Are You There God? It's Me, Chris.

(Con't...)
I had been an altar boy for a couple of years and was well adjusted living in Minnesota. In the seventh grade I moved to Connecticut and tried to adjust to East Coast living. Nothing was the same. My friends had been calm and well behaved boys. Now I hung out with rough, thieving, drinking hooligans. I had gone to a church that cared about me and where I was a valued member. Now I sat in a stagnant hollowed hall. I tried to be an altar boy there, but it wasn't the same.

My effort in school dropped to nothing. I started drinking alcohol and stealing. Finally when I had given up on the nice young man I had been, I gave up on God. I had determined that there couldn't be a God because of intellectual reasons. I reasoned away God into science and rationale. Even though I was certain to drive his existence out of my life, I retained the right to say I could be wrong. I was agnostic, not atheistic. It was my compromise that I believed would appease a deity if there was one and I was wrong.

My next four or five years were filled with alcohol, crime and suicidal thoughts. I was an avid drinker. My buddy and I could drink a pint of scotch by the eighth grade. When I got to high school I was drinking close to a fifth to "party". I have committed horrible crimes and hurt people. I am guilty of larceny, breaking and entering, burglary, conspiracy, battery, assault and racketeering. When I was 15 I started to have thoughts of suicide. I couldn't live with who I had become and my life had no direction or purpose. I began to hear unintelligible voices screaming in my head at night. By 16 I had planned my suicide and wrote my goodbye letter. I had a revolver that I was going to use to end my life.

During this time I met a girl named Sarah Wheeler. She was a friend of my sister's and she was really cute. We began dating and got really close. There was a slight complication. Her parent's rule was, "If you can take her out on Saturday, you can join us on Sunday." I was being coerced into going to church so I could...well...you know. For the first time, in a long time I was feeling accepted. I was going to church and even though I really wasn't listening, I wasn't rejecting. It was in the basement of the Wheeler's home, on their computer, that I found a bible verse. "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Ecc 3:11 This verse caused me to think, "Was it possible that the reason I used to disprove God, was His design all along, and I am subject to a divine 'Where's Waldo'?"