About Me by Natasha Crain

http://christianmomthoughts.com/about/


Welcome to my blog!

Here’s a little about me: My name is Natasha and I’ve been married 14 years to my husband, Bryan. We have three children: Kenna and Nathan, twins age 5, and Alexa, age 3. Bryan and I met while we were both undergraduates at the University of Southern California. While in college, Bryan co-founded a company which he and his partner run to this day. I went into a career in business consulting and then corporate marketing, and got an MBA in marketing and statistics from UCLA. I currently work part time as the Vice President of Marketing for a media company.

Things I love: Genealogy, cooking, Disneyland, holidays, setting goals, traveling, reading non-fiction, USC Trojan football, learning new things, history, backpacking, camping and hiking

Things I don’t love: Elevators, having to be patient (for anything) and people drinking water loudly (really, it drives me crazy!)

…But you’re probably more interested in my faith background given the nature of this blog, so let me tell you about my spiritual journey.

I was raised as a Christian in a non-denominational protestant church. The application of my faith outside of church, however, was limited. My family didn’t pray together, have conversations about faith, study the Bible together, find ways to serve together, or worship at home together. By the time I left for college, I was more of a general believer in God than a Christ-follower whose life had been changed. Christianity was really just a belief system for me, rather than an applied way of life.

In college I rarely went to church. Fortunately, it did remain important to me to marry a Christian, and I fell in love with my (Christian) husband Bryan, who was spiritually in a very similar place at the time. After we married, we attended various churches that were theologically very liberal. I recall one Easter sermon where the pastor explained why it isn’t important whether or not Jesus rose from the dead; what is important is following his teachings and doing good works. I wasn’t a very grounded Christian at that point, but the warning bells started going off in my head.

If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, he isn’t who he said he was. That would make him nothing more than a human with just another life philosophy to take or leave. Why would it even matter if I decided to be a “Christian?”

I realized at that point that I had to either accept the resurrection as evidence that Jesus was indeed God – and live all for Christ – or abandon Jesus as nothing more than a teacher of nice things. The problem was that I didn’t know where to begin with making that decision. I had so many questions and doubts. I didn’t know how they could ever be resolved enough to commit my life one way or another.

Everything changed for us when we started attending a large evangelical Christian church teaching biblically-sound theology. I started to understand that believing in what the Bible actually says doesn’t require the intellectual leap that had been hinted at by our past churches.

With a new passion for discovering God’s Word, I started digging in deep. When I had questions, I read other biblical references and many external sources. (I have read thousands of pages on archaeology and ancient Near Eastern thought. Oh, yes. I have.) Many questions were answered and many more were opened. More importantly, I could see that there would never be a point where all questions would be perfectly answered. And most importantly, that made me no less of a Christian; all Christians, all atheists, and everyone in between has questions (if they are honest with themselves). For the first time, I gained a conviction of the truth of Christianity while coming to peace with the questions I still had. And for the first time, that allowed me to step beyond a “Sunday faith” and put Christ at the center of my daily life.

Becoming a committed Christian did not come naturally to me. I certainly wasn’t born with the gift of faith! It’s been a process, and that process is ongoing.

I do hope it will come more naturally to my kids. Quite honestly, I find it shocking that the gulf between Christian theology and applied Christian living can be so huge and yet so not obvious to someone who was raised in church. I pray that I am the hand that pulls my children across the gulf it took me so long to cross. It’s my passion now to raise my kids in a Christ-centered home. I started this blog to help others do so as well.

Welcome to my blog!