Sometimes, I wonder—as I suppose many of us do—what my life might have been like under other circumstances.

What if I had been raised in a mostly white city or state instead of being raised in the Bay Area of California, where Asians and Hispanics abounded? Had that been the case, I might not be the kind of person who, for the most part, doesn’t focus on race (mind you, this isn’t me tooting my horn; my relatively high level of color myopia—because no one is color blind—isn’t some great achievement; it’s just who I am, and it can cut in bad ways as well as good ones, like when I don’t notice a racial slight against my wife by someone). In which case, I wouldn’t have my current wife most likely. Or children.

What if I had been born under greater or lesser economic circumstances than what I have been? What if I couldn’t conceive of being able to ever pay anything? Might I have turned out to be a hard-assed criminal to get by instead of a goofy nerd? Might I have embraced the idea of fleecing the system and using other people, like some people I have known casually and been related to? If I had been born rich, would I see people in need as worthless leeches instead of, well, people in need?

And in terms of my faith, would I still be a Christian in name only, and empty in terms of my actual walk with God, if I hadn’t met Mrs. Blue, back in the days before she had my last name tacked on with hers? That might be the biggest “what if” for me. I spent so much of my life having been born and raised Catholic, but with God almost never on my mind.

It wasn’t until I started going to church while dating Mrs. Blue (at her father’s church, mind you) that I started looking at the Bible again and really reading it and thinking about it. Viewing it with a fresh set of adult eyes and instead of just viewing it with skepticism, really looking into the underlying themes of separation and redemption and seeing how it made sense, really.

Thinking outside the box, if I hadn’t started dating Mrs. Blue, I probably wouldn’t be born again. I probably wouldn’t be thinking much about God. And for those of you out there who think it’s foolish for me to think of God as a real being, know this: I am a better person for having started my faith walk. Not a perfect person. And, frankly, I wasn’t a bad person before. People liked me and I was a pretty decent sort. I had compassion and lots of other positive qualities.

But the way I approach life is different now, and more deeply humane I think. My ability to weather the storms of life is better now that I can lean on the Holy Spirit for strength as needed. I still get knocked on my ass, but not as much as before.

Faith has given me reservoirs of love and endurance that are above and beyond whatever I had before. A person can knock my Christian faith as silly supersition all he or she wants. But faith is something that, properly harnessed, make a person something more than they would have been otherwise.

I’m thankful that I can think outside the box and only wonder what would have happened if my wife hadn’t been an example to lead me to seek out Jesus. Because there are many people who are still stuck inside boxes. I hope they can not only think their way out of them, but feel their way out through faith.

For the record, and as an afternote, yes, I can (and do) think outside the box of my own faith to consider the notion that I might be wrong about my beliefs or that there may be no God. I am inexorably drawn back to a firm grounding in my faith and in Jesus for many different reasons. But I’m not so rigid that I cannot carry opposing viewpoints and thoughts in my skull along with my long-established ones.