How I Met God

I met God first, I think, at the young age of four.  It was in my backyard on post at Eilson Airforce Base, Alaska.  
I heard about him in Sunday school and wondered if God was actually real.  My parents took my brother and I to the chapel every Sunday.  One of our neighbors, a girl slightly older than I, told me that she believed in science, not God.  Also in Mother Nature.  I asked a lady who was teaching Sunday school how I could know if God is real.  She told me to ask God to show himself to me, and he would.
I went home and did as directed.  God did just as she said he would.
My father had given me a children's Bible and through videos and my parents reading the children's Bible to me, I was familiar with a story of Gideon (Judges 6-7) and how he set out a physical test to see if God was real.  I decided to do ask God to reveal himself to me in a simple test:  If he was real, he would accept an offering that I left for him.
I then set about making the offering.  It was a bouquet of hand-picked dandelions and clover flowers.  I took a piece of Trident chewing gum and wrapped it around them to hold them together, so God wouldn’t lose any.  I then thought he might find the gum disgusting, as grown ups did when they found used gum under tables.  So I disguised it with clover leaves.  The bouquet I left by the solitary birch tree in the back yard.  And then I waited.
The next day, I went to the tree, and the bouquet was gone.  I thought to myself surely someone must have taken it, so I told God if he was there, he would accept my next offering too.  And I went through the routine a few more times.  Each time, the bouquet disappeared.
I never told my parents about my experiment, for fear they might interfere.
Suffice to say, I told God shortly thereafter I believed in Him and would do so the rest of my life.  I also said I didn't really understand the part about Jesus because I didn't really find the crucifixion comfortable, but because I believed in God and Jesus was sent by Him, I would believe in all of that as well.  I told God I didn't understand everything in the Bible, but since He was real, then the Bible had to be real, too.
I still believe in God today, and he has revealed himself in ways to me more powerful than accepting a simple offering of flowers.
I am excited to one day see him face to face.