I wasn’t always a Christian and I didn’t always want to be one. In fact, for a huge chunk of my adult life I thought that “The Church” was full of itself—a bunch of stuffy people who thought they knew everything but who, in reality, couldn’t explain or defend what they believed and why. It’s like, I knew there was a God but I had no idea how to get to and connect with him. I didn’t really get who Jesus was. I wanted God, not church, and I definitely didn’t want a bunch of rules and rituals. So, I dabbled in a lot of spiritualities but got nowhere—just more questions and more dead ends.

As all of this was going on, life was moving along. I got married, started a career, and had two kids. On the outside, I looked like a person who had it all together. On the inside, I was dying a slow death. I had never dealt with the abuse that I had experienced in the past and it kept pushing its ugly head out of the dark hole that I had tried to stuff it in. I was depressed and, for many years, had been turning to alcohol to numb and escape from the pain and the feelings of hopelessness that were always there lurking in the corners. Well, all of that finally reached a crescendo and I literally screamed at God to make himself real to me. I didn’t think he would—at least not to a person like me. But he did. Jesus took me by the hand. I don’t know how else to say it. And he showed me how to walk with him—not with the bottle, not with the pain of the past, and not with hopelessness.

So, here I am. It hasn’t always been easy. Life is still full of challenges and the process of healing from depression and alcoholism took a long time. What I learned in the process is that Jesus is the most amazing person ever. A God who can take a pile of ashes and make something new out of it. A God who can infuse anyone’s personal story with meaning and purpose—anyone who says “Yes” to him, picks up their cross, and follows him.

All of this is to say, that my life’s purpose and my personal story connect in Jesus. I want to share God’s Story and how his Story has the power to connect with our own personal stories. No churchy lingo. No fake, plastic haloes. No pretending everything is hunky-dory. No checking either your brain or your capacity to think critically at the door. I also want people to know that God is a person, not a religion, a set of rules, or some abstract spirituality. He’s right here. He’s the God who’s made himself known and who loves and cares about us enough to literally walk with us in everyday, messy life—if we let him. I want people to know that following Jesus doesn’t equal being either weird or a mindless robot. Following Jesus doesn’t even equal going to church on Sunday. Following Jesus is life— abundant life both now and forever. Following Jesus is about being part of God’s family—being part of a real community of real people who aren’t about escaping life or pretending it isn’t hard, but who are all about living life and making a real difference in a broken world with the resurrection power of Jesus.