Testimony?

This is overdue but I've been pretty busy lately. A few months ago, I came to this site to talk about a topic in the music section. My wife and children were going to church every week without me. I decided to come into this section and ask about some problems I was having with Christianity, in particular Christians. From the start, I have said that I'm a believer but didn't call myself a Christian because I didn't go to church. So I used the other religion icon. I'm not going into the mess of answers that I was getting, it's unimportant now.

My family, grandmother, aunts, grandfather were very religious people, all could be found at church on Sunday but because of my parents work schedules, I was not in church. As I got older, I became even more detached from religion all together. Being involved in sports, left little time to really consider religion.

After some hard times (losing my maternal grandmother, my dad, 2 uncles, 2 cousins and having 3 friends from childhood entered into drug rehabs or jail), age 12-20, I decided to look into religion. It was all confusing to me. What I read in the Bible was not how I seen people acting. I started college and pushed religion away again. During this time, I met my now wife, who was very active in a church. Her parents insisted anyone she dated be active in church as well. Maybe for 3 or 4 months, I went every Sunday but then my college football season started and I now had football games on Saturdays, sometimes not getting home until Sunday, so those visits to the church stopped. By this time, my wife's parents had accepted me into their family and understood. Time went on but still no church for me.

I want everyone to realize at this point, I did believe very much in Jesus and prayed before every game that He would protect me, my teammates and the opposing team from injury. If you asked me, I was a believer but not a Christian, simply because the name seemed to be a way for others to justify their actions. A big argument recently on this forum, is about asking Jesus into your heart, how it is wrong because it's not in the Bible.

Back in 1998, there was a kid that I had become close to who was a patient at a Children's Hospital, who had leukemia. After each game, I would visit him. He was my biggest fan. One day, I was holding his hand, the next day he was gone. I dropped my college football career because I was starting to realize there is a much higher power than me. During these years, I had lost 2 more cousins (suicides), an uncle (suicide), 5 more friends to drug rehab or jail and my mom was diagnosed with Renal Cancer.

What I did have was my wife and a newborn son. Priorities on how to make sure they were taken care of, getting my second degree, this one a Business degree (this one was more practical than the Psychology degree I had). A few years passed, many prayers for my mom (my hero) and she made it through after having a kidney removed. In 2001, I had started a job as a Human Resources manager for a large cell phone company. We were getting ready to have our second child, a little girl. The breaks were starting to fall for us. Having just bought a new house, helping my mom move closer to us but then in a 4 month span, 3 cousins killed in a car accident, 2 more cousins committed suicide, another uncle to suicide and my grandmother was starting to fall, breaking her hip.

My wife and children were going to church every week without me. My priorities were still to take care of my family, not just my wife, kids and mom but my cousins, helping friends out that were jobless, some even homeless. In the last year, I had started to visit the church my wife and kids went to. I've went into the problems that came from that and those are not important now. What was important was that I, "talked" to Jesus everyday. A few weeks ago, my best friend from childhood, committed suicide, waking me up again to the fact that there is a higher power than me, than scientific evidence and decided it was time to become baptised.

***Two important factors to this***
When I was 14 or 15, I was playing with a gun. The gun fired, luckily the gun had been dropped by the previous owner which caused the sights to be off causing the bullet to miss me, even though it was close enough that I could not hear for 3 days out of one ear.

A few years ago, I woke up, stepped out of bed and fell flat on my face. My legs had no feeling in them. For the next week, I couldn't stand, needing a wheelchair to visit the Doctor who had no answer to what was wrong with me. Diabetes tests, MRIs but nothing was showing up as wrong. A week later, I was able to walk a little but still couldn't feel my legs. It took almost 6 months for me to have the confidence to even drive a car. Still no medical reason why this happened. Even to this day, there is slight numbness in my lower legs but I can walk fine, play with my kids fine and can live normal. It came and left without reason.
*********************
All of these things combined smacked me into reality again, that there is a Higher Power. The baptism went fine, my Pastor has already put to me work with troubled teens. I made the decision to be baptised, to accept the Christian label because I feel that God is more powerful than anyone or anything in my life. I can see my family growing stronger now that we are in church together.


I've said enough lately to probably get myself booted from the site but as I said with everything else, not my concern. My honesty and my real attempts to help others on here is enough for me. I wouldn't be able to help people if I didn't have God by my side and hopefully that has been seen.

Thank you,
Tim