my personal testimony; i am dumber than dirt

I didn't graduate high school.

There were three (3) people in my class with a GPA lower than me.

After summer school I was given my diploma and accepted to a summer program at a college.

One month into my time there I almost died from blood-alcohol poisoning. When I came to in the ER all wired and tubed up the doctor said "congratulations. I wish I could have video taped you. You should be dead."

I was dismissed from that school twice, and finally left because of "poor performance" but not before one of my friends was killed while a bunch of them drove home drunk from a bar.

I attended a community college and applied to another school one year later.

I was on academic probation three times at that school. I was about to be dismissed when, by God's grace (whom I blasphemed daily), I was enrolled in a study course. I lost the one thing that kept God from working in my life;

My pride.

My GPA rose from a 0.67 (point-six-seven) to a  3.25 (three-point-two-five). I graduated from that school on the Deans' list, but not after I picked coffee for the Sandinistas' during the contra war, became a rabid surfer and rock climber, made many protest marches at the UN, the Capital, and the White House.

There I lost a friend to a drug overdose. I stopped that lifestyle.

I graduated with a degree in Political Science/History and roamed until two years later I found myself in Fort Collins, Co. house-sitting for a friend while he went back East to get married. I was climbing with the folks I was reading about in magazines. Big, crazy stuff...

Then one day something (I would later learn His name) crept into me. I sat down on a rock beside the cliff up the Poudre River in Fort Collins, CO and said "god, you know I don't believe in you, but if you are real, please show me. I've had enough. Help me."

And I experienced one of those "blinding-light" things folks talk about. I was bathed in a gold light I could feel more than see.

The next day I bailed. My car was already packed (at that time I was living in it), and drove home non-stop.

I went through a carton of Marlboro's, my brakes went in Ohio, my 5th gear disappeared somewhere  by the Gateway Arch in MO. When I pulled in the driveway 39 hours later my dad's face was like "what are you doing here?"

To make a long, beautiful story a bit shorter:
I was married-divorced-married (YEAH!)-went to seminary-buried my first son at childbirth-graduated-blessed my a daughter-deposed-blessed my a daughter-ordained in Tanzania-worked in America as missionary-helped start a church-woke up today-read the passage below-wrote this.

Why?
I want to encourage you all who are like me who are told you are dumber that dirt by world standards, that you are the apple of the eye of the God who crafted the universe with a whisper, and to remind you that Christ, His one and only Son, values you above all else, even to the point of death.

may he equip you with all you need for doing his will. 

May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, 

every good thing that is pleasing to him. 

All glory to him forever and ever! Amen. (Hebrews 13:21)

You are beautiful. I am beautiful.
...oh, and I think it's pretty sweet that one day God introduced me to the lead geologist of the richest mine in East Africa and had us sit down in the Gold Lounge in the Dubai Airport and talk about Jesus over Hagen-Das and espresso.

"The Message that points to Christ on the Cross seems like sheer silliness to those hellbent on destruction, but for those on the way of salvation it makes perfect sense. This is the way God works, and most powerfully as it turns out. It’s written,

I’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head,
I’ll expose so-called experts as crackpots.

So where can you find someone truly wise, truly educated, truly intelligent in this day and age? Hasn’t God exposed it all as pretentious nonsense? Since the world in all its fancy wisdom never had a clue when it came to knowing God, God in his wisdom took delight in using what the world considered dumb—preaching, of all things!—to bring those who trust him into the way of salvation.

While Jews clamor for miraculous demonstrations and Greeks go in for philosophical wisdom, we go right on proclaiming Christ, the Crucified. Jews treat this like an anti-miracle—and Greeks pass it off as absurd. But to us who are personally called by God himself—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s ultimate miracle and wisdom all wrapped up in one. Human wisdom is so tinny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God. Human strength can’t begin to compete with God’s “weakness.”

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, 

“If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”

                                                                        1 Corinthians 1:21-30