Eight things about me…

I was tagged by John Remy to post eight things about myself that my readers probably wouldn’t know. Unfortunately, I live a pretty boring life, so these probably won’t be too exciting.

1. I was born in Jerusalem, Israel. My father was over in Israel getting his masters degree with my mother, and then I was born. I actually had the opportunity to go back and see the hospital where it all happened, and to see my parent’s old apartment – my first home. It was very surreal. 🙂
2. One of the ways I coped with a depressing high school life was to write down book outlines for the dreams I had. For some reason, I would dream often and would remember them clearly. Oddly, the settings for almost all of them were about 1000 years in the future – and were always science fiction or fantasy. Not much has changed to this day – my dreams still are set far in the future, but I have fewer of them. The reason for this I have theorized is because I actually enjoy living in the real world.
   I remember praying and asking God when college was over if I should start an amateur career as a writer, and God spoke to me that night quite clearly – that many of those dreams and stories spoke of Him symbolically – the best way to explain that intense period of my life and my overactive imagination was that it was a deep courtship between the two of us. If you’ve read any of my posts on stories and myth, you will understand what I mean. So I decided that night to move on to other fascinating pursuits, of which I have too many besides writing to do. I have a feeling I will one day return to writing science fiction or fantasy, but the time has not yet come.
3. I never had a serious relationship until I was 23. I know why this was. I remember as a 12 year old seeing the disaster of teenage dating and relationships, and prayed desperately to God to take over this area, because I would most definitely screw it up, knowing that I was not any smarter than anyone else. He did. I had many great friendships during this time, but none even remotely romantic. I finally became somewhat mature after collage – and that’s when I first asked a girl if she wanted to date seriously.
4. Even though I’ve always loved art, I have always loved computers. When I was young (10 years old or so) I used to write batch files in DOS to load my favorite video games by just typing a number that corresponded with a video games in a little graphic menu I designed that was made up of ASCII characters. I had automatically load when the computer booted up. Little did I know I would launch a successful career involving the marriage of these two things.
5. One of my close friends growing up though middle school and high school, whose name was Anna, had a good friend during her senior year of high school that I somehow never met – even though I met all of her other friends. Although Anna never introduce me, I met this mysterious friend 6 years later – Melissa, who is now my wife. Small world. 🙂 I am pretty sure I know why – because I was not mature enough to meet her, but God had us in mind for each other all along.
6. I remember violently waking up feeling that something terrible was happening to my father one night in college – around 3 in the morning. I immediately got down on my hands and knees and prayed for him for a quite a while. The next morning , my mother called me and told me that my father had trouble breathing the night before and was rushed to the emergency room. However, he recovered early in the following morning – around 3 am.My life is filled with stories like this – so many in fact, that they have become almost commonplace. It puzzles me why others do not have these same experiences – of an intimate fellowship with God and seeing Him working all the time. I feel very bad for people who are part of religous groups that walk the road of man-made religion – where all that they will ever know of God comes from second-hand knowledge, via their holy books and what their pastors/priests say. It’s like trying to have a relationship with your spouse by calling their voicemail and reading books about them. How is that fun? How will you ever really know about them this way? Where is the intimacy?
7. I listened to Rush Limbaugh once when I was in collage. I wasn’t impressed with him at all 🙂 To this day, I am still wary of Christian political groups. To me, Christianity and politics goes together like oil and water. I am not saying that a Christian cannot hold a government job, but just that when we start forcing non-Christians to follow Christian-only rules, I think we have a very serious problem. I avoid the subject like the plague. I hear that George W. is doing a bad job, but I have a hard time caring – I am so totally consumed with the study of God, philosophy, and web design that I don’t have time to care about that stuff anyway.
8. I am going back to school. I will start taking classes towards a master of arts and religion degree and studying under my father as well as other excellent professors who take Christianity very seriously and approach it in a very scholarly fashion. I have determined that at the pace I am setting for myself, of 1 class per semester, I will graduate in about 15 years. This is ok, because the thought of being around intellectual men and women who are very serious about studying the Bible makes me very happy – I will be in great company with very rational people. I need that kind of company more than ever now.