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Chasing the Wild Goose on Independence Day

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If you noticed, unlike every other blogger, I did NOT write about the 4th of July. I was thinking of my European friends instead.

In fact, antwrites.com was down due to a faulty wordpress upgrade. I didn’t follow my own rule, which is backup, backup, backup.

I am trying to be part of this month’s synchro blog, but I may be too late, due to my lack of backupidness. I commented on a friend’s blog, about how being ordained in a Pentecostal denomination, should make me an absolute expert on the Holy Spirit. But alas, I was no an expert. The Holy Spirit can be looked at as a wild goose chase, but I’m not writing about that. I just needed a catchy title!

No, I’m joking. I will write about my experience. I was a computer engineer for around 10 years. I had a web hosting company before they were trendy. I owned 4 dot coms and even had a hedge fund invest in a company I helped form. Before I caught the dot com bug, I wanted to be a missionary to Zambia and to the Lolo people in Western China. After the dot com crash, I felt the Lord tell me to go back to my first love. I finished seminary (because all you could do in my denomination was be a pastor) After I bought my last year or seminary’s books, I got a hold of Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola. Completely ruined my plans. (The best way to make God laugh, is to tell him your plans). But deep inside, I KNEW everything Frank wrote about. I just wanted to finish quick so I could be a missionary. My whole life was completely reversed. So, I thought to myself, “Self, you have a career, just get back into the I.T. field”. Great idea. So, I woke up a few days later and couldn’t walk. Literally. I got out of bed and fell to the ground. My wife is screaming as she brings me to the doctor. He tells me I should go to the hospital, right away. Since it was Memorial Day, and the hospital was on a skeleton crew, I was diagnosed with a stroke, and told to take aspirin. So, I went home and didn’t think about it until the Tuesday after Memorial day for a second opinion. The Neurologist told me I had M.S. Multiple Sclerosis. The Doctor saw my face. All I could think of was Annette Funicello from the Mickey Mouse Club, and Bee Sting Therapy that the wife of some old guy at an old job I had was going through. The doctor asked “Do you think MS is worse than a stroke? It’s not. A stroke is a heart problem and a man your age shouldn’t be having heart problems”.

Annettte Funicello

Now, I could no longer be a pastor and I couldn’t be a programmer anymore because my brain was mush. I was told iI lost 20 I.Q. points. My wife was banking on me to be the bread winner and she would fry it up in a pan. Now she had no bacon to fry. It was almost like God was playing a joke on me. So what did we do? We went to Germany for 2 weeks. And who did we meet there? Frank Viola. I had these visions of me giving him a swift kick in the shins. But that was silly.

He couldn’t be immobilized by a kick in the shins! Honestly, I wanted to thank him, but I didn’t want to take his time, so I just mumbled a few words and avoided him the entire 3 days. He was the only other American there, but for the first time I was speechless. For those who know me, speechless is NOT an adjective used to describe me!

I didn’t know why. I felt that his book freed me from wasting even more or my life. How do you thank someone who does that to you? I could have been his personal German interpreter as he was taking in the scenery, but that job was filled. So I just mumbled something stupid, and walked away. So instead, I became good friends with 4 Germans who have visited us here in the states and my wife has made the strongest friendship with a German woman who stayed with us when my wife gave birth to our second child. Plus, as a pastor I never had true friendships. Even my fellow pastors were phony and fake, save one, but he’s not part of the story.

So, all this to say my life has been a wild goose chase the past 6 years. We’ve moved 3 times, 13 states, visited 3 countries and we still haven’t found community with like-minded individuals. So if anyone has any advice how to find this illustrious goose, please fill me in