This may seem weird to admit, but I have always had a twinge of regret that I have lived a pretty straight-arrow life and don’t have any of those dark secrets that would give me a more interesting testimony. Would I be more effective for Jesus if I had “a past,” a collection of sins that I could parade as being overcome when I finally saw the Light?

Well, Google has come to my rescue.

Yesterday I googled myself. Hmmm. When you put it like that it sounds both narcissistic and perhaps a little improper. But I did.

C’mon admit it. You have done it too, right? How can you not check yourself out on the web’s premier search engine. It’s like having the opportunity to overhear what other people are saying about you…hard not to listen.

Anyway, because I have written several books and done a bit of speaking, there are quite a few mentions that come up when you type in my name. Most of the hits were reviews or mentions of my books, and my blog at ConversantLife.com was prominent among them. But right in the middle of the first or second page was something unfamiliar…

I opened it to find that it was the official record from a court case in North Dakota in 1990, where one Terry Glaspey was charged with driving while intoxicated. He got off on something that appeared to be a technicality, but it sounded to me like he was definitely guilty.

Well, I have traveled pretty extensively around these United States, but I have actually never been in North Dakota. So it couldn’t have been me. I am quite sure of that, unless I was so intoxicated at the time that I traveled across the country from my home in Oregon without any awareness or memory. I suppose stranger things have happened. But no, it wasn’t me.

But it got me to wondering. Could I co-opt this transgression and somehow claim it for my own, thereby gilding my testimony with a little more excitement and intrigue. Perhaps my namesake even committed some rather more heinous acts that could provide me with a testimony a little closer to a born-again Tony Soprano, rather than my mild little misdeeds as a kid growing up in church and attending Bible college.

Then it hit me. Sure I didn’t drink and drive in North Dakota, but I have been guilty of far greater crimes than operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol. I have been proud, greedy, uncaring, and mean-spirited. I haven’t been there for friends in need like I should, much less strangers in need. And I certainly haven’t loved God with my whole heart, soul, and mind, being too busy making sure that I looked good in the eyes of others and pursuing my own pleasure and benefit.

That isn’t only my past. It is often my present as well.

So I am back on the internet once more. This time I am googling “grace.”