The Beginning, in a Nutshell

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Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s felt like living inside a world that has long since disappeared. My generation—and the ones before us—experienced a version of life that simply doesn’t exist anymore, though we remember it vividly. I can tell stories of that old world to my kids, but they’ll never truly understand what it felt like to live in it. There is no going back.


When I look back on those years, I don’t think I could have asked for a better childhood. I was raised by parents who loved each other, and who loved me and my sister unconditionally. Like any marriage, I’m sure they had their hardships, but they worked through them and stayed together. I’ve always counted that as one of the greatest blessings in my life. In a world where divorce and broken homes have become so common, I was spared that pain, and I know it shaped who I am today.


I have nothing but fond memories of childhood. When I think hard about it, I honestly can’t recall anything truly negative. Life was just… good.


I wasn’t raised in church, but I was raised to know that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Apart from tagging along to vacation Bible schools with childhood friends, church wasn’t a part of my early life. Not until I turned twelve.


At twelve, my younger sister attended a daycare run by an older Christian couple, Paulette and Bill. Because my parents didn’t want me staying home alone to catch the school bus, they arranged for me to be dropped off there each morning. I’d wait with my sister and then catch the bus from their house. They had built the daycare onto their home, and their warmth made it feel like an extension of their faith.


Around this time, I started having these unexplainable fears that my parents would die while I was at school. I don’t remember anything that might have triggered those thoughts, but they clung to me tightly. Some mornings, just before the bus arrived, I’d slip into the bathroom and pretend to be sick. Paulette, would call my parents to come get me. Eventually it became frequent enough that the school counselor had me take strange little tests and puzzles, trying to figure out what was wrong with me.


Not long after these things started occurring, Paulette asked my mom if she could talk to me about Jesus—about what it truly meant to have a relationship with Him. With permission, she invited me upstairs to their dining room. I remember sitting with her at that table as she shared the gospel, using the “bridge of salvation” illustration to explain it all. Something in me understood. Something in me opened. And there, in that warm dining room, I bowed my head and surrendered my life to Jesus.


That’s where it all began.

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