CHAPTER 1
The End of Life as I Knew it
My life was as ordinary as they come. I was brought up in the church, professed to be a Christian, and would challenge anyone who would dare say I wasn't. I went to church every Sunday morning and night and to the midweek service on Wednesday nights. My dad was a member of the Full Gospel Business Men's organization, and my mom was with Women's Ministries, or the WMs as she called it.
My dad and mom had a few rules, and one of those rules was, "As long as you live under our roof, you will go to church." The only way out of it was if you were really sick. To prove that, you'd better have a fever and be stuck to the bathroom pretty much constantly; otherwise, you were going. After all, where better to go if you're sick and in need of prayers?
They didn't allow back-talking or pouting, so I learned at a young age not to argue. Back then, it was okay for a dad to backhand you and knock you down if you dared to stand up and oppose him. I learned that I didn't appreciate the back of his hairy fingers, so I didn't talk back. What he said was law. As he would say, "End of discussion."
I'm not saying that I'm against discipline. I'm not totally against the way I was brought up. I know for a fact, by looking around, that if it was not for strict parents, I would not be any better than all these people running around killing one another. There's a lot of anger out in the world today. I can't judge these people, though. Society has really sucked the love of God right out of life. Where there is a lack of love, hatred seems to flourish.
I have had many life-changing experiences. In my early years, I can remember, I had angels following me everywhere. Sometimes I would even have discussions with them. As a little child, I had a problem paying attention to things that were happening here on earth, as I was focusing more on things that were happening in what I call the spirit realm. I would even include them in my prayers sometimes and ask the angels to help me do better at paying attention to my parents and being a more obedient child in general.
My dad had no concerns over my attention problem, by the way. He could get my attention right through the seat of my pants and with the boom of his voice. They call it attention deficit disorder nowadays. Back then, they didn't have a term for it, other than just plain not paying attention.
I can remember my mom taking me to a building downtown one day. This nice lady took me into a room where they did tests on me, seeing what my abilities were. They had me put these plastic double colored blocks together to form different pictures of things. I just added that all up to mean that I was slow. To me, being held back in the third grade meant I basically had flunked — "held back" was just a nicer term to use. Retarded was the word they used back then. I guess now they would say a person was mentally challenged.
Really, the only thing I was having trouble with was reading. I could sound out the words all right, if a little more slowly than the average student my age. Where I really struggled was with comprehension. The words were just words to me, and reading was boring — unless it was a story that had a lot of pictures and really captured my attention.
I was an active child (not hyperactive) who wanted to go play outside. It just seemed to me that there was a lot going on outside that I would enjoy doing, rather than sitting in a room somewhere wasting the daylight away. My teacher told my mom that I was daydreaming. I know that this was true to a certain degree. I hated being in a classroom when there was so much to be explored outside. I loved the outdoors, and spending time in the sunshine was my favorite thing to do.
I had the attention problem so bad that sometimes, I didn't know what to do. I would be in a state of confusion and chaos when I was at home. I would feel like I was having a mental breakdown — like I was trying not to escape God's presence and couldn't figure out how. I would kneel and bang my head lightly on the floor, trying to remain focused.
Sometimes I would just blank out from this world and seem to be daydreaming. I now know I was having a problem staying connected with the Spirit of God inside of me, and I would get a light-headed sort of feeling — like I was being torn away from God, something that I really didn't want to let happen.
I think some children just have a problem with concentrating. Their imagination wants to run wild. I personally don't believe in putting drugs into children, no matter what they want to call it. It's not a disease, as some so-called professional doctors or whatever you want to call them would say that it is. That's just drug-company propaganda. How do I know? Because I grew up and out of it. I know firsthand that love is the key to getting the attention of a child who is lost and doesn't know how, at the moment, to comprehend what is going on and what direction he or she needs to take. Love is the answer, not brute force.
My mom had a gentler approach than my dad and could get my attention just by talking in a soft voice and making me look her in the face. It worked well, and I responded well to that approach. Oh, don't get me wrong, my dad's method worked quite well for him. But it was done out of forced dominance to create discipline, not love, and that approach can cause a lot of mental problems, hurt, anguish, and hard feelings of unforgiveness later in life. He was a no-nonsense type of father, the kind that seemed to be so popular when I was a young boy.
* * *
Some of the things that I recall the most are from my early twenties to now. I was working at a drugstore, doing my best to become a manager there. My best friend started working there a couple of years later. I was dating a girl my parents didn't approve of. She was a bit of a mean girl, but I was able to overlook and forgive some of the things she pulled.
Then the strangest thing happened. It was wintertime, and I had spent the day in Leavenworth, Washington, watching the lighting of the lights with my girlfriend and her parents. We stayed at her aunt's house that night and headed home about noon the next day. On the way back, I started feeling sick, and I didn't want my girlfriend to know; she was the type to say, "Just buck up and be a man." I tried to do that, but finally it got bad enough that I couldn't hide it. She knew something was wrong but kind of gave me the cold shoulder.
When we got back to her house, we said goodbye, and I got in my car to leave. I felt like I was losing touch with her. Later I found out that her dad sent her out to see if I was okay, but I was just going around the corner and out of sight when she went out to the driveway.
My mom and dad had gotten to the point where they seemed disgusted with me because I wouldn't leave her alone. My best friend, who I had grown up with (and who my girlfriend didn't like), was telling me he had overheard my boss talking about getting rid of me, for reasons I couldn't understand. I felt like I was being attacked from all sides. You know, like nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I might as well go eat worms — a feel-sorry-for-me attitude. I know that now, but I didn't see it that way at the time.
All this was swirling through my head as I drove home to face my parents. When I got to the road where I was supposed to turn left — I even had my left turn signal on — I went right. I thought to myself, Why did I do that? It was almost like something took over and made me turn right. Then I thought, Well, I'll turn right up here and then another right, and that will take me home. I put on my right turn signal ... and went straight.
At that point, I said, "Okay, Lord, what is going on?" I didn't hear anything. Then I said, "What is this, that I can't make myself go home?" Still nothing. I went on up the road to a little gas station, got a lemon lime soda to settle my stomach, and just paused there for a little bit sipping my soda. Then it happened: the feel-sorry-for-me bug bit me and took over.
I realized I didn't want to go home, and my boss was going to fire me anyway, and my folks didn't really like me anymore, and on top of all that, my girlfriend didn't really want anything to do with me anymore. I'll just leave, I thought. I'm twenty years old, and I can make my own decisions. I'll just run away, leave this old cruel world behind, and go to Alaska. The only problem was, I didn't have a clue how far away Alaska was.
I went to the bank, withdrew the last forty dollars I had, and left. I thought the exchange rate would help me go further, not realizing the prices in Canada would be higher.
I got to the Canadian border, and they asked where I was going. I thought, Now, I don't want anyone to know that, so I told them I was going up to see my grandparents in Oroville, Washington. (This was a lie. I didn't have any grandparents who were still alive.) Highway 20, the North Cascade highway, was closed this time of year — that was the excuse I used. I was wanting to take their Highway 1. I would cross on over the mountains, get on Highway 97, and come back into Washington. My story worked — they let me in the country. I was able to get to a gas station, buy a map, and get gas.
This was in the late 1980s. Things have changed a lot since 9/11. It's not so easy to get into Canada anymore.
When I saw how far Alaska was and knew I didn't have enough money for gas all the way up there, I decided I really did want to go over to Oroville, Washington, just like I had told them at the border crossing. It started snowing, and it snowed until I got to the border coming back into the state of Washington, on the other side of the Cascades. I went down there, and when I got to the town grocery store, I pulled into the parking lot to rest for a moment.
I saw a couple of state troopers pull in and thought that now would be a good time to leave. That aroused their suspicion. As I started to drive out of the parking lot and get back on the highway, they pulled me over and asked where I was headed. It was wintertime, so I told them I had just been skiing up at the Big Ten ski area, up in Canada. (Oh yeah, I was lying through my teeth.)
They told me it looked a little suspicious when they pulled into the parking lot and I left. I played it off, and they accepted the response I gave for it and asked me where I was going now. I told them I was on a week's vacation and wanted to see just how many different ski slopes I could hit in a week. I said I thought I might try going up to Stevens Pass and skiing up there next. I asked them if they could check the conditions up there for me and see what it was doing. They did, and I found out that it was starting to rain a little up there.
So I said, "Well, maybe I'll start heading that way and see if conditions change." I didn't want to give them the feeling that I was uncomfortable and just trying to get rid of them. I stuck around, and we exchanged some small talk so that I wouldn't raise any more suspicion. They let me go when they found out I wasn't wanted for anything.
My parents actually had put out an APB (all points bulletin) on me, but it hadn't been reported yet because I hadn't been gone long enough for the police to consider me to be missing, so I got away. I went to a little lake called Fish Lake up in the mountains there, just west of town, and went to sleep in my car.
The next day, I headed out of town, not really sure where I was going to go. I started heading back west on a highway, and I got lost. It was getting foggy, and I noticed a pickup with a camper shell on it parked across the road and decided that would be a good place for me to pull off, look at my map, and figure out where I was. What I didn't realize was that I was making the road too narrow for a semi to pass between me and that pickup. (Not the brightest Idea I ever had.)
With the fog so thick and snow on the road the way it was, that semi seemed to come up behind me out of nowhere. He knew it was too narrow — but a little too late. He blasted his air horn. The road was covered in ice, so it wouldn't have done him any good to hit his brakes. I saw him coming right for me, and I had only enough time to say, "Oh Jesus, please save me!"
How can I get you to imagine this? I was looking in my side-view mirror, and that truck was coming right at me. At first I felt a cold chilling wind in my car, like I had my car door open, but it wasn't. I looked in my side-view mirror, and I knew he was going to hit me. Instead, this is what unfolded.
The truck came up to my car and proceeded to go through my car and my left shoulder as I felt the cold air of the outside whipping past me. I looked up at the driver, who I was now staring at, as though his truck was transparent. The look on his face was sheer horror as he saw his truck — and the full length of his trailer — passing through me and my car without a single scratch. I can still see him hanging on that air horn and the look that was frozen on his face, and probably my face as well. All I can say is that for some reason, Jesus answered my request.
Strange? People who don't know or understand the power of my God would probably say so. All I know is that I said his name, "Jesus," and there is power in that name like no other name on earth. Should I be dead? I guess not, otherwise that is undoubtedly what the outcome would have been. Sometimes we do get a second chance and get to see miracles unfold right before our eyes.
* * *
I hate to even mention this one, but another feel-sorry-for-me time came when I was about twenty-three. I was at a low point in my life, so I decided on the way over to my parents' house that I should just end it. I felt like God was toying with me. He wasn't speaking to me like he always had. It was like your best friend giving you the cold shoulder, and you have no idea what you did to make him so mad that he won't even talk to you.
God didn't seem to care about what I was asking. I was just trying to get him to help me get a good-paying job and find the girl I was supposed to get married to. It seemed to me that he wasn't there for me anymore. I was on my motorcycle, and I thought, I can get right up to the street to turn right on to get to my parents' house, and I'll just turn a little sharp, line up with the telephone pole, bow my head into my chest, and close my eyes. When my front tire hits the telephone pole, it will catapult me off the seat headfirst into the pole. The pole will snap my neck, and I'll die. Crazy, I know.
I thought that way, the police would say that it was an accident, and since I would be close to home, they wouldn't have far to go to notify my parents. Since I lived less than half a block away, they would assume it was misjudgment on my part and not know it was a planned suicide. I did everything just right, and when I was within three feet of the front tire hitting the telephone pole, I closed my eyes, bowed my head, and waited for the impact. At thirty-five miles per hour, that should have happened almost immediately. I waited a second and thought, What's wrong? It should have happened by now.
I opened my eyes just in time to see myself headed right for the curb across the street and the neighbors' six-foot-high wooden fence. I hit the brakes, corrected my turn, and only went over the curb a little and then back into the street. I yelled out loud to God, "What's wrong with you? You won't even let me kill myself! Why are you toying with me?"
I was mad, but I didn't get an answer. So I gave up on trying to do myself in. God wasn't through with me yet, and he had too many things left to do with me to let me off the hook that easy. I'm thankful now that I wasn't allowed to end it that way. I'll say it for you: that was stupid. I know, but to err is human.
Another time, I was driving back from Leavenworth, Washington, and I was close to the top of Stevens Pass on Highway 2. It had started snowing, and my car was fishtailing a little going up the hill. I said, "Dear Lord, please help me get over this pass without going off the road or having an accident." Then I saw a little glow of light with my upper peripheral vision and looked up just in time to see what appeared to be the lower inside giant palm of a man's hand. I realized God's hand was on my car; then it raised up and out of the car. That put me in peace mode immediately. I made the trip without having to get out and chain up. (I thought about it later and was thinking that it was like God was playing cars like we used to as kids.)
So yes, I have had a few incidents in which to me, the only explainable way to approach this is, "Truly, it's a God thing." I don't think for one second that my vision is off or that I've been seeing things. To me, that's not a possible explanation for it. I believe God allows these events for some of us who just don't know who we really are. If we choose to believe, then it was worth the effort to let us see these things.
* * *
As time went on, I was working at a fast food restaurant. One day, the Lord said to me out of the blue, "I want you to go to Carlee's house today after work."
