AMAZING GRACE
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
It’s been over a year since my last blog on The Sword At Central. To be frank I am not a blogger by nature and would not continue to write one were it not for the fact that the only thing I feel I can do in life is fly an aircraft and write. Since flying for God is not an option for me at this point in my life the only way I feel I can serve Him is to put some of the stories of my life in print with the intent that these self disclosed and very personal malfeasances of my past, and their outcomes, will show you, the reader, that in this world there is a greater good that permeates the very fabric of our human existence, and that this “good” is the Lord’s presence.
Very few of us are qualified to write blogs such as this, but not because we are better than others; conversely it is because we are much worse. I am a man both blessed and cursed due to my rather chaotic and detritus strewn life. My curse has been having to live much of my life, somewhat like a blind man, stumbling and feeling my way through it, with lots of bad choices and the consequences thereof . The blessing has been having a God who brought me safely and successfully from that hell. My close Christian friends have told me that due to the extremes of my life I have a responsibility to tell others what my faith has done for me in the belief that I can give hope, encouragement and a certain kind of sustenance to them (others). But that responsibility implies that I am able to write effectively enough to promote God’s word. When the Lord keeps whispering upon your soul, ‘You need to write and convey the trials and tribulations you have experienced with such clarity, passion, and conviction that it puts a Christian seed upon the hearts of others...” ; well, it’s an scary responsibility. I don’t want to disobey God, but yet I don’t think I have the ability to write well enough to get my word out, at least not with any efficacy. However, when you feel this steady push from the Lord and look back at all that He has done, it’s really difficult to ignore “That Call”.
Whether of not I can write well enough to effectively promote my faith and cause a change in a person’s belief system is a question that perseveres in my heart even as I type this; you will have to be the jury. My inner protests while in prayer to God regarding His will (this assignment), were met with a recurring vision of the Biblical verse from Exodus, chapter 4 verses 10 through 12. (10 Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue."11 The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? 12 Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."). Additionally, when I fixated in prayer upon my lack of faith in any skill related to writing, ie the actual conveyance of His word, God came to me in prayer with the following: 1 (Corinthians 12 Spiritual Gifts) 1Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3 Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit. 4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. 7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues,[a] and to still another the interpretation of tongues.[b] 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines. So…no matter where I went in private protesting, the Holy Spirit was there, gently ushering me along to begin writing again.
Earlier I alluded to the fact that I am a loser and indeed I know I am. I was born a loser, we all were. We were born with original sin, committed by Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden and the effect of that disobedience has been passed down from father and mother to son and daughter for eons. Were it not for the Grace of God, and the fact that He allowed His son, Jesus, to die for ALL of us and to wash away that original sin and others, assuming we believe in Him as our Lord and Savior, none of us would have any hope.
At 50 something years old, my belief in God is steadfast, though it wasn’t always this way. Given the dysfunction of my parents, their personality disorders and general lack of any real parenting skills, and the anarchic life in which I was raised, I should have been a statistic on some social workers’ or parole officer’s data sheets living my life in and out of jail, or dead from a drug overdose or, similarly, in and out of rehab or both. Only by the Grace of God am I what society would call successful.
When you mention that you come from a dysfunctional family in a group of people, 9 times out of 10 a few people in that group will say, “Yeah me too!” and then want to immediately launch into their hard luck soliloquy. But, conversely, a couple of people in that group will say a bit drily and sarcastically “Yeah so what, we all come from dysfunctional families, get over it.” And ya know in a Biblical view they are right, we are all messed up. However, just like there are degrees of hot and cold, good and bad, richer or poorer, there are also degrees of dysfunction and in some family’s veins/vanes it runs more extreme than others….
I had many dreams, like all children, while growing up, big dreams that I would hope to fulfill. I had what you could call desires of the heart and though I didn’t know how I would achieve those desires, I flippantly lived my life as if what I wanted would be delivered to me easily enough.
In Psalm 37:3-5 (New International Version) God tells us how, in a way, how we can get those desires answered: 3 Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. 4 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this.
Now you cannot rest on just this passage alone to bring you what you may want. In fact, it is not “what we want” that is the gist of this, it is what the Lord wants and He brings you the desires because you are doing what He wants. The verses from above are not stand alone words, but, when combined with the totality of what the Lord teaches us through reading, knowing, and living through the Bible and by having a serious, personal one-on-one relationship with Jesus (a committed prayer life is what helps in developing that one on one friendship) by accomplishing His will and bearing fruit, he rewards us with certain desires.
When we are young what the Lord wants is not what is first and foremost on most of our minds, it is what we want. If you come from a “normal” family, your physiological/emotional wants, needs, and desires are metered out and learned/taught “naturally” by loving and nurturing parents in a certain way so as to produce a persona that understands delay of gratification and how to deal with the “normal” stress, trauma, and emotional pains of life as you mature and how to set and live with proper boundaries. The child from this family knows, as they mature, how to put the needs of another, at times, before his/hers and if raised Biblically how to honor thy Father, the Lord above all. The same cannot be said of a child from dysfunctional setting. They live their life literally for the moment. They don’t know from one day to the next when the bad times will end so when there is a period of “good, whether it be food, a friend, a vacation, or any other type of ‘good deal” they tend to go way overboard when dealing/relating to it; they don’t understand delay of gratification, or boundaries or emotional separateness, and just the simple understanding of dealing with pain as a way of growth; all of this is foreign to them simply because they are led by example and hence have no role models. In some cases one parent is bad and the other good, and that can temper the damage. But if both parents are whacko well then this child has no real escape, unless it’s with a more sane relative. In a very real way a child of this environment, though an adult on the outside, he or she is still a child on the inside…their only need and desire tends to be to please and comfort that hurt little boy or girl deep down inside their psyche.
My father was an alcoholic for all of my life while I lived at home and it’s not a stretch to say he was drunk for 360 out of 365 days of the year. My mother, though not a drinker, was at best manic-depressive, at worst bi-polar (if you could actually think was is worse/better than the other) and both were extremely self-centered and narcissistic. There was no such thing as a normal day in my house while growing up. My father, if not flying, was drinking and my parent’s were constantly fighting with each other. I can’t begin to tell you how many times the police came to our house to settle some bitter domestic squabble between them; it was embarrassing to the point I rarely ever invited friends over to my house, nor, due to rumor and the proverbial grapevine, did they invite themselves.
My mother, sisters, and I were terrified of my father physically, however, in all of my life he actually only hit me just once; and that was all it took because the threat of physical abuse was implied with his extreme temper and the rage associated with his tantrums were enough to make you do whatever he asked. In one extreme case many years ago, and during a violent argument, my father began to strangle my mom. I was under my bed, hands over my ears trying to shield my brain from the reality of the hell in which I was immersed, when I heard the physical struggle going on outside my room. I raced out of my room to see the stark look of terror in my mom’s eyes as she turned blue while my father was strangling her; I put a pair of scissors in his back to keep him from killing her. Though they didn’t go in very far, they drew blood and it did stop him. I was only 6 or 7 years old when that happened, but the emotional effect was devastating and to this day I can still see my mother’s terrified face. Although they each promised us profusely sobbing kids (I had 2 older sisters) they would change and things would get better, they/it didn’t.
When not yelling at each other, my mother and father were harshly, and I mean words no child should hear, verbally abusive to each of us kids. Unfortunately, that is not where it ended. They were very neglectful in every sense other than to feed and clothe us; all of our emotional security, psychological, or physical (affection) needs had to be found elsewhere as they simply did not have time to personally take care of their own children. A therapist, whom I saw in my 40s, when my world was caving in, said that the neglect from my parent’s was one of the worst cases she had ever seen in all of years of psychology. (And I say this not for sympathy, but I am leading somewhere with all of this, so hang on, it’s not a pity party I am wanting you to be a part of!) This neglect came with consequences as my oldest sister baled when she was 17, leaving home before high school ended, marrying a soldier and moving to Hawaii. The second oldest, 2 years behind her older sister, met a low rent boyfriend upon barely graduating from high school, married him, and then they moved into a trailer a few miles from home. Neither of my sisters had what you would call decent morals, nor were they Christians in the normal sense of the word, I am sure they thought and think, they are (only God knows their heart).
We did not attend church regularly when I was growing up. The usual church days were Christmas and Easter, however, as odd as it seems, my mother did make my middle sister and I go to Sunday school while we were in 5th, 6th and 7th grade. I always thought it odd as they never went themselves. In fact my mother had a bitter hatred towards all non-Catholic Christians, but she never went to a Catholic church while I was growing up. And indeed she held true to her anger and contempt for all non-Catholic church goers, both parishioners and clergy alike, to the degree that when I lost a child in my 40s, she adamantly refused to be in the same house as the associate pastor of the non-denominational church I attended.
My parents, as I said were extremely narcissistic. That diagnoses was made many years later when I attended therapy after the loss of my previously mentioned child and after my father met the therapist. Narcissism is a horrible personality disorder with which to be diagnosed, and sadly, when a person is diagnosed with it, they will most likely think the shrink is wrong and will not agree with his/her diagnoses and most likely stop seeing them. For this reason, there is a failure to understand the mental health issue, and embrace the truth, and it is almost impossible for a narcissist to be cured, because, quite simply, they do not think they have a problem. I know because I too was also diagnosed with narcissism.
My personal road through hell began after my birth in the late 50’s when my mother was sent to an institution as she got a severe case of postpartum depression. Since my father was an airline pilot and flew a lot, my sisters and I were passed around from caretaker to caretaker, eventually settling in with my mother’s sister in Denver. While with my aunt, my mother tried to get her to adopt us because, to be blunt, my mother never wanted kids to begin with and did not want the responsibility of raising us. My aunt did not want the responsibility either and she declined the offer. Now you can maybe see why my mother was indifferent when raising us…it’s hard to love, and therefore take care of, something you that you never wanted in the first place; she told me she had kids only because my father wanted them, and had it been up to her, she would have aborted us.
It would take a dedicated book just to describe all the depressing issues that my sisters and I endured while living with my parents. All the times we came home from school to an empty house because my mother ran away with this or that man, or just left to get away from my father and his drinking and abuse. Growing up in this environment you simply try to survive, by not angering your parents if possible, but given the narcissism that’s impossible, particularly if they had a bad day, because it was always your fault that they did, whether you were present or not.
Because of this continuous on going drama, Sunday school was a kind of safe house and refuge and it taught me that God was there to help and that the Bible always had an answer to your problems. One Sunday after church, our very mean Saint Bernard got out of our house and ventured into the neighborhood. I swear I thought he would kill somebody. I ran to my room as my Dad ran out the door to try and find Brandy. In my room and grabbed my Bible and just opened it to whatever page my fingers parted and started reading, hoping, then praying that God would deliver the dog, and the neighbors, safely. About 5 minutes after I began reading, my sister came in yelling that my dad caught Brandy and that no one got hurt. In fact, a bunch of kids had surrounded him and were petting him! It was at that moment where my belief in God, took a turn from the surreal to the sublime.
In Romans 20 God says: “ For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” When growing up with bipolar extremes, where one day your father is happy and you have to be happy too, or the next day where he is angry and you have to be his whipping boy, it’s hard to believe in God because you wonder, why would He let me live in this hell? I lived all of my family life wishing for Mrs. and Mr. Cleaver to suddenly plop into my world or the parents’ of the sitcoms Hazel and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, or Fred McMurray of “My 3 Sons” TV fame…actually any nice parents would have sufficed. And let me tell you I prayed, dearly, for my dad to stop drinking as that was, to me, the crux of all our dysfunction. But, you can’t change another’s psyche and, alas, the Lord’s will was not my Dad’s, nor my Mom’s.
So as I aged my sisters left one by one, and by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I was the only child left at home. Like my parents, I did not go to church on a regular basis, but I did slowly develop a personal faith in God and many, many times I watched Billy Graham, all alone, with my mother hiding in her room and my father drunk on the back porch. I prayed to receive Christ during each of those crusades, and with each prayer, I came closer to Him and begged for Him to help my family be normal, but with seemingly no relief.
And speaking of my sophomore year, it was a living hell. I was unmercifully picked on by a kid who looked like he was on his fourth attempt at it (his second year) and who was a boxer in training. My emotional pleas to my father and mother for some sort of help were always met with either a lesson on how bad their life had been or some sort of attempt at comedic relief. I think the idea of actually having to deal with their child’s issues was just too much too handle. I had started to race motorcycles, motocross, that year, and towards the end of the school year, I was cutting school quite a bit just to escape the hell of it. Motorcycle riding was a huge release and I rode at every chance I could with a multitude of friends. One day I had been riding a friend of mine on the back of my cycle when he fell off on a dirt trail and was hit by a buddy riding behind me (The boy was bruised, but otherwise OK). An ambulance was called to pick up my friend but, unfortunately, it was followed by a police car, and the policeman in it took me away, so that I could be reunited with a very angry mother. When the juvenile court verdict came down the judge was actually more lenient than my parents, who were convinced that I was turning to the dark side, because of the accident in the woods, their feeling that I seemed to be withdrawn, and because they knew I had been cutting a lot of school. Yeah I was withdrawn because I could not get any parental help in dealing with the issues of a teen life while massive amounts of pubescent hormones began taking over my emotions; every time I asked my parents for help in understanding “me” they refuse to take anything seriously and would run to either their bottle (my dad) or their room (my mom). But all was not lost because just as I thought I was going to burst, emotionally, God intervened.
The end of this school year was a watershed moment in my teen life as it was when I actually began to feel God was actively involved with me. My parent’s answer to parenting this obvious “problem” (me) was to ship me off to summer camp. Though I protested mightily, my father did not budge. No doubt my father played into God’s hands. Though I had to go to camp, I could choose “my poison” with-in reason, and so I chose a scuba diving camp in the Florida Keys (I began diving when I was 14). You have to understand that I had an extreme case of separation anxiety (fear of being abandoned) all of my life. Even given how abusive my parents were, the idea of being all alone was supremely scary to me, and I was not sure when I left for camp, I would ever see my parents again. Thankfully, once I settled into the life at camp, and through the blunt force trauma of being ripped from a familiar setting and being inserted in another foreign one, I overcame my fears and found that I could flourish and indeed I loved being away from the hell of my parents. I met kids from all over the country and learned that I was not weird or “broken”, but pretty darn normal, and in fact I was a good person. By the time I left the camp, I had won many awards and to my surprise, they asked me to come back the next year, for free, to be a counselor.
All good things come to an end, however, and after a few weeks at the camp, I had to return home, though now I was kicking and screaming to stay. When I left for Florida, I had the intention of becoming a pilot, as I had begun taken flying lessons at the end of my school year, but now I came back wanting to be a treasure diver.
Upon my return home and as I became reacquainted with my friends, I realized that I was a changed person, or at least I wanted to believe that I was. Scuba diving and seeing the wonderful underwater sights: The different types of coral; the endless variety of fish and plants and crustaceans; the sunken ships and the birds that lived so easily it seemed off of the sea; the thunderstorms that I saw that spawned waterspouts and the lightening; and the continuous interaction of all of the aforementioned items…it was so breath taking and beautiful! The effect of the natural beauty made me so in love with the world and correspondingly caused me to fall so much more deeply in love with God and to even believe even more in Him, for truly, no matter what the scientists can say, none of this was by chance and truly, ours must be a Great god who could design all of this beauty and wonder into the world!
TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK…………………
