I came to Christ through many years of seed planting and watering. I'd always "believed in God" though I really had no idea, I just knew He was up there. Growing up, my family was not "religious", no church-going, but there was always some acknowledgement of a God above. The extent of the theology I learned from parents and my uncle was "God has one hand over Heaven, and one over Earth. When you die, if your good deeds outweigh the bad, you'll go to Heaven and be like an angel".

Kindergarten was at Grace Baptist Church, where I have vague memories of us kids being led in songs like "Jesus Loves Me".
I was a rotten kid, stealing, lying, and all sorts of things I wasn't supposed to do. I wouldn't shake quarters out of the drink machines on a Sunday though. Did a lot of my childhood up in CT where my stepdad and mom, who was technically my aunt, were a doctor and anesthesiologist. Well, he got involved with a young pediatrician, and divorce came to my family. I hated him for doing that, and making mom sad. She moved us back to NC. Soon after we settled into the new house, a couple of brothers came walking across the lawn and introduced themselves as my new neighbors. One wearing a NC State Wolfpack shirt, the other a Carolina Tar Heels shirt, arguing about basketball. We became fast friends and I soon learned their family were "Christians". They invited and took me to Sunday school and church with them, where we largely goofed off and got in trouble for things like climbing on the church roof during the sermon.
We'd often play basketball at their house until late on summer nights when the mosquitos would be out eating us up. Their dad would come out to get them in the house for bedtime and he'd spend time talking to me about God, and Jesus, telling me things about the Bible. Some of what he would say made me uneasy, but I was respectful to listen to him, as he really seemed to care, which was something I was not used to a dad doing. I knew he loved his family, and his wife. Later as I moved through middle school, then high school, I got involved with the pothead crowd in my junior and senior years. I was an OK student, but mediocre my mom said, and never good enough for her. I guess she wanted me to go into medicine, and have all my ducks in a row like she did. Life at home became increasingly troubled. I entered art school the fall after graduation, on a full ride endowment because of my step-dad's position with the University he worked at in CT. I quickly bombed out since I was more interested in getting stoned than attending classes. Also the drawing teacher ticked me off on the first day of class, because he wanted us to "forget everything we thought we knew" about drawing, and start over.
Well, I was a laborer on a construction crew, and the Friday came that the boss pulled me aside at the end of the day and told me to find another job. I was living in a party house by then, and now unable to pay my rent and share of the utilities. I moved to FL to get to know my real mom. I lived with her and her husband for a year or so until I was able to get working and into an apartment, where I fell in with the local party crowd. Sex, drugs and rock-n-roll ensued for the next four years. Some of the crowd were more temperate than others, and in college. I was encouraged by some to return to school to pursue my commercial art, not waste my life with the losers. I began to spend more time with them, and as time passed, some were graduating and moving on with their lives. I was kinda jealous of that, but realized hey, there is more to life than partying nonstop. At work, there were also some Christians, an older husband and wife, who would often witness to me. They were not condemning of the lifestyle they knew I lived, but held out a better way.
Around that time, infidelity was having it's effect between my mom and her husband. They separated, and she moved out to the resort town where she worked for a large hotel in the office. I also got fired from my restaurant management job, and had to take some other positions for much lower pay. I wrecked my car driving home from a party, but fortunately walked away with no injuries.
The thing to do in FL when we were not working or partying, was of course the beach, and I was really into snorkeling in that clear Gulf water. One day I was down on a sunken shrimp boat, pondering my life and next moves. I was alone that day, friends had other things to do. Observing the fish, and how different kinds did different things, it dawned on me that none of this was an accident, or evolution, there MUST be a Designer behind all of this. Soon after that "revelation", I woke up in our party apartment, amid the baggies and beer cans, stale cigarette butts, and decided you know what, I don't have to live like this, I'm going nowhere, man. I got up my nerve and walked up to the pay phone at the corner and called my mom in NC. Asked her if I could come back home and go back to school.
Well, she and my brother (who both still need Jesus, BTW

) drove down, we loaded up my junk, in their car and mine, and we drove back to NC. I got back into art school, where I met and began dating my future wife. She was a believer. As we got more serious, we'd ask each other the hard questions about life, what we wanted to do, etc. I guess I thought I was a liberal. She asked me a bunch of questions one day, and told me think you are a conservative, you just don't know it. I guess the point of including that was that I had started to see life differently. The day came that we decided we wanted to get married. We had graduated, I was working at the local TV station doing graphics and producing a car trader magazine for them, and she was working at a small ad agency. We had a little duplex, and were doing OK.
I knew that if our marriage would work, it had to be based on God. No church we called would allow us to get married there without being members. I thought that was kinda mean, but finally we found a Pastor who agreed to marry us, but only after six weeks of pre-marriage counseling. I reluctantly agreed, though I was thinking let's just do it now.
Well, during that counseling, he led me through the relevant verses, and to Christ. I got saved about two weeks before we were married. The Pastor did not have a church, the small congregation was meeting in the ballroom at a Holiday Inn across town. We called a little Baptist church outside town a few miles, and they said "Sure, we would love for you to have your ceremony in our church!" Such a contrast from the town churches we had called. I guess it was meant to be like that. We went to Pastor Will's meeting at the hotel for a while, then eventually he got the same Free Will Baptist Church where those two brothers had invited me to Sunday school in 8th Grade! We went there for a while, and eventually he got called to a church up in Raleigh, so we started going to a different church after a few months, where another Pastor Will was one of the kids from my high school! We attended there for years, until for some reason the church split. We felt burned out over all that, and were churchless for some time, during which I discovered RR-BB, then RF, and now CCF, and all of you wonderful folks.
Just this past August, on our 30th anniversary, we began attending the little Baptist Church where we were married. It has been great, and God is so Good! And long-suffering and patient.