So sometimes I have to make a conscious decision to believe that God is Real… that IT ALL, for the most part, happened the way it is described in the Bible (with the acceptance that I can believe that some of it is just mythological fiction that is really used to explain some unknown phenomenon…) I have to make a conscious decision to believe that the voice I hear inside my head telling me to do something is God’s voice, not just my own thoughts; that sometimes when it seems things happen coincidentally, it is really God’s hand in the situation; that some of my dreams at night are really visions from God…

I have to choose to believe all of that…

…Because for so many years of my life, I couldn’t bring myself to believe in something as bogus as a God. I wanted to believe in God… I really did. It scared me to think that I would spend eternity somewhere separate from those who I love dearly here on earth…but I couldn’t bring myself to buy in to all the whimsy of religion and heaven and hell. I remember writing in a journal when I was a young teenager, questioning God’s existence and struggling with the practical side of my brain that was telling me I couldn’t possibly give in to the foolishness that I heard in church… writing theories on how religious thought was just a crafty explanation of our existence and a way to attempt to give reason to the innate qualities of humans. I would read the Bible, looking for answers, only to find more proof for my theories and more situations that seemed truly unbelievable. I even heard from someone that when people’s hearts are hardened to God, they eventually will never be able to accept God into their hearts. That scared me even more… the image that eventually, I would have built up so many borders of reason and fortresses of rationality around my heart that I would never be able to truly believe in God.

Then it all started to change one night. I had been sleeping heavily when I suddenly woke up with a sweaty, wide-eyed, deep-with-thought jolt. I had just dreamed that I had died. I had actually died earlier in the dream, but had somehow still been around, and sensed my death was coming. I was so scared to do anything or go anywhere because I knew that I was going to die. I kept hoping I could outwit my death and make it through the day alive. I was so sad that I was going to be leaving my family. I remember crying as I told my little brother good-bye… It was such a realistic dream, I was crying as I lay in my bed.

For the first time in years, I just wanted to go crawl into bed between my mom and dad and fall into a peaceful and oblivious sleep. But instead I sat up in bed and thought. I started thinking that I didn’t want death to be a horrible, sad thing that I dreaded… dreaded so much that I would avoid living in order to avoid dying. It was that night that I decided to make a conscious decision to stop waiting for an unquestionable sign that God existed but to instead believe in God and to find God in my life…not really to ask God into my heart, because He had always been there; I had just barricaded Him in with my doubt and practicality; but to believe that it was God who had given me that dream and even more, my life.

Slowly over the next several years, I found God in other people. He revealed himself to me through Godly friends, precious children, unexpected beauty, and the awesome example of Jesus. The more I taught children about God’s love and God’s world, the more I taught myself about it too… and whenever that doubt would creep into my brain’s soul, I would lie in the grass, look up at the blue sky decorated with puffy white clouds, hear the wind blow through the trees, and know that He is God.

Yes, it is still hard for me to fathom what more there could possibly be than this world that I see and my life that I know. The thought that there could be something more when I die is literally unfathomable for me. But I have come to two realizations: one is that it is okay for me to not be able to wrap my mind around a concept that is truly bigger and more amazing than I could ever imagine. The other is that Christianity is not about living a holy life now so that I can have a heavenly life when I die. It is about living a Christ-like life now… a life full of risks and joys and pains and fulfillment and uncertainness and clarity and pleasure and pensiveness…a life that is so in line with God’s heart that when I die, it won’t matter what happens to me. All that will have mattered is that I lived my life the way my Creator intended… to have expressed what's truly on His mind and in His heart...