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To tell of all the blessings God has poured out on me and the many things He has done in my life would fill a whole book, but for the sake of time I'll just hit the highlights. I was raised in the church and as early as I can remember I was in Sunday school and church every Sunday. I knew all the songs about Jesus. I memorized scripture and had a long string of perfect attendance pins to prove my commitment. I was considered a "good kid" by most people I suppose and I would say I led a pretty normal childhood. That would all be interrupted when I was just three months shy of age thirteen.
I still remember the exact date and could get pretty close to the time of the morning my young world turned upside down. I had just left P.E. class and was racing through the hall at Rockridge Jr. High before the rest of the classes let out, a daily thing for my buddies and me. But on March 9, 1989 when I took my turn at swinging from the door jam that separated the hallway, my feet didn't come back to the floor like usual. To this day I don't know if my hands slipped or I just swung too far and lost control, but I ended up on the tile-covered concrete floor barely conscious.
I have no recollection of that morning or the following week aside from what I have been told happened. When I arrived at the emergency room and the doctors analyzed my situation things didn't look good at all. The neurosurgeon told my parents I had a blood clot on my brain and although there were ways to remove the blood without brain surgery they would likely leave me with some brain damage. To operate would give me a 50% chance of life and my only chance to be me again. My dad said until the day he died that was the biggest coin flip he ever won.
So at the age of thirteen I already had a sense that God had put me on this earth for a reason. I believed He had spared my life that the rest of my days would be in service to Him. But my knowledge of Him was still in my head and it was not until a year after this accident that I knew at least one reason God had spared my life that day in March. He wanted my heart.
I was at church camp when it all clicked for me one night. I realized that to serve God you don't have to be an ordained minister of the church or a missionary to a foreign country. God is looking for soldiers who will fight His fight in the day-to-day battlefield. No matter where or who you are He just wants you to be wholly His. That night, at the age of fourteen, God spoke this message to me heart and I went to the altar to give Jesus all that I have, all that I am. "From this day forward all that I do let me do it for you," I prayed. And the strength to do that has only come from Him.
Eleven years have passed since Jesus became the Lord of my life and I wish I could say it has been a bed of roses the whole way. By His grace alone He has never let me stray so far that I can't find my way home. I moved to Nashville in pursuit of a Country Music career in early 1997. Along the way God has opened all the right doors and closed all the wrong ones. Satan has vied several times for my very soul and many times I have stumbled, trying to do it in my own strength, but Jesus has picked me up every time and helped me go on. When we do not simply rely on His grace to see us through, we will fail as I have learned several times over. "And He said unto me, 'My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in your weakness.' Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." II Corinthians 12:9
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