Wandering

For the next few years I went through the equivalent of the pre-teen years - I was trying to figure out what my new life was going to look like. It was during this time I lost a lot of my friends. I think that although this was really difficult, it was likely necessary given the activities I was involved with at the time. This isn't to say that my friends or I took part in anything wild - but, the big difference was that there seemed to be a need for those friends to have me continue drinking and secondly to deny that Jesus was God.

The first two years were really difficult for me. I spent a lot of time on the internet until the early hours of the morning (like 4am) and then I would go into work the next day for 9am. I did this pretty much every night. While I was going through this transition I would often question if what happened was real, and each time came back to the conclusion that yes, indeed, God is real and He chose me.

I started to meet Christian friends which was vital to me growing in my relationship with Christ. I am so thankful for those friends and most of them are still close friends to this day, which is nearly 10 years later.

I started attending a church. Initially it was a University campus church, where I would be baptized in November of '99. Later on, I would make my home at a Pentecostal church in Kitchener where I remain today.

Given that I gave my life to Jesus at an older age, I found that I had a lot of "catching up" to do if I wanted to be able to socialize with the church members. I have found since that it is something rare for someone who is already 21 years old to start following Jesus. (I initially realized this at a conference I attended where people were asked to raise their hand when the age of when they accepted Christ was called out. I think I was only one of a handful who raise their hand when the 20's were called out).

I read a lot of the Bible - getting familiar with a lot of the stories that were in there - and what I found was that it really didn't take all that long to "catch up".

The other area of catching up had to do with music. Seeing as I sold or thrown out the majority of my music collection it was time to switch my music preferences. I shamefully downloaded large quantities of music through this "new" service called Napster until I had roughly 40 Gigs worth of Christian music. (It would be later on that I would feel convicted of my wrong doing where in a moments notice hit delete to my beloved music collection and watch all the music disappear).

I was starting to fit in, but, was not ready to date as I was still working through my emotions. This would take a few years to process.

Next up - the circumstances that would lead me to my future wife.