A DEFINING MOMENT IN MY LIFE
I was living in London when it happened. It wasn't a noisy event –
no overnight conversion, no falling down in church, no speaking in
tongues, no being struck by lightning, no sudden “Aha!” moment.
Nevertheless, it happened.
I was 22 when I left home. Having been born in London originally, I
had lived in the suburbs until I was 12, whereupon I moved to the
countryside of Cornwall in the southwest of England. After ten years
there, I had graduated from high school and been to college. As
someone who had been teased and bullied at school and rather shy and
not terribly confident, I had developed a reputation at school for
being rather nervous and anxious, resulting in large amounts of glass
equipment in chemistry class being smashed on the floor. This
continued during my science studies at college, where I became
something of a legend for the number of test-tubes and mercury
thermometers I broke (how did I know what the temperature of the
flame would be?)
At 22 I arrived in London and did a couple of office jobs before
deciding that I wanted to study in America. I tried to save money by
doing a part-time job in a bar. There I found plenty more glasses to
smash and the legend returned. I also got stressed about customer
service and would fret about any complaints or negativity from
patrons. So from 22 onwards, I began searching for answers.
This was 1994. The World Wide Web had just been invented by Sir Tim
Berners-Lee, so the days of Googling stuff had not arrived yet. So I
went to the library, read newspaper articles and tried to figure out
why I was so anxious.
At first, I tried man-made solutions. I investigated various
ideologies and pursued numerous ideas but nothing seemed perfect. There always
seemed to be at least one aspect of each one that I didn't agree
with.
I became hazily aware that I was leaving religion on the table until
other options had been exhausted. I eventually became suspicious as
to why my brain seemed to be avoiding the topic. So one day I took a
walk down to the Fulham Road to browse through a bookshop. In there I
found a King James Bible. I flicked through it for maybe 20 minutes
or half an hour, then put it back. I remembered this book from my
childhood, when I had received a portion of it at school. I then put
it back on the shelf and left.
THAT WAS IT. That was the biggest defining moment of my life. It
doesn't sound like much, does it? However, Jesus has had a profound
influence on my life since then.
A few weeks later, I went back to purchase that Bible. I took it home and attempted to read it but it was hard-going. I decided to focus on keeping the Ten Commandments. So began my walk with the Lord.
I began to realize that these various things that had been happening
to me until then had come from God. When I accepted this, I was
implicitly consenting to the truth of this by virtue of the authority
of the One who sent them. This is FAITH.
At first, I was happy just to believe in God alone. I didn't identify
with any particular religion. I began to wonder how much of my life
could be better if I followed His lead more carefully. I began to
submit my decisions to the Will of God. I listened to the Holy Spirit
in my heart and if I experienced a light, happy feeling, I took that
as a “yes”. A heavy, dark feeling meant “no”. I began
following the light, happy feelings exclusively and my life began to
improve.
As I put more and more trust in Him, He became more and more
trustworthy. Stuff that scared me before I no longer needed to worry
about. I began to lose my anxiety as I turned more and more things
over to Him.
After a while, I looked back and saw a path emerging that I hadn't
noticed before. It had a holy feel to it, like I was becoming a
better person. I noticed that my friends were still doing the same
things as before and having the same troubles but I was moving out
and into something better.
There were times when God showed me some worrying things. Lessons I
was learning by following this path were not being learned by those
not following it. Doors open to me because I walked in faith were
unknown to others because they had no faith. They might never find or
experience that door. They were making costly mistakes that I had
avoided. They couldn't see what I could see. I knew that if I tried
to explain it to them, they would think I was crazy. However, when I
saw them make those mistakes, I thought, “There but for the Grace
of God go I”.
I began to develop a brighter outlook, like the future would be good.
I began to feel that I would end up in Heaven if I continued this.
This is HOPE.
There were times when I stumbled and fell but God always gave me the
grace to get back up again. Grace is power from God to achieve things
that would be impossible to achieve if that power had not been given.
I was very grateful to receive this grace – it was very generous of
Him. I felt rather unworthy and was desperately afraid that I would
mess up really badly and lose everything I had ever worked for. Many
times when I goofed up, I assumed I had been forsaken and that it was
all over, only to find that still, small voice continuing in my
heart.
At other times, I'm sorry to say, I sinned against him – a
combination of resistance and feeling sorry for myself, like I was
irredeemable. On one occasion, I had behaved rather badly. I was
surprised to find myself rewarded by being invited to a slap-up steak
dinner. I felt completely unworthy and decided not to eat it, in
order to say sorry. “Eat it!” said my wife, who was also there.
So, unable to get out of it, I ate the steak and it was great. I felt
very grateful to God for His kindness, feeling rather vulnerable and
like a little kid who had just avoided a serious punishment.
There were many other similar examples after that, all with the same
moral to teach. I was someone special, someone worth caring about,
someone God wanted to spend time with, someone that was important. I
felt a lot of affection for the Lord until, one day, I realized this
affection had turned to LOVE.
So now my life has been transformed. I am now confident that I am
loved by God and this has allowed me to love others. I can now love
my wife, my son and my students, whose teacher I am and I believe I
have something to offer the world. I have now studied to become a
Life Coach and plan to use my experiences to help others. I believe I
have a voice in the world that other people need and want to hear. I
feel excited by my life and at the prospect of transforming the lives
of others.
My hope is that, in reading this account, you will both appreciate
why that visit to a bookshop turned out to be so important and
realize the steps that need to be taken to achieve the same results.
My fervent wish is that this story will inspire you to take the first
steps towards receiving this new life and being transformed into the
person you have always wanted to be, so that all your dreams come
true!
Here's a quote that sums up all this -
Here's a quote that sums up all this -
You were an unexpected surprise.
The defining moment. The collision of stars that slammed into me hard and sent my neat little world plummeting into the ocean.
I never expected it to be you, you know?
But it is you. It’s all you. And now there’s no looking back.
The defining moment. The collision of stars that slammed into me hard and sent my neat little world plummeting into the ocean.
I never expected it to be you, you know?
But it is you. It’s all you. And now there’s no looking back.
— Beau Taplin • T h e D e f i n i n g M o m e n t
SPIRITUALITY HELPS YOU TO BE A GOOD MAN
(This article was originally published on The Good Men Project, hence the focus on men and masculinity within the article.)
It would seem that, these days, there is a dearth of interest in
spirituality as it was traditionally conceived; while modern-day
gurus such as Deepak Chopra or celebrities such as Oprah have
embraced an eclectic range of beliefs, and positive psychology is all
the rage, for all this abundance of spiritual options, there seems to
be a lack of depth or sense of direction to many of the varieties of
spirituality now on offer.
Coupled with this is a confusion between spirituality and religion,
as though the two were mutually incompatible – you can't be
religious without being a traditionalist, right-wing, anti-LGBT
fuddy-duddy who votes Republican, while if you're spiritual, then you
must be some kind of new-age guru appearing on daytime TV with a
“you-can-have-it-all” message.
But this goes against the example of history, where guys like St.
Francis of Assisi were able to love everybody and be deeply
spiritual, while being 100% committed to the teachings of their
religion. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a big-time
traditional Protestant preacher, yet still managed to lead the black
civil rights movement to victory and become the pre-eminent figure in
20th. Century U.S. race relations.
So I would argue that a deeper impact on masculinity can be felt when
we take the time to develop our own connection to the spiritual
reality that is out there, while using the tenets of our religious
background as guidelines that reveal a path that we can follow to
become the better man that it is our birthright to become.
My own experience is a good example. My mother is a lapsed Catholic
who chose to have me baptized into the Church of England denomination
(Pentecostal in the US) as a statement against her own strict
Catholic upbringing; she brought me up without religion but after receiving
verbal, emotional and physical abuse from my father, I developed
avoidant personality disorder and suffered prolonged teasing and
bullying from boys at school until the age of 16. I had very low
self-esteem and hated myself intensely; and the introspection that
this caused led me to becoming attracted to the teachings of Jesus
Christ, especially on issues of forgiveness and God's love for the
poor and forgotten people of the world, of which I considered myself
a fully-paid-up member.
I discovered my own spirituality within myself in my own way and in
my own time, and I suppose I could have stayed that way; but I became
increasingly dissatisfied with going around in circles. I wanted to
experience everything my spirituality had to offer but this involved
making a commitment to follow Christ's teachings and making a more
concerted effort. Through a range of events, I ended up returning to
the Roman Catholic Church; but not for me the often heavy-handed
doctrine and judgementalism of other Catholics – I chose to focus
on the unconditional love offered by luminaries such as St. Francis,
Mother Theresa and the personal example of John Paul II, who was Pope
at the time.
It all started with a personal decision to follow the Ten
Commandments. The daily decisions that needed to be taken to make
sure that I didn't tell lies or steal or be jealous of others often
forced me to put what, at the time, appeared to be blind faith in God
that everything would turn out OK. I would choose to do something,
terrified that it wouldn't work out but confident that it was what
God wanted and, sure enough, things would be OK. Sometimes, unusual
or unexpected surprises would happen that, perhaps, would not have
happened if I had not chosen to make that choice.
I remember when I was very poor in Australia and a homeless man asked
me for money. I looked in my wallet and saw ONE Australian dollar and
a few small coins. I hadn't eaten anything for breakfast yet, so I
was hungry. I decided to put faith in Christ's teachings and gave him
the dollar. After he walked away, I went to a bakery and bought some
bread. “That'll be 23 cents,” said the lady. I looked in my
wallet and, sure enough, the “few small coins” totalled exactly 23 cents to the very penny.
It is situations like these that allow us to see beyond mere
appearances and catch a glimpse of what destiny awaits us. However,
we can only see this destiny when we put faith in the teachings we
are given. If we refuse to obey, we are also refusing to open the
door to becoming a better person and achieving the happiness that is
ours for the taking.
One of the difficulties people have with this is the fact that you
are doing it blind; you can't see where you are going. However, one
decision made in faith, leads to further doors opening; taking these
subsequent doors, leads to further doors down the road; and so, as
time goes by, a body of experience builds up and, although we still
have no idea where we are going, after a certain amount of time and
experience, we can look behind us at the path we have travelled so
far and see that we are now in a better place than we were before
and, indeed, that we are a better man for having travelled that
distance in faith.
So by all means develop your own spirituality YOUR way, in YOUR time,
in the way that is meaningful for YOU – but to become a better man,
you need a path to follow, even if that path appears blind at the
beginning. Religion oftentimes gives us the framework we need to find
that path and achieve the greatness that is possible for us in this
life and, indeed, this was the way of all the saints and prophets of
old. So I encourage you to do the same and not discount the value of
more traditional religions, since they often have a much
better-developed system of mystic pathway than more modern
alternatives; and in so doing, you will find it that much easier to
become the man you have always wanted to be and achieve the greatness
that you were born to occupy in this life.
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