Just wow. That’s what I have to say. Well…besides a humble THANK YOU. Deep breath and sigh too. Yeah – just wow. 

When I was a kid, we had friends of the family that I just loved. As I have shared many times around here at Give Your Story, my father passed when I was just 7. This young couple entered our lives. They were everything to me. They were the gap that was missing in my life. We did everything together. Every Friday we were at the mall and there was always eating out. We went to church together and we would eat out every Sunday after church at Howard’s Dinner. The list of things we did together is not even countable. We even went on vacations together. As the couple morphed into a family of 5 we still did everything together, but now there were more. I learned many lessons along the way. However, there was something missing.

As an Adult, I figured out what was missing while growing up. Even though there were people in my life to fill the gap, what I did not get, is an up close in our house example, of what a two-parent household should look like. I was also missing Jesus.

8 years ago, on whim, I landed on this odd webpage where this lady talked about vacuuming.  Well, not really. She talked about sex – from a Christian point of view. What did you say Phil? Yup she did and still does. When I first saw it, I didn’t think it was real. It was over the top real. You mean a guy who was recovering from sex addiction can talk about sex in a healthy way? To be honest, I was mesmerized and also semi confused.

Ok, so just so you know, sex wasn’t actually the primary topic. There was so much more. Her original blog format was about parenting and I glommed onto Examples of how her and her husband raised their daughters. There were all kinds of topics. Sex, Parenting, Abuse, Healthy Marriage Examples, Life’s organizational tips and even posts about board games I never heard of. The entire space sucked me in. This was the example I needed to add into my battle to not only be a better person, but also a better husband and a better parent. You know what though? There was a BIGGER message.

JESUS!

One day my workday was canceled due to weather events and this was a big day on the blog. It was the end of a blog series. The topic had been about improving your sex life and that day was the mountaintop of the series. This day though, sex wasn’t even a part of the blog post. But wait. This was supposed to be the final post of the series and this lady was talking about Jesus. There were many verses that she quoted that connected the entire thing. I took what I recall as hours, studying the post and the bible chapters and verses that connected the entire thing. I recall thinking to myself, now this just took me hours to read and research. Imagine what it took to create it? 

This was the ending – Romans 8 – LIVE BY THE SPIRIT.

This was the beginning of my Jesus journey. This is where I met Christ. To this day that lady is my hero. What she did for me is not repayable. I never had a hero growing up. For me, it seems there were always disappointments. Today I have a hero.

It’s good to have a hero. Heroes are people who lead as examples and we look up to them because they perform actions without any expectations of reward or external gain. When you look up hero definitions in the dictionary or on the internet, there is something missing in those descriptions.  It’s Love.  Sea, my hero exudes Love. To me, LOVE should be included in the definition of a hero. 

JESUS IS LOVE.  I LOVE JESUS AND I LOVE YOU.