My Personal Testimony!

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 Forgiving Grace Ministries

Where the Turmoil Began

This is a rough journey for me, one, I have never really put to words, however in the wake of all the national tragedies and personal tragedies in the lives of friends and family, I feel lead to show that out of the turmoil can come great victories and in the midst there is a great hope. As I write this, I am forty-one years old, and have shared this story to one degree or another, verbally but never written to such a full extent.

The year was 1980 and I was just fourteen years old, my dad has just passed away form a massive coronary from a long history of drinking and smoking. Now at fourteen you could scarce find a soul that would say a boy at this age could do without a dad. There are some harsh realities that I could not deal with, as I just did not have an inventory of skills capable to deal with all this and some events just a few short years before. I guess I was twelve, when my dad had a blood clot in one of his legs and when the doctor came in to see him, I was asked to leave the room. I stepped out but I was just out of sight not out of earshot, this day I heard the doctor tell my dad that if he did not quit smoking and drinking that he would die, they would cause him to die of a heart attack, and he would not be around for his family. My dad’s words were the vilest words any child could ever hear, “I do not love anything enough to quit”. As a child of an alcoholic, as many can testify a child’s self worth is already low, but to hear a man, your own dad say he does not love you enough to live, was the day the turmoil really began.

          Back to 1980 and my dad’s death I was fourteen, and have already had a couple years of drugs and alcohol sampling. My dad passing at the end of summer and just after the beginning of the next year, mind you just a few short months later and I get shot in the eye with a BB riffle and since then have been 87% blind in my left eye. All of these days of personal tragedy with no apparent hope led me further into the realm of drugs and alcohol and pornography. All of this prompted me to act in ways that led to me being abused, by someone who I trusted and this I have only shared with very few.

The memories of my youth are not that much different from many people, the drugs, alcohol, and porn were cries for help but in those days, it seemed like no one was even listening to my cries. I found friends in a culture of drugs and alcohol, and I found a love and acceptance that I could get nowhere else, or at least I thought.

My days of abuse and being abused by age sixteen were out of control, and I was twisted and demented beyond comprehension. There was a time where I would not even step one foot out of bed without getting high. The harsh reality of life was more than I could bear on a day-to-day basis, but being the child of a very functional alcoholic allowed me the study I needed, also to be very functional in many situations.

I drugged, drank and worked, though not real steady, there was a year when I went to get my taxes done and I had to pay the preparer extra because I had thirteen different jobs, in less than one year. I love music and love to write, I always have, I used to write songs and poetry in these stupors, and many dealt with an extreme wickedness and evil, it was a vision into a very black soul. It was a vision into my own soul.

Looking back the harsh reality is, I was a zombie rushing headlong with a fevered abandon to end my life I had attempted suicide about three times by age eighteen and what will come as a shock to every parent who reads this, my mother knew very little of these things. I was an expert of pushing the envelope without getting caught, the suicide attempts came in the form of trying to slice my wrist and trying to smoke more, pop more and drink more than everyone around me. No one was going to smoke more, drink more, or pop more, drugs than me, because I was good at this, I found something that I was admired for and I was the best. For me this seems like an endless nightmare, where I am the monster and I am devouring everything, while simultaneously being devoured by all that I was devouring. Every one of my personal relationships was very superficial and that is probably an understatement. No one to trust and no one to trust me, an emotional prison of solitude, and from my view, this was to be a life sentence. Every person I met and came to know was a user and I literally went several years that I cannot even remember having a day where I was not intoxicated by one means or another. With each passing year the depth of this pit of despair, grew deeper and deeper and the light at the top got further and further away growing dimmer and dimmer with each passing day.  While all this was going on the porn use grew and became more and more of an obsession, it became so controlling and in some respects this addiction began to consume me as much or more so than all the other chemicals, I consumed on a daily basis.

 I had struggled with life daily, or more aptly, I struggled with a reason to live daily. Many women came and went and one had a profound effect.  I was about twenty-six years old with no hope, no life and no way out but death; I had numerous addictions and was dangling from the end of a very thin rope.

I was at one of my “friends” house and we had been doing drugs for hours, and I was ready to go and do other things and as I left I saw this girl at their next door neighbors house. I  thought I would like to meet a girl like that but the wonderfully cruel voice inside me (rightly I thought) let me know that a loser like me, a burnt out drug and porn addict could never be able to have any girl, let alone that one. As things go, I ended up meeting this girl as we were set up on a blind date, and though it did not go to well, it was the beginning of a change of my life forever, a change that all these years of hopelessness would never have foretold.

After our date, we exchanged phone numbers and the next day I called her and we met and talked. There was something very different about this girl and I was able to open up to her and her to me. As the days went on she told me that in order to date her I had to go to church, wow what a disheartening bombshell. My first thought was if there was a god why would he want me, after all I just need to look back as far as yesterday or earlier that day to see many things that would make me an undesirable. However, being the moral degenerate that I was, I was able to think this through and figure there could be no god after all look at my past, what kind of god would allow my life to happen.

Anyway, I went and before I knew it I began to get the idea that this girl was talking with the man up front talking because that book he was reading form seem to know a lot about me and the things I was involved in. Before I knew it I felt very strongly that this preacher was talking to me and I could not escape his words they were convicting, they caused a great upheaval inside me. This was something I just could not explain, a new shame and guilt came on me one, of more power than that which I had ever experienced before. I had experienced many episodes of guilt from the abuse, the drugs, the alcohol and the porn, but nothing like this. It was a weight that bore on me like the weight of a train, a weight that followed me in my waking hours and even my sleep. I was tortured by this weight day and night not knowing what to do and then one Sunday, I heard this man, this preacher explain that I could get relief form this. He told us that a man named Jesus wanted to save me, I knew only captivity, I knew I always wanted someone to save me from this horror that I was forced to call life. I discovered that this Jesus, he wanted to not only save me from this consuming life and haunting past, but He wanted to give me a life, an eternal life, to be lived out with him. Someone wanted me, loved me, and wanted me to be well, this was far more than I could have ever expected.

It has been about eight months since I met this girl and that light that was growing so dim began to shine with a new intensity.

To make this part of the story short, it was nine months after meeting this girl, that I accepted Jesus as Lord of my life, asked Him to forgive my sins against Him and others. I turned from my wicked life, was baptized, and was married to that girl. We have four wonderful children, and are preparing to celebrate our fourteenth year of marriage. The early years of our marriage were rough, I still struggled with drugs and porn; the withdrawal was horrible. I climbed the walls with a physical pain and desire for drugs and slipped farther into the pit of porn as I used it as an escape from the addiction when I would wake up in the middle of the night in pain.

We moved to another state in an attempt to get our life on track and give us the best financial opportunity. When we did this, I slipped away from the church and God; this went on for a few years until one day I felt an overwhelming desire to return to church. We got in a good church and as I began to grow and learn I began to once again find freedom from my pains and an understanding of why my life was the way it was and how much of a blessing I could be to others. As time went a man came to the church, his name was Thomas, he was a preacher or evangelist who traveled around the country talking to people about his life. Thomas had a profound impact on me that night and I rededicated my life to Christ. There have been many changes in my life since that night, a new desire, but not for the things and life I had but a freedom from this old life and a desire to live my life for Jesus, who was the one who laid His life down for me. I received a strange peace that night, a peace and a real sense of forgiveness and a wonderful fulfilling love. The Lord began this work in me for a purpose, which I will reveal in just a bit. He began to work in my life and I no longer felt the same desires that I had previously experienced. My life changed my attitude, people really began to notice and it was strange. Over the next four years, many changes to my life took place, many victories over these past horrors, freedom from the abuse, the addictions, a power and victory in living, a joy beyond measure. I was finally able to forgive my father for not loving me enough to want to live, and able to forgive my countless abusers, and I think more importantly myself for letting myself walk the path I walked.

Jesus, I am thankful that You are so powerful, powerful enough to make something good come out of the mess that was my life.

Peace and Purpose out of the Turmoil

My personal testimony, continued

For those of you have made it this far in my story, thank you. May you be as blessed by finishing it as I have been by living it. 

Today it is April 2007 and just about two years ago, I felt this God who saved me from this turmoil call me to proclaim His awesome power and love, His might and justice. This too has been a journey of monumental proportions; in those two-years, my family and I went through many trials. For those who read this and know our family and the whole story of the two years, you know, that story is one of awesome victory, one of many ups and downs, weeks and months where life seemed hopeless.

  I made a list from just the last two weeks before our departure from our home to a new state for me to attend Bible College it goes something like this.

From about July 31^st through August 17^th 2006 when the truck pulled out we have been attacked and lost the following

1. First we had a contract on our house and it fell through
2. the upstairs ac unit went out
3. the Heat pump downstairs which is new, broke
4. My truck failed emissions
5. In one day we lost a TV, vcr/dvd, satellite receiver and a brand new phone jack extender when the house got struck by lightening
6. My wife’s carpel tunnel surgery on her right/dominant hand has not been healing and the doctor put her in a cast, now she cannot help load the moving truck
7. We were not able to find work when we went to the town where we are moving, the job I had well let’s say it is no longer available
8. I put some parts on the truck and took it out on the interstate to “Blow it out” and now it is blowing oil everywhere, the truck may be a lost cause, (it was)
9. We have not been able to sell any of the stuff we own, to get some moving money
10. We are broke
11. My dog keeps breaking my alarm clocks

Many victories came about through all these, and many more but this was just an abbreviated list. The process was a two-year journey, but as it stands, the Lord God is faithful, we moved without the sale of our house or a job. Many people we went to church with thought we should not go, that we maybe we were wrong and that God had not called, we knew that was not the case, for I had seen Jesus be powerful in a man and I knew that He was going to be powerful to me, because His word said so.

We moved on a Thursday, by Saturday our house was sold. God has provided in so many ways that one could lose count, we have not missed a meal and work has come, I am about to finish my second semester in college and the most important thing I have learned in the past two years is that God is faithful, all the time, even when we are not. Another thing I learned is that if we want to see Jesus in a powerful way then we must get out of the boat, step out in faith and put our total reliance on Him, who is Faithful, Christ Jesus.

I have been clean for about fourteen years now and it is amazing to look back at how a life that seemed without hope, destined for a tragic end, lives in victory, a victory that could only come through the cleansing blood and redemptive work of Jesus on the cross at Calvary.

 There are so many things in life, both good and bad, pleasurable and painful, and sometimes even that which seems good can be bad and pleasurable can be painful, where the lines begin to blur we can become lost, and there is one, Jesus who stands seeking that which is lost.

If a man whose life was what mine was, can find peace, comfort, freedom from pain and guilt, find love and acceptance, then so can you!

 If you do not know Jesus, run don’t walk for we are not guaranteed not one second here, but we are all guaranteed eternity, whether it be an eternity with Him in Heaven or without Him in hell. He loves so much that He gave His life for each of us so, to pay the cost of our sins and so we would not have to spend an eternity separated from Him, who loves you and me.