The Man With The Masterful Plan

When I write I'm seldom vulnerable.

I like to have the appearance that I always know what I'm talking about. When I blogged for the Thrashers my opinions were thrust about and if my opinion ended up being misled, I never admitted it. I saw it as a sign of weakness.

Which is just what I avoided.

I liked to feel like I was in control of my own destiny. Could do what I wanted, could date who I wanted, could drink what I wanted, could smoke what I wanted. It's funny how with every day that you continue to live your life like that the more and more your secular heart and mind convinces yourself that the one true God you had relied on for the previous 18 years of your life was really just a facade.

This was me. For roughly 5 years I grew more and more apart from God. Things went well for me actually. I was in control and I was loving it. I went about a year and a half without even realizing I hadn't gone to a church service, and when I realized that it didn't phase me. I lived my life on my terms. I played World of Warcraft, I smoked weed, I hooked up with girls I considered friends but also knew wouldn't be able to say no to me. I wasn't living in Christ. And I didn't care.

I felt that if I still led a life full of love for my fellow man and didn't harm anyone then I would still be appeasing in God's eyes. My mind convinced me that it was OK to not walk with God, but walk just beside him so if things started to go wrong I could shout and he would hear me.

Then I moved to Denver. Save my cousin and the occasional visit from my younger brother while on holiday from college, I was alone. I clung to the things that kept my mind off of just how lonely I would feel. I'd play video games or watch sports exclusively, whilst continuing to smoke weed. I used these as crutches, a distraction from the reality of how alone I really was. I didn't know it yet but I NEEDED GOD.

My mind once again convinced me that I needed the soft touch of the fairer sex. So I put myself out there. I started meeting lovely women, each of whom I tricked myself into thinking was "the one". But every time things started to move towards the inevitable "dating phase" an unseen force would swoop in and nix the plan.

I grew frustrated, which only drove me further from God. Little did I know he was in the process of bringing me closer to him than I've ever been.

Last December my best friend came back from her missions trip to Poland for what was supposed to be only a 6 week recovery trip in Denver. That has turned into an indefinite stay in Denver for the foreseeable future. It was God's plan that she be blessed with a friend and mentor who was kind enough to allow her to stay at her town home for free. God's plan that that mentor's house was only a 10 minute drive from my house. God's plan that I inexplicably take a major risk and ask her out knowing full well that after she completes raising enough money to return to Poland my girlfriend will have to travel halfway around the world to continue doing God's work. God's plan that she suddenly felt called to do God's work in her own back yard. And God's plan that we're engaged to be married on May 19th, 2012.

In all of this, God has touched my life in a way that I've never experienced. It is mostly an amazing feeling but also has a slight tinge of uneasiness to it. Some would probably say that it's narcissistic to admit that but I don't feel that way at all. Faith, unbridled and unrelenting, requires an incredible amount of trust in what you can not see. It's not always supposed to be comfortable.

So in this short span of my life if there's one thing I've learned to do is this. Embrace the uncomfortable moments in life, because they're the most enriching you'll ever experience.

That is all.

Prologue

Hello

My name is Devin Howard

I had an easy, settled, comfortable, boring life in Atlanta, GA and then one day everything changed.

I've never written a blog about life, particularly mine. I have blogged about sports up until this night so the thought of blogging about life stories, events and what I have learned, haven't learned or in some instances still am in the process of learning scares the crap outta me. But just tonight driving home in the rain it all hit me like a ton of bricks. I needed to start writing again, I wanted to write about something more meaningful than sports and I had to write so that if need be people could read, respond or even learn from the words that spill onto this pixelated paper I have at my disposal.

This blog/journal/diary/memoirs what-have-you is just that, a meaningful thought inducing whateverness.

It will probably seem a bit rambling, this is my writing style. I only attended 2 semesters of college and of those semesters I passed 2 classes and either dropped classes or failed out so you'll have to forgive me if my grammar makes you cringe. This is me and this is my story...get used to it.

I don't really know what my intended purpose is for writing this blog yet, and I'm completely ok with that. I will try to keep up with this the best I can but with the crazy life I lead I can't make any promises.

Anyways, there I go rambling already and I haven't even started the story. Where was I...oh yes Atlanta. I had a great girlfriend, I had a job that paid handsomely, I had the closest knit group of friends in the world. But I didn't have God. I was a Chreaster (one who only shows up to the major religious holidays at church) and I was ok with it. I struggled with the church having grown up with a church which was perfect for so long but outgrew itself and lost it's identity in the process.

Aside from that everything in my life was peachy and God was allowing it to happen. When suddenly he started nudging me to something greater, something he wanted, something in line with his PLAN for my life. My girlfriend of nearly exactly 1 year and I broke up without any real rhyme or reason on Valentines Day. It was purely mutual, we both weren't feeling it anymore and we split.

Two weeks later my mother asked to talk to me about something. She said "Devin, your father and I are moving to greener pastures, we're moving closer to family in Denver Colorado, I understand you have a job that pays you well and a great base of friends here so the choice is up to you, if you want to move with us you're welcome to do so, if not you'll be just fine living here as well."

I still don't really know why I said yes. But that is how this story starts.