If you’re a first time reader, this is a good place to start.

Who am I? Firstly, I am a Christian. Why do I declare that up front? Well this blog is about my Christian journey, what I see and what I feel and think.

So to kick off, let me tell you a little about myself.

I’ve had a different life. I didn’t grow up in a traditional family. I grew up in the “system”. More about that later. I’m on my second marriage (this one’s working), I have two children from my first marriage and I’m step dad to four in my second. I hold down a good job that I enjoy but I feel I’m meant for more. I know what it’s like to be unemployed and have no idea how I’m going to pay the rent or put food on the table. I know what it’s like to be spurned by family and friends for no reasonable reason. But I have a good life and I’m happy and I wouldn’t trade my life for yours.

Now I’m not a minister and am certainly no theologian and don’t intend to preach because that’s not me. I will however, talk about what I feel and think about “stuff”. What stuff? Well whatever God puts on my heart to write about. If you get something out of what I share, that’s fantastic. If not, I hope you at least enjoy my writing.

If you’re still reading then great.

Now for a little bit more about me. Why talk so much about myself? Well as a Christian, the most powerful thing we have is our testimony. This blog is mine. As you read on, please do not feel sorry for me. This is just my story so you can see where I’ve come from.

I was born as the middle child into an ordinary working class family in the mid 60’s in England. Sadly, my father passed away from cancer just after my third birthday. Not that long after my mother met another man and fell pregnant to him. Now, I don’t know all of the details and I’m not overly interested in them. It says something that they were together for nearly 50 years until he passed away. The upshot is that we moved to Australia before my sister was born and pretty much lost contact with all family back home.

Things didn’t work out too well here and my two brothers and new sister ended up in foster care. I had my 4th birthday in a stranger’s house surrounded by people I didn’t know. My mum and dad and brothers and sister were gone. It would be 10 years before I had any more contact with my parents. I did eventually get to see my brothers and very occasionally my sister but we never really got to bond the way siblings should.

My first foster family was not a happy place. I had a foster brother that was 11 months older than me and was very jealous. Any sort of affection from my foster mother would result in a beating from him. Affection from my foster father wasn’t a problem. There was none. It wasn’t until I was 14 did I finally turn the tables and give him a hiding. We got on all right after that. My foster father was a very stern disciplinarian and I copped a cane across my bum or the back of my legs a couple of times a week. I wasn’t the best behaved child. I reasoned that if I was bad they would send me back and then my mum could find me. I was about nine when the horrific revelation hit that she could have found me any time. Now I am unwanted, not lost. This didn’t do a lot to help my behaviour.

I was very good at school, I was a voracious learner and found solace in my books. I wanted to learn everything so it is no surprise that I also excelled in scripture. Our scripture teacher asked us if we wanted to join the Sunday school at the local Baptist church. I jumped at the chance. Looking back, I can’t fully explain why. I have no recollection of being drawn to God, I think I saw it more as a temporary respite from a miserable family life. I remember very little of my time there apart from the fact that I enjoyed it very much. I went for about a year and cannot remember why I stopped. Maybe it was the break over the school holidays and I just never got around to going back and as my scripture teacher changed there was no one to follow up on me.

When I was going into year six (I was 12 years old), my foster mother had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalised. I was sent to live with the uncle and it was a much happier time. I was treated as part of the family and my foster cousin was a couple of years younger and loved having a big brother. I was settling in well and I was in line to be the dux of the school (top student). I was able, in the school holidays before the last term to travel two hours up the coast to spend the holidays with my real older brother. Despite all the distance and time, we got on like a house on fire. At the end of the holidays I was sad to be leaving but overall I was happy with my life. You can imagine my surprise when I landed back at my home train station to be met by my district officer to tell me that I wasn’t going home. Now, whilst that family was a horrible place to be, it was the only home I had. I had been there for eight and a half years. Devastated does not begin to explain how I felt. To make it worse, I was told that they did not want me anymore. Twelve year old and rejected by two families.

I then move into a temporary institution for foster children waiting to be rehomed. I was lucky in that the house parents of where I was placed had real empathy for the children. We ranged in ages from 6 to 18. I think there was about twenty of us in that cottage. The grounds had three or four such cottages on it. I drove past a few years ago and was a little sad to see it gone now and replaced with a remand centre. I spent two months there. I was “lucky” enough to be moved to a new foster family that had five other foster children; two sisters and a brother and two other boys (one arrived a couple of weeks after I did). It was called a family group home and was run by a live in couple that were basically at retirement age. They didn’t try to mould us into a family but they weren’t cruel either. We did have to refer to them as Mr and Mrs. I remember almost no interactions with them. A few months later they left and were replaced by another family; mother and father and their 4 year old son.

The new foster parents did care for us and tried to make us a family. They told us that whilst they were not our birth parents they would still treat us like their own. Now my memory may be faulty here. They may not have actually said that but their actions certainly did. We said grace before each meal and went to church on Sundays. I was back in Sunday school and my science teacher was a Christian and involved in Christian youth work. I feel slightly guilty that I can never remember his name. Through him we (me and my foster brother of about the same age) went to a few Christian camps during the holidays. I only really remember one of them which was a bush walking camp where I cut the bottom of my foot and needed three stiches. That camp was also memorable in other ways which I might talk about another time.

In the late 70’s Billy Graham came to town and my teacher organised for a few of us to go. At the altar call I felt led to go and give myself to Christ. It was a wonderful feeling at the time, but there was absolutely no follow up. There was no shepherd to guide me. Even my teacher said little about it. As I got older I drifted away. We moved house and schools and I lost contact with the teacher. I had no one to show me what being a Christian meant on a personal level and I didn’t know to ask. I left home after school to start a cadetship in another city and church was all but forgotten.

I discovered new friends and alcohol. I really liked alcohol. I would go to the pub after work with whoever was going and get kicked out at closing. I went from high distinctions in my first semester to failing everything in my second. When I first moved, I was living in the university accommodation whilst studying and working. After 18 months I realised that something was wrong so I moved out into a flat with a friend and all but gave up drinking. My grades improved and so did my health.

The friends I now had were pretty much all atheist or at best non-religious. I gradually moved to the position that God didn’t exist or t least if there was a creator, he had created the world but had no more part in it and we were on our own. I was able to argue that God and the devil were constructs people created to control each other. I was very good at this and could bamboozle most door to door theologians.

A while later I met and married a girl that claimed to be Jewish. She wasn’t by birth but decided that was the religion for her. So I was reintroduced to faith. I was still a non-believer (or so I thought) but saw the 10 commandments as a pretty good guide to living well. Well 7 of them at least, the ones that didn’t relate to God. The marriage produced two children but didn’t last and nine years later we separated under fairly acrimonious circumstances. We did not have a civil relationship as our children grew and now have no contact. I think we are each content with that. I’ll probably talk more about this in other posts, but only as it relates to my faith. I’m not going to talk her down.

After a few single years, I met another woman. We met on an internet chess site. Not the normal place one goes to meet people. I’ve found God has a way to put the right people in our path at the right time. As we got to chatting about parenting and other things, I realised that I was developing feelings for this woman on the other side of the world. Distance doesn’t seem to be an issue for God. Luckily for me, she was developing feelings for me as well. In our conversations she had mentioned that she only took a few things really seriously, her faith, her family and her chess. The family and chess I got, but her faith. I thought about that for a bit and decided if we were going to be together I should find out why this intelligent, funny woman was a Christian. I’d spent a lot of my time convincing myself that religion is a crutch for the needy and that wasn’t me. So off I went and bought myself a bible (it was and NIV, not sure if that’s relevant) and started to read it. By the time she traversed the world to be here with me I’d read a fair bit and was finding myself less disinclined to believe in the almighty.

She arrived and she had a few bibles with her; different translations for study purposes. We were married a few months later and have been happily so for the last 15 years (as of 2023). I’d also started listening to Christian radio and to a couple of short sermons a week, still trying to work out what it was all about. After we were married and settled in she announced that she’d like to find a church to go to of a Sunday. Odd that if she’d done it as soon as she had arrived I’d have let her go by herself, but by now, I wanted to know more. A few months later I was driving to work and was listening to a sermon from Harvest Ministries. At the end of each sermon, the pastor made an alter call telling us that the love of Christ can transform lives. I’d heard this call multiple times but this morning I knew in that moment that I wanted it more than anything so whilst driving to work that dark cold morning I accepted Christ as my personal lord and saviour. In 2014 I was baptised.

I continue to hunger for God and look at how I can be used in his kingdom. This blog will be about my journey and what I’m learning. I chose the title Just Another Man, because that’s what I am; no more or less special than any of you. Just a man trying to find his way in the world.

If you have read this far, I hope you will continue the journey with me. I may not be the most reliable updater but most news readers will take the feed and let you know when something new appears.

God bless…