Nine years ago I was an atheist, and had been for all of my adult life. Even though I received some religious training as a child, I never acquired a workable concept of God as an ever-present source of life. So I grew up regarding man and the universe as rationally unexplainable. And then, something so extraordinary happened to me that in a matter of less than 20 minutes, my life changed forever.
During my freshman year in college, I started to lift weights. By the time I reached my mid-20s, I began to notice a temporary but recurring pain and loss of strength in my right hand, a condition that seemed to occur after I'd been lifting weights.
Within a few years after I first noticed it, the condition began to appear more frequently. The formerly simple task of writing had become difficult and exceedingly painful. And my hand had started to shake. My grandfather, my mother, and two of my aunts had also suffered with both the shaking and the inability to write.
