I grew up in a Presbyterian home. In fact, my father is an ordained Minister of the Word and Sacrement, now honorably retired. However, he always made it clear that at home he was our father, not our pastor.

The two calls he took to parish ministry occurred such that I had little experience of what it was like to be the pastor's kid at church. His first call was right out of seminary while I was just a toddler and I have only a few memories of that community. His second call to parish ministry came as I moved into the dorms at Georgia Tech and effectively dropped out of church for some years, so I rarely attended the church where he served.

None the less, it was always clear in our home that faith was an important part of life. Like many young people, I questioned and rebelled in different ways, but I was a regular attendee at church and Sunday School, usually sang in the children's choir, and participated in youth fellowship activities. I worked out some of my rebellious ways by changing which church I attended. That turned out to be of great benefit to me because the youth at my chosen church, North Decatur Presbyterian, were much more welcoming than were those at the church my parents attended, Decatur Presbyterian. I used to joke that Decatur still had several charter members, somewhat of an exageration since the church was founded in the mid-19th century.

Once I went to college I spent several years exploring the freedom that moving away from home offered. I eventually dropped out of school, in large part because I hadn't figured out what I wanted to do and with no clear direction my grades were taking a nose dive.

I lived for a few years in a house with some friends from Tech in Midtown Atlanta. That was an interesting experience. The owners of the property were simply holding it for speculation anticipating the construction of the MARTA line a few blocks away (that lot is now a parking garage for a bank, I think). That meant we could do most anything we wanted with the house which gave us lots of opportunities to learn how to work with plumbing, wiring, painting, and other aspects of home maintenance. I have since learned some of the right ways to do some of those things.

After a couple of years out of school, supporting myself by working the graveyard shift at a grocery store (now the Lindberg MARTA station), I came to realize that I didn't particularly want to spend the rest of my life working in a grocery store. With some help from my grandparents I went back to Tech which gave me an opportunity to learn about computers and led to my career in programming.

I got married shortly before I graduated. Not surprisingly, that marked a major change in my life. Within a few years we became parents, which was the most dramatic change in my life which I have ever experienced.

It was shortly after the birth of my daughter that we decided that it would be a good idea to start attending church again. We recognized that it would be important for our children to learn about the church and about God. We felt that it would be helpful to them because it would give them additional moral training beyond our own instruction and it would help them to understand biblical allusions which are pervasive in much of American culture. But mostly, we realized that by going to church there would be at least one hour each week when we could let someone else take care of the kids.

That return to church was part of the beginning of what I think of as the third stage of my faith journey. I had received a strong foundation from my parents while growing up, but I didn't appreciate it and I wasn't certain that I agreed with it. The second stage was when I lived without an active church involvement, though I continued to learn and grow during that time. However, in this latest stage I have found that my faith and my involvement at church has become a very important part of my life.