Hey. since we're now at "halftime" of #GeneralConference I bet you are wondering "how did Raider came to being a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints"

(But we're gonna go to the honky tonk tonight!)

Yeah those ladies are working on their 4th husband. Chill.

So it was the summer of 2012. I was in my early 30s, and aside from my job--in local showbiz, if you're the prying type--I was a borderline alcoholic and toe-tapped around random drug tests doing...well, drugs (I was primarily a cocaine and MDMA type of guy FWIW)

A guy I met when I first moved to Utah was every bit the booze hound I was, and he could easily go through a gallon of whiskey a day. (I couldn't quite achieve that threshold, I'm kind of thin and was even thinner back then). Alas...

...one morning I found out that he fell asleep (read: passed out) and never woke up. Dude died at the age of 37 and it was, for the most part, due to pounding whiskey like most normal people take breaths. Left behind a wife and 1 year old son.

I had no real idea at the time how to process something that sudden, tragic and poignant. You go through life thinking you're ten feet tall and bullet proof and then you watch a husband, new father and recently created family just crumble in an instant and it f---s with you

At some point not too long after that, I felt a thought (as I have considered it): "If you don't stop this path you're on, you may not die at 37, but you will die well before you are supposed to".

Oh, great.

I'll admit, it was hard to know what to do with that. So I sat in my modest Rose Park dwelling and tried to reflect on that kind of warning (and make no mistake, it absolutely was a warning)

That summer, I started reading a lot more than I ever had. My old boss at the time told me "it sounds like you're searching for meaning".

Well yeah, if you've spent a good decade and a half of your life trying to drink and drug my way through life. Clearly *that* isn't working

You see, from the time I was a junior in high school until that point in my life, I was an atheist. I may not have been militant or extreme about it, but it was how I would've described myself with a gun pointed at my head.

So given all that I studied more on faith and religion than I ever had before up to that point. (Even when I was a kid, which I'll get to later).

Soon I had friends who kept telling me to try (their) different churches since they found out I was having this little "crisis"

Much of the selling points for them to a tragically single guy in his 30s was "come to our service, we have hot chicks there!"

(I mean "hot chicks here" is definitely convincing, even for such things as evangelical Mississippi squirrel revivals and Catholic mass)

Then...my boss at the time threw this at me: "Why don't you come with us to sacrament meeting one morning?"

Two things that kind of made this an issue for me: 1. The word "morning" just sounds like hell and 2. I was in my youth a member of the Church

My parents did take us to church when I was younger, but by the time I was in high school, a bishopric member yelled at my Mom after she was called as an activities coordinator and that was pretty much the end of our fam's (LDS) church activity

Full disclosure: I took my boss (& her husband) up on their offer, but I also ended up going that morning hungover. This was by no means my brightest idea, but despite my temporary self-abuse, I felt something peaceful...calming, that I hadn't felt in a long, long time

That whole week I kept thinking "maybe I should try that sober next time"?

(& then that "warning" came back to my memory...)

Then, it occurred to me: "what if I quit drinking? What if I simply leave this part of my life behind? What could possibly go wrong?"

I spent a good day or two deciding on whether to call the bishop of my assigned ward.

Eventually, I did. In the meantime, I did what every full fledged clout seeking person does: post on FB that I'm "retiring" from drinking. No one thought I had it in me.

Some *others* though...saw it as only the beginning...

I called the ward executive secretary and he said the bishop had an opening on a Saturday night at 6pm.

We were there for over 2 hours, I basically ruined his evening, and I felt bad for doing that. But anyway...

...I showed up to sacrament meeting a half hour early that next day. If there's one thing I found out quickly about Latter-Day Saints, its just how much they're all over meeting new people. I'm not great at that whatsoever.

(Especially since I basically just showed up one day and none of them knew me from Herman Franks, that had to have been kind of weird)

From that point until now, things that I never, ever thought would happen in my life have happened. I'm married with three kids. I have an understanding and love for the Savior I never knew let alone felt. I have felt joy through trial and frustration

And most important, it has truly felt like heaven opened up to me. I will ever be grateful to Christ for that opportunity through His blood and His sacrifice.

Thanks for reading.

/fin