cocoa butter for the soul?

might help with unsightly spiritual stretching.

better than keeping your head in the sand, or hiding in the trench.

Geppy: "But growing isn't always fun."

It seldom is. Growing is always work, and often hard work. Overcoming our own laziness is frequently dificult.

Or at least it is for me.

(greetings everyone! I've been out of town with work for the past month or so and it's good to be home. I missed you all)

I have a hard time remembering a time when I didn't consider myself "saved". It's hard to even explain. Basically, I didn't grow up attending church regularly, but when I did go (with my grandmother) it made a powerful impression on me. I've basically always been a lot more concerned with right and wrong than most other kids, and fascinated by religion and spirituality. I was formally baptised when I was 17, by my great uncle who was the pastor of a church I regularly attended with my parents and sister. I didn't feel any particular need to be baptised from a spiritual perspective, but my sister wanted to and I wanted to support her. For me, baptism was mostly a symbolic thing, sort of like the final period in a book that had been started long before. The changes had already been made, I was just finally announcing them to everyone.

It was a memorable experience, though. We did it in North Bay, right there in the salt water the old school way. Everyone sang "Shall we gather at the river" beforehand and "Victory in Jesus" and "Amazing Grace" afterwards.

And to answer the poll questions:

1) I just wanted to have God and Jesus in my life and "be on the same side as them." It never really occured to me to be any other way. In all honesty, I have a hard time relating to people who only live for themselves.

2) Otherworldly? Hard to say. Now and then little things happen around me that fill me with wonder and comfort. It's hard to explain, but there are many little daily coincidences that make me smile and think about God. Seeing angles and demons? No. But I get the warm fuzzies now and then and I've been around people and places that have made me uncomfortable and just felt "wrong", too.

With that said I've had a lot of people who I know and trust who have no reason to lie to me claim to have seen and experienced all manner of things. I confess that I have difficulty with that, because it's hard for me to believe something I haven't experienced myself. Because of the testimony of the folks I know and trust I'm forced to accept that there are some things I simply don't know anything about, the world is more complicated than I have yet seen, and just because I haven't experienced something that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

3) Like I answered in #2, I've gotten the warm fuzzies and I've felt distinctly uncomfortable in certain places/situations or around certain people. But I couldn't say whether it was due to some angelic or demonic presence or due to something more psychological. Nor am I sure there's a difference between the two.

As you can see, I have a lot of learning and growing to do myself ;)