Dear God: Letters to God

Sometime in my early fifties, I started writing while traveling instead of my usual reading. Over the past 20 years, I had spent a lot of time in airports and planes while living in Asia and working in 15 countries, and something had changed inside of me. I was no longer a consumer of content. I became its producer. It was inside me and needed to get out.

Around this time, my mother was aging quickly past 90, and, as she did, her faith became a bigger and bigger piece of her life, comforting her deeply during her last years, then days, then hours. The closer she got to death, the more her faith's depth and conviction seemed to double down.

My mother's faith: The depth of it truly impressed me. It also confused me and awed me. She never seemed to waver in her belief that God truly watched over her, her children, her life. She prayed without hesitation, with dedication. And she prayed as she was passing away. I hope that one day I can have the same conviction in life that she had in her faith.

I was raised Catholic and was an altar boy. Then, like many other young people, I drifted away from the Church and religion in general. Over the years that I've lived and worked in Asia, I've been exposed to many other religions, cultures, and belief systems; their different ways of looking at life impacted me. I suddenly believed in everything and nothing at the same time.

My own faith, my own spirituality, was something I hadn't confronted. I hadn't faced who I was and what I believed or didn't believe after all these years.

One day, on a plane headed back to Asia from a visit to see my mother, I was feeling a little sad. I took out my notes folder, ripped out a blank page, printed on it the word "Faith," and started writing. And that became the first letter in Dear God. What had started as a few letters became an idea and then a project to somehow better understand my own spirituality, what I've learned over the years, and what remains unresolved.

I wanted to share these letters and my own journey to inspire you to reflect on who you are and what kind of legacy you want to leave. What do you believe? What don't you believe? What kind of impact will you have left behind when you are gone? I know that there are many people who are on a similar journey and can connect with the messages in my conversations with God. My hope is to share them with as many people as possible.

Ken Stearns is a grandfather, father, midwestern boy, writer, speaker, photographer, and lyricist.

In this, his first book, Dear God, Ken tries to make sense in his own way about how all his experiences and upbringing have led him to look at life - not in a religious way but in a practical way. His collection of 48 conversations with God looks at how to live and work with ourselves first, with those closest to us, with others, and, finally, with God.