“I would learn that this was God breaking me so that I would finally look to Him for my joy.
I was born and raised mostly right here in central Iowa. I was blessed to have Bible believing parents, who raised me up going to church, and teaching me the Word of God. At the age of 5, attending vacation bible school at Saylorville Church, I listened to Pastor Butler share that I was a sinner, and that I was in need of a savior. After he was done I had questions about what this meant, and my teacher and I went to a back room and talked. She shared some scriptures with me, and the one that stood out was John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
And, with a child-like faith, I placed my trust in Jesus right then and there. I praise the Lord for my salvation at a young age, but I had much learning left, and it wasn’t painless.
About a year or so later, my parents noticed that one of my eyes seemed to be larger than the other, and decided to have it looked at. After seeing a few different doctors, we found out that I had a rare form of cancer, acute non-lymphocytic leukemia. It is a cancer of the bone marrow, and had spread to most all of my body, with a small cluster of cancer gathering in my eye socket that was pushing on my eye. The doctor had to tell my parents that there was a 10% chance I would survive it.
Over the next 2 years I underwent radiation treatment and a bone marrow transplant. I have a rare blood type, which made it impossible to find a blood donor, so an experimental treatment was performed – a self-donor bone marrow transplant. Needless to say, the conditions were set up for God to do the miraculous. And He did. I’ve been in remission ever since.
As I grew up, I played the good kid doing mostly as I should (my parents may say otherwise), but lived more and more for myself, and forgot what God had done for me. As high school ended, I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. Thinking it would please my parents, and knowing some friends were going, I went to Faith Baptist Bible College for a year.
That year was the turning point in my life. I turned away from God. I told myself there was no joy in following God. So for the next few years I tried desperately to find joy in other things. Drinking, drugs, sex, friendships. It was almost like I leap frogged from one thing to the next, and each one left me feeling unsatisfied and looking for something else.
While I was living this way, I once again found myself at the mercy of God. One day I noticed that I wasn’t able to taste anything on one side of my tongue. That led me to start seeing a couple different doctors until finding out that it was a cavernous angioma on my brain stem. The radiation I received when I was little had damaged some blood vessels, which started to get tangled as they grew. By the age of 19 they had become a mass the size of a golf ball, and it was putting pressure on my brain stem. I was again facing a life threatening condition, and a surgery that would likely leave me unable to walk on my own was the solution.
Again God showed undeserved mercy toward me. He was in every detail: providing a referral to the #1 brain surgeon in the world, providing a place to stay for my family and me, and a recovery that was nothing short of being obviously God’s handiwork. A month later, after being told I might not walk, I was back at work serving tables at Applebee’s.
Again, God saved my life, and again I would not give it back to him. I went back to living for myself.
The only thing I learned from that was to get rid of the drugs and excessive drinking. Instead I looked to a relationship for joy. I met a girl, and we dated for 3 months, got engaged, and were married 3 months later. Life was going well for me. I was married, got promoted, bought a house and a new car. My joy was in those things, but God started to work on my heart, and over the next few years He brought me back to him. It was slow going though; I was back in church and even joined a small group with my wife. But my life was still mine, and I wouldn’t let God have it completely.
3 years into our marriage, my wife left. There was a note on the bed and divorce papers arrived a week later. That was it, I lost it. I was broken, ashamed, everything I put my joy in was taken away from me in an instant. But I would learn that this was God breaking me so that I would finally look to Him for my joy. A blessing in disguise.
God had worked on me during the last year of my first marriage to get me in a small group at Lakeside Fellowship. A group of solid believers who came to my side when everything fell apart. They reminded me that God was still jealous for me (James 4:5). And again God worked on my heart and drew me to Himself.
Since then I can’t even list all of the ways God has provided for me and taught me more about Himself. One thing stands out the most. Christ died for me and never gave up on me. He knew what kind of person I was, how I would fight against Him to find my own joy, how I would dishonor His name in the way I lived my life, while calling myself a Christian. He knew me and loved me anyway.
Now my desire is to seek after Him and live in a way that I am driven and compelled by Christ’s love (2 Corinthians 5:14).
But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
-Matthew 6:33
August 5th of 2012, Stacey and I started dating, and we married on July 12th, 2013. She has truly been a Godsend in my life, with a heart for the Lord that is contagious. She pushes me every day to grow more and more in my personal relationship with Jesus.
I am a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17) in Jesus Christ. I have been blessed beyond measure, and have found my joy in Him alone.