My Freshmen were
given an autobiography assignment. So
far they have presented good work. I
decided to throw my hat in the ring as well.
Here is my autobiography:
My name is Stuart Kingsley. I was born on August 23, 1985, to Warren and
Jean Kingsley. I was born in Riverdale,
Georgia, but I grew up in Jonesboro, Georgia.
Of course, I do not remember much from the first few years of my life,
but I know that my mother stayed at home to raise me. I would learn as I got older that my father
was a lawyer in Atlanta. My mother
raised me on the Word of God, and my father raised me on military history and
mythology. Thanks to my mother, I
learned how to read at an early age. She
taught me the alphabet with cards that had Bible verses, so I learned a letter
and a verse all at once. I had a wooden
puzzle of the United States, so I learned U.S. Geography. The states were different colors in that
puzzle, and to this day I think of each state as that color. The ironic thing is that I’m colorblind! Most importantly, my parents raised me in the
Christian faith. I believed that Jesus
Christ was Lord and Savior when I was four years old. I was in the bath tub, and my mother led me
in the prayer. After I had made the
decision, I went downstairs to tell my father and his friend that I had trusted
Christ. They were very happy. My father is very smart and very
well-read. I can always trust my father
to be honest with me, and give me good advice. Thanks to my parents, I had a solid
foundation that was laid for the rest of my life. On this foundation, God would build the man I
am today. He would also destroy and
remove anything I tried to build for myself on that foundation. I am the man I am today because of my faith,
my family, my education, and my relationships.
Two of the most important bricks on
the foundation have been my siblings. I
have one sister, Valerie (25), and one brother, Garrett (21). Valerie was born when I was 3. I remember my parents calling me into the
room to tell me I was going to have a sister.
I was very excited, even for my limited three-year-old
understanding. They allowed me to name
her by giving me a choice from two names.
My mother proposed Lydia, and my father proposed Valerie. I chose Valerie because of a famous song that
my father always sang. From an early
age, my sister and I fought each other a lot, but we also loved each other. When I was 7, and my sister was 4, our
brother Garrett was born. My sister and
I stopped fighting each other, and turned to fighting our baby brother. However, we quickly learned that we didn’t
want the kid to grow up resenting us, so we switched to loving him. The three of us became really close. I only have one sister and one brother, and I
love them dearly. I could write a whole
other blog post about the “SVG” experience.
Valerie is currently living in Germany with her husband, and her son. Garrett is currently a
Junior at Georgia Southern University. I
miss my siblings, and I really enjoy whatever time I get to spend with them.
When I was about four years old, I
started preschool at Reynolds Nature Preserve.
It was called Reynolds Recess. It
was taught by a woman I now call “mom” because I grew up being friends with her
son. I remember having fun there. Right down the road from RNP was the church I
grew up in, Community Bible Church. When
I was growing up, until about 1993, CBC was in Morrow, Georgia. In 1993, the church branched off into Stockbridge,
GA, and we started going to the Stockbridge branch. Now, CBC is based at the Stockbridge
location. The Morrow location was sold
to Rock Springs Baptist Church many years ago.
In about 1990/1991 Community Bible Church housed Clayton Christian School. I started at CCS in Kindergarten, and
attended through 8th grade.
Again, I could write a whole separate blog post about the CCS/CCA
experience. Maybe I will one day. What I will say about CCS/CCA is that it gave
me a solid educational foundation that would propel me into Honors status in
high school.
In 2000 I started as a Freshman at
Jonesboro High School. Initially, I was
very scared of the thought of public high school. My perception of public school was shaped by
television. Shows like Doug and Saved By
The Bell taught me that the kind of boy I was would lead to vast amounts of
humiliation. I just knew I would be
hazed, made fun of, etc. I had been
bullied at CCA for being fat and un-athletic (at a Christian school), so I
couldn’t imagine the horrors that awaited me in a Clayton County public
school. I had four of the best years of
my life at Jonesboro High School. In 7th
Grade, my mentor, Coach Gillette, asked me to be his Basketball manager. It allowed me to participate from a servant’s
role. That decision led me to sign on as
the Football and Baseball manager at Jonesboro High School. As a Freshman manager, I served the two
sports teams well, and the Senior athletes took me under their wing. I enjoyed notoriety and popularity unlike
anything I was able to experience at CCA.
My solid academic foundation supported me into a straight-A (minus a C
in Honors Chemistry my Sophomore year), AP, Honors status upon my graduation in
2004. I was also selected to attend the
prestigious Governor’s Honors Program in the Summer of 2003 with 600 other
elite Georgia high school students. I
had fantastic teachers and coaches. I
had some not so good teachers and coaches.
I was well-liked and respected by my peers. Overall, I really appreciated my time at
Jonesboro High School. My final grades
were enough to get me into the University of Georgia.
In 2004, I began my Freshman year at the
University of Georgia. I had been a
Basketball manager in middle school, a Football/Baseball manager in high
school, and as a life-long Georgia Football fan I sought to be a Football
manager at UGA. By the grace of God, I
was able to start as a volunteer equipment manager for the 2004 season. Being a UGA Football student equipment
manager defined me for the next 5 years.
I don’t remember much about my academics. I graduated with a 2.9 GPA, which sucked
compared to my 4.0+ from high school, but I didn’t care. I was able to remain on the football
team. I spent my first season only
working practices. I helped the
Defensive Line manager since he had the most gear to set up before
practices. In doing so, I got to know
Coach Garner and the Defensive Linemen.
I worked on a staff of twelve student managers and two full-time
managers. In 2005 I was with the team
when they won the SEC Championship. I
loved being an equipment manager because I got all the perks of being on an SEC
Football team without having to be hit by SEC Football players every day. Again, I could write a whole other blog post
about my time at the University of Georgia.
My Football position ended after the 2009 Capital One Bowl. I earned my Bachelors Degree in Sport
Management also in 2009. I stayed in
Athens to work with the UGA Ticket Office until I earned my Masters Degree in
Sport Management in 2012.
Enough about academics, let’s move on to
relationships. Throughout my childhood I
had many crushes. In high school I was
never popular enough to be a desirable date, so I continued to harbor
crushes. I was constantly put in the
“friend zone”. I have always been an
observer, so I gained wisdom through the experiences of others. I was always able to give good advice,
whether or not it was actually heeded.
One of my nicknames in high school was “Judge” because I was able to
mediate well. I said I was well-known,
well-respected, and well-liked, but I was never “popular”. I was constantly a big brother figure to the
girls I had crushes on. I have been
overweight most of my life, and people, especially females, haven’t been able
to see past that. I don’t blame
them. Guys are visual beings, and even
though girls swear they aren’t, I am not much to look at. In college, I was able to spend more personal
time with girls since we were on our own.
A few girls actually started liking me in return, but they never had the
same level of feelings that I had for them.
In a weird turn of events, I began having girls fall for me, yet I wasn’t
interested in them. I didn’t know how to
handle that. I felt like a jerk. In 2008, I fell in love with a girl I met in
a summer class. I pursued confidently,
and she responded in kind. We grew
together for 5 months, but she didn’t want to put a label on our
relationship. We never became official
or exclusive even though I didn’t want to pursue anyone but her. In December 2008, she broke up with me. I made a mistake, and even though it was
minor and forgivable she decided to cut me off.
That Christmas Break broke me. I
managed to enjoy the Capital One Bowl trip to Orlando, but on the inside I was
dying. When I returned to UGA in
January, I no longer had Football every day.
I no longer had classes every day.
Instead, I reported for an unpaid internship in the Ticket Office every
day through my May graduation. I was
very empty. The girl came back from
Christmas break and reached out to me.
She forgave me, and said all the things I had hoped she would say. I thought we would be okay. Then, randomly, she decided to stop talking
to me. To this day, I do not know her
thought process about me. For the next
three years I would live without closure.
To this day, I still don’t have closure from her, but life has made me
stronger. That one event, that
destruction of what I had tried to build on God’s foundation, was the beginning
of the man I am today. In 2009, Stuart
Kingsley was truly born again.
I started going back to church in
2009. All through my undergraduate
career I didn’t set foot inside of a church building. It wasn’t that I had lost my faith. I still carried my beliefs and
convictions. I just wanted to see what
the world had to offer. By the grace of
God, I came through it relatively unscathed.
During the 2006 season I really ran into the world’s arms, but that
ended after we beat Auburn and I almost ended up in a one-night stand. I realized that I was empty, so I turned back
to God. I grew some in 2007, but my
belief that I was entitled to a girlfriend in 2008 due to having enough “holy
points” was one of the reasons the destruction of that idol hurt so much. Also in 2009, I was invited to a Young Men’s
group at Watkinsville First Baptist Church.
That group was called Fight Club.
For three years that group taught me all about biblical
masculinity. I’ve written about it in
previous blog posts, so you can see it there, but this group changed my life. I ended up attending WFBC regularly in 2010,
and I miss it to this day. I got to the
point at the beginning of 2009 where I felt God say, “Okay, now that I have
your attention, do you really believe in Me?”
When I answered, “Yes”, He said, “Okay, let’s do this!” I haven’t been the same since. My spiritual life has grown
exponentially. I learned who I was in
Christ, and I learned how to be a man. I
learned how to love a woman. Eventually,
I started looking for that woman.
My time in Athens ended at the end of
2011. I moved to Arkansas to pursue an
internship with the Great American Conference at the beginning of 2012. That period of isolation was one of the worst
times of my life. I worked with good
people, and I had fun experiences, but I was so lonely. I had been on eHarmony for a year or so, but
moving away from Georgia hurt those connections. I earned my Masters Degree at the end of
2012, but the lack of job opportunities in college athletics led me back to my
parents’ house in Jonesboro, Georgia.
So, not only was I a grown man, I lived with my parents. I took a job as a paraprofessional at a local
public high school. Paraprofessionals
make a pittance, so I had no money to live off of. I made no money, and I lived with my
parents. I felt that my ability to find
my wife was non-existent. I had lost all
hope. I met a girl through eHarmony at
the start of the 2012-13 school year, and we ended up falling in love. We dated into the 2013-14 school year, and I
prayed and prepared to marry her. I
learned a lot about what it takes to be a marriageable guy. I had Fight Club training, and now I had a
woman to use that training on. Still, I
was limited by my living situation and paraprofessional salary. The girl could not take it anymore, and we
broke up in November 2013. One week away
from our one year anniversary. It’s
poetic and ironic. I was not broken or
angry about this break up. In fact, I
was relieved! I felt free. That’s a good sign that it was not the right
relationship for me. Still, I wondered how
a guy like me could find another girl who met my standards. I outlined my standards in another blog post,
so you can go read about those thoughts later.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far.
The girl and I broke up on a Tuesday night, and that Thursday night I
was out to dinner with the woman I’m going to marry in 2 weeks. God had a plan all along.
Let me tell you about my bride to
be. (I hope Bethany doesn’t mind!) I consider this the culmination of many years
of prayer, tears, arguing with God, praising God, etc. I met Bethany New in a Sunday School class
that I taught at Community Bible Church in 2013. Ironically, I was dating that other girl at
the time. Bethany and I became friends
on Facebook, and we started chatting during Marvel: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. We got to know each other through Facebook
and text messages, so after my breakup she was the woman I was speaking to the
most. We met for dinner, spent a few
hours talking, and we just grew from there.
It took about a month for me to ask her to be my exclusive girlfriend. I know that is a very short amount of time,
considering I had just broken off a year-long relationship, but like I said
before, I was ready. I did not need time
to mourn or heal from a lost relationship like I had back in 2009. I knew who I was as a man, I knew my
limitations, and my ex decided she wanted more.
That’s fine. Bethany wanted
me. So, on December 23 I asked Bethany
to be my girlfriend. On April 10, 2014,
I asked her to be my wife. And in 2
weeks, on October 4, we will be married.
I mentioned an earlier blog post about the standards I had for my
wife. My ex met those standards, but it
wasn’t a good fit. Bethany meets those
standards, and we are a perfect fit.
It’s crazy how quickly our relationship has progressed, but it’s also
very evident that this was the way God intended things to go. I do not take this relationship lightly at
all. Marriage is a life-long commitment,
but Bethany is the one I want to come home to at night. I look forward to living out my Fight Club
training through this marriage. My goal
is to reach the end of my life and present Bethany to God more holy than when
He first brought us together. I cannot
do that on my own. I am a failed and
flawed man. I have the Holy Spirit, and
a relationship with Jesus Christ though.
He is all I need. I won’t be
perfect, but He is perfect, and I’m so excited for this new adventure of
marriage. Also, God has finally paid off
my patience, and allowed me to be hired as a full English teacher at Hampton
High School starting September 24. So, I
will no longer be poor and living with my parents. I will be stable and living with my
wife. My whole life is a testament to
God’s faithfulness and provision. I
could write many more pages about this, but I will end this assignment here.
For
the Kingdom,
Stuart
L. Kingsley
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