I am most noted for the Christian articles I have written over the years, found at His Love Shines: The Ministry for Christian Discovery. But, please, there is much more to me than just that. I do have other ministry passions besides writing. While it is true that I love putting words together, I love bringing people together even more. Here are some rare glimpses into my personal life -- how it has shaped my beliefs, and how my beliefs have shaped it. At the time of publication (February, 2009) I am 50 years old. My parents have been married 56 years. I am the middler, between two sisters, and also have a niece. Plus their husbands. And my niece and her husband have a young daughter. All of these live nearby. I didn’t know any of my other relatives because we never lived near them. Dad was called the farm boy. He was born in a log cabin with no running water or electricity. Mom was a city girl, growing up in the town of 3,000 near Dad’s parents’ farm. Dad earned a Degree in Veterinary Medicine and worked in regulatory medicine. Mom wanted to be an accountant (probably) but never made it to college because she married Dad and worked to help put him through school. She says she got a good return on her investment anyway though. She worked as a bookkeeper for a couple years some time later, but entertained we three kids, as we called ourselves, most of our lives as her occupation. My family moved around a lot when I was a kid. Sometimes the moves were for the better. Sometimes not. You have to wonder if things might have gone differently if Dad’s transfers had been to different places at different times. I asked Mom if I have always been this way. She said, “No, you were normal until you were five.” Which coincided with a move. Someday station wagons will rule the road again. Especially the ones with three rows of seats. Then all will be right with the world. Flip the back rows of seats down and you have room for three or four Triumphs back there. Maybe a half dozen on top on the luggage carrier. When I was a teenager a lot of people told me I should become a minister. I didn’t drink, didn’t chase women, didn’t shoot up. And I was involved in more areas of the church than many adults. When I was 16, I was told I had "a quiet dignity" and "a reach beyond my years". I even showed an interest in reading the Bible. All of the Bible. Without ignoring the parts I didn’t want to hear. All these things made me “minister material”. But I had my own way of thinking. I thought that EVERYONE is called to be a minister of God. Everyone needs to understand God’s Word, not just the pastors, the preachers and the reverends. Don’t rely solely on a third party to reveal God’s intentions to you when the Holy Spirit will interpret for you. And if you think you need a go-between between you and God, try Jesus Christ before a fallible human being. I guess you could say that during much of my life I have had an adversarial relationship with the Church. I think there were those who saw something in me they couldn’t control. Since they couldn’t control me, they tried to manipulate and crush me. But I don’t think that bothered me as much as discovering that there were other people who could have, should have, come to my rescue, but didn’t. It really burned me when they said they were praying for me. But their prayers meant nothing to me. Why should they ask God to help me when God had already given them the resources to do it themselves? When I got knocked down, I jumped back up again. Even as a young child, there was a fire in me they couldn’t understand. Try as they might, they could not extinguish that flame. Maybe I was too defiant for my own good because when one person could not triumph over me, others were called in to hold me down. Of course the more people you get involved in a situation, the harder it is to hide things. My escape finally came when we moved on to the next town. This was quite a change, going from a class of 40 to that of over 500. Obscurity does have its advantages. I seemed to be recovering nicely, and was even beginning to thrive. But then I thought I was crazy because I was having these awful headaches. I thought I had a psychosomatic illness to escape from what moving did not solve. The doctors said I was healthy and there was no reason for me to be in pain. I eventually learned I had four badly impacted wisdom teeth that were causing the pain. But my teeth never hurt. The pain showed itself outside of my mouth. So I wasn’t really crazy. Just too impatient to wait the months it took to learn the exact cause. I wanted to have a career in something creative, like being an interior decorator or florist. I love creating different effects with colors. My favorite color was purple. I liked to mix it with orange and grass green. I did later like Harvest Gold, but not the Avocado Green that graced the casings of fondue sets. At which time I switched to blue being my favorite color since you couldn't buy anything purple at the store anymore. I like mixing shades of blue with shades of brown. Grays are nice too. If you wear too much red, or maybe black, it might color my opinion of you. Or maybe I should be an architect because I like making floor plans. But when I had the problems with the pain, I quit thinking about creative, risky things. I felt more comfortable with pursuits I could quantify and predict the outcome of. I later had braces put on my teeth, which caused the same pain. But dealing with the causes did not provide immediate relief. So when I added it up, I have had headaches for a total of seven years. Not headaches spread over seven years. Seven years total spread over a greater number of years. This pattern continues throughout my life. I think I am going to make it, only to find that God is just teasing me. He dangles a carrot in front of you, then yanks it away when you reach for it. But I was the dutiful Christian and was still going to church. Still in high school, I was growing spiritually, perhaps too much because it seemed to make other Christians nervous. When the Church should have been nurturing my spiritual gifts, they were trying to use pop psychology to reason (rationalize) them away. I was looking for confirmation, acceptance, guidance; when all I got was demands to deny what was beginning to come so naturally to me. I turned against myself because they were older and must know better than I did. And I turned against God because He wasn’t placing me in the right environment that could appreciate me instead of chasing me like the hounds of Hell. I told God that this is not the way the Church is supposed to be. I knew that. But I didn’t know what the alternatives might be. Rather like when something begins at a very early age and you never question it because that is all you know. You don’t challenge it because you don’t know there is any other way of doing things. I knew I had to challenge it. But I didn’t know how. I had a huge confrontation with God. Yes, I talk to God like He is a real person. Try it sometime. You might learn a lot about God. And yourself. Anyway, I told God I was leaving the Church, and Him behind. I was going off to lick my wounds. But I told God someday I would be rejuvenated and would be back. I told God His Church is really screwed up. And I went on to say that when I return, I will be equipped to fix some of the damage the Church inflicts on itself, its members, and the world in general. And I told God that what I could not fix, I was going to tear down. And if He had a problem with that, He had better take me out while I was still down, before I came back. Because once I returned, there would be no stopping me. Somehow, I don’t think God was intimidated. Perhaps I was trying to provoke Him into proving He wasn’t God just because He happened to have evolved before I did. Some people love me. Some people hate me. There doesn’t seem to be much in between. I went on to college and they were kind enough to hand me a B.S. It used to be a women's Catholic college, and many of the Sisters still taught classes there. They were really nice. Some of them worked without getting paid so our tuition could be lower. The Sisters knew more about real world teaching than some the instructors they brought in from the outside world, those working in the business community. I didn’t have any self-confidence. I thought I was stupid. I almost flunked first grade because we moved just before it began, and I was forced to skip kindergarten and go directly into first grade. Which was the school’s fault, but they said it was my parents’ fault. (It was the school’s fault.) I was always a year younger than (behind) the other kids and could not keep up in physical activities either. (If I am forced to view sports, I can watch the Olympics, favoring gymnastics, skating, diving and swimming. I like horses too. But I don't watch American Idol.) And my older sister made better grades than I did and I was compared to her. And my parents are really, really smart. So it seemed nothing I could do could impress anyone. I mean to do something special no one else had done. Back to me being stupid at college. The teachers proved otherwise to me. One of them gave me a job working in the school computer lab helping students with their computer coursework. The person who managed the computer hardware and software, which was also used for the school’s business applications, provided me with some training on the computer that other students didn’t get. Sometimes I had to enter the “inside” computer room where no one was allowed because the master console was there. I had extra privileges to be able to get students out of their messes when their programs tried to erase all the information on the main hard drives. I guess you could say I had come a long way. It wasn’t even my idea to take the computer course that got me the job in the lab. My business degree required me to take some computer classes. Back then, few people knew anything about computers. But I was still insecure. The manager of the school’s computer system also worked at a computer software company. He wanted me to take a summer position between school years. A catalog store chain needed some big changes to its software to handle its expansion. The school manager and the managers at the business were certain I could do it. I was not. So I made excuses why I could not take the job. I didn’t have a car. And public transportation did not go where the business was located. I made other excuses. Those are just examples. I finally ran out of excuses when they said they would have their secretary pick me up and bring me home everyday. God is that way sometimes. Picking away at all your excuses until you don’t have any left to hide behind. I did quite well. I remember sitting in the student lounge at college with a couple other students from one of my business classes. A girl came over and talked to us. After she left, one of the guys said the girl was flirting with me. I didn't believe him. It seemed women always liked to talk to me, but I was just like having a brother for them to listen to. I did meet a girl during summer vacation in high school. She lived in another state and we wrote each other faithfully, until her mother started intercepting our letters to each other so we would get upset with the other for not writing. Her mother didn't want us to get any more serious because they were a different religion. God put up a hedge around me while I was in college that little evil could penetrate. (This hedge did come down after college.) I didn't have a mind of my own, but it was ok to allow myself to float because someone would be there to keep me on course. I was vulnerable and needed to be led down the right path to prepare me for the future. Except there was the time that my boss at the summer job took me on a business trip and we shared a hotel room. We were each in our own bed when he invited me to come over to his. I graciously declined the invitation, saying I was already comfortable where I was, and no more was said about it. But, hey, isn’t it great to have one more thing to tell about to get attention? Go to the next section of Jeff's bio. Go to the beginning of Jeff's bio.