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...