I was asked to write my testimony for a new site on Calvary's website, I have found that to do anything like this it is extremely important that you have prayed and asked guidance from the Lord, what I mean by guidance is to make sure that what you are saying is "your" testimony and not something that you think others will want to hear. It has to be right and come from your "heart" and "spirit." God has to lead you back down the paths that brought you to where you are today. Going back over the "past" to bring hope to the future is a journey that can only be accomplished with God as your guide and protector. For me to look back at my life and talk about what happened to get me to today is a dark trip. For me to look back at the world I was living in, a world of drugs, alcohol, and much violence, is something that I can only do through God's Grace and His Love, for me to do this I have to stand on His Word, "The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation." This is from Exodus 15:2, it is because of verses like this that I am able to do the things that He has me doing, without Him I am lost, with Him I AM FOUND!
When I got out of the Air Force, the middle 80s, I was a man who was hurt and very angry at God, for me I had no reason to love Him much less trust Him. To me God was to blame for every thing that went wrong in my life. God took the only other place that I felt at home in away from me, the Air Force. I say the only other place because, according me, He also took the first place I ever felt accepted and safe, playing football in high school, it was there that I first was hurt very badly, it was there I first injured my left knee. Because of the injury I could no longer play ball and all the offers from colleges went away, to me God did it. Now, after a long period I thought that the service was the answer, I fit in, I was very good at what I did, I was needed and what I took for love, I was of use to the powers that be, until I was again hurt very badly in the same area, my left knee, again I was told I was no longer needed or of use to them, God did it again! At least in my mind He did.
From there, after a long period of rehabilitation by my self, I ended up in Tucson, with my family, my sister and brother-in-law. It was here in Tucson that my journey into darkness finally reached its top.
As I stated I came out here to be with family, they opened up their homes and hearts to me, I stayed with my sister and her family. I went to work for her and her husband in the little restaurant they owed in Park Mall, I washed dishes, and this lasted a year or so. While everyone at work and in my home thought that I was this hard working man who was hurt in the service of his country and was trying to make a life for himself, who I really was, was the person they did not really know or see, after my day at work and sometime with family, I would leave home and go into another world completely, at night I worked for one of the most powerful and violent drug dealers in Tucson. I was his "muscle," I collected money and watched over the club he owed. I was also using n to love Him much less trust Him. To me God was to blame for every thing that went wrong in my life. God took the only other place that I felt at home in away from me, the Air Force. I say the only other place because, according me, He also took the first place I ever felt accepted and safe, playing football in high school, it was there that I first was hurt very badly, it was there I first injured my left knee. Because of the injury I could no longer play ball and all the offers from colleges went away, to me God did it. Now, after a long period I thought that the service was the answer, I fit in, I was very good at what I did, I was needed and what I took for love, I was of use to the powers that be, until I was again hurt very badly in the same area, my left knee, again I was told I was no longer needed or of use to them, God did it again! At least in my mind He did.
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