dad's green chair. We would stop the movie periodically to talk about what we had just heard or watched, and I was so blown away. One thing I will always remember about it is the idea of "Yip." When the movie was over, all I did was slump back in the chair and smile. I can't remember that part for sure, but it's very likely. I remember being at a complete loss of words though. It was like he was wanting me to expound on this or talk deeply about what he had just shared with me, but I was dumbfounded. Absolutely and completely at a loss for words. But I remember something so well. Something that I will never ever forget. (We must have switched seats? Because when I thought this I know I was sitting on the couch and he was in the chair. But it didn't start out that way...) I knew right then, that I wanted to be a missionary. Because of this video, because of this boy, I wanted to share God with EVERYONE. I wanted to do it right then, and I wanted him to be there.

I had never had that thought before. The God that I had kept in my "safe-box" was shaken and destroyed. He became real to me. He came alive for the first time maybe since I had been baptized.


That one night changed my whole course to this very day...