My Story Part VI: Carlos Santana & Amazing Grace

Fast forward about 10 years.

I am now living n Charlotte and working in television advertising.

Prior to taking the job one morning I prayed and told God that I had talent, skills and abilities and that God knew where God wanted me. I told God that I was going to walk through whatever door was opened and trust that God was in it. I got on the telephone and began calling ad agencies for that is where I had professional experience. An ownwer answered her phone and I gave her my pitch. She immediately suggested that I cntact three television stations and gave me the names of the managers. She told me to tell them that she referred me. Little did I know that she owned the largest media buying agency in Charlotte.

All three stations offered me a job and I decided to go to work with one the strongest ABC affiliates in the country.

I had two goals in moving to Charlotte: to know God deeper and to know myself. Work was important but not at the expense of my relationship with God.

My spiritual life deepened. My daily prayer and meditation took me to deeper and more intimate places with God. I felt closer to God than anyone or anything. I’d spend an hour or two each morning in prayer and meditation and more time in the evening.

Still no church but my spiritual life was at an all time high. I began to visit churches but nothing seemed to fit. Regardless of what church I visited, I sensed an overwhelming sensation inside my heart that literally took my breath. I felt drawn to the pulpit. This feeling never went away. I had been carrying this “burden” for over 10 years. Not one day passed that I did not think about it but I just wrote it off. The last thing God needed was someone who thought he was supposed to be a pastor or priest, right?
Plus, I didn’t speak the language. I did not fit in the box and the box was concerned about me for I did not act like the people in the box. All I knew was that God was real to me, very real.

I got used to people telling me they thought I should be a minister for I had a way of talking about God that they could relate to. I remember a friend asking me one evening if I ever thought about becoming a minister, I told him “every single day of my life.” But where was I going to be a minister? Yet, I must have had 1,000 conversations with people over the years about God. I had a very successful career and the only thing I thought about was God.

One night while at a Carlos Santana concert I finally looked up at the sky while Carlos was in the middle of a blistering solo and asked, “Why me God? There are six billion people on this planet and yet you made yourself known to me. Why the call to get up and leave? What do you want from me? Why J.P.? Why this journey? Why me? Why did you just pluck me out of the world like you did?”

I was haunted by this journey and it must have meant something. God wanted me for something, right? At just that moment right in the middle of his solo Carlos transitioned into Amazing Grace. At the exact moment that I was contemplating this spiritual, mysterious journey and asking God “why me” he began to play Amazing Grace. Oh my, a coincidence or a work of the spirit?
That’s when it hit me; God did what God had to do to reach me. For whatever reason, God knew how to reach me. From “get up and leave” to the countless people I had conversations with over the years, God simply loved me and it was purely the grace of God that was extended to me. Love. Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that reached into a heart like mine. I had been lost but God went searching for me and God had found me. I had been blind but through the healing touch of God’s loving hand I could now see.

It had nothing to do with an institution; it had to do with what we call God going to whatever length necessary to awaken me to God’s presence and love. That is the God I experienced.

That night was as close to the “voice” as I had heard since the night I met J.P. 10 years earlier. But you won’t believe this, the “voice” returned out of nowhere and unexpectedly and for an entirely different reason. If the first time led me to this point, the second time it occurred set me to where I am today.

This story goes really deep… way deep.