How did I get here? A religion blog? No one could have predicted this one. But, that is why God is fun. Yep, I said that, God is fun. I know that isn’t what most people think, but seriously, if you can look at a platypus and not think that God has a sense of humor, then maybe you are getting exactly the God that you deserve. But I digress.

How I got here is the pilgrimage that we all take. I started off just like everyone else; I wanted to be loved…to feel safe…and to be a successful adult…whatever that means. I was raised in a corporate family where success was measured by getting good grades, going to college, getting a good job, having kids, and planning for retirement. Living a good life was defined in those terms only. So, once I became an adult and life started moving away from the inevitable march to retirement, I turned to God.

I wasn’t raised in church. So, for all of you who have churched your whole lives, just know I had to take the long way. I went to church with my great-grandparents until I was about six. Then, once my mother re-married, we didn’t do church anymore. Then, after attending two colleges and seeing the world as a young adult, I felt like there was more. At the time, I was an undergraduate at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!). Dealing with a lot and not knowing how to become an adult, I was invited to Bulldog Christian Fellowship, a non-denominational college youth group.

In that group, I got to hang out with clean-cut college students, meet a few boys, and sang the Christian Praise Songs of the early 1990s. It was weird and fun. I was finding my way and getting to know people who would become some of my best friends. If you don’t know or didn’t grow up in church, like me, college fellowships speak a whole different language. It was kind of like trying to talk to a CrossFit junky and they keep talking about how harsh “Jake” was that morning. You feel awkward and don’t know the language, but you stick around because something interesting is happening. So, maybe that is how I “got saved” as we say in the South. We will discuss why I put that in quotes in the future, but back to my story.

I loved the people that I met in church and started building relationships, in and out of church, that have persisted to this day. And the entire time, I knew that I had chosen to follow Christ. Personally, I think Jesus has a lot going for Him, so building on that belief is where my pilgrimage really flourished.

Later, I attended and graduated from law school, got married, and started my own law firm.  We never worked out the “kids thing,” but my life was flourishing and I was hitting all the goals of the American Dream. Then, one day it struck me that there was so much about my faith that I didn’t know. I realized that everything that I really knew about God had been told to me by a white man from a Sunday pulpit, which made me curious about the rest of the story. As a successful woman with a graduate degree in a male-dominated profession, I thought that perhaps I needed to go straight to the sources. At the time, I didn’t know where that would lead.

Let me just tell you that Bible study is a rabbit hole of ideas, history, language, psychology, sociology, theology – all of the “ologies.” Seriously, there is no book in the history of humankind more studied, discussed, disseminated, and debated. Once your heart and mind open to the curiosity of Bible study, you enter a universe of ideas. Couple that curiosity with a lawyer’s skills of research, analysis, and pure ability to chew on ideas, and my brain exploded into an entirely new way of looking at my faith.

In the mornings, I started praying and studying. Beginning with the mass marketed authors of the present, which quickly lead from milk to meat…Thomas Merton, Saint Augustine, Julian of Norwich, and N.T. Wright. It became so nerdy that a friend suggested I audit a couple of religion courses at Mercer, my law school alma meter. Of course, by then my heart and mind were aflame, so I entered the graduate program at Mercer’s McAfee School of Theology while still running my law practice. I hope to graduate with a Masters in Christian Ministry within 24 months.

In the meantime, I have learned so much that is fascinating about the Bible, faith, religions, and people. It is food for the soul. So, much so, that I am starting this blog to share it with others. And, now that you know how I got here, buckle up because we are going for a ride in faith, theology, and communion with the Creator.