Preacher's Pulpit Sedries #7

My Testimony

 

            My name is John King.  I am just a common man in the Faith and nobody famous or of notoriety.  For many years I believe the Lord has wanted me to write my autobiography.  This has been felt in my spirit and has been told to me many times by people of the Faith.  It is my sincere prayer that this story of my life will help someone in need just as I was twenty-six years ago before I gave my life to the Lord Jesus.  I am now fifty-six years old at the time of this writing and it is well time that I got on with it.  May the Lord speak to your heart as you read these words.

            I was born on January 19^th, 1957 in Fort Worth, Texas.  I was the youngest of two children and unlike many children today I had the advantage of having both of my parents present in my early years.  I would say that we were a normal family depending on what your definition of normal is.  If a person was brought up in a happy home this would be normal to them.  If a person was brought up in an abusive home then this would be normal to them.  If a person doesn’t know of any other way to live then their environment is what they consider normal. 

            They say that addiction is a hereditary disease.  So if you grew up in a family with alcoholics and addicts there is a good chance that you will become one too.  However, it is still a choice to take that first drink or drug. 

            I did not know that my father had a problem with drugs until after I had become clean and sober.  My dad used to get what he called histamine headaches and he would give himself shots of Demerol that he got from the Dr. I remember watching him give himself shots when I was a child.  He also would drink a little beer from time to time.  I only saw him tipsy once that I can remember when we were at some friend’s house and at least he had the good sense not to drive home.          

            I remember vaguely that my dad’s mother was instutionalized at one time but I don’t know what for.  Things such as that were not talked about much in those days.  I do not recollect ever hearing that her or my grandfather ever had a problem with alcohol.

            I don’t remember ever seeing my mother drunk, however, she would drink an occasional beer with my dad.  I learned many years later that her dad was an alcoholic and apparently a pretty bad one.  I never met him as he had died several years before I was born.  According to my mother he was very abusive with his wife and would beat her often.  She said that he never beat her but there were times when her and her siblings would have to run and hide in the fields from him. 

            It was very hard for my mother to forgive her dad but she knew she had to do it before the Lord took her home.   One day when she came home from church she told me that she had done this and a great weight had been lifted from her and she felt light as a feather.  I believe that she truly forgave him.

            I don’t remember much about my grandparents.  My dad’s father died when I was three years old and that was the first funeral that I had ever gone to.  However, he wrote a brief autobiography that I obtained and it gave me insight into what kind of life he lived.  My dad’s mom died in 1970 I think and even though she lived with us six months out of the year I never got to know her.  I wish I had though because her dad had fought in the Civil War and she would have been the source of a vast knowledge about that era.  My mom’s dad died about ten or more years before I was born and from what I have heard about him I probably wouldn’t much care for him.  My mom’s mother did not speak English so I never got to know her either.  She died when I was about ten years old.

            My mother had to learn to speak English growing up and because she went to an English speaking school she never made it past the sixth grade.  However, she was a very smart woman and she learned English on her own.  This was also made hard for her since her father would not allow English to be spoken in their house. 

            My parents met in Galveston, TX and were married in 1949.  In 1953 my brother was born and in 1957 I came along.

            I took my first drink of alcohol when I was around four years old.  My parents would have friends over and they would play a little penny-anny poker and have a few drinks.  One of those nights they gave me a little sip and laughed as I coughed and gagged on that horrible stuff.  I guess it was funny back then to see a little kid react to a grown-up’s drink.  However, they were unaware of the demon that they had unleashed in me.  I do not blame them for getting me started because they did not know what they were doing.  When I was about six years old I found some sleeping pills in a bottle on our snack bar that belonged to my grandmother.  Being the curious kid that I was I grabbed some of them and chewed them up.  To this day I do not know what kind they were but I thought that they tasted good so I ate some more.  I have no idea how many I wound up ingesting but I believe this was the first time that I overdosed in my life.  Needless to say, it wouldn’t be the last.  My parents caught me eating those things and I don’t remember much after that.  I do not know if they took me to the hospital or not but I do remember my dad walking me up and down the sidewalk to prevent me from going to sleep.  Eventually, I did fall asleep but obviously I did not die.

            Times seemed to be a lot simpler when I was growing up.  You could actually let your kids play in the front yard and not have to worry about some pervert kidnapping them.  My parents enjoyed staying at home.  I remember my dad loved to watch the Texas Longhorns play football on the television.  He would get so excited that he would run into the kitchen and grab a bottle of vodka and take a big swig to calm his self down.  I was told that he played for the University of Texas on the football team back before WW2 by a friend of his but he never mentioned this to me so I don’t know if it is actually true or not.  I remember my brother and me sitting in his lap when we were little on a Sunday morning while he would read the Sunday comics to us.  I can remember him playing football with us, too.  I can remember that my mother was a homemaker.  These were the days when a family of four could live off of one paycheck and my mom stayed at home to take care of us while dad went off to work each day.   I can remember that when I had a cold my mom would warm up a mixture of whiskey and honey which was an old country medicine and it would actually work and calm my cold.  I used to get a lot of ear aches when I was a child and they didn’t put tubes in your ears back then instead a person just had to suffer.  My mom would put peroxide in our ears or she would use Everclear grain alcohol and it would eventually relieve the pain.  I can remember in 1962 that my parents had an addition added on to the house which practically doubled it in size and also they added a central air conditioner and heater.  About this same time we got our first colored television and my parents paid for all of this on one paycheck without using credit cards.  In fact, my parents never owned a credit card.  They would save up their money and pay for something in cash.  This even included buying a new car.  The only loan that I know that they had was for the mortgage and I can remember when they paid that off.  The last car my dad bought before he died was a 1970 Chevy Impala.  It had no air conditioner, no power steering, no power windows, standard gear shift, standard brakes, and an AM radio.  That was the way that my dad liked a car.

            Each year in June, we would go on vacation.  We took the same route practically every year.  We first would stop in Austin, TX where my dad grew up and visit a couple of friends of theirs then go to Corpus Christi and stay in a hotel on the beach for a couple of nights.  We would play on the beach or in the hotel swimming pool and visit his sister who lived there.  From there we would go to the country outside of Hallettsville, TX where my mom grew up.  My mom’s parents had a farm that was about 303 acres in size and this is where my dad taught me how to drive a car on the dirt roads.  He also taught me how to hunt and shoot a gun.  These were good times that I remember about my family growing up.

            I used to walk to school when I was in elementary.  The school was three blocks from our house and kids in the neighborhood always walked to school.  Across the street from our house was a place called the Tarrant County Children’s Home.  There were a lot of orphans that grew up there.  They would walk the same way to school that I did.  They used to tease me a lot and I never have known why.  I never did anything to harm them and with me being a skinny kid they would pick on me a lot and call me names.  Our school had its share of bullies, also.  It seems that these bullies would always pick a fight with me.  I don’t know what they expected to gain by beating me up other than it might have been a boost to their low self esteem.  I guess I was an easy target because I was skinny and I was smart in school.  I remember that in fifth grade I received an award from the Daughters of the American Revolution for excellence in American history.  I always loved to read about the Civil War and the Texas Revolution for Independence.

            In middle school is when things started to change in my life and I started to change also.  I was around twelve years old and I started to hang around with the wrong crowd.  I started smoking cigarettes and getting into fights just trying to be cool.  At that age I wanted to be popular with the girls and it seem like the so called cool kids were the ones that had girl friends.  I did not want to be classified as a geek because I made good grades so I started trying to be cool.       

            I was in Scouting when I was growing up and you would think that Scouting would be a wonderful time for a boy especially when his parents are involved and participating.  Things started out good when I was in Cub Scouts and one of the den mothers would become instrumental in my salvation later on in my life.  This den mother and her husband became close friends with my parents and remained friends for many years.  When I entered Boy Scouts I worked hard and eventually achieved Eagle which is the highest rank.  However, my time in Scouting became disastrous for me because of some of the things the older boys (patrol leaders) did to me.  These boys are the ones we were supposed to look up to for leadership and they were supposed to set examples for the younger boys.  This was not the case for me.  A couple of these older boys did things that would haunt me for many years.  Also, in Boy Scouts was the first time that I had ever seen pot.  This was through another patrol leader.  Needless to say, I did not have very good examples of what a Boy Scout was suppose to be.  Once I made Eagle Scout I got out of there as fast as I could.  I was fourteen at the time and I was now a freshman in high school.

            As a freshman I tried out for the freshman football team and I made third string tight end and defensive end.  However, the third string rarely ever got to play in a game.  In fact, that whole year I got to play one play of one game.  Our coaches were in to winning games and not into letting kids have fun and learn sportsmanship.  Our team did finish with nine wins and one loss for that year so I guess the coaches did a good job in that respect.  Again, I don’t know why, but the better players would pick on the ones that weren’t as good which included me.  Even some of the coaches would pick on me.  One coach caught me smoking cigarettes off campus a couple of times which further turned him against me.  Because of my lack of coordination there were some exercises that I just could not do.  One of these was called jumping jacks.  One day the coach had me stand in front of the entire football team and lead them in jumping jacks just to humiliate me.  Of course, the entire football team was rolling on the ground laughing as well as the coaches.   Now days I probably could have sued the coaches and the school for such a thing but back then they could get away with it.  I remember another time when our first string fullback saw me smoking a cigarette he came up to me and in front of other students told me to eat the cigarette or he would beat the snout out of me.  Knowing that he was quite capable of doing this I ate the cigarette.   These were just a couple of examples of the ways that people would pick on me all through high school and is probably one of the reasons I turned to the counter culture of those days.  The people that smoked pot and did other drugs accepted me the way I was.

            I used to hang out with a couple of the neighborhood kids that were a couple of years older than me when I was fourteen.  One of them had a driver’s license and we would go out and look for something to do.   One day we got someone to buy some Schlitz malt liquor for us and we drank it down heartily.  This was the first time I had gotten really drunk in my life.  I came home that night and my dad let me in the house and I thought that I was doing a good job of acting like I wasn’t drunk cause he never said a word to me and I went on to bed.  The next morning when I woke up I had a terrific headache and when I walked into the kitchen my dad was sitting at the table and he asked me how I felt.  I don’t remember my exact response but I am sure that I must have told him that I felt really bad.  He must have thought that my hangover was punishment enough because nothing else was ever said about it.

            This one kid started smoking pot and tried to talk the rest of us into doing it.  This friend of mine said he would never touch that stuff and I said the same thing.  However, it seemed like the very next day he was smoking it and soon after I started smoking it too.  It was all downhill after that.  At the age of fourteen I started taking any kind of drug I could get my hands on.  The first one that I took was yellow sunshine otherwise known as LSD.  I would take quaaludes, valium, black beauties, preludes, plastidils, yellowjackets, methadone, sansert, among others.  I would start going through my parent’s medicine cabinets and try anything that was in there just to see what it would do.  This kind of pattern would continue all through high school and beyond.

            Along about this same time frame my dad had developed cancer.  It started in his colon and from there eventually spread to nearly every part of his body.  From 1972 to 1975 he was bed ridden in the hospital.  A neurologist had cut a nerve in his spinal cord to kill the constant pain he was in.  Unfortunately, this also paralyzed him from the waist down.  During this three year period he would only get to come home once that I can remember for about a two week visit and then it was right back to the hospital where he died on Jan. 15^th, 1975.  Four days before my eighteenth birthday.  At the time of his death the legal drinking age in Texas was eighteen so on my eighteenth birthday I got drunk legally. 

            Since I was eighteen now I had to register for the draft and I was able to vote.  A benifit that I received with the death of my dad was that I was able to receive enough money to go to college untill I turned twenty-two.            When I turned twenty-two the money stopped and I had completed my basic studies at college.  So it was time to transfer to a major university to complete my degree program.  At this time I had a desire to be a game warden which would have meant that I would want to get a degree in forestry with emphasis on game management.  I know that I could have applied for a loan or grant to do this but I had had enough of school and decided that I would rather go to work and be on my own.  At this time the government had a work program that would help young people get good jobs and pay part of their salary.  The City of ________ was part of this and I got hired on as a meter serviceman and this started my career in the water works industry which I am still doing at the time of this writing but in a different city and a different occupation.

            During the time I was working for the city I had a girlfriend that lived with me for about two years before she moved out and I needed to move also so I asked my boss if I could use the city truck to move my stuff in.  He gave me his permission on the condition if I got called in on that he knew nothing about it which I agreed to.  Well, sure enough, someone called in on me and even though this was my first infraction with the city they saw fit to fire me.  About two weeks later I got a construction job building their new city hall.   Maybe I have a wrap sense of humor but to me at the time this was hilarious.  Anyway, after about three months I appealed my firing and was rehired with the city.  After this rehire I worked for about two more years with the city.  During this time I met a girl out at the swimming pool of my apartments that one day would become my wife.  However, this would not occur for another nine years or so.  During this time we dated for about three months and then she dumped me.  Turned out that the Lord was after her but at this time I wanted nothing to do with God.  I was having fun and on the run.  Well, this came to an abrupt end about 1982 when I went to score some dope from a friend of a friend.  I was strung out and had nothing to purchase any drugs with except some gems that I had come across.  This guy thought they were fake and proceeded to throw me out of his house.  As I left and got a few feet away from the door I turned and with a pistol I had in my pants fired off a round in his general vicinity.  I missed him by about six inches and the bullet went through his hallway, into the kitchen and out a back window or so I was told.  I didn't want to kill him because there were about four or five other people there and I would have had to kill them, too.  It just wasn't worth all that.

            Even though this person was facing charges himself he filed charges on me.  I had an indictment out for me on the grounds of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault with intent to do bodily harm, and attempted murder.  I don't know why they would indict me for three different charges, seems to me that one would be enough.  In the end they did just charge me with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.  Anyway, the police came and arrested me at my work place and then transferred me to the city where I had committed this crime and then I was transferred to the county jail.  I was incarcerated here for about one week and this probably saved my life.  I think I slept the first couple of days and I actually gained a little weight because I had three meals a day.

            Eventually, I was arraigned, bond was set, and my mother found me a lawyer.  At the arraignment I was told that the prosecutor wanted to give me four years in the state penitentiary with no chance of parole. I was in total shock at the seriousness of doing time on my first felony arrest.  However, the lawyer got me out on bond. When I got home my mother told me that I could not live with her unless I got help for my drug problem.  I had no choice other than to comply with her demand.  We found a treatment center that was a one year program and you had to live there.  I really wasn't ready to give up drugs and I stayed there about a month before I gave up and checked myself out.  Fortunately, my mother let me stay with her this time. While I was waiting for my court date a lady that I mentioned earlier as being my den mother when I was in cub scouts had been going to a home Bible study and she invited me to come.  To my own surprise I said yes.  The concept of a home Bible study was something I had never heard of before.  Of course, I still had my reservations about church people. 

            When I got to the home where the study was going to take place I was amazed at how friendly the people were that lived there.  They actually seemed normal and down to earth.  A far cry from the stuff suits that I was used to associating church people with.  Even the leader of the study appeared to be an average "Joe".  He wore blue jeans and a T-shirt and was quite nice.  So, when everyone was present we sang a few songs that were new to me and had an opening prayer before we sat down and the leader began to teach.  I had never experience a teaching like this before where the leader read from the Bible verse by verse and then would pause and explain what the Word was saying to him.  We were even allowed to interrupt him and ask questions as he elaborated on the Scriptures.

            At the end of the meeting the leader asked if he could pray for me and to my astonishment I said yes. So they all gathered in a circle with me in the center and started to pray.  This was in 1982 and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.  Then they started to pray that I be filled with the Holy Spirit and I felt a warm rising up in my body from my toes to the top of my head.  I didn't know  or understand about the Holy Spirit at this time but I knew it had to be good.  In fact, this made me actually want to come back next week.  It was as if my eyes had been opened and I was seeing things in a whole new light.

            Of course, this must have made the devil really angry because he came after me in full force and blindsided me.  There was another person at the study about my age that I soon became friends with and after a few weeks he caught me by surprise and asked me if I could get him some meth and a syringe.  Now I don't hold anything against this person and all is forgiven but I couldn't get him some meth without getting some for myself and I was right back where I started from in my addiction but, things weren't quite the same this time around.  The Holy Ghost has a way of messing up your partying.  Needless to say things got a whole lot worse than they had been before. 

            For the next five years I would straddle the fence. I would stay clean for maybe a month or so and then go on a binge for four or five days.  During this time I would start manufacturing meth.  I could have made a lot of money but I would do it just for free drugs.  In the long run, this might be one of the things that save my life along with my mother and others praying for me.  I would go through two more rehabs before my life straightened out.  After the first rehab I made some friends that were trying to stay clean also.  I started going to AA and NA meetings three and four times a week and to church also.  But, I couldn't seem to quit going back to the drugs. 

            One night I did a shot of meth that knocked me to my knees and I had a vision.  Some may say it was because of the drugs and I was hallucinating but I know what I saw and it was real.  I believe that the Holy Spirit came to me and me and showed me Calvary.  I was seeing past the back of a Roman soldier's head that was taking Jesus to be nailed to a cross looking at the same things that he was.  As they reached the top the soldier had Jesus drop the cross he was carrying and threw him down on top of it.  He stretched out Jesus' hand and took a hammer and spike, raised the hammer above his head and came down with a mighty blow on the head of the spike which drove it through the hand of Jesus.  Jesus let out a shout of pain and I could see him look at the soldier with love radiating out of him.  The soldier paused for a moment in confusion or disbelief at the expression of love on Jesus' face but then he still raised the hammer again and drove the spike further through Jesus' hand and the cross.  Again the same shout of pain was given followed by the love radiating from Jesus' face.  One more time the hammer came down driving the spike all the way through the cross and the vision shifted.  Now I was looking at the face of the soldier through the eyes of Jesus and that soldier was me.

            I wish I could say that was the end of my drug use but such is not the case.   Jail couldn't make me quit.  My parents couldn't make me quit.  My friends couldn't make me quit.  Seeing my friends die couldn't make me quit. Losing my job couldn't make me quit.  So, what was left?  I will say that every time I shot up after that vision that I could see myself driving another nail into Jesus and even that didn't make me quit.

            Finally, on Sept. 7th, 1987 I did a shot of crystal meth like I had done so many times before and this time it put me on my knees.  Nothing spectacular was happening that day, just another day of shooting up.  But when I went down on my knees I knew my day had come.  They say every dog has his day, well, this was mine.  I didn't hear a booming voice or even an audible voice but I knew the Father was speaking to my heart and what he said was that if I did another shot of meth he was going to take me out of this world and I wasn't going to be with him! 

            I checked myself into my third and final rehab hospital to detox and after a 10 day stay I entered a one year after-care program which I managed to stretch out for two years because of my hard -headiness. During this time I also was attending AA and NA meetings on a regular basis and got back in church. 

            Now begins a new chapter in my life. Old things have passed away and all things are new.  The sun seems brighter and the sky clearer.  I received much counseling during this time and certain people that God had placed in my life were a great help to me in my spiritual growth. After about two years of this I ran into a man that I used to do drugs with and he had been born again and was drug free.  He invited me to a Bible study  at a lady's house and I began attending it on a regular basis.  After attending here for a while the name of a lady I used to date about nine years previously came up.  Yes, this was the same woman that had dumped me in 1980.  I was shocked to hear her name but happy to hear that she had been born again.  This woman leading the Bible study had her phone number and it turned out that she lived in Georgia.  The interesting thing was that I had been longing for a wife and a few weeks before as I was crying into my pillow I told the Lord that whether I had a wife or not that I was going to serve Him and the Lord saw that I meant it in my heart as only He can see.  Also, this woman in Georgia had been in waiting for a husband for seven years!  (And I thought I had it rough!)  Well, I called her up after much hesitation and she remembered me.  Turned out her son had asked her a couple of weeks earlier, "Whatever happened to that long hair hippie that played guitar?" and she responded with, "Don't remind me of my past!".  We corresponded for a few weeks and finally we decided it was time for me to fly out there and see her face to face.

            Well, I did just that.  We got to know each other again and went to Panama City, Fl. where I proposed to her and she said, "Yes!".  So, we decided that we would get married by my preacher in Texas and on Aug. 26th, 1989 we became husband and wife.

            I was impressed with the beauty of Georgia when I was out there visiting and we decided to make Georgia our home.  The very next day after our wedding we loaded up the car and U-Haul trailer and drove to the town in Georgia where my wife grew up.  She already had a son who was fifteen at the time and two years later we had our precious daughter.

            The Word of God is true and I am here to testify to that fact that when you first seek Him and His Kingdom first He will truly give you the desires of your heart.  Amen!

 (To be continued)