So I think it's time that we become better acquainted, don't you?

My name is Joe, though over the years I've used a few different monikers--both online and in real life. Some people have known me as Joe, George, gjoe, or GJ--but despite the multiple identities, I'm the same on the inside.

I was born, raised and currently live in beautiful Shawnee, Kansas with my lovely wife and our 9-pound dachshund, Frank Furter. My lovely wife and I both graduated from the University of Kansas. Together, we own a custom-printed t-shirt company, Kansas Tees.

We are parishioners at St. Joseph's Church in Shawnee, though I also attend Old St. Patrick's Latin Mass community at Our Lady of Sorrows.

I went to Catholic School from the time I was in 4-year-old preschool until I graduated High School. I was well schooled in how to be a good person, but not a lot of education in how to be a good Catholic. I hated 5th and 6th grade religion class--it was boring and kind of hard, we read all of the major stories of the bible from Creation through Solomon, learned all the parts and equipment for the mass, and were generally bored to death. Looking back, this was the most "Catholicy" part of my Catholic education, and pretty much the last time I ever had any type of formal catechesis.

Like everyone else my age, we had D.A.R.E. officers in the schools, sex-ed in the curriculum, and watched Star Wars as an illustration of how Luke Skywalker was like Jesus who came to save us all.

You know, the typical stuff.

By the time I was a senior in High School, I was confused about God, under-nourished in religion, and smart enough to talk myself out of the whole religion thing altogether. I wouldn't call myself an atheist, at least not in absolute terms. I wouldn't call myself an agnostic, either--agnostics continue their search for knowledge. No, I was just disinterested.

My mother asked, like parents should do, if I was going to church while I was in college. I told the truth: I was not. I think it really let her down. They'd spent a lot of time and money on educating my soul, and I wasn't holding up my end of the deal. Mom told me something that really stuck in my craw and kind of made me mad at the time. She said "If you stop learning about your faith when your 18 years old, you'll always have an 18 year old's understanding of your faith."

I didn't like being told that. But inertia is hard to overcome, and I was an object at rest.

Over the next few years, I'd call myself a Catholic, but wasn't doing anything about it. I could do the prayers, know when to stand, sit and kneel, and knew the Nicene Creed right up until it gets to "believe in the Holy Spirit" (where I still have to check to make sure I get everything in the right order), but it didn't matter. I wasn't going to Mass. I was rolling through life, school, jobs, roommates and life without direction. I had big dreams of opening a restaurant or bar one day, and somehow saw my wandering as some kind of plan.

There was no real plan.

And somewhere around 2004, everything began to fall apart for like the umpteenth time. I'd raced though another 4 or 5 jobs in a year. I was a couple months behind on my rent again. The debt collectors finally quit calling when my telephone was shut off for non-payment, re-activated, re-shut off and reactivated. I'd been dropping job applications around town for a couple weeks, but hadn't heard back from any of them. Staying in my apartment was torture--I owed my roommate money and neither of us wanted much to do with each other. But I didn't have anywhere else to go all day--you know, when people are at work. So I did something that I had never done before.

I still don't know why I did it.

I looked up the nearest church to my apartment and drove over there, hoping there was a perpetual adoration chapel that was open to the public. Inside, I took a kneeler and found one of the plastic rosaries that are always in adoration chapels and began to pray silently. After about 20 minutes, I left, and made myself the promise that I was going to do this every day until I found a job.

I'd go out in the late morning and fill out job applications, scrape together a fast lunch, and head to the adoration chapel to do a ring around the rosary. And somewhere in the second week of doing it, my cell phone started buzzing in the middle of my rosary prayers. I didn't check who was calling or answer the phone, but my heart leaped at the possibility it was someone calling me back with a job. The last 3 decades of the rosary flew by!

It was someone calling to schedule an interview! Maybe 5 or 6 other companies called over the next few days wanting to schedule interviews and eventually I ended up getting hired with one of them. It was a temporary gig until I could get enrolled in school again and finish my degree.

Gentle reader, let me also say objectively, that it was probably a matter of time until I found a job. It was almost inevitable. I had filled our dozens of applications in a few days; the odds were good that someone was going to call me back eventually. But on the other hand, it would be pretty naïve of me to presume that I'd gotten the job on my own, as if the Lord or the Blessed Virgin Mary didn't have a part! In the end, I don't care. I'm giving them the credit. And for 30 minutes a day for a couple weeks, I had gotten my only peace when I gave up trying to live life on my own. The little part of the day I spent on my knees was about the only time I didn't feel like I was fighting for myself; rather, someone else was fighting for me.

Plainly, 2004 was the worst year of my life. But it also started the renewal of my faith. When I admitted that I sucked at living life on my own and needed a little guidance from the Holy Spirit, I wandered back into Sunday Mass and found my seat in the middle of pews. It was one of the strongest--and lonliest--parts of my life. But there were those words that the priest said again and again at Mass that no one else was saying in my life, those words that I needed more than anything else I had ever needed--well, the words speak for themselves: Peace be to you.

Peace.

Well, gentle reader, it was good.

Since 2004, I've lapsed and relapsed a time or two into spiritual neglect. Like a junk car that you never know if she's going to start, a few times I've needed a steady push to get my faith jump-started again.

And since then, I've gotten married, got a house and a dog, and a steady job with a pension and a 401(k), and I'm happy to say that I'm not the person that I was back then. Oh, I'm glad I lived those days, but I am glad they're over! And though I still struggle with my faith, I'm not trying to do it alone any more. It doesn't work. I promise.

Is Christianity a religion for losers? Yeah, maybe. And from a certain point of view, there's real merit in that statement. But I've been one of those losers, and if it weren't for my religion, I'd still be lost. These days, I'm still roamin', it's true. Sometimes I'm better at life than others. But now I have a tool in my toolbox that I never had back then, something I had tossed out carelessly years before.

Peace be to you.