I am a baby boomer born in Denver, Colorado, in 1953. It was a great time to be alive. I have an older brother, George, six years older than me. Our mother left my dad and married another man when I was six. From then on, we visited Dad in Las Vegas, Nevada, every summer and lived with Mom and our stepfather during the school year. That marriage gave me a sister and brother. Dad eventually remarried and gave me another sister and brother.

In 1972, one year out of high school, I married a girl I met in college. We thought we were in love. Twenty-four years and five children later, she left me for another man.

I spent two and a half years as a single dad before I met Jenny, who had a 13-year-old daughter. We've been married 24 years, have a dog named Finn (from Oman), and live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Altogether, we have six adult married children who live in Washington State, Utah, Tennessee, Mexico, and Wisconsin; 19 grandchildren and another on the way.

I spent ten years (from 16 to 26 years old) tenaciously pursuing a career in professional golf. After serving three years in the U.S. Army, I played golf for UNLV (University of Nevada, Las Vegas). I realized I didn’t have what it took to make a living as a touring professional and dreaded being a club professional. I graduated in 1979 with a degree in Communications.

Upon graduating from college, I worked in various management, marketing, and advertising jobs, followed by over 30 years in pastoral ministry.

In 1977, God apprehended me through a simple challenge to God to prove himself real. While he should have, could easily have, smote me for questioning his deity, in his mercy, he saved me instead.

This was the beginning of seeking to understand what being a Christian meant. As Charles Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...” It began a 45-year journey of learning the difference between man-made religion and living out God-breathed truths. I admit that I am a slow learner.

In 1989, I began a pursuit of the pastorate in the hopes of starting a church. Over the next 12 years, I learned all I could about what it meant to be the lead/senior pastor of a church, and in 2001, I packed up the family, moved to Puyallup (pew-Al-up), Washington, and started a church from scratch. I pastored that church for the next 17 years.

At 70 years old, I think a lot about the brevity of life and how quickly time passes. Whether I like it or not, I am obliged to accept it because there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. In some respects, I can relate to the words of Woody Allen, “It’s not that I am afraid to die; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

I am not so foolish as to think for a moment that I won’t be there. I think about it more and more as the ticking of my biological clock keeps going, not knowing when it will strike its final hour. I accept it as a natural law that I have no control over and want to make sure that I take advantage of every moment I have left.