My Conversion Story

That I'm sitting here writing this testimony is proof God is kind to dumb animals...

What follows is the story of a modern day Doubting Thomas' conversion from agnosticism to faith. It's a bit of a winding and sordid tale which spans exactly 40 years.

One of three siblings, I'm a proud Gen-X'er, born in the late 60s, and while I was the product of good parents, I evolved into something of a feral child.

Ours was an acutely "areligious" household, but nonetheless, as I grew I professed a general fear of God just in case one existed. In my heart of hearts though, I was a full blown agnostic. I was never baptized, nor did our family pray or go to church.

My mother was the consummate skeptic; I found out later in life that my dad spent a couple years in scripture, reading from a tattered KJV bible when I was a small child. The former condition prevailed, the latter did not, and a wholly secular upbringing ensued.

A picture of complete immorality isn't what I'm trying to paint of my folks, however. No, they instilled some good qualities in their kids. My mother and father both possessed a remarkable work ethic; mom in the home, cooking, cleaning and doing laundry for five, and dad outside the house involving a marketing job in the petroleum industry which had him on the road a lot.

Selling oil proved to be a windfall career for dad. As a result, we had "everything" growing up. A new, usually custom built house every few years. Nice cars. RV-borne family vacations to Yellowstone and other far off places. Lots of stuff to open on birthdays and at Christmas. Even a second home, a beautiful condo in Estes Park, Colorado.

Good intentions and material possessions were not enough. I was destined for trouble.

At the tender age of 13, I welcomed myself to the contents of our home's substantial wet bar one night when my parents were at a dinner party down the street. I had watched both of them partake in the daily consumption of alcohol for as long as I could remember, and I figured whatever it was in booze that made dad funny and mom relaxed might be a good thing for me too.

So drink I did. My parents found me passed out later that night - an array of partially consumed bottles of hard liquor telling the tale of my intrusion. A vague recollection of being gently slapped in the face and having cups of ink black coffee poured down my throat at the kitchen table prevails to this day.

The same year, I got into trouble with a hooligan friend while vandalizing exterior holiday decorations and displays during the Christmas season. Ages passed, or so it seemed, before I was able to pay full restitution from my meager salary as a paper carrier for the Omaha World-Herald.

Garden variety delinquency wasn't entertaining enough. My path to moral decay was paved more straight when I had intercourse at the age of 15. Such was the foundation for future behavior that demonstrated a distinct lack of respect for myself and others. I didn't wind up a dad or diseased, but no one would deny the social and medical ills which often result from teen and premarital sex.

It's staggering to ponder the implication of my actions and decision making during this time of my life. It begs the question how I didn't wind up in Boys Town, the juvenile detention center, or the morgue. Why was I spared? Good question. It surely wasn't due to my embrace of Christianity despite being exposed to it several times.

In my late teens, I hung out with a kid whose dad was "born again." One night after dinner at their house, he engaged me in conversation about whether I was saved. I didn't know how to answer. Dialogue ensued, followed by prayer, followed by my verbalizing acceptance of Jesus as my savior, acknowledgment of my sinful nature, and asking Him to take over my life forever.

You would have thought I won the lottery, what with the excitement of the man who had led me through what I know today as the "Sinner's Prayer." High-fives all around. Sadly, while I wanted to feel a change in the wake of this event, I never did.

It should then not surprise the reader... I continued on my sinful path, a slave to promiscuity, under age drinking, drag racing on city streets, and a newfound penchant for shoplifting auto parts I developed to help fund my hot rod project at home.

(Anyone else pondering the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13 as I catalog these events?)

Now my father was a physical specimen. He was state heavyweight champion in wrestling at North High School and a football great at the University of Nebraska at Omaha during the 50s (he was even drafted by the San Francisco 49ers!). Despite his physical abilities, he regularly admonished me, "You'll make more money with your mouth than you will your back!" Thus was his mantra when stressing the importance of a college education to get ahead in the business world.

The thought was dreadful. I'd graduated from high school with only a C-average and a couple credits to spare. Reluctantly, I accepted my dad's offer to pay for college. I enrolled at UNO with my eye on mediocre grades and beer parties.

I decided to join the walk-on program for UNO Maverick football. While standing 6'3", weighing well over 200 pounds, and having a couple years of high school ball under my belt, I was never the athlete my father had been. I'd gotten lazy at Millard North High School and quit the team midway through my junior year, so there existed no tape of me on the field. Dad knew Sandy Buda, UNO's coach at the time. Being an influential alum, he pulled the necessary strings to get Coach Buda to take a look at me. I was in the door, though I had hardly earned it.

No one was more acutely aware of the chasm between my father's athleticism and mine better than me. Having heard the virtues of anabolic steroids as professed by a teammate, I bought my first bottle of methandrostenolone, or "D-bol" as it's called on the street, as a way to build my body and enhance the odds of my making the squad. This would later lead to sticking needles in my thigh and injecting myself with more powerful, black market equine steroids. You read that right - for horses. In the end, "juicing" didn't make me a better football player, but it did make me an angrier person, quicker to disrespect my mother and shout at my handicapped younger brother for no good reason whatsoever.

Thankfully, my college career wasn't a complete bust. The shotgun approach I employed to pick my electives as I pursued an undergraduate degree in Business Administration paid dividends; I signed up for a basic Criminal Justice class, Intro to CJ 101. In part because the professor was cute, I never missed that class, though I skipped plenty of others. About halfway through the semester, I experienced a bonafide epiphany. I knew I wanted to be a cop.

I quit drinking, stopped doing steroids, and withdrew from the football team. I enrolled in all the CJ classes I could carry. My GPA went from a borderline "C-D" average to a 3.85 by the time I left UNO. And after three years cutting my teeth as a sheriffs deputy in Papillion, Nebraska, I raised my right hand and swore a solemn oath in my hometown of Omaha as my mom pinned a brilliant, nickel plated shield to my heaving chest. The year was 1991.

In short order, my existence revolved around being a police officer. I loved being a cop and I pursued the criminal element with reckless abandon. Few police officers worked harder than I did while patrolling the mean streets of northeast Omaha in the early '90s.

Police work makes you grow up fast. By the time I finished five years of the four to midnight shift in the city's projects, I had been in countless fights, three shooting situations, and had seen my friend and trainee, Officer Jimmy Wilson Jr., shot to death in the line of duty by a criminal affiliated with the Bloods street gang.

I became a decorated officer, earning the department's Medal of Valor for engaging in a 12-mile vehicle pursuit of two armed robbery suspects while the passenger fired shots at me during the course of the chase. With six years on the job, I successfully sought the rank of sergeant, testing #4 out of 60 peers vying for promotion.

Did I say I loved my job? Yeah, in fact, I used to proclaim, "God put me on this earth to be a cop!" even though I held no particular belief in or reverence of the deity whose name I invoked when I stated so.

In 1993, I married into an Italian family of practicing Catholics. I occasionally spectated at mass, but as was the case with my "born again" experience, the exposure had no effect. Best I could do was try to stay awake during the hour-long service. I struggled through this on a few Sundays, eventually refusing to attend church at all.

The marriage was mostly tumultuous. We endured for over seven years before I filed for divorce. Driven in part by unjustifiable anger toward my ex-spouse, I petitioned the Omaha Archdiocese for an annulment and, a year after typing out a 20 page affidavit for such, was granted one. (Note: My ex-spouse, now living in New York City, is today an evangelical Christian, and a good one at that.)

Afterwards, I continued my boyish pursuits, dating around and tear-assing through the countryside on my Kawasaki Ninja during time off. I toured the Smokies and the Rockies aboard my bike and lived responsibility free but for duties at work. I spent my energy and money on myself. Time passed. I thought I was pretty happy.

Deep down though, in a corner of my psyche I didn't want to peer too deeply into, I felt there was something missing: depth and meaning of life.

Early in 2005, I met an angel of a woman who would later become my beloved wife, Denise. The confluence of our paths was a miracle.

After much goading, a married couple I was friends with talked me into a double date with a female acquaintance (not Denise). I was promised the girl was pretty, earned big money as a pharmacist, drove a cool Audi, and lived in a fancy home.

Well, the woman seemed most if not all those things, but midway through the evening she was planning out our married lives and the children we'd have together. To be blunt, I could conjure few things I wanted to be less than I wanted to be a husband, and I was aching for the date to end.

Denise was out that night with family. She spied my friend Nick who had arranged the double date and came over to say hello. Pleasantries were exchanged and, as soon as I shook her hand and took in her infectious smile, I was hooked. Sounds sappy, but it's the truth.

A ten month courtship ensued. After attending premarital training as required by the Omaha Archdiocese, we were married. And this time, I really did win the lotto.

My wife is a light of a human being. She is the love of my life and is the finest woman I have ever known. She is a gem of a daughter, sister, and friend to those she loves. She is also a devout Catholic and is faithful to the Christian walk.

By example alone (via the manner in which she conducted herself), Denise softened my heart to the point the previously unthinkable was made possible. Ten months after the wedding, I entered into the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults - RCIA.

Noteworthy is the fact I did so only out of respect and a desire to better understand her faith. She knew I wasn't agreeing ahead of time to be baptized or join the Church, however, I left that door ajar in case I were inclined to do so by the end of the nine month program.

The byproduct of spiritual enlightenment was not without dark moments and they didn't take long to materialize. I experienced significant levels of stress early on in RCIA due to a secretly held fear my wife would be disappointed if I didn't join the Church. I believed going through the training and opting not to join would let Denise down and hurt our marriage, though she gave me no reason to believe this.

Enter my militantly Calvinist friend. He had me on the ropes on a couple occasions to the point I went to my wife one evening after dinner and asked if she'd feel differently about me if I didn't join the Church, if I embraced Protestantism instead of Catholicism. Denise desired me to share her faith, but she reiterated her love for me and her belief God would prevail no matter how this turned out... so back to my studies I went.

I'm a semi-suspicious, sometimes cynical person. Blame the job, but for better or worse, I've never been a proponent of blind trust. So I attacked my studies in the same manner I attacked my responsibilities as a cop. God either existed or He didn't. The Resurrection really happened or it didn't. I was hell bent on getting to the bottom of both.

I took an honest, holistic approach to my approach. Aside from reading handout material from Thursday evening RCIA classes, I began to read the Bible for the first time. I developed an appetite for it, reading the New Testament in four weeks. Then I leaped into the Old Testament and various biblical commentaries.

I investigated early Christian history through the writings of the Church Fathers. I read the Compendium cover to cover and made a big dent in the full length Catechism. I listened to Christian apologetics and I began to fellowship with Protestants and Catholics alike. I spent time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and doing Stations of the Cross. I began to pray, challenging God to reveal Himself to me and to spur on my expedition. A material change of heart ensued.

(a) The priest who married me, a Nigerian clergyman, shattered biases I had developed toward African-Americans during years spent working nights in the inner city.

(b) I prayed my mother's heart be softened in the same way mine had proved malleable. I recall the day I took her a book entitled The Case for Faith written by Lee Strobel, a former atheist. Rather than telling me to get lost (I was sure this was going to be her response), she accepted the gift with a smile and a promise to read it.

(c) People noticed me interacting with co-workers and strangers in a different way. Instead of shooting my mouth off about some perceived transgression, I was slower to judge and quick to forgive and pray.

(d) I quit a lucrative part-time job moonlighting as security at a local bar as it finally dawned on me being around dozens of flirtatious, intoxicated, scantily dressed college co-eds wasn't the environment a married man should be in.

Were these positive events in my life the manifestation of a changed will? Hardly. You've heard where my will took me before: self service.

As the months unfolded in RCIA, I went back and forth some, but the overall leaning was eventually toward Catholicism and is mostly that direction today. There remains an ease about (the chartiable versions of) Bible-alone Christianity which appeal to me too, but irrespective of what particular expression of the faith speaks to your soul, the important thing to remember is we're brothers and sisters in Christ.

When I take inventory of my life and glance rearward, it's astonishing that I am where I'm at today. I lied, I stole, I cheated, I fought, I dishonored my parents, I abused alcohol, I used illicit drugs, I didn't respect myself or others and I had no real work ethic. Still the dumb animal, tripping and stumbling and banging his head into inanimate objects, today I believe I have a chance with Christ.

I invite you to take that first step of faith, no matter how skeptical you may be, and embark upon your own spiritual investigation. I sought and have been rewarded. If a cretin like me is able to undeservedly receive God's grace, so too is everyone who reads this.

I challenge you to seek the truth for yourself and to do something more than simply going through the motions. Sponsor someone in RCIA, or tithe an hour of your time each week to the Church, or help the less fortunate in your community with donations of time or money to the Food Bank or other charities.

Learn something more about your faith. Listen to Christian radio. Order apologetics CDs from the Bible Christian Society, The Reason For Our Hope Foundation, or the Mary Foundation.

Buy a book that explains the mass in lay terms so you can become rejuvenated with your weekly experience of the Eucharist. (The How-To Book of the Mass by Michael Dubriel, a Creighton University grad, is superb.) Browse the Compendium. Go to mass each Sunday and on Holy Days of Obligation. Go to confession. Read the Bible, if even only a few verses a day. And pray - because without a prayer life, you can't know Christ any better than you can know your next door neighbor (unless you have a relationship with him).

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. -John 3.16