You do not have to go to church to be a believer in Christ. You do not have to go to church to give yourself to Christ. You do not have to go to church to repent. If you want to learn about Christ and walk the path to Salvation, you need to go to church. Once you walk with Christ, He is always there, we are the ones that leave the well beaten path. One alwyas know that He is there at all times, even when we do not think we need Him.

When I was a kid, I was made to go to church at a young age. I hated it. I didn’y mind going to church, I just hated going dressed up. I was a kid, little boys didn’t like to be clean. When I was allowed to decide for myself, I elected to go. After so many years I realized that the main reason why I didn’t want o tgo wasn’t because of the monkey suit I had to wear every Sunday, it was the fact that the church I went to did not have many kids my age thereat the time.

Thru out my childhood, I have to say that unfortunally, I did not give church a look. It had never crossed my mind. When I was in high school, close to my adult age, I did start feeling a tugging, started “seeing” things, started “knowing” things, but I just shrugged them off as being a “normal” teen. I realized later to what they were was not part of a “normal” teenager.

I joined the service after my graduation from high school and I did get to travel. I was stationed first in Germany and then stateside only to be shipped out to the desert for Operation Desert Shield/Storm. When I was in Germany, I started to expierence things that I could not understand. Ouija boards, I could control them on my own, I did not have to be touching the orb to get an answer to my questions and my questions would trump those touching the orb. I walked to places and felt like “I was there before”. Trips out into the field, I would pick up on things that noone else could and learned later from the locals cofirmed my feelings. The most important thing I remembered is that one night I had dreamed that I flew home, went into my old bedroom, turned the light on to search for something that was lost and then left. In a phone conversation with my mother the next day, she had said that he heard my bedroom door opened and when she got up to look, the light was on. When I was in Germany, I talked to my Grandfather the day he had passed and I talked to him again later during the Gulf War.

After the service, I decided to settle down. Like most people, I hurried up and got married. Three years after the birth of my second child, we were divorced. It was after the divorce that I started to tumble around. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad for the divorce, I did not know what direction I needed to go. The time from the seperation to the divorce final, I was a celebrating, celebrating my freedom. A couple of months before the final divorce, I started to find direction, started to take better care of myself.  A few months after the divorce, I started to go to church and eventually got on my knees and repented. On June 09, 1998, I was saved.

From June thru December, I went to church and on the days I had visitation with my children, I took them also. I was working to better myself physically also. At the time, I was training to run a marathon and try to reach my dream goal of playing for the Washington Redskins. The more I became physically built, the more I took into the word of the Lord. As I look back now, there were certain events and certain things said to me that I did not understand until that fateful day on December 12th, 1998.

December 12th, 1998, started out just like any other day. Except that day, I had to work overtime. It was also a day thay I would get my daughters for the weekend. That was also a day the girls were to go to church for play practice. It was a day that we were going Christmas shopping out of town. I got off work around 9 that morning, picked up the girls from their grandmother, went home, got ready and took the girls to church. Noone was there so we went to my moms. While I was there, I took a short nap and then we went shopping. We ate first, went shopping then started to go home. Only, we didn’t make it home that day. We were in an accident that we shouldn’t had lived thru.

I remembered what happened the moments before the accident and the moments during the accident. The moments before the accident I did not remembered until after a year, but what happened during the accident, I will always remember for the rest of my life. I know what happened was probably a few short seconds but what transpired, seems like it had passed for awhile.

At the moment of impact, I was surrounded by white light. I remember thinking at the time that I was in limbo. The thing was, I knew where I was at and I was not afraid. I was not worried about my family, about what I haven’t accomplished, how my girls would be taken care of. I was, in a sense, at peace. I remebered the sermon the week before on when things go bad, don’t ask the Lord “Why me?”, instead “What do you want me to do Lord!”. I remember during the accident, feeling of euphoria and letting myself go, saying, “Here I am Lord, do with me as you wish!”. Then I seen hands coming from the light, then arms, then a face. It was a face of Jesus. The moment I saw him, I knew I was not dead. At that moment, I remembered from the Bible that when we face Christ on Judgement Day, he will be in His glory and I remember how John described His Glory in the book of Revelations. I did not look at His Hands, I only looked at His face. He did not speak to me, but I felt comfort. I did not want to leave, but I also did not want to go.

Then in a moment, I was back.