Apologetic Evangelism

There isn’t a singular moment in my life where I can say that God has been there for me, because God has always been there, even when I didn’t know it, see it or feel it.

Defax or Child Protective Service took me from my parents. They were “unfit” because they were on all sorts of drugs. My father beat my brother and I. My mom would try to stick up for us then he would beat her too. I think I was taken into foster care when I was 5 years old.

After being taken by Defax / CPS I was put into foster care. I was such a bad kid that we were tossed from foster care home to foster care home until we finally found one that could “handle” us. 

Thankfully God had a plan and my brother and I were adopted together by loving parents. Little did I know at the time was that my new Dad was a pastor at a non-denominational church.

The early years of my childhood left my lacking in any resemblance of manners or respect for anyone. In fact when my adoptive father walked us down the hallway in church for the first time, to introduce us to people that worked there, someone greeted us and asked how we were. My response, as a 7 year old, was “Fuck You.” and to flip him off. We were not good kids.

When I was roughly 13 years old, my rebellion grew. I did not take to Christianity, I did not care about the Bible, I did not care about church. In my opinion I was forced to be there and I didn’t want to be there. Therefore I rebelled in every way imaginable. I committed sins in God’s house, inside the Church. I argued, I cursed, I fought people, I even drank alcohol and brought drugs to church. I am not sure anyone could have rebelled harder than I did.

If my previous slide didn’t get the picture through clear enough, when I was roughly 16-17 years old I was asked to leave the church. I’m not joking. Despite my father being a pastor at the church, I was asked to leave the church by the Senior Pastor. And since I did not want to be there, I was happy to leave.

At the age of 18, I decided to pursue a relationship with a girl and I left home. I moved out and moved out of state. I did all of this without even letting my parents know, I essentially abandoned them and they had no idea where I was. This lasted roughly a year and a half before I woke up one day and told the girl that I was with that I was moving back home regardless of if she wanted to come with me or not. Little did I know, she was pregnant.

In the year 2008 I moved back home, my girlfriend tells me that she is pregnant but come to find out she has attempted to trap me in this relationship. She was on birth control but lied to me and stopped taking it but told me she was still taking it. She told her mother she was pregnant and her mom kicked her out of her house, so my parents took her in. While she was pregnant she tried to force my hand in marriage, demanding that I marry her because she was pregnant. I informed her that marriage to me has always been a one time thing, a life long commitment and that when I was ready I would ask her to marry me but the last thing I would do was be forced into it. Her response was, “If you’re not going to marry me then we aren’t going to be together.” I then replied, “That is fine, I don’t have to be here for you but I will always be here for my daughter.”

January 23rd, 2009 – My daughter is born! But I do not get to be there to witness her birth because her mother and their side of the family did not call me until after she was born. I still remember the call, my baby momma’s mother called me and said something along the lines of, “Do you even want to see your daughter? Because she is born.” – I will forever go through life not experiencing the birth of my first born because of the malice from their side of the family.

Because I was young and I did not know what to do, I looked to my parents for guidance. They instructed me to NOT sign the birth certificate for my daughter because at this point in time we don’t know if she is even mine because her mother is claiming that she has had sex with other men, and there are potentially at least 2-3 other men who might be her father. A year and a half goes by without seeing my daughter and no one seems to care about what I want or feel.

In this same time, I began to question God, Christianity, Jesus, The Church, My Upbringing and so much more. I started to wonder why I would just blindly follow and accept my adoptive father’s religion just because that is what he believes? What if my adoptive father was Hindu? Muslim? Mormon? What if he didn’t believe in anything at all? At what point would I started making my own decisions for myself?

This lead to me a year and a half+ long journey where I researched and looked into every other religion or belief system that I could find.

I had grown so much in a year and a half. I looked into countless religions and belief systems, including non-belief. I was not only working on my mental health but also my physical health. I was in very good shape at the time, mentally, physically and emotionally. 

At this point in my life I went from being a “womanizer” to being alone in solace. I had put such high standards on women that I actually stopped dating. I turned to online “dating” because I was able to easily weed out women that would not be worth my effort or time. I was not looking for a one-night stand, a fling or fornication. I was looking for a wife. I had been searching for a quality women for almost 2 years now. As time passed it became increasingly frustrating and almost seemed hopeless. I had actually deactivated my online dating profile 3 months prior to meeting my wife.

After 3 months, something inside me was calling to me and telling me to reactivate my profile. I even argued with this voice or feeling but I eventually caved and reactivated my profile. Little did I know that within 7 days of reactivating it, I would be talking to my future wife.