From a boy to a child of God

[j2thc]

Started out good, got messy and ended up in the arms of Jesus.

I had 2 good parents (Dads dead now) but like all parents they had never done it before, so they made mistakes. No sexual or extreme physical abuse in our lives (1 brother, 2 sisters[one adopted]) but some mild psych abuse. Things like "who'd have kids" and "I wish they'd thrown away the baby and kept the afterbirth". Mum said these things out of pure frustration. As an adult I understand this, notwithstanding raising 5 kids of my own. Kids do dumb things. They do dumb things but they are not dumb. It took my wife and I a while to realise this ourselves, hence we do not call any of our kids "an idiot" or "a dummy" any more.
Mum did all the disciplining because, as I found out Dad was to afraid of really hurting us. I remember Mum breaking down one day, right in the middle of giving us younger three the strap. She just stopped half way through a stroke, slowly sat down and started to cry. Big deep sobs. Pure despair. It was at that moment I realised, even as a 7-8 year old, that we had pushed our mother too far. This did temper my behaviour somewhat but not enough. I eventually ended up breaking into cars and graduating to houses then warehouses.
This is where I found my Father's breaking point. My mates and I were caught, processed and left to wait for our parents, in our own little graffiti covered holding cells. Mum picked me up and brought me home, where I tried to sneak past Dad to my room. He was feeding the dogs (greyhounds) and had a knife in his hand. I was quite naturally, very afraid. He put the knife down, turned around and said "so you think your a big hero now do ya". then everything went black. I came to with Mum on top of me saying "don't hit hit him again pleeease", and Dad replying "get off him girl I don't wanna hit you". Once I was on my feet again and facing Dad, he gave me a verbal dressing down and said "and your not gonna do that again are you, now get to your room" and everything went black again. He gave me one more for good measure. Mum cleaned me up (and later the fridge, the stove, the cupboards and the floor) and brought me something to eat in my room. I was 10.
Now I know I said no extreme physical abuse but this was a singular incident, it had never happened before and never happened again. I still love the memory of my earthly Father. He was a tower of strength and a fount of knowledge. That hiding kept me from becoming a career criminal, although I continued to misbehave. I had sex at 12, started smoking at 14 and using cannabis and alcohol shortly thereafter. Up until that time I had been an A student, star rugby player and record holding athlete (1 and 2 hundred meters, 4x4 relay anchor, long and high jump). Then I found girls, alcohol and drugs. Everything went bad. I left school the same year, got a job and started to lose myself in the things of this world.
I met the wife of my youth at 16. She was a year younger and doing much the same thing as me, getting lost. She moved back to her home at the other end of the island and I followed. Two years later we had our eldest boy Jordan. We were so stoned all the time she didn't even know she was pregnant. We nearly lost him, he was 11 weeks premature. I nearly lost them both. Whew, thank you Lord. Not long after, we moved back to my home town to bring up our son and after a few ups and downs, arguments and splits bought a house and settled down. We were still not married and me being a regular male, I jumped the fence to see what was in the other paddock. At this point Angie decided enough was enough and returned to the Lord. I say returned because she had always been His, she had just been ignoring His call. As was I. Her mother was a devout believer. We got back together and I continued on the path to destruction while she prayed for me. I was unaware of her prayers. Fourteen years she petitioned the Lord until He answered.
In the intervening years, my drug habit grew to the point where I was getting out of it 7-8 times a day...and she kept praying. Eventually I ended up with a 30 plant crop in a specially constructed room in our garage. This is where it all happened. Everything was rosy... for me at least, until I had $5000.00 of dope stolen right out from under my nose. Now, I know it was long winded but I laid out my history so you could see where I'd been and all the factors that lead up to my crisis. For three weeks I couldn't eat right or sleep right, all my bodily functions went haywire. Then I broke.
I just couldn't take it anymore, so I sat down with a guy I had worked with years ago as a scrubcutter, who was now a friend of my wife through the worship team at her fellowship. He and his lady friend gave an ear to my misery and a few well chosen words for comfort. I knew from about the age of 7 or 8 what was right or wrong and I knew now what was the right thing to do. I chose Christ.
Joe's next words to me be after he realised the choice I'd made were "Now I'd think about talking to the pastor of a local church about getting baptisied". I chose not to wait and grabbed some shorts and a towel and said lets go. So he rung his pastor to meet us at the nearest river and within an hour or so and with half the congregation from my wife's church in attendance, I was washed clean. I belonged to God.
Well its taken me about two hours to give a brief synopsis of my life leading to salvation because I am a slow, two finger typer and a fastidious writer, so I'm not going to go into the other half of my testimony. The part about the blessings in my life, my marriage, my family and my finances I will leave for another time, but I will say one more thing here and now. Thank you Jesus for Your Presence in my life and thank you for the opportunity to share my testimony. I feel purged of a few things that needed saying. Peace and God's blessings to you all. Jc