The subject has come up many times about my life and my experiences and every time I have shrugged it off. I have tried every way in the world to avoid writing my story. My testimony. To do so requires me to look at the horrible creature I was and I have been avoiding it longer than I care to admit. So now is the time.
Let's start with my childhood. My parents divorced before I knew what that meant, and so I never really remember having a two parent home. Both my parents loved me, I always knew that, but both were very, very, very young when I was born, and young people are prone to mistakes. I don't really know the particulars of what happened that caused them to split up, I just know that they were better people apart than together ( although secretly I always wished for the two people I loved so much to love each other and find themselves together. I always wanted that -normal- home. My father was a service man, a tank commander in the U.S. Army, his story is he was advised not to attempt to gain custody of me when my mother left. I'm sure there are two sides to that as there always are, and somewhere in the middle is the truth of what happened. I particularly don't care because it happened before I even knew what life was about. So I lived with my mother for quite a while. Until I was 5 years old. I don't remember a whole lot, and I am sure it is because I have blocked some out. I remember being a happy kid. Smiling, playing, and hating .. absolutely hating nap time. ( I had a little sister she hated it too) I do recall being left with my mothers step sister ( who I will never call my aunt) my little sister and I, for one night. During that night the woman asked us if we wanted some milk to drink. Now as you know all little kids love milk. Let me just say the delivery method left quite a lot to be desired. I was so young and while it may have ( and as you will learn later I think did indeed, effect my mental growing I do not recall it affecting me much at all, but yes, I was sexually abused.) Then a few years later, the first thing that I can really remember affecting me happened.
Of course it involved nap time. My sister and I were supposed to be sleeping but no, we decided to play, and of course for us play meant using everything in the environment as our toys. My mother had gotten some very, very nice window coverings and of course we decided that these should be used as ropes.. When we broke one of them, needless to say my mother was very, very angry. She freely admits that she was too rough with me that day. Unfortunately, it was the day that my father was supposed to pick me up for a visit. He did with his then girlfriend Debbie. For some reason ( and I do not know the particular reason, it has always made me wonder) she decided to pull off my pants and have a good look at my bare bottom, and she noticed marks where my mother had used a belt. I was 5 years old at the time, and when my Dad saw them he went a little crazy himself. Police were called, I was interviewed by some weird guy who smelled funny, and there was a court date set, etc etc.. I went to live with my Father, who at the time lived with my grandparents. I can not lie to you and say that I was traumatized because I truly do not feel like I was. I went on to live with my grandparents in their home that I felt was pretty much the greatest place on earth, and my mamaw and papaw ( what I called my grandparents) were pretty much the greatest people on earth in my eyes. There really isn't much left to say at this point, until the next turning point in my life. I started school, didn't really get along with other kids, made a friend or two, and was pretty much a terror to everyone who tried to get me to calm down and do something. Except mamaw and papaw.. When they spoke it was like I had to do what they say, I was compelled by no other sound but the sound of their voice.
When my grandfather died I was 8 years old. You know that feeling like the whole world is crashing down at your feet and you just have no idea what to do or how to do it? That's how I felt, I couldn't reconcile that I would never again see my grandfather on this plane of existence. I wanted so badly just to hear his laugh, or share a “June Apple” with him once again. I didn't exactly know how to cry, so I bottled it up and tried to go on with my life. I grew up in a very small area of Tennessee known as Walland, and church was always a part of my life, I remember going to church and being told to sit still, be quiet, just listen. I was involved with the youth at the church, some of which were my family but I never fit in with them. I was different. Trust me, being different at that young of an age can really... really be difficult. Very few people saw the abuse that was laid on me by the other children, those that did said something and were not believed, one of them actually left the church because of it. The rest turned their heads and went on, I was the bad seed. It was around that time in my life when I figured being the bad seed wasn't exactly a bad thing. I started to embrace it, and enjoy it. There were few times when I would let myself come out of my shell, and mostly those times were around my Great Aunt Roxie, or My Great Aunt Mae, who always made me feel like I was loved no matter what I did or didn't do.
Sometime around that time I asked a cousin who I will not name openly to teach me to play basketball. He said he would have to think about it and after a while he came back and said “ I will teach you to play basketball but there is a price” The price was for me to perform fellatio on him after each lesson. Wow that was a twofer, I got to learn basketball, and feel important. After all, that cousin had said that my father had made him do it when he was my age. If Dad did it how wrong could it be? My Dad was great.... So that lasted for about two or three weeks, it was over, no more basketball lessons and no more payments.. Funny, I still don't know how to play basketball very well...
To understand, I don't remember a time in my life when I was not interested in sex, this is probably because of the “milk” incident if psychiatrists are to be believed, but I can not remember a time when I went through the stage of “girls are icky” heck I didn't think anyone was icky as far as that went. So I was not a pleasant person, I was deep into depravity and lust. At school I turned hated remarks from everyone into some sort of sexual innuendo, I was in a lot of trouble. I began to hate everyone and everything that wasn't part of my family. That hatred would give rise to my life and give it a purpose for a long time. Church was horrible for me, I didn't fit in with the people my age, worse I knew I was a sinner for I had done with my cousin ( and he wasn't the only cousin who knew about it, or even had it).. I could not reconcile myself with God, because I did not know how. Everything in my core knowledge told me homosexuality is wrong but look at what I had done. How could God forgive that? What's worse, the door was open to me.. I not only liked it, I wanted it.. I relished it, I was good at it.. I made people happy... I was also a very accomplished liar, yes by the time I was 8. I knew how to avoid saying things to get myself in trouble and I knew how to say things to get others in trouble. At least with those I trusted anyway. I knew how to manipulate things. My mother loves to tell the story of her having to come to school and bring me clean clothes because I had urinated on the ones I had. I will share the story with that as it explains two things about me..
The school I went to should have been shut down years before it finally was. The building my classes were in had holes in the walls of the adjoined bathrooms. A girl I liked ( who I am still friends with now) would synchronize trips to the bathroom with me, not that we had to go, but because we could “show” ourselves through the holes. Apparently a teacher picked up on or synchronization and while she may not have known why she did think it was a disruption and informed us we would both be paddled after lunch.. I decided that I was not going to have it hurt and I asked to be excused to the restroom before the paddling ( so I could pad my britches) that did not happen. I was told that after the paddling I could go, not before. ( assumedly so that I could not pad my pants.. haha) I made up my mind right then I was not going to get paddled. So as I stood out on the porch of the building and was told to bend over, I wet myself. No teacher is going to paddle a child that just wet themselves, they called my mother and she brought me clean clothes. I did not get a paddling. This story explains, even at such a young age that I was interested in sex, and that even at a young age I knew how to manipulate situations to get what I wanted. Something that later in life people would refer to as a type of super power for me.
No one at that time knew that I had other interests as well, I had already begun smoking my fathers cigarettes behind his back, and I had begun stealing from stores I went too. I made a game of it almost, I was good at it. In my mind the best at it. I never got caught, not by anyone. I would continue to steal from stores stuff that I wanted up until I was in my 20's. I never got caught. Things in my life were tumultuous and they only got worse when my father married his long time girlfriend ( the one who had inexplicably looked at my bare bottom when I was five) who was 10 years older than me. I did not like the woman, what's worse is I knew my papaw had never liked her, I knew my grandmother who had started to lose her mental faculties at this time didn't like her, and I flat out hated her. Who was this woman trying to be my mother who was not more than 10 years older than me, for that matter, who was this woman who happened to be the first woman I ever saw fully naked. ( A story I have not disclosed)
I was ripped, and yes I do say ripped, because in my heart my home was with my grandmother, from my home and forced to live in her small, roach infested, smelly house. Where once I had free reign to anything I wanted to eat, I was put on a diet. There were things in the refrigerator that I could not eat. Where once I had not known what it was like to be hungry, I could no longer eat. Where once I had lived a life allowed to read books or go play in the woods, here I was restricted. I could go no further than the front yard. The woods were no place for a child, and I could not stay inside and read, that was forbidden. Where once I had privacy when I was in the bathroom now I had none. She would wait until I was in the bathroom to come in to put towels away, or she would rush in when I was in the bath tub ( because I could not take showers) I had no peace, I had no privacy, and after the first big argument at the house I had no door. My father had picked me up and slammed me through it. I got to see a side of him I did not know existed when he was with her. He became her enforcer. Whatever she said was right, and whatever I said was wrong. This was the case no matter what. I had not only lost my home, I had lost my freedom as a child, and I had lost my best friend. The man I wanted to emulate, the person I wanted to be, the man I loved with all my heart. He became not only distant, but very abusive. I had broken noses, broken shoulders, bruises, everything. Whenever I did something Debbie did not like she would twist my ear til it bled, or grab and scratch at my throat, if I made any move to defend myself from malicious attacks, she yelled for my father who like a white knight came charging in to defend his wife. ….. Uhhhh.. What about his son?
It didn't stop there though. Debbie always had her friends around, and many times they would move into the house with us. I lost the room I had there, and was forced to sleep on the couch until my father boarded up the back porch and made a psuedo room out of it for me. Debbie who had seen me naked more times than any woman not my mother or wife should have began to make jokes, the cruelest I can imagine for a young man growing up. She would wait until we were in front of her friends, or with a group of people and she would start making comments about the size of my genetailia. ( remember my previous interest in sex.. imagine how that must have felt) School was no respite, I loved going to school to get away from her, but when in school I did not share commoradorie with people. I was the one that no-one liked, and I really honestly didn't like them. I made few friends there, and had few people to talk too. At home I suffered abuse from Debbie, and abuse from her father, and if I lashed out, abuse from my father. No one in this world can hit as hard as my father could. Even when things were good, they weren't. Debbie's other favorite past time besides making fun of my genetailia was punching it.. It became a game for her and her friends. I was punched, kicked, and mocked all in one sitting. “It's so small he can't even feel it” No, I felt it, I just knew that if I made any move to defend myself that I would have to deal with the 6'1” 400lb monster my father could turn into. Of my father, I only saw glimpses every now and then of the man I once knew, it seemed that he had become some extension of her, and that he hung on every word she said. I remember writing once in a school journal that I thought my step mother was a witch who had cast a spell on my father.
I became the first “Goth” East Tennessee had ever seen. I hid my scars well, I hid my pain well, and I went to school and got into fights, and hated every one and every thing.. Except learning.. That I loved. I stopped attending church, truthfully it made me sick how everyone pandered around Debbie and treated her so nicely.. Could they not see the person she was? Why did they let that happen? Why did my father let it happen. My Grandmother had lost so much of her mental faculties at that time that even the powerhouse who always protected me, who I did tell, would be angry about it for a time and then forget it. At school, At the Sherriff's office, everywhere... I was the liar, Debbie and My Father were perfect parents. Perhaps I was just jealous of her. She was taking the attention I wanted from my dad.. they said. Meanwhile I was residing in the closest approximation I can imagine to hell. I tried to talk to some family about it, but it seemed no use. The people I thought would protect me, seemed not too. During this time my mother had a lot going on in her life, Im sure had we talked and had she known everything that was going on she would have fought for me, but then again.. My Dad was there.... Who could I trust? God? Certainly not. He let this happen to me, what's more Debbie was in church every Sunday morning so she was a good Christian. Oh how I hated that woman. As I grew older and my grandmothers health weakened, I began to run away from home. Always hoping that I never had to go back to that little shack with Debbie, or sleep at her parents house on a couch. It's surprising that I never tried drugs, to this day I do not know exactly why I didn't. It was my teenage years when Debbie got the idea in her head that I was a drug addict. She told everyone she knew that I was a drug addict that she knew I was on drugs. So the rumours began. She also told everyone horrible stories about how -I- abused her. How she was scared to sleep at home with me for fear I would rape her. (as if) This is why she had to sleep at her parents house. So she could feel protected.. Why could I not feel protected? Several times I remember crying and actually cursing God. How could he let this happen to me?
On my 17th birthday I was under house arrest. I could visit my grandmothers and even sleep there if it were ok with my father. Who always took his orders from Debbie. I was on probation and I could not do anything else. On my 17th birthday, after my grandmother went home, I asked simply to spend the night with her. I wanted to be with my grandmother on my birthday. Debbie would have none of this. We were going to her fathers house to sleep while my Dad worked his third shift job, there was no other choice. So I made a choice. I ran away. This time to my friend April's house. A refuge in the Storm that was my life, was April. She had been my best friend since 7th Grade. When I showed up at her door, soaking wet, and told her my story she sat me down and calmed me down and said her mom would be home soon to work things out. Her mom, not knowing the things that went on in my home life, made the best decision she could, she called her friend and neighbor who was a sheriffs deputy and asked him for help. I walked out of their living room in handcuffs, and was sent down town. Debbie had taken out an unruly warrant for me. That was my first arrest. I was pulled into my probation officers office and after a very tense discussion I said that I could either go to my grandmothers or to my mothers, but I would not go home with them. So he gave me a choice.. I could either go home with them, or I could go to juvenile hall.. The choice was mine. I turned, fiery eyed to the probation officer who was not on my side, and said.. “ I will go home with them, but I will not go to her parents house.” So I was taken to juvenile hall. My first call was too my mother, the second was to tell the jailors I did not want to see my father.
It was at this point that I met a prison minister who came by with a bible, it was called “Free on the inside” and witnessed with me and he prayed with me. I was moved out of jail into a psychiatric ward for a week due to my “suicidal poetry”, and then marched back into the jail, to await my court date. To tell you that it was pleasant would be the worst lie in the world. I hated every moment of it. As I spoke to the Guardian Ad Litem who was my “lawyer” of sorts he said that the case against me was basically bunk, and that he could have me free within minutes of being in front of the judge. He urged me to plead not guilty. At that point I made another decision in my life.. I decided I would not, no, could not go back to live with Debbie. I plead guilty. I was moved into states custody and the promise of a nice, clean, boys home not far from anyone I knew where I could have fun and be a kid and enjoy life.... That did not happen.. I was moved to Oak Ridge, far from where I grew up, in a town I hated, in a boys home that felt awkward and scary. So far from any one I called friend, and so far from the family I still loved very much I fell into a deep.. deep depression.. The first night I was to stay at the boys home, my bunk mates game back. Older boys, who found me too fat for their liking, or too ugly, or too stupid, or too country.. Or something. I was hounded endlessly by them, talking to the house parent made no difference. I begged to be moved out of that room but was told there were no others.. So as the lights went out... I heard them laughing at me and mocking me and I screamed at them.. “WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE.. DO YOU WANT TO SEE ME BLEED?” They answered unequivocally yes.. Apparently not knowing the lunatic they were talking too. I went into the bathroom we had access too, I took apart a disposable razor and I walked back in with the blade in my hand and cut my wrists in front of them. I guess they were horrified... Either way the house parent was awakened and I was moved to another place to sleep, but I could no longer stay there.. The next morning my case worker from DHS came to pick me up. I had won another battle.
I don't know if you know this or not, but it's really hard to place a child into the system if they have a history of mental illness ( which I did) or a suicide attempt. No one wanted to deal with that kind of child and after HOURS of trying to find a place my case worker was at her wits end. My mother who had been there to visit me talked with her and it was agreed that while I was still in states custody, I would be allowed to stay in the care of my mother until another option was found. ( I did not know at the time that the option would be a long term rehabilitation center). So I spent the next few weeks with my mother. It was a glorious time in my life, my mother was not abusive in the least. I had freedom, I had rules but they were not intrusive. I could talk on the phone, watch tv, stay up all night. As long as I followed the house rules, and paid my mother the respect she was owed. Her boyfriend Chris, became like a second father to me, and a best friend. Someone I dearly loved. I got to spend Christmas with my mother. On December 26th I was to be placed in my next placement. No one had told me what that was... I had a feeling it was something bad.. I even asked if it was lakeshore ( the state mental home) as I left my moms house with her in tears.. It was not lakeshore. It was Penninsula Village. A long term rehabilitation center for children who were treatment resistant. My freedom was gone.. in an instant.. On the first night there, one of the counselors told me I was a self absorbed narcissist.. I responded “Thank you” I resented being sent here. This was no group home, this was worse than jail.. I spent a good four months of my time there, without my clothes, in hospital gowns sitting in the day room floor because I had lost, due to my behavior, even the respite of a cubicle to sleep in.
I won't disclose any of my treatment there,although I will say this was the first place to actually recognize that I had a disorder, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but I do recall one specific thing. The same man who told me I was going to be a lifelong mental institution patient, once said to me.. “Christion, if you could get away from your family, you might have a chance.” That stuck with me. So when I got out I stayed as far away from my father and stepmonster (as I called her) as I could. I lived with my mother until an argument sent me walking from Knoxville, TN to Walland Tennessee, to the only place I had ever called home.. To my Grandmothers house. It was a long walk.....
I could not stay there though, it was unhealthy for me to be there with my grandmother, it was decided I was a strain on her, and that I was too much for her to handle. After all, I was this mental patient who abused Debbie so horribly, what would I do with that old woman? So I spent more time than I care to count not knowing exactly what I was going to do. I stayed with my grandmother some, stayed with my mother some, and moved pretty much back and forth. I had however, secured a job. A good factory job. I worked night shift, with the stepmonster, and got to listen to her tell everyone how horrible I was to her. At one point several of my co-workers asked me how I could stand to be in the same room with her. They apparently could see her lies.. I just went about my business. My uncle had decided that since I had came this far in my life, he would “take a chance on me” and that I could come and live with him. He also helped me secure a car. A 1986 Toyota Celica, that I thought was the greatest vehicle in the history of mankind.. Unfortunately... My job at Tennessee plastic molding ended when I took a voluntary lay off. I had been hurt, and had just returned from a back injury when my supervisor talked with me. I was told that volunteer lay offs would be the first to be hired back. Did I want to go ahead and take it.. I wanted to be hired back after the buy out so I said sure. That.. Did not go over well at my uncles house.....
The day I came home and told them, he came in from work and demanded I get off his computer, I could tell at that moment he was very, very, mad. He told me quite simply that if I had no job I had no home. I decided to take my car and go that very moment. I packed up all that I had in it, and began living out of it, when I could not convince my mom to let me stay with her. It wasn't long until my old habbits came crashing back.. I stole gas, I wrote bad checks, I went anywhere I could to find a place to rest. Of course with all this, my sexual deviation had came back, and I had decided that it was finally time I had some release.. So I called a friend who had told me about a girl who would do “anything” for a pack of smokes. He gave her the first pack of smokes.... for me.. as a gift.. The second time I was to see her, I had not slept in three days. I had went to the gas station in my car that I had been living in and bought “protection” and of course the pack of cigarettes that was required payment. I guess God had a different plan for me, because as I went to pull out of the gas station ( after being motioned out by a lady) I was t-boned. What I remember about the wreck was hearing someone say “OH MY GOD, HE'S DEAD” and hearing someone praying. I laughed in my head.. Praying.. how stupid... Then I blacked out for a short time. My Uncle came to pick me up, the same one who had helped me get the car. The car I had not payed a dime on since losing my job. I remember how mad he was.. He said to me, as I slowly walked to his car, “hurry up, you are wasting my time, and what about that poor woman you hit, you wasted her time too, with your carelessness.” When we got to his work he called my father and told him to come get his son, and that he did not want to even look at me. Understand, my uncle to this day is a deacon in the baptist church I went to growing up, you can imagine how that made me look towards God. I spent some time in a motel, that my father paid for, then I had to leave that.. I called the only person I knew.. I called April.. She once again provided a respite for me. Her boyfriend ( someone who I had fought with nearly constantly in school) would let me stay with him until he went away to college. It wasn't long before we agreed I would go with him to Nashville, to start a new life..
Nashville was a great experience, I thought.. A chance to escape all the things I had been in the past, the preconceived notions of who I was. My bipolar disorder was a problem, I could not hold a job, but Danny patiently held his temper and let me live with him, even leaving the apartment in my name after the two years when he was done with college. It did not last long.. It wasn't long until my failure to pay my bills landed me homeless once more. Of course I had excuses.. I got fired for something dumb.. Even so much as blaming God for it. God doesn't like me because I wear black.. That's ok I don't like him either. So more hatred towards anything Christian, any principle that said my lifestyle was wrong. Any thing that said I was bad, I hated it.. How could anyone judge me, no one knew me. I was just that kid in black that no one liked. Oh the excuses I had. I slept with as many women as there were months in a year, and repeated that more times than I care to count. I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, I drank like a fish.. Finally confirming Debbie's statement that I was a drunk. This was all ok, because I was a new person in Nashville, no one could pass judgement on me. I slept with under age girls, heck it was once said that it didn't matter as long as it was female.. That was a lie too, my sexual depravity did not end at the female of the species.. Of course I could look down in judgement on everyone else, because I had never done drugs. Alcohol and cigarettes were acceptable. Any from of illegal substance was not. It was in Nashville that my next life adventure began.
Before we get to that, I have to interlude into the circumstances surrounding my only child. Circumstances had left me ( of my own device I assure you) with no where to go, and so I headed back to East Tennessee, where I knew someone would take me in. Sure enough my sister convinced her father and her stepmother to take me in so that I was not homeless.. While there my old appetite for sex came back and I began looking for an outlet. I ran into an old friend who I had always wanted, she said she was taken but introduced me to her friend. I will not go into this girls psychological make up , but let me suffice it to say, she was dumb.. Not just a bit ignorant, she was down right stupid, and I was only able to be around her while I was drunk.. Still she was easy to manipulate and I did. I took her out of her parents home and had her move in with me ( remember I was staying at my sisters parents home). After a while the arrangement was not good, and we were told to leave, and so we set out to have a place of our own. A cute little couple moving into an apartment. She was abusive. More times than I care to count did I suffer her punching me, and that was just the physical, the things she did and said mentally were worse. My sister saw some of it, and boy did she hate Chrissy. I remember holding my sister back the day Chrissy attempted to run me over with her car. That did not end well.. Still I tried. I mean this was it for me. The last chance I had at happiness, then we found out she was pregnant. She went to work with Debbie at a place in Townsend. I thought everything would be ok.. Then one day I got a call that she was staying at my fathers house, and that she would not be coming back to the apartment. Ever. Later I found out that everyone I knew had been told horror stories of the abuse I had wreaked upon her. How I had beaten her senseless while she was pregnant with my baby. Once more down the rabbit hole I guess.. Oddly enough, I still have never once hit a woman in my life. I refuse to do so. Dejected and lost.. Unable to know what to do I decided that the child she carried was not mine, after all she must have cheated on me. I had cheated on her, so of course she had cheated on me. ( nice logic huh?) This was confirmed after the baby was born when my sister saw her out and asked to see the baby and she said in no uncertain terms he was not mine. Done with that I moved on with my life. I contacted a girl I had known from Nashville, one of the under age girls I had, had relations with, who as chance would have it was now 18 years old. We kept in constant contact and finally, she agreed to be my wife. To move into my little apartment with me and to have a life. She did not, I think, know what she was in for.
Our marriage lasted 9 years. For the first few it was great, we fought, outlandish fights .. battles that went on and on, she even threw a sword at me once, and cut me. HAHA.. That passion was met with even more passion and we made it work. For a long time. I tried to be back with my family and for a while everything seemed ok. My grandmother passed away shortly after we were married, my father passed away a few years after that. My family though, had loved my wife, even though she was black, that sort of thing never mattered. It mattered to Debbie, who never missed a chance to point it out but to my family Gena was the thing in my life that would turn it all around. .She was my savior. Behind closed doors though, my sexual depravity turned our marriage into a hell for her. There were threesomes, and other things. Unmentionable things. The times when I was in church were good, the times when I wasn't were horrible. Somewhere I had decided that I was a Christian, but I did not agree with going to church, churches have rules.. and busy body people.. Finally, the Godlessness of our marriage, and my own depravity became too much for her. She began to have dissasociation seizures, she fell deeper into the world of pot, and I fell deeper into the world of “Im better than you” and it finally came to the point where I knew we were hopeless. Both of us had finally lost our will to fight.
I remember that I didn't pray much then, but when I did it was always that God would save my marriage, that God would not leave me alone in this world, that God would not let Gena leave me too. Until one night, I went to bed and I prayed. I said : “God, as a Christian, and a horrible one, I have to let your will be done. If Gena would be happier, if it is what you want in my life, then let her leave.” The next morning she woke me up with a note telling me she did not want to be married anymore. There had been discussion of time apart, that was not what she needed, she needed to not be married to me anymore. So what did I do? I got drunk, and decided to kill myself. Took a bunch of pills, and ended up in the hospital. ALONE. My life in shambles, I didn't know what to do. My friend Christopher came and stayed with me at the hospital, and then when it was time for me to go home I went to his parents house. They did everything they could to help me, but everyone can only go so far. I was a drain on their supplies, I was giving them nothing. They were already supporting their son, they could not support me as well. So I had to go. I did. A landlord, I had lived with agreed to let me stay in one of his places. (after I called everyone I knew to ask if I could stay with them) if I could find a roommate. I went to live in the old house my then ex wife and I had lived in. Still not seeing that God had blessed me. I found a roommate, bad experience. Then I found a couple more roommates, more bad experiences, and finally Dave let me move into the old apartment I had lived in under the stipulation that I would pay him as much as I could each month. Not even half of the rent that was due on the place. He paid the electric bill, and even bought me food a couple times. Until one day he said to me. “Christion, my family is not doing well, I have to start making money on this property. I wish I could help you but I simply can not do anymore for you. You need to find some where else to go. I had exhausted all my abilities. I had no where. I had cut off from my family again when I had noticed that they had posted on my exes facebook page that they were praying for her. Where were my prayers? I had all but alienated Christopher and his family by my simple hindrance of staying there. I could not return. My mother could not help me. Where was I to go? This time I didn't even have a car to sleep in. At my very rock bottom.. With no other choice, and no other thing to do. This time .. I hit my knees.. Right there in the kitchen of that apartment, I cried out LORD HELP ME!!!!.. I prayed for his hand to work in my life and for him to help me out of this situation. Something I had never done before. It was not five minutes later when my phone rang, and it was the apartment complex I now live in. They told me they had an apartment for me, and that I could be in it by the end of the week. If I could pay the rest of the months rent. Dave, the landlord, ended up paying that..
I hated government housing. How far I had fallen, but I knew one thing for sure. God had been the one to give me this. God had given me this home, and it was high time I start paying attention to that. A few months after living here I met Jenny, a very large woman, in a wheel chair. A few months later I met her boyfriend. A man named Will. We hit it off immediately.. They invited me to Bible Study with them, but I refused. I was not all about that.. I was a solitary Christian. Finally, after weeks, and weeks of hounding me.. I agreed to go. It was, to say the least amazing. After a few weeks Will and I decided to start a church. We held service on Saturday, bible study on Wednesday, and “happy hour” ( which was a time to be drunk on the word, not on the things of this world) on Fridays. We would go out into the world together and simply talk to people and witness to them. I can not tell you how great it felt to be a part of a Godly movement. Things happened, and Pastor Will as he had been called for longer than I remembered, began to back slide, becoming a wretched beast of a thing that no one wanted to be around. He became consumed with lust. The church ended there. Once again I was without church, without Godliness in my life.
Stuff happened, lots of stuff happened and barely any of it mentionable. God continued to move in my life, and I was happy for a long while, but one thing Pastor Will said to me was that I needed to forgive people that had wronged me in the past. I said, selfishly, when they ask for forgiveness I will forgive them. An argument sprung up on Facebook, that brought a cousin of mine back into my life. As we argued I heard Pastor Will in my head telling me I needed to forgive him. I had never done that. So I did. In my heart. Im not sure if I ever told him I did, but I did it in my heart. We remained friends on Facebook from that day on. It was through him that I was re-united with my cousin Johnny. After struggling since Pastor Wills decline and then death with Godliness I saw his name on my forgiven cousins page and I sent him a friends request. I wanted to get back in touch with him, but more than that. God told me that I needed to ask him to let me go to church with him one day.
After 10 years of not talking to that cousin, who was shielded from all the things of my past and only knew me as my fathers son, my grandmother's grandson. I messaged him and asked him if I could go to church with him. The response was yes. I have been delivered now, from Godlessness in my life. I have a church that I can truly say I am happy with, I have family back in my life, and I have love. No one can ever tell me God is not real, No one can ever tell me God does not care. Every time I have ever let myself ask him to aid me, to be there, to comfort me. He has. Many have asked me for proof God exists. Read back over this, look at the life I have lead, the things I have done, and know that God saved me. God gave me a new life in him, a family to love me, and a home church, what's more look at the times in my life that God provided for me even as I cursed him. Don't tell me God doesn't love unconditionally.. I know better. All it takes.. Is just a little talk with Jesus!
