The Promise

Should people always keep their promises?

When I was six years old my mother drug me out of school shortly after lunch and took me home.  When we arrived at our house in Hazelwood, Missouri, my uncle Ken was there with his pickup truck and a trailer loaded with a lot of our stuff.

They told me that we were going to visit my grandparents.  I did not see Dad and I asked them in tears where Dad was.  Mom told me that he would come down to Arkansas later.

I did not want to leave without Dad and cried terribly.  Dad was my world despite the abuse he had heaped upon Mom and me.

Dad had not always been abusive.

When the man with the knife invaded our home in NWA (Northwest Arkansas) before moving to Saint Louis, Dad beat him soundly before he fled into the night in fear for his life.  Dad was capable of defending us, but never laid a hand on us in anger until we moved to Saint Louis.

At first, everything was good when we moved to Saint Louis.  We would go camping at Meramec Caverns and fishing in the many stocked lakes in the area.

Dad would take us to Forest Park where we would have picnics.  We would then either go to the Jefferson Museum or the Saint Louis Zoo.  Sometimes we would go down to the Arch or Cardinal Stadium for events.

The only bad memory of any of this was when I drew a picture for Dad of a modern art piece that I had seen at the museum.  I was enthralled with the symmetry and fractal patterns of the piece.

When I showed my work to Dad, he looked at it, said “That’s not art”, tore it up and threw it in the trash.  It broke my heart and destroyed my aspirations to one day become an artist.  I wanted to do something that Dad would be proud of.

Mom had started going to a large church, but Dad would never go.  He had gone when he was younger, but after some argument with a pastor over money he became embittered against all preachers.

Dad put a love in me for all things outdoors, history, art, and science.  The only thing that I was at odds with Dad was religion.  I loved the stories I heard in church and could not understand why I could not talk to Dad about them without him becoming angry.

City life grinded on the nerves of Dad and wore on him constantly until he would finally snap.  He had grown up fifteen miles from the nearest “town” with a population of about 100 and never got used to the sounds of the city.  His need for quiet was so great that he later moved to the small community of Cherry Court and made the 90 mile drive each way every day to work for the quiet.

Dad was fine most of the time, but he could be set off into a fit of rage without a moment’s notice over the littlest things at times.  Sometimes, he would hurt me or Mom.

One time, he got angry because I was carrying around what he thought was a doll.  It was not what he thought, but it was my patient that I was taking care of.  Mom had told me that Dad helped people who were hurt when he was in the army, so that is what I wanted to do.

I could speak enough to tell Dad this.  So, killed by my patient by ripping off its head.  Then he pushed me down the stairs in a fit of rage and my left foot was caught between the wooden steps (there was no backboard between steps). 

He then had a look of panic at what happened and used his medical skills that he learned in the army to give me first aid instead of taking me to a doctor.  Some days I still have a painful reminder of this with every step of my left leg or when one of my legs unconsciously twists outward.

One time he became so anger over my right and left impairment that he carved an “R” and “L” in the top of my hands with his pocketknife to “help me remember which hand was which”.  Those scars still have not completely faded.

One time he almost beat me to death because I disturbed him while he was reading the paper after he came home from work.  My mother had laid into him before hand and the mousetrap was set when I came along.  Again, he treated my wounds, and I never went to a doctor.

After these incidents, he would come to me looking ashamed and tell me that he was sorry.  Some people thought that if he was really sorry, then he would not have done this in the first place.  However, I understood that he really was sorry, for I have also been tormented by the same monster within that tormented him.

He also hit Mom sometimes.  One time he beat her pretty badly for taking us to church because he had wanted to take us fishing.  The worst time he beat her was when she did not go with me to the bus stop like he had told her to do to protect me from the bully across the street and his brothers beat me up at the bus stop.

My younger brother David was scared that he was going to kill Mom one day and told her to call Uncle Ken.  Mom was hesitant to do so, but she was scared that if she stayed that Dad would kill me one day, so she called Uncle Ken.  However, they kept it secret from me because I would have told Dad.

So, Mom took us to her parents in Arkansas.

After we arrived in Arkansas with our cat Frisky and my brother’s black goldfish Molly, I asked when Dad was coming to join us.  Mom, Uncle Ken, and my grandparents told me that he would be coming in a few days.

A few days later Mom enrolled me in the local elementary school.  Most of the kids there made fun of me.

I missed my old school.  I did not have any friends there either, but at least the kids there did not make fun of me for being different all the time.  As long as they knew that I was willing to fight back, they left me alone.

To make things worse, I had trouble learning to read and a speech impediment.  I had been born with an auditorial processing problem and had not begun speaking at all until I was three years old.

The teacher taught reading using phonetics and I had trouble sounding words out since I was not hearing them right to start with.  I also pronounced words the way I heard them instead of the way that they should have been pronounced.  So, I spent part of the day in special education classes to help with these problems.

Also, many of the other kids had gone to head start or kindergarten, but I had not.  So, I was still learning to count while they were beginning basic addition and subtraction.

So, the kids called me stupid and dumb.  However, the more they called me those things, the more determined I became to prove them wrong.

It soon became apparent that I had a gift for math.  By the end of first grade, I could beat all of them in any math contest.  That never changed as long as I was in school.

Then came November.

When my seventh birthday rolled around about a month later, Dad had still not come.  By this time we had moved into the house my great grandfather had built.  This is the same house that I had lived in before we had moved to Saint Louis, and I only had happy memories there.

Since Dad could not come to my birthday, his younger brother came.  He lived with my Grandma Remington in the town where I went to school.

When Uncle Frankie arrived, he saved Mom from being burned by a pressure cooker that she had left on the stove too long because she had gotten distracted.  When he left, he ditched his car less than half a mile from our house and Uncle Ken had to help him get his VW Bug out of the ditch with his tractor.

Soon after that, Dad came down for Thanksgiving.  This was before the disintegration of Thanksgiving had begun and it was always the happiest day of the year for me.

So, I went with great joy to my Grandma Remington’s house and saw Dad.  I had so much to be thankful for – we were going to be family once again.

However, at the end of that weekend Dad headed towards his car.  I asked him where he was going.  He told me that He was going back to Saint Louis, and I had to stay in Arkansas on the farm because Mom was divorcing him.

I held on to his leg crying harder than I had ever cried in my life.  He would have to beat me to death before I would let him go.  He was my world and families were supposed to stay together.

After a few minutes, he dried my tears and gently lifted my head.  He told me that since he would not be around that he needed me to take care of Mom and my brothers.

I promised him that I would take care of them for him.  Then he drove off.

I never forgot that promise and it shaped my whole life.

After that, my Mom’s father, who I called Grampa, began to fill in some of the gap created when Dad left.  He only spanked me for purposeful disobedience and never raised up his hands against me in anger.

Grampa had been unhappy in many ways ever since Mom had married Dad.  He had warned her that Dad was trouble and not to marry him. 

Instead, Mom rebelled completely against his wishes and married Dad before even graduating high school.  She was pregnant with me a month or so later.

Perhaps Grampa felt that he had failed in raising Mom but was being given another chance.  Also, he and I were alike in a lot of ways.  We both had exceptional memories and did not need acceptance from other people.

When I was eight I went down to an altar to be saved in the Baptist church in town that Grandma Remington attended.  I was dead serious about wanting the Father of Truth (YHVH aka God aka THE LORD) to change me, so that I did not turn out like Dad.

I sincerely wanted the power to not sin against the Father of Truth.  The pastor and deacons told me that was unscriptural. 

So nothing changed in my life.  In fact, things would eventually get worse because a baby cannot live or grow without milk.

In fact, I became terrified of sleeping because I thought if I slept then I might never wake up.  The Man of Truth (Yeshua HaMashiach aka Jesus Christ) appeared to me in the first of many dreams and visions and assured me that I had nothing to fear.

However, there was trouble at school.

At school, a girl named Kate was sweet on me as Grampa would say.  She was the first friend that I ever had.

Kate was the first person outside of my family to invite me to their birthday party.  Her father had built their house into the side of a hill to keep down heating and cooling cost.  I thought that was really cool.

I bought her a plastic purse with Daisy Duck on it and she loved it.  She carried with her to school every day.  Then one day, Kate was gone when her dad moved to take a better job.

By this time, my parents’ divorce had become public knowledge, and it was scandalous.  Divorce was virtually unheard of in NWA at that time and anyone who was divorced was a pariah – as well as their children.

So, now when I went to school, it was like I was wearing a big scarlet “D” on my chest.  I overheard one of the other kids tell their friend that their parents said to have nothing to do with me since I came from a broken home.  Their parents acted like divorce was a virus that I could give their kids and destroy their homes.

The worst part about school was recess.  In first grade, we had three each day – one at the beginning of the day, one at lunch, and one in the afternoon.  The intent was to give the children time to develop their social skills.

Instead, I spent most of my recesses sitting under a tree in the far corner of the playground crying because I was so lonely.  This went on every day until one day in third grade, I just quit crying.  I decided that I would have to be my own friend since no one else was going to be my friend.

Not long after that, a new kid, Roger, came into our class.  Soon, I had a new friend and recess was no longer unbearable.

The parents of Roger had also divorced, and he also moved to NWA from a large urban area.  He also liked many of the same things that I liked including playing army and reptiles.

Roger had much better social skills than me (the bar was low) and soon helped me make friends with some of the other kids.  Soon, I was being included in their games at recess.

However, being one of only two kids growing up divorce still caused problems that the other kids just could not understand. 

My father had agreed to give only a small amount of money for our support each month plus provide medical insurance.  He never provided the insurance, and I had no medical coverage until I joined the US Air Force. 

Also, at times the support checks did not come in.  So, my parents spent a good part of their money on lawyers and a fair amount of their time in court suing each other.

Roger did not have as many financial problems, since his father gave them much more support.  I do not think that his parents ever sued each other.

None of the other kids could understand why I could not just ask my parents for money needed for social events.  Many of them worked on farms as well, but they usually did not have to spend all their wages on things like food and clothing.

However, I had never forgotten the promise that I made to Dad to take care of my mother and my brothers.  I tried to make sure that they had what they needed, even if it meant that I did not have what I needed.

Dad would call us every month or so.  The first question he always asked me was “how are my mother and brothers doing?”.  I would tell him so he could see that I was keeping my promise.

However, things were about to get worse in many ways.

It was not too long before Dad had married another woman.  The “friend” of my mom who had told her to leave Dad in Saint Louis, introduced this woman to Dad as soon as Mom had left.

When Dad came down for Christmas, he introduced us to this other woman’s children.  He said that they were now our stepbrother and stepsisters.

The first thing my new stepbrother did upon meeting me was punch me in the mouth.  I had done nothing to provoke this.  He was just trying to show me who was boss.

I went crying to Dad, who told me if someone hits then you have to hit them back.  So, soon Kevin and I got into a full-fledged fist fight that Dad finally had to break up.

Later, my Uncle Terry got into it with my Dad over his treatment of us.  He pointed to me and told Dad that I was more of a man than he was.  I did not understand what he meant at the time.

This was typical of Christmas time when I was growing up.  The happiest day of the entire season was when we burned the tree on the day after Christmas and finished cleaning up the Christmas mess.  The ordeal was over until the day after the next Thanksgiving.

As part of the divorce agreement, we had to spend part of our summer with Dad at his new home in Cherry Court.  Dad let me and Kevin know that he expected us to learn to get along with each other.

We were both too afraid of Dad to not comply, so Kevin invited me to play a game with him.  We soon found that we actually enjoyed playing games together as well as other things like fishing and baseball.  So, I gained a part-time brother and friend, but it also created problems. 

Even though Dad tried to treat everyone fairly, our stepmother made sure that her children were taken care of first.  At times, she resented that Dad had to send us money for support – even though it was small and totally inadequate for our needs.

Also, the father of our stepbrother and stepsisters was in prison.  However, he had taught his children some things before he went away like how to pick pockets and shoplift.

Kevin often used these skills to help me.  Whenever we went to the Venture store, he would ask me if there was anything that he could shoplift for me, but I always told him no.  When I told him I had gotten pick pocketed at the fair, he told me where to put my wallet, so that I would not be pick pocketed again.

However, Kevin also influenced David.  By the time David was ten years old, he was already smoking marijuana.

I was furious when I found out.  I felt like I was failing to keep my promise to take care of my brothers that I had made to my dad.  This led to much trouble between us.

Then things got even worse.

The following Summer, when visiting Dad in Cherry Court, my stepsister hit me in the stomach because I tagged her out in a baseball game.  So, I hit her back as Dad had taught me.

Kim went crying to Dad and told him.  He told me not to hit girls and hit me hard in the stomach.

I told him that I was doing what he had taught me, but he said that did not apply to girls.  When I asked him if it did not apply to girls then why he had hit Mom, he backhanded me hard across the face.  Then I had a busted lip, a bloody nose, and a black eye as well.

I was becoming afraid of talking to Dad and this made things much worse.  I was also becoming increasingly fearful that if I got married that I would also beat my wife like Dad had done with Mom.  I thought the only way to keep that from happening was to have nothing to do with girls.

That same visit I forgot to take my medicine that kept me from sleeping too soundly one night and I wet the bed.  When Dad saw the soaked sheets he began beating me in a fit of rage.

He told me if I was going to wet where I slept like a dog, then he was going to treat me like a dog.  So, for the rest of that visit he made me sleep on the floor like a dog.

My stepmother got upset at him for doing this.  After all, his own sister did not quit wetting the bed until she was sixteen and he hit anyone who made fun of her for doing so.  So, he did not hit me for wetting the bed anymore, but I did have to wash my own bedding if I wet the bed. 

Still, the damage he had done with his words was a thousand times worse than those he had done with his fists and left me damaged for years.  Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can really hurt you.

I was in middle school and the girl trouble began.

The friends that I eventually made in elementary school were now forming cliques.  They were beginning to date and the like.

There was this one girl that I really liked as well, and it scared me terribly that she liked me as well.  One day, she told me she thought that I was sweet, and I knew that there was only one thing I could do to protect her.

I started doing things to drive her away from me.  It broke my heart to do so, but I truly loved her and did not want her to end up abused like my mother.

Soon, I developed an entirely misogynist persona that I put on at school to keep not just her but all girls safe from me.  I did whatever I could be unattractive to girls and offend girls.  However, it was not always successful because girls tend to be attracted to boys who remind them of their fathers, and I was acting just like some of their fathers.

Also, the bullying on the school bus increased.  Grampa was not able to do anything about the bullying on the bus and had told me to talk to the principal about it.

The principal told me basically just to take whatever the bullies did to me and not fight back.  However, Dad had told me when someone hits you, then you have to hit them back.

So, now I was responsible for doing what the school authorities would not do. I had to do something about these bullies because I had promised Dad to take care of my brothers. 

During this time, the men from the government came.

One day in sixth grade, me and one of my classmates were pulled out of the classroom for a special assignment.  We were then taken to a room in the prefab attached to the school to be given an IQ test.

My classmate went first while I waited, then it was my turn.  I found the test to be quite easy and a lot of fun.

A lot of it was puzzles, which I spent a lot of time solving for fun since I often had a lot of time to myself.  They also showed me things like the chemical formula for sugar, which I identified right away.

I loved tests of all kinds, because to me they were a game that I could almost always win.  I also loved math and there was plenty of that on the test as well.

Of course, I wanted to know my score when it was over.  Part of the fun of playing games is knowing your score and who had the highest score.

However, the lady in the prefab building would not tell me because she said that was confidential information.  Still I was determined to find out if I had won the game or if my classmate had won.

I asked her if she could at least tell me my score.  She told me that the government men had taken the test for grading, and she did not know my score.  After my persistent pestering, she said that she would have the scores later and she could tell me my score then.

Every day, I went to the prefab at lunch to learn my score.  Finally, she told me that it had come in, but reminded me that she could only tell me my score.

So, she unlocked the bottom drawer of the file cabinet to locate the test results.  Just as she found them, a co-worker came rushing in and told her that she had to come see what had been done to her car.  So, she left in a hurry without locking the filing cabinet.

I quickly opened the filing cabinet drawer and found my test results right where she had left the files divided.  I looked at my score and the score of my classmate whose test results were right in front of mine.

I had a really high score and had beaten my classmate by over thirty points.  I was really quite happy about this being unaware of the trouble it would bring.

Then I put everything back as it was and went out the door to see what was going on.  I blended into the crowd of kids to not raise any suspicion.

It turned out that while I had her distracted with my daily visit to find my score, that some of the eighth graders decided to pull a prank on her.  They had picked up her VW Bug and turned it sideways in the parking space.  The lady who came running in was not able to open her driver’s side door because the sideways VW Bug was blocking it.

Eventually, the principal was called out to straighten out the situation.  Nobody would say who did this, but he had his suspicions.  So, he called a group of eighth grade boys over and made them put the VW Bug back in the normal position.

Not long after this, Mom was called to have an afterschool conference with the government men and told to bring me.  They wanted to send me to a special institute for the gifted and told Mom if I did well there, then I would be sent to a school like Harvard.

This was a terrible conflict for me.

I would have been glad to get away from the bullying and be surrounded by people with a similar intellect and interests.  I was interested in going to Harvard because it was the finest business school in the world.

However, I had promised Dad that I would take care of Mom and my brothers.  The institute was far away in Indiana, and I would only see them a few times a year.

There was no way that I could go there and keep the promise I had made to Dad.  Also, Grampa had become my world by this point, and I did not want to leave him.

However, Mom resolved the conflict for me.  She flat out refused to let me go and I could not go without her permission.

The government men tried to change her mind.  They told her that a mind like mine did not belong in a place like NWA and that America needed those minds to beat the Soviets in the Cold War.

For a long time, I was upset with Mom for not letting me decide for myself until I learned how unhappy the people who went were as evidenced by a high suicide rate.  A gifted child is still a child and still needs to be allowed to have a childhood to grow into an adult over time.

After learning this, I thought Mom had told them “no” to protect me.  It turned out that she just wanted me to graduate from the same high school that she and Grampa had graduated from.

Also after this, my head began to swell as Grampa would say.  I began to develop a superiority complex that brought me a lot of trouble.

I also became resentful that my classmates never recognized me for my abilities.  They always voted my classmate as most intellectual, even though I had beaten him quite handedly on the IQ test.

In many ways, I wish that I had never been given that test.  It felt like I now had a responsibility to live up to the expectations that came with an exceptional IQ.  I also felt like I was letting my country down.

This test had made me feel even more isolated and alone.  Being a government proclaimed genius was just another way of not fitting in with the people of NWA.

However, I was making Grampa proud.

Grampa highly valued education.  Every time I brought home a test with a 100% score on it, he smiled.  He also gave me a small amount of money for each A that I made on my report cards.

Grampa had wanted to become a doctor when he was younger, but his health ironically would not let him stand up to the rigors of medical school.  Though he never complained about it, he had always hoped that one of his children would be able to do something like that.

If there is such thing as a genius gene, then it plainly skipped a generation.  Mom made good grades in school and excelled in some areas, but she was not in the same league as Grampa.

Uncle Ken skipped school often and made the minimum grades necessary to stay out of trouble.  All he ever wanted to do was be a cowboy.  When it came to that, he was the real deal.

Dad had never told me that he was proud of me for anything.  Grampa was proud of me and bragged on me to everyone.  If I won an award for something, Grampa was always there, while Dad never was.

In many ways, I was raised as Grampa’s son.  Uncle Ken had not gotten married, and Grampa needed someone to keep the line going.  He only hoped that I would one day get married and have children.

So, I began signing my tests with Grampa’s last name instead of Dad’s.  This confused my teachers at first, but they recognized that it was my test by my horrible handwriting and perfect scores.

However, Dad was still part of my life.

I would go to see Dad each Summer at Cherry Court and sometimes at Thanksgiving or Christmas.  Most of the time, we did things like fishing or hunting, and things went pretty well.  However, when I was fourteen, things took a turn for the worst.

Dad and my stepmother had a child that they named Jerry.  Dad favored Jerry over all of his children.

When Jerry was about three years old, he got upset with me and hit me hard with one of my shoes.  I hit him back as Dad had told me to do.

He went crying to Dad and Dad asked me if I had hit Jerry.  I told him that I had, because he had told me when someone hits you to hit them back.

Dad went into the worst fit of rage that I had ever seen.  He grabbed my hand that was holding my drink shattering the drinking glass - embedding pieces of glass in my hand.

He then knocked me out of my chair and began kicking me hard in my stomach with his cowboy boots.  He gave me another thing to remember him by in the form of internal organ damage that has lasted a lifetime.

I rolled away from him and stood up on my feet.  I placed my arms up to protect my face.

This made him even angrier and shouted, “how dare you rise up against me”.  Then he began beating me with his fists and I ran to the basement to escape out the door to the back yard, but I tripped and rolled down them instead.

He followed me down the stairs and continued to beat me as I was lying on the floor.  I got up again and started to run for the backyard door, but he got between me and the door.  So, I ran back up the stairs.

I was afraid that he was going to kill me, and no one was doing anything to help me.  So, I ran to Kevin’s room and locked the door.

Then I reached where Kevin kept his gun but thank the Father of Truth it was not there.  I was afraid for my life, and I would have shot Dad if had gotten that gun.

Just as Dad reached the door and began demanding that I open the door, my stepmother yelled out his name and Dad instantly froze.  She then told him that if he hit me one more time then she would leave him.

Eventually, she told me to come out and that I would be safe.  Then Dad told me he was sorry for what he had done.  I understood for I was also subject to sudden fits of rage, but I was now terrified to talk to Dad.

Of course, I was never taken in for medical treatment.  My stepmother thought I should be, but I had no medical insurance since Dad had never paid for it.  I guess they would have told the doctors that I had fallen down the stairs – which was technically true.

My stepmother had Dad send us home early on a bus.  It was the only thing she could do to keep everyone safe and out of prison.

However, I was not the only one scarred for life that day.

Little did I know that this was my last visit to Cherry Court.

After I got back home, the support checks from Dad stopped coming altogether.  Mom called Dad about it, but Dad insisted that he was sending them.

Soon, Mom and Dad were back in court, but could not come to an agreement.  Dad insisted Mom was lying to get more money out of him.

Mom knew what Dad had done to me on our last visit, so she got a restraining order against Dad.  Dad was not allowed to come into the state of Arkansas to even visit his mother.

Mom also told us that we were no longer allowed to visit Dad either until after he resumed paying the support checks.  So, visits with Dad were over, and our money became even tighter.

Eventually, the courts ruled that we would be paid by having Dad’s paycheck garnished.  The city of Saint Louis responded by firing Dad, so we still got no support checks.

After that, Dad moved to Evansville, Indiana where my stepmother was from.

After Summer was over, I started High School. 

Just like in Middle School, the principal was unwilling to do anything about the bullies and wanted me to just take it to keep his job safe with the parents of the bullies.  However, Dad had told me when some hits you then you have to hit them back.

I knew that at the end of the day, I was on my own and no one was coming to rescue me. 

The problem was that the bullies were physically a lot larger and stronger than me.  Their longer arm reaches gave them a decided advantage in a fist fight.  So, I had to find different ways to hit back.

One thing I thought of was poisoning them like people did with rats.  I did not want to be caught because it would embarrass Grampa, so I decided to figure out a way to make some type of poison that would be hard to trace back to me.  Thus began my obsession with chemistry.

The bullies in a lot of ways were morons.  They could see me struggling with fear at the time and they assumed that I was afraid of them.  It never once occurred to them that someone might just shoot them one day.

The truth is that I was afraid of losing control of myself completely like Dad had done and going on a killing spree.  I did not want to hurt Grampa with the shame that would come if I was caught.

In reality, any beatings they gave me or the humiliation they put me through were not nearly as bad as what I had already gone through.  Compared to Dad, they were all a bunch of pathetic amateurs.

In the meantime, I found other ways to fight back.  Dad being taken from me had taught me that to really hurt someone, find out what is most important to them and take it away from them.

So, I did things like causing their girlfriends to leave them.  I had become quite expert at offending girls, and I knew what to say to make the bullies look offensive in the eyes of their girlfriends.

The truth is that I really had never been taught how to deal with a bully.  This was not it and it only created an endless cycle.  After one bully would leave me alone, there was always another one to deal with.

Then Uncle Ken got married and soon his wife was pregnant.  I was no longer responsible for continuing the line of Grampa.

However, in May of the next year, the baby was still born.  Shortly after that, Grampa died when I was sixteen.

It was like that terrible day when I had made the promise to Dad all over again.  It was more than I could bear.

Soon, I went off the deep end completely.

Grampa had been my world and my source of stability.  I had always struggled to do what he had told me what was right, and it had restrained me from seeking revenge.

I felt like I had no one to help me carry the load.  I had to be strong for the sake of Mom and my brothers to keep my promise to Dad, but I was in the worst pain of my life.

So, I would sometimes go deep into the woods to let my pain out.  I would just scream at the Father of Truth asking why.  I would howl in pain as if I was a wounded animal.

Sometimes, I would be gone for more than a day when Mom was staying in town with one of her friends because she was working double shifts in a row.  Sometimes I wandered through the woods all night and sometimes I just slept on the forest floor like a dog.

However, I pulled out of it eventually.  I could not let myself go completely mad and keep the promise that I had made to Dad.

I was also no longer concerned about embarrassing Grampa if I started killing the bullies as I had convinced myself they deserved.  I was on the road to becoming a serial killer.

I went to the library and studied various ways to kill people.  I learned that you could kill people using ordinary household items like cinnamon.

One of my uncles that married into Dad’s extended family had been to prison.  He told me how I could make plastic explosives from bleach and fertilizer like those used in the OKC bombing years later.

I scouted out locations deep in the woods to bury the bodies where no one was likely to find them.  I also learned how to dissolve bodies completely in a bathtub using lye if I could acquire enough of it and had the patience to keep at it for three days.

Dad had told me to always hit bullies back.  I thought that maybe he would finally be proud of me.

I thought about every obstacle to revenge and how I could overcome it.  Still, there was one problem with my plans that I could not overcome. 

I was no match for my praying grandmothers.

This kind and gentle voice would start talking to me about how I would hurt them if I started killing the bullies.  It warned me that I would end up hurting someone unintentionally like one of my brothers.  It also told me that I would get caught no matter how clever my plan was and then I would not be able to keep my promise to Dad.

Then I decided that the only way to keep from becoming a serial killer was to kill myself.  I was terrified that I was going to lose all control like Dad had the last time I visited him.

However, every time I was ready to kill myself that same kind and gentle voice would start talking to me about how much it would hurt my grandmothers, Mom, and my brothers if I killed myself.  It told me that I would end up in the chamber of horrors that was much worse than anything I had experienced.  It would remind me of the promise that I had made to Dad.

I also threatened some of David’s friends with a bow and arrow one time when I caught them with drugs in our home.  Another time I threatened another group with a gun.  I really did not want to kill them, but I was doing what I could to keep the promise I made to Dad to take care of my brother.

Also during this summer Dad called and said that if I came to live with him, then he would buy me a car.  Not only was I terrified every time I spoke to Dad, but there was no way I could move and keep the promise I had made to him concerning Mom and my brothers.  So, I told him I could not do that in a shaky voice.

Still by the time that school came around, I was determined to not kill myself or anyone else.  The bullying actually got worse as if to test my resolve to keep the promise I had made to Dad.

Then I got a new outlet for my frustrations.

My uncle Tim introduced me to a new game about the time that school started called Dungeons and Dragons.  It turned out that I made a really good Dungeon Master.

Academically, high school was a waste of four years of my life.  I could have learned most of what I learned there in one semester.  I was always doing puzzles and the like to keep from being bored.

Now, I used that time to create adventures for people to play out in dungeons I designed.  The first six weeks of school they just went over what they had done the former school year anyways.

I thought my classmate were just being lazy.  I remembered exactly where we had left off and was ready to learn something new.  (My daughter later informed me that most people really do forget a lot of information over the summer and really do need a refresher.)

Thanks to my government instilled superiority complex, I made sure the bullies knew just how weak their minds really were.  It did not make me any friends, but it did make them avoid me as much as possible.

When we played Dungeons and Dragons, I played a few characters as well as acting as Dungeon Master.  They were expressions of Dad and me.

There were two wizards named “Johnny B. Good” and “Johnny Rotten” that reflected the two sides of Dad I had experienced.  They were named after titles of rock songs I liked. 

They were identical twins that were like two sides of the same coin.  They were both unstable and unpredictable.

One of them usually either showed up suddenly to save the day or the other one showed to wreak havoc for no good reason when things were going well.  Most of the time, they were just absent.

Then there was the assassin with no name (inspired by another song).  He did not belong to a guild like most assassins but was a lone wolf.

He killed evil people, primarily with poison, and was never caught.  He reflected my inner serial killer and did what I still wanted to do to the bullies.

Soon there was a disruption to my gaming.

Not long after that, Mom came home one day and told me that she had found me a job in Fayetteville.  I had never indicated that I wanted a job since it could only take time away from Dungeon and Dragons.

So, I asked her why I needed a job and replied to get a car.  I told her that I did not go anywhere, so why did I need a car?  She replied to drive to work.

I thought that she needed help with money.  So, I agreed to go to work at Bowen’s Buffet.  After all, I had promised Dad to take care of Mom and my brothers.

When I got there, they wanted me to work on Sundays.  I did not want to work on Sundays because Grampa had taught me to give one day a week to the Father of Truth.

However, Mom insisted that I take the job, even though it meant that I would not be able to go to church at all.  So, I was dragged out of church by Mom much to my surprise.  This eroded my sense of right and wrong further.

It turned out that I really was not able to be much help working part time.  I got paid weekly and most of my money went to pay for car expenses.  Often, I only had enough left over to buy myself one bottle of Mountain Dew at the One Stop.

So, I began working more hours to get money to help Mom.  If I worked over forty hours, I got time and half pay.  Soon, I was working ninety hours a week while still in high school trying to keep the promise I made to Dad.

I could have avoided working so many hours by selling drugs like some of my classmates.  However, I had promised Grampa to never take drugs and I hated what they were doing to my brother.

My grades did not suffer.  Mrs. Post would let me sleep in physics class and only wake me up on test days.  I usually got a perfect score, which made some of my classmates jealous.

In reality, I should have been jealous of them.  Most of them had stable home lives and parents who provided for them.

Even though some people made fun of me for my menial job as a dishwasher, one of my classmates encouraged me when I really needed it.  The classmate that I had beaten on the IQ test in sixth grade, told me that he admired me for doing honest work instead of selling drugs.

Working long hours while going to school finally took its toll.  I soon totaled two cars – one because I fell asleep at the wheel and one because I was driving way too fast trying to get to work on time.  This destroyed my ability to help Mom.

Afterwards things got a little better.

Richard joined me at work after that and we carpooled.  That helped me get more sleep and allowed me to cut back to sixty hours a week.

Mom and Dad stopped suing each other and Mom dropped the restraining order against Dad.  I began seeing him again when he went to Arkansas.

I was also still dealing with the bullies.  In fact, on my last day of school one of them hit me when our teacher left the classroom and she found me on top of him pounding his head into the floor when she returned.  I was still hitting the bullies back as Dad had told me to do.

Of course, no one came to his rescue just like they had never come to my rescue.  However, the principal did give us both licks with his paddle since no more bullies from his prominent family would be attending school there after that day.

Finally graduation day came, and the nightmare called high school was over.  Of course, Dad was nowhere to be seen.

However, he did pick me up later and I went to visit with him in Indiana.  I caught the only crappie I ever caught, and it was close to the Indiana state record in size.

Then Dad took me to Saint Charles, Missouri to visit Kevin for a few days.  Then I went home on the bus, not knowing that this was the last time that I would see Kevin.

Then I was off to the University of Arkansas.

I had a full ride scholarship to the University of Arkansas, but I chose to live off campus.  After all, I could not keep my promise to Dad if I was not home with Mom, David, and Richard.

When David graduated from high school, Dad was there.  It may have been the first time that he was at any of our school events.

Grampa had left me ten acres of land and I decided to sell them to our neighbor to have money for school.  That way, I could cut back to working forty hours a week and focus more on school like he had wanted.

After paying back Mom for her pickup that I wrecked, Mom soon needed money for other expenses that piled up.  So, I loaned her the rest of it and went back to working sixty hours a week.  I knew that she might never be able to repay me, but I had promised Dad to take care of her and my brothers.

When I was nineteen, I took out a student loan so I could cut back to working twenty hours a week and really focus on my schoolwork.  However, David was soon arrested, and Mom came crying to me to use the money to help keep him out of prison.

I had promised Dad to take care of Mom and my brothers, so I ended up committing fraud by not using the money for school expenses as I had agreed to.  It took me ten years to pay back that loan, but I repaid every penny of it.

Afterwards I had a life-changing encounter at college.

One day a group of Baptist students came over to a gaming session that I had going outdoors at college before heading for home.  They did not say much, but their presence made us uncomfortable.  We ended our session early.

After the others left, I saw one of them heading towards off-campus parking.  It looked like he needed a ride, so I offered him one.

When we got in my car, we began to talk.  I learned that his name was Roger. 

I asked Roger why we had become so uncomfortable when they came over.  He said we were probably being convicted by the Spirit of Truth (Ruach HaQodesh aka The Holy Spirit aka The Holy Ghost).

This was new to me.  All I knew about the Spirit of Truth was that it was one of the three names that we had mentioned each week when we recited the Apostles Creed in the Methodist church.  I had no idea that the Spirit of Truth did anything other than just be there.

As the gentle rain fell, I told him about the kind and gentle voice that had talked me out of doing violence to the bullies and myself.  He told me that was the Spirit of Truth and the Father of Truth had not forgotten my sincerity when I had gone down to the alter at the Baptist church when I was eight.

After that, I asked Roger where he needed to go.  He told me that he did not need a ride, but the Father of Truth had told him to talk to me.

Then he handed me a paperback with the words “Good News” on a cover that looked like a newspaper and told me that the answers to all my questions were in it.  I never saw Roger again.

Summer break began a few days later, and I began reading the book.

It started off with some of what we had always called “The Christmas Story” in a book called Matthew.

I realized that Roger had given me the Renewed Covenant (B'rit Chadashah aka The New Testament), but it was different than the King James Bible that Grampa had given to each of us as a Christmas present when I was twelve.  That Bible was black with gold lettering on a zippered cloth covering.  I had carried everywhere I went, including camping.

I had read small parts of it, but the only book in it I ever read entirely was Revelation.  That one scared me because all of the terrible things I had dreams about after going down to that altar were in it.

This Good News translation was easy to read, if not terribly accurate.  I read the entire book in one marathon session lying on our couch.

Usually, when I read a book once, I do not bother reading it again because I remember most of what is in it, but this book was different.  It was like the book was reading me back.

So, I read it a second time much more slowly. As I was reading through the Gospels, I heard the voice of the Man of Truth who had spoken to me when he had appeared to me one night after I had gone down to the alter.  His voice is distinct and unmistakable, but I had not heard it in years.

I did not see him, but he started quoting the Ten Commandments.  I felt conviction as he quoted each commandment, except one.  When he got to “Thou shall not kill”, I objected out loud that I had never killed anyone.

His immediate response was “that is because you were denied means and opportunity” and I knew it was true.  He went on that murder is in the heart and I had hated people enough to kill them.

I was so convicted of my sin because saying I hated the bullies was an understatement.  I had not only wanted to murder them, but I hoped Hell was real because I wanted their suffering to never end.

Still I tried to justify myself by screaming at the Man of Truth that he knew what they had done to me, and that someone had to pay.  His quiet response absolutely crushed me.  He said, “someone did pay, I paid”.

I knew in that moment that if I did not forgive them, then it was the same as saying what the Man of Truth suffered on the cross was not good enough.  He had suffered more than I ever had when he became the bullied man to pay for their sins.

I now understood that I was a worse sinner than I had thought.  That I was not just guilty of the things that I had done, but also of the things that I would have done if I could have done them.

I now knew that it was about the heart and anyone who wants the Father of Truth to judge them based on their intentions instead of their actions has deluded themselves about their intentions.

I now knew from what I had read that the Man of Truth literally wanted me to do what he had told the woman caught in adultery: “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11).  This was not unscriptural as I had been told as a child.

I now knew that he wanted all of me or none of me.  He had made it plain in Revelation that he would rather me serve the Father of Lies (HaShatan aka Satan Aka The Devil) full time than serve him part time (Revelation 3:15-16).

I just did not know what to do about these things.  It was not like I could go to the local chapter of some twelve-step program like Alcoholics Anonymous called SKA (Serial Killers Anonymous) and gradually wean myself off of this sin.

Soon things began to change.

One day during summer break, we were having a Dungeons and Dragons session at my house, but Richard was late, so we started without him.  Then his girlfriend and some of her friends showed up looking for him.

We had no idea where Richard was, and I politely asked them to leave us alone.  They were distracting my players and disturbing our session.  However, they persisted, and it was plain that politeness was not going get them to leave.

I found one of them particularly distracting.  In Dungeon and Dragon terms, she was very comely and that made me even more uncomfortable.

So, I put on my well-practiced misogynist persona to drive them from our presence.  I referred to her as a wretched wench that would be vile to even the most disfigured and desperate man.  I applied my usual disparaging comments about women in general and how she was a perfect example.

However, this girl was totally unimpressed and continued to be a distraction.  She even mocked me.  It was if she was saying to me, “Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on me, boy”.

This left me shook up and confused.  It had never failed me before, and I was not sure what to do.

After a while, Richard drove up.  He had gone fishing and had “forgotten” to tell anyone.  I think he was hoping that his girlfriend would be gone before he arrived.

Our session was ruined, even though I tried to salvage it.  The girls were not leaving without Richard and Richard’s character “Brule the Spear-Slayer” was essential to the quest the party was on.

I was upset with this girl for invading my domain and disrupting my escape from reality.  I was frustrated that she could see that my usual misogynist behavior was really just an act.  I was irritated with myself for noticing how comely she was.

It turned out that this girl knew a lot of people that I knew and had even been in Grandma Remington’s house many times when I was there.  Yet somehow we just kept missing each other.

If she was downstairs at Grandma Remington’s, then I was upstairs.  If her school was playing our school in a ball game, then she would be on one side and I the other.  We learned from others that sometimes we had been within three feet of each other but with our backs to each other.

However after that day, this girl kept somehow being there every time I went into town to be with my friends.  If it had not been that her friends were usually there as well, then I would have thought that she was stalking me.

She had told me when I met her at my house that her name was Julie.  After a while, I realized that driving Julie away was hopeless, so I did something that I almost never did.  I asked a girl if she wanted to join us.

Julie joined us, but she was a terrible player.  She did not take the game seriously at all.  In fact, she seemed to enjoy disrupting our sessions from within.

I could not figure out what Julie was trying to accomplish.  I just knew that there did not seem to be any way to get rid of her and she was becoming a distraction to me.  My legendary skills as a Dungeon Master were suffering from her presence.

Eventually every time Julie came around me, her friends would start singing this popular song at the time “She can’t stop talking about him”.  She would tell them to shut up.  They would then stop singing and start giggling.

Then school resumed and Julie began calling me on my phone.  Soon, she was calling every night that I was off from work.

I tried the girl repellant again and got even worse results than before.  She just told me it sounded like a personal problem and then began asking me questions about why I acted this way.  It made me uncomfortable to think about the things that had driven me to be like this.

Also she was calling during my study time.  My time was divided between work, college, and my gaming.  Even my gaming had taken a backseat to college.

I told her that I could not keep talking to her during my study time.  She said that she would not call me anymore and I could call her when I had time.

However, found that I could not study.  Julie had gotten to me. 

Now I was not just irritated at myself for noticing her comeliness, but also opening up myself to her.  I now seemed hooked on our conversations as much as I was on math, science, rock music, and gaming.

So, a week later I found myself calling her.  However, it was a wrong number.  I did not know what to do.  I had never remembered a phone number wrong before.

Eventually, I got her number from one of my friends who gamed with us.  It turned out that I had transposed two of the digits in my head when she told me her phone number.  My audio processing issues caused me problems yet again.

So, I called Julie and told her what had happened.  She seemed to just be glad that I had called her back.  Soon we were back to our conversations and her uncomfortable questions.

Suddenly a ray of hope appeared.

My cousins from Tulsa came to visit Grandma Remington. 

During that visit my cousin Teresa told me that her brother no longer took drugs and had gotten rid of everything associated with that lifestyle.  She told me that he had cut his hair and went to church.

We would tell each other stories to see if we could get the other one to believe them.  If they did, then we would tell them how gullible they were and would believe anything.  She had gotten me a few times before, but none of them were as unbelievable as this one and I was not falling for it.

However, she insisted that this had really happened to Carl.  I wondered how far she was going to go just to win our game until I saw him.

I could not believe my own eyes.  Everything she said was true. I thought he must be scamming his parents, or the drugs had completely burned out his mind, or something.

When I started talking to him, it was apparent that he was in his right mind for the first time in years.  It was like a completely different person with his body was talking to me.

I asked him how his happened, so he told me something that I had never heard before in my life.  He told me that he had surrendered everything to the Man of Truth and the Man of Truth had made him completely free from the desire to do drugs.

I was stunned.  Carl was telling me that what I had asked about when I was eight had happened to him.  How could the Father of Truth do something in someone’s life that I had been told was “unscriptural” by the religious professionals?

I had gone to church weekly since I was young until my mother dragged me out of church to go to work at seventeen.  I had gone to Vacation Bible School each summer and also to church camp several times.  Not one time had I ever heard that if I surrendered everything to the Man of Truth then he would cleanse the unrighteousness out of my heart that caused me to sin.

For the first time since Dad has put me on the path to becoming a serial killer I felt hope.   However, I needed to know that it was real and not just a religious act that Carl was putting on.

A little later, I was conducting a Dungeon and Dragons session at Grandma Remington’s when Carl asked me what we were doing.  I had that same uncomfortable feeling that I had felt when Roger asked me the same thing before.

I explained to him that were playing a fantasy role playing game and asked him if he wanted to play.  He said no because it looked kind of evil.             

I responded that it was, and everyone busted out laughing.  They might have thought I was mocking Carl, but I was being completely honest.

I had realized by this point that I was not really the Dungeon Master, but rather the Dungeon Slave.  This game had become my addiction that was taking over my life.  I was as much a slave to it as other people were to drugs.

I wanted to be freed from my dungeons of gaming obsession and other worst things.  I wanted to be free of the increasingly violent dreams of torturing and killing the bullies in my life.  I hated what I had become, and I wanted to happen to me what had happened to Carl.

After this, I went to visit his family in Tulsa.  While there, I tried to tempt Carl to go back into his former lifestyle.  I did not really want him to do so, but the engineer in me needed to test things to be sure that they really worked.  I needed to know if this was real.

All my efforts were futile.  This new Carl was here to stay, and the old Carl was forever dead.  (Carl never took drugs again after that day he was delivered from them by the Man of Truth over forty years ago.)

The evidence said that this was real and everything Carl had told me was true.  I had reason to believe that the Man of Truth could deliver me from my dungeons as well.  I finally had hope.

Soon, something wonderful happened to me.

The next time I saw Carl he gave me a cassette with rock songs that he had taped off the Christian radio station.  When I listened to it, I found that it was of poor sound quality and the songs were of lower quality as well.  Still, something about listening to it was comforting.

So, I started to listen to it at night instead of my overtly occultic heavy metal albums that I had become addicted to.  Soon, I realized that on the nights that I listened to the heavy metal albums I would have nightmares, but when I listened to the cassette that Carl gave me I would sleep in peace with pleasant dreams.

I did not realize it at the time, but the lyrics mattered more than I realized.  The heavy metal album lyrics were full of messages of death from the Father of Lies, but the Christian rock song lyrics were full of the words of life from the Father of Truth.  It was not the music that made the difference but the lyrics.

After work on Friday I was driving one of my friends from a party that he had thrown after work.  I had not drunk alcohol or taken any drugs due to my promise to Grampa and he needed a ride from someone that was not under the influence.

As I was driving him, I began thinking about what Roger had told me, what I had read in the Renewed Covenant, what Carl had told me and how listening to the Christian music gave me peace.  Suddenly, it all made sense and it was obvious that I had made a mess of my life.

So, I pulled my car over to the side of the road and started crying like a baby.  I told the Man of Truth that I was sorry for the things I had done and named them one by one.  I told him that I no longer wanted to run my own life and I wanted him to run my life instead.

Jeff sat there shocked at the things that he had heard me confess.  He had always thought that I was a goody two shoes because I would not take drugs, drink alcohol, or have sex with any of the girls who wanted me to join them.

However, I did not care about anything except being free from my addictions, so I took the deal shortly after midnight on November 13, 1982.  I surrendered control of everything to the Man of Truth and he instantly delivered me from all of it like he had done with Carl.

It was all gone in the twinkling of an eye.  The hatred of bullies, the fear of harming my wife if I got married, the fits of uncontrollable rage, the addiction to gaming, the tormenting fear of being predestinated to become like Dad, and even worse things.

The old me was forever dead and a new me was forever alive.  I was a new creation, and the old things were forever gone (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The Man of Truth had come into my dark world and called me into his marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9).  This was the Good News that I had never heard in church.

There was no more struggle, for I had no more desire to do the things that I had done before than to pick up dog poop and eat it. I had completed the one-step program.

This was total surrender.  When I told the Man of Truth that he had control over everything, I had meant everything.  This included telling me whether or not I could get married and who to marry if he wanted me to get married.

When I got home, I burned all of my heavily occultic heavy metal albums.  However, I kept my other albums that did not seem to be so bad.

Then my whole world changed again.

David got into trouble with the police, and they let him know that they wanted him out of the state of Arkansas.  However, he had nowhere to go since Mom had put the restraining order on Dad.

Mom had dropped the restraining order, so David could live with Dad.  Just like when I was a child, they kept this hidden from me until they had no choice but to tell me.

That day came on my twentieth birthday.  I felt like I had completely failed to keep my promise to Dad when Mom told me that David would be going to live with Dad the next day.  David and I held each other and just cried.

I went to my room to cry some more until Granny came to comfort me.  I got angry at her for coming and seeing me cry.  Dad had told me that men should not cry when I made that promise.

I then did something I had never done before.  I cussed at Granny.  I could not believe that I had spoken to her like that, and I felt so ashamed when I saw the hurt on her face.

That was my worst birthday ever, even though I had more to come that were pretty awful as well.  This just seemed like more than I could bear once again.

David calmed me down.  He told me that Mom and my youngest brother Richard needed me to be strong.

When Dad came to pick up David, he asked me how Mom and Richard were doing.  I told him just like I had reported so many times before.  Then he drove off with David.

After that the Man of Truth got busy repairing my broken life.

Two days later, while thinking about what I had read in the Renewed Covenant that night I heard the voice of the Father of Truth.  He told me that I had a lust problem.

Of course He was right.  I had been addicted to porn magazines ever since I accidentally came across one when I was a kid that someone had hidden at school.  So I asked Him, “What can I do about it?”.

He said that I needed to get married.  I was very poor and seem to have nothing to offer a woman.  So, I asked, “Who would marry me?”. 

He said, “Have you considered Julie?”.  I sat there shocked because I had not despite her very comely appearance.

I thought “she is my friend and that would be weird”.  I am not sure what type of people I thought married each other, but Mom and Dad had not acted like friends most of my life.

So, I called Julie and asked her if she would like to go out on a date with me.  She eagerly said yes.

The next night I went on the first date of my life and asked Julie to marry me.  Her immediate response was “Of course I will Silly.”.

Ater this, Julie and I went around holding hands like Kate had done with me.  People could not believe it, but many of my relatives were just relieved that I was interested in a girl.

(My extended family had lots of people who never married.  Some of those were homosexuals and pedophiles.  I think my older relatives could see that I was going down the same path that some of them had gone down.)

One day when I was over at Grandma Remington’s house, I went into the kitchen through the back porch door to get a drink of water after mowing her yard.  The door to the dining room was shut but I could hear her talking to her sister Ruth.

She was talking about some of the things that Grandpa Remington had done to Dad when he was growing up.  One time, Dad had wet the bed and Grandpa Remington made him sleep in the barn like an animal even though it was the dead of winter.  Another time, Grandpa Remington stabbed him in his hand with a fork because he had grabbed a piece of chicken that Grandpa Remington had wanted.

I realized that in many ways Dad was only treating me the way that his father had treated him growing up.  Most of the time he was probably being easier on me than his dad had been on him.

I could see that this was a generational curse, but I had the Man of Truth on my side.  I was determined that this cycle would end with me.

After that, we went to visit Carl again when I was on vacation and went to a meeting with him in a converted warehouse on a Friday night.  The man leading the meeting began telling me that the Man of Truth would heal those who asked in faith.  I had read that in the Renewed Covenant, but the religious professionals told me that it was not literal but allegorical.

I had suffered terrible bouts of pain in my abdomen ever since Dad had kicked me in the stomach with his cowboy boots.  I had seen a few doctors with some of the money I got from the land sale, but they really could not do anything about it.

I had made up my mind that the Father of Truth said what He meant and meant what He said in the Book of Truth (The Bible.  So, when the man called for people to come up for healing I rushed to front.  When he laid hands on me the pain was gone never to return because there was a doctor in the house – the Man of Truth!

Carl made the long drive to NWA to disciple me several times since I would not go into a church.  Dad had spoken badly of preachers and hated church.  Also, I kept finding that the religious professionals that ran the churches had been consistently at odds with what the Renewed Covenant said.

On January 18, 1983, Julie and I got married in my backyard.  Carl had told me that Isaac just took Rebekah into his tent without any ceremony when they got married, so I decided I could do the same thing.

We raised up our right hands and promised the Father of Truth to never leave each other no matter what.  This was unconventional, but we have stayed married for over forty years while watching people with conventional weddings not last for five years.  The vows Mom and Dad had made in a conventional wedding had meant nothing, but ours stood the test of time.

Then things got even better.

I went to visit Carl and he took me to a Bible study.  At that Bible study I was baptized in the Spirit of Truth and began producing the sound of power.

Afterwards, Carl took me to a Christian bookstore and let me pick out a record.  I picked “All Fall Down” by the Seventy-Sevens.  It is still one of my favorite records ever.

When I got home, I smashed and burned all of my records except for the one that Carl had bought me.  It was hard for me to find the money to buy records and the most I ever had was about two dozen, but after that I only had one.

When I played my record for my friends, they wanted to know where I got it from.  This Christian band was not just as good as their secular bands - it was better.

(Eventually, even Rolling Stone magazine acknowledged this.  It said the Seventy Sevens virtually invented alternative music and modern rock all by themselves.)

I listened to that album over and over again in the farmhouse.  It was healing me in a way that is hard to explain.  The only time I listened to secular rock music was when I in my car and could not find a Christian rock radio station.

Also, I started going to church every chance I got.  I went to churches where the Spirit of Truth was showing up.  Richard went with me also.

I started paying tithes right away.  No had told me to do so, but I acted on what I had read in the Renewed Covenant. 

The Man of Truth said that the children of Abraham do what Abraham had done (John 8:39).  Abraham had paid tithes (Hebrews 7:6).

Somehow, I started getting money to buy more Christian records.  Many of them had come with a sticker and could get a free record for four stickers.  Soon, I had bought the entire Exit records (the label the Seventy-Sevens were on) catalog.

I also bought my first Styper album.  They were a Christian heavy metal band that my fellow metal heads acknowledged was not just as good as the occultic heavy metal bands, but better.

Then I prayed one night that I wanted to get closer to the Father of Truth.  The Spirit of Truth told me that I needed to start fasting.

So, I decided to make a one-day fast thinking “how hard could it be?”.  Two hours into it, I thought I was going to die.

I apparently had turned to food for comfort to deal with the issues caused by Dad without realizing it.  It was really hard, but with the help of the Spirit of Truth I made it.  Then I stuffed myself.

So, my life became consumed with my wife Julie, going to church, listening to my Christian records, reading the Renewed Covenant, praying in tongues and eating the breakfast of champions.  It was like Heaven on Earth.  I had thought everyone would want to get in on this.

I was wrong.

I told my friends, but they really did not want to hear about it.   Some of them were angry at the Father of Truth for bad things that happened in their life as if it was His fault that their parents had rebelled against His Word and brought trouble to their family.

My relatives were not much better.  Even though it was plain that they had never really surrendered control of their lives to the Man of Truth, they were confident that they were saved because they had gone down to an altar and repeated the magic words the religious professionals had told them.

A few of them really were part of the Children of Truth, but they were not experiencing everything that the Father of Truth had for them.  They had been religiously brainwashed instead of Biblically taught by the religious professionals.

When I worked up the courage to tell Dad about what had happened to me, he became visibly angry.  However, he just told me to not talk to him about it without hitting me.

It seemed that speaking to people about the wonderful things that could be theirs if they would only surrender control of their lives to the Man of Truth was more offensive to them than anything else I had ever said.  This offended girls more than my girl repellant and caused guys to avoid me more than making bullies feel stupid.

This was not what I expected, and I was perplexed.  Then the Spirit of Truth brought to my mind the warning of the Man of Truth that this would happen when the Good News about him was shared (Matthew 10:34-37).  The Spirit of Truth also was brought to my mind the warning that the Good News smelled wonderful to those who accepted it, but smelled like the stench of death to those who rejected it (2 Corinthians 2:15-16).

Then more changes came.

Soon we found out that Julie was pregnant, and I told her by the Spirit of Truth that it was a boy.  Even though I had no idea how I was going to support a family, I was so happy.  I was going to be able to break the cycle of abuse that Dad had passed onto me.

Mom wanted me to have a conventional church wedding and so did her father.  So, I agreed to have one in the Lutheran church that she had gone to before marrying me to keep peace with our families.

I had not wanted one due to my irrational fear of needles.  I had been tormented with needles as a kid by someone other than Dad and it had left me with an irrational fear.

The State of Arkansas required a blood test to check for STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) before it would issue a marriage certificate.  So, you had to be given the blood test and wait for at least three days before you could get married.  Strangely, you could get divorced in an afternoon.

I reminded myself of the torture that the Man of Truth had endured when they nailed his hands, and this would not be as bad as that.  Also, he would be with me during the test.  So, I got the blood test, and we got a marriage license.

Then we were married a second time in a traditional church wedding in her church on March 31, 1983.  My best man found that he was too angry at the Father of Truth to come into a church.  So, Richard became my best man, but Dad was not there as usual.

Not long after this, Mom got remarried and moved to Missouri.  She left Richard with me to take care of him during his senior year with the help of Granny.  I had kept the promise to Dad, and she was sure everything would be fine.

After summer was over, Richard went back to finish his senior year of high school and I resumed going to college.  We were both still working at Bowen’s.

Julie had a rough pregnancy and gave birth to my son Danny Ray on September 18, 1983.  He was two months premature with an original due date on my birthday.

At the end of this semester, I was dismissed from the University of Arkansas.  My grades had consistently been dismal.

Even though my gaming obsession was over, there really had been no way to keep up with the demands of 18 credits per semester of Chemical Engineering (the hardest major there was) and keep the promise that I had made to Dad to take care of Mom and my brothers.  I had picked that major not just because of my love for Chemistry, but also because it paid very well, so I would have money to take care of Mom and my brothers.

Then Richard graduated from high school, and everyone was there except Dad.  No one was really surprised.

After that Richard told us that he had joined the US Army and would soon be leaving.  When I asked him what he would be doing in the army, he replied that he did not know, but he would be getting out of Arkansas.

After Richard came home on leave after basic training, Julie began talking to me about joining the US Air Force.  At first I was concerned that I was not strong enough, but I decided if Richard was tough enough for the US Army, then I could be strong enough for the US Air Force.

The war between the Soviet backed Sandinistas and the American backed Contras had intensified.  It looked like the Contras would need aid to keep the Sandinistas from gaining control and setting up a Soviet satellite just south of Mexico.

Once again, my country was calling me like it had when the government men came to my school.  This time I was determined to answer the call and not let my country down again.

I would just be continuing what Dad and his father’s line had done since before the Revolutionary War.  Now it was my turn to do my part as well.  Since I was more brain than brawn, the US Air Force looked like the best way to do that.

So in 1985 I enlisted in the US Air Force.

As I waited for the bus at Fayetteville to go to basic training, I got the surprise of my life.

Dad had driven the ten hour plus drive down from Indiana to see me off.  He had never been there for any school event or even my wedding.  I was used to him not being there for the important events in my life.

For the first time in my life, Dad told me that he was proud of me.  I did my best to keep my composure because Dad had told me that men should not cry.

After finishing tech school, Julie and I went to Greece.  It was paradise – except for the frequent terrorist attacks against American service people and their allies that nurtured a heroic spirit in me.

After I got back from Greece, I went on leave.  Dad came down to Missouri and wanted me to go fishing with him and David.

On the way there, I did not say a word to Dad.  I had calmly outwitted terrorists embedded in crowds that wielded knives, guns, and explosives.  However, I was still terrified to talk to Dad.

However, Dad was trying to repair some of the damage he had done.  So, later we went fishing at my favorite spot in Arkansas that Dad had shown me years ago.  Somehow it helped, and I finally began to quit being so afraid to talk to Dad.

In 1989, my time in the US Air Force was over.

So, I moved back in with my mother in Missouri after she had divorced her second husband.  Richard had married a German girl and they moved back to Germany where he could work for her father.

We went to visit Granny and Uncle Ken on the farm.  While there I learned that they along with Grandpa, Mom, and David had lied to me when I was a kid. 

Mom had wanted to try to work things out with Dad, but Grampa gave her an ultimatum to either agree to divorce Dad or she could not come back home.  They all agreed that Mom would tell me that Dad would be joining us later.

Now my ability to trust people was destroyed.  My own family had deceived me for years. 

I decided the only thing I could do was to not trust people until they proved that they were trustworthy.  If they broke my trust once, then I would never give them a chance to break it twice.

As beautiful as the Ozarks are, I knew that NWA had become a crime magnet. So I went back to Missouri to figure out what to do. 

My stepmother had tried to kill Dad with ant poison in his coffee.  She wanted to marry the paster of her church that started having an affair with her after his wife got cancer.  She did not want to go to court constantly after the divorce like Dad and Mom had done.

After getting out of the hospital, Dad divorced her and got custody of Jerry.  So, they had moved down to Missouri to be near some of his brothers who lived near Mom.

So, I started visiting Dad and watching the war on television.  It was really strange watching the US Air Force destroy buildings with smart bombs and obliterate the Iraqi Republican Guard with A-10 Warthogs while we ate popcorn.  Still, we found that military service was something that we both had in common that we could build on.

Then, we decided to move to Tulsa.

However, I had to find a place to live first.  So, I stayed with Carl while Julie and the kids stayed with Mom.

One night, while driving back from Tulsa I could not find much on the radio in a very rural part of my route on US 60 between Grove, Oklahoma and Neosho, Missouri.  I finally managed to find two stations.

One was a secular rock station and one played music that Granny listened to.  However, I was drawn to the Word of Truth that was being sung on the one Granny listened to.  After that, I never listened to a secular music station again.

I soon joined a church that had just started.  It was connected to the school started by the man who had laid hands on me years earlier.

A few of the people were really kind, but most were hostile to us.  We just did not fit in with them.

However, I had been called to go there to learn more about the Man of Truth and NWA had made me immune to their rejection.  As long as the Father of Truth accepted me, it did not matter who rejected me.

Julie used her genius level people skills and soon people began to accept us.  After a couple of years, most of the hostility was gone.

Things went well for the next couple of years. I was providing for my children what I had never had – a stable home life. 

I was doing things with Dad occasionally.  Some months seemed like Heaven on Earth.

However, that was all about the change.

In 1993, we had another daughter, Savannah, who was born with serious medical issues.  Most of the people at church just told my wife that this would not have happened if we had more faith.

However, I was from NWA and was used to stupid people saying things that did not line up with the Book of Truth.  I understood that they were saying these things because it was easier than doing something to help us.

So, once again it looked like at the end of the day I was on own, and nobody was coming to rescue me.  However, this time I knew that I was not on my own, for the Man of Truth had said that he would never leave me nor forsake me.

Mom, Granny, and Julie’s Dad did what they could, but Dad was no help at all.  He was used to me handling things like this on my own as I had since the day I made the promise to him to take care of Mom and my brothers.

So, we pushed through, and it became apparent that we needed to move into a house where we could keep out pollutants like cigarette smoke.  We were not sure what was wrong, but it was apparent that Savannah was having breathing problems.

Also Julie’s brother Karl was living with us after he left the Navy.  I had promised him that if he would do as I told him then I would help him out of his poverty. 

He had joined the Navy as I had told him to do and now I was helping him go to college.  I was doing for him what should have been done for me.

I had promised my son that I would take him to Disney World, just as Dad had promised me he would take me to Disney Land, right before Mom left him.  I was determined to not be like Dad by not keeping my promise.

So, in 1995 Mom, Karl, and our family went on a grand vacation all over the south including Disney World.  The Father of Truth blessed us every step of the way with ideal weather and unexpected savings.

For example, we stayed at a beautiful new hotel in Pensacola, Florida for half price and enjoyed fantastic weather.  The day after we left, a hurricane destroyed the hotel.  This kind of thing happened the entire trip.

Then I went camping with David, Richard, and Dad on the Buffalo River.  That night wolves chased an elk through our camp and the elk knocked over the tripod of the campers next to us.

The next day we went canoeing on it.  I had done this many times with the Boy Scouts, but I had always wished that I was doing it with Dad like the other kids.

The water was incredibly clear and the fishing fantastic.  When we got to the canoe drop off point, I continued to fish for small mouth bass in the waist deep water.  Dad commented that he had never seen me so happy.

Mom and Dad had also started dating.  It looked like our shattered family was being put back together again.

I was having the greatest summer of my life.  It seemed like there were nothing but good times ahead.

However, it all came to a sudden end.

We finally got a diagnosis of what was wrong with Savannah.  According to the doctors, she had seven diseases and medical conditions that were incurable and 100% fatal.

The diagnosis was undeniable, but their prognosis was not.  I had seen the Father of Truth bring back to live at least one baby when I prayed long ago at Arkansas Childrens hospital when my son was there.

Only the Father of Truth could determine how long she would live.  I was on His side, and this was not over.

The Father of Lies had hit my family hard, but we were not out.  Dad had told me when someone hits you to hit them back!

So, I began to hit the Father of Lies back.  I fought where I fight best – on my knees. Soon there was an onslaught of praying in tongues and fasting.

Then I went into enemy territory and became bolder in telling other people about the Man of Truth.  If he was going to try to take someone from my family, then I was going to try to take ten thousand from his.

The Father of Lies had been behind every bully that ever gave me trouble.  He had been behind the trouble between Dad and me.

Now the Father of Lies crossed a line that caused a righteous anger to rise up in me.  I was going to trouble him like he had troubled me.  If his goal had been to get me to back off on my efforts for the Man of Truth, then he had just made a terrible mistake.

Soon, I needed more money to take care of Savannah better.  So, I left my stable job at the community college and went into the wildly unstable world of contracting in corporate America.

However, when I told Dad what was going on with his granddaughter, he was indifferent.  I might as well have been telling him about a total stranger that I had seen on the news.

Then Mom and Dad stopped dating.  He just could not forgive her for leaving with his boys - even though he had made her feel like it was the only way to keep him from killing someone!

Right after that, my stepmother called crying to Dad.  She had cancer and the preacher had left her for another woman as soon as he learned of her illness.  (Who could have seen that coming?)

Also, she told him that a child of one of her daughters had been attacked by a dog and needed stitches.  She pled with him to come back to Indiana and rescue them.

So, Dad left everything and moved back to Indiana without Jerry to be with my stepmother.  His brothers thought he was crazy, and Uncle Terry warned him, “Whatever you do, don’t drink the coffee!”.

After this, Dad called me from Indiana to see how Mom and my brothers were doing.  I reported their condition to him.  I was still keeping the promise that I had made to him.

Then I told Dad that I forgave him for the way he had treated Mom and me when I was a kid.  I told him that the Father of Truth would forgive him too, if he would just surrender his life to the Man of Truth.

Dad came unglued.  He let me know that he would rather me be a homosexual than a Christian and a drug dealer than a preacher.  Then he told me that he did not want to ever talk to me again and hung up the phone.

I did not have the address of where Dad moved to, and I did not have his phone number.  I got the phone number from one of his brothers, but after I called him a few days later, he had his number changed.

He did not even let his brothers know what his new number was for a few years.  He was mad at them for telling him that he should not go running back into the arms of a woman who cheated on him and tried to murder him.

Not long after that, Uncle Ken sold the farm in Arkansas and moved to a new one in Missouri.  Granny moved in with Mom.

So, I was once again without Dad in my life and my childhood home was gone.

After that, the Man of Truth stood between the Impossible Girl and death three times.  However, we still could have really used some help from Dad.

The absence of Dad took its toll on my daughters.  They would come crying to me asking why Grampa Remington did not love them.

All I could tell them was that he was a selfish and angry man that did not know how to love them.  I made sure they understood that the problem was Dad and not them.

Dad had destroyed the stable home of Mom and his sons growing up.  I was not going to let him destroy the stable home of my children as well.

Mom got married to her third husband.  All hope of her family with Dad being restored was lost.

Then in 1997, there was corruption in the church that I have moved nearby in order to help grow.  The pastor had put his family in front of the Word of Truth.

The Father of Truth had been using me as His spokesman before I had even joined the US Air Force.  Apparently, He was able to put the thick skin that I developed growing up in NWA to good use.

So, I confronted the pastor, who had become like a father to me in many ways, about his need to put the Man of Truth in front of even his own family.  After getting the courage to talk to Dad, I was able to find it to talk to anyone. 

In 1999 on Mother’s Day, Granny died.  Mom was devastated, so I drove Julie to Missouri to help her.

Later we had the funeral in Arkansas to bury Granny next to Grampa.  The service was held in the same Methodist church that I had attended until Mom had dragged me out church.

I later helped Mom with the financial details.  She had relied on me for things like that ever since I started helping her with her taxes when I was ten.

After the service, I picked up one of the hymnals and looked at the responsives in the back. I was shocked to see that they were all sections of scripture.

We had been saying the Word of Truth every week for years, but it had rarely penetrated anyone’s heart.  We had become as numb to it as I had become from people dying too young in NWA.

We helped Mom take care of things after the funeral until Mom no longer needed our help.  I was keeping the promise that I had made to Dad.

Then came more changes.

The pastor would get convicted by the words I spoke to him about not putting his family in front of the Father of Truth, but he refused to take the action needed for repentance. Instead, he put me out of the church, and I reluctantly began looking for another congregation in 2000.

Not long after that, the contracting market dried up in Tulsa and I took a lower paying job with WorldCom to be able to close enough to take care of Mom.  I was determined to keep the promise I had to Dad.

Soon, we got a flier in the mail for a church that would be starting soon. So, we went to it on the first service it had.  It was led by an energetic man about my age and had thirty-seven people in attendance counting the infants.

However, Brett had a spine like iron that showed up in his preaching and his life.  We knew that we were supposed to be there to help him.

So, I asked him if it would be alright for us to have a time to lay hands on the sick and pray.  He agreed and the Father of Truth began healing people that the healing team led by him laid their hands on.

Some people were healed instantly of things like cancer.  Within a year, his congregation had grown to over seven hundred people, and we were running out of space.  When the Spirit of Truth is at work, the problem is not advertising, but crowd control.

Then things took a turn for the worst.

By this time, we had been very active in the Cystic Fibrosis community.  Most of the kids did not make it past twelve years of age – the age of Savannah.

I had no fear of Savannah dying, for I had been seeking the Father of Truth on her behalf.  However, there were over two hundred children that had died.  It never shook me because growing up in NWA had gotten me used to people dying too young.

After our congregation moved to a larger facility, Brett allowed the first chapter of Celebrate Recovery in the Tulsa area to be started by our congregation.  This proved to be a huge mistake.

Karl wanted me to go with him to one of their first meetings.  In it, people would confess their garden variety sins like drug addiction and alcoholism, but some of them sounded more like they were bragging than sorrowful.  As I listened to them talk about being the worst of sinners for doing what a lot of other people did, I thought to myself “amateurs”.

When it was my turn, I told them that I had no addictions I was struggling with because the Man of Truth had set me free when I surrendered everything to him as the Father of Truth had promised in His Word.  Several of them said things like “be real”, by which they really meant “liar”.

They could not believe that the Man of Truth would make someone into a new creation.  They were convinced that they would always be slaves to their sin, but I knew that the serial killer in the making was dead forever.

In reality, this program gave them the illusion that they had a safety net that allowed them to fall back into their socially acceptable sins until they got things right.  I had no such illusion, and I was never going back on the road to being a serial killer.

The bottom line is that they really wanted to keep running their own lives and only wanted to give the Man of Truth the parts that they could not handle.  They wanted him to just be part of their lives, but He was my life.

I had surrendered everything to the Man of Truth because that is what he demanded.  His demand was not unreasonable, for he had surrendered everything to redeem my life on the cross.

The next year, Brett told me that the Father of Truth said that he was going to pastor a church of 6,000 people.  I confirmed to him that he really had heard from the Father of Truth, and it would certainly come to pass.

Then WorldCom went bankrupt in 2003 and what could be salvaged was rebranded as MCI.  Soon, working for MCI was adding more stress to my life, but I endured to provide my family with a stable home.

Afterwards, MCI was sold to Verizon and became Verizon business.  The stress from work lowered considerably in 2005.

My life had become quite busy between working for these three companies, taking care of Danny Ray and Miranda with their various needs, taking care of Savannah with her needs, and helping Family Church in various ways.  Still, there was a hole left by Dad.

In ten years, Dad had not talked to any of his sons.  He had not called me once to see if I was keeping the promise I had made to him.

He had no concern for our children either.  It was obvious that we meant nothing in the world to him.

Then the Spirit of Truth told me to call Dad.

I did not know how to even reach him.  Dad had cut himself off completely from his brothers, so I could not ask them.

However, the Spirit of Truth led me to use my excellent investigation and internet skills.  Dad had changed his numbers a couple of more times, but I was finally able to get his phone number with the help of the Spirit of Truth.

So, I called Dad.  When he answered, he did not immediately hang up.

Instead, he asked me how Mom and my brothers were doing as if he had been doing this for the last ten years.  So, I reported to him about how I had been keeping the promise I had made to him.

We talked for a few more minutes and he told me to call him again sometime.  It was a small beginning of a long process of restoration.

After that we talked several times a year.  Mostly, we talked about his experiences in the US Army and my experiences in US Air Force.

A couple of years later, Dad showed up at my house without notice.  I wondered how he even knew where I lived and invited him in.

I asked him how he had found our house.  He told me that Aunt Laura had given him directions to our house.

As we talked, I learned that he had not cut off contact with two of his sisters.  He had visited Aunt Laura twice a year for the last twelve years without ever letting me know that he was in town.

Then Granny’s sister Sue down in Louisiana developed dementia.  Under the law there, Mom could not be her guardian or have her declared internally incompetent because she was in the will.  So, Mom had her lawyer call me.

Soon, I was using my vacation time to make trips down to Louisiana to help Mom take care of Aunt Sue.  This continued until Aunt Sue died.  I was still keeping the promise I made to Dad.

Shortly after that the stock market crashed in 2008, and I was laid off.

Then one Sunday, Brett asked me what I had done before I surrendered to the Man of Truth that caused me to have such zeal.  I told him, “a serial killer in the making”.  So, he became the first person that I ever told I had been on the road to becoming a serial killer.

He replied, he knew that it had to be really bad.  The Man of Truth had said that those have been forgiven much, loved much (Luke 7:47).

However, a man not far from us overheard my answer and moved his kids behind his back as if I was going to harm them.  He did not really believe in the redeeming power of the Man of Truth.  Celebrate Recovery had taught him “once a serial killer, always a serial killer”.

After that service, Brett moved to Florida to pastor a church of 6,000 people.  However, he left behind a mess at Family Church.

Those who started Celebrate Recovery had the idea that as people recovered, then they would start contributing so that the next generation could recover at Celebrate Recovery.  Just like children growing up and then taking care of their own children.

Instead, most of the people had spent their time celebrating but never recovering.  They kept falling back into the same sins as before as long as they had a safety net that allowed them to do so.

They became like children in their thirties who never had left home but did manage to have more children.  Instead of growing more contributors, it only grew more celebrators.

This placed a tremendous financial burden on the church.  That burden got worse as the contributors began leaving the church because they could see that all they were doing was financing celebrations.

However, I stayed to try to help Family Church recover from Celebrate Recovery.  When the next pastor came in eight months later, there looked like there was hope for that recovery.

After this, Dad and I continued to talk.  Then one day, Dad told me why he had gotten so angry about me becoming a Christian and preaching to people.

He told me that the Father of Truth had called him before I was ever born to tell people that He was real.  People were coming to believe the greatest fairy tale ever told and Dad was called to tell them why it was all a lie.

However, Dad had refused to answer the call because he did not want the Man of Truth to run his life.  He wanted to run his own life and had done so with disastrous results.

Everything that I was doing since I surrendered my life to the Man of Truth was a constant reminder of that call.  He had thought that if he got away from me, then he could get away from that call he had refused to answer.

However, there is no getting away from the call of the Father of Truth.  You can ignore it, run from it, refuse to answer it, and so on, but you cannot cause the Father of Truth to take back the call (Romans 11:29).

Dad may not have known it, but he was warning me to never back down from answering the call that the Father of Truth had placed on my life.  His words were helping me instead of hurting me.

By this time, it had become apparent that the problems at Family Church were not getting better.  The cause was obvious.

Brady had been zealous for the Father of Truth when he arrived and had a miniature Torah scroll on his desk.  However, his wife practically worshipped Oprah Winfrey and was far more interested in what she had to say than the Book of Truth.

Like most men, Brady wanted to keep his wife happy, so he started incorporating her ideas into running the church.  Soon, there were all kinds of emotional expressions like candle lighting that were displacing solid teaching of the Word of Truth.

Then other members started bringing in things that had their roots in idol worship like Ash Wednesday.  Family church had started out so far removed from most of these things and was moving further away from them when Brady first became pastor.

Like I had done before, I went and talked to the pastor about these things.  I showed him in the Book of Truth why we should not be doing these things.

He could not refute what I was saying, but he wanted peace with his wife.  In essence, like Adam he had to choose between pleasing the Father of Truth or pleasing his wife.

Then one night he showed a teaching video at a small group meeting that I was attending.  Then he asked each one of us what we thought.

When it was my turn, I pointed out several things the man in the video had said that completely contrary to the Word of Truth.  I showed in the Book of Truth why they were wrong.

Brady became unglued like Dad had and I was put out of a church that I had helped start up.  However, other people at the study had seen my points and they also left.  Soon, after that Brady left and Family Church was no more.

Soon after this, the first Obama vacation was over.

I soon got a job doing Android development with a start-up.  However, this start-up only paid once a month and I was almost completely out of money.  Also, all of my utility bills were all past due with shut off notices.

So, I asked Carl for help.  I told him that I needed a loan and would repay him quickly.  He loaned me the money and told me to pay him back whenever, but I repaid him within two months.

Even though Dad and I talked frequently I had never told him about any of these problems.  He never been there for me except to help with car repairs.  He and David would never let me help perform the repairs because that was their thing.

Then Aunt Sue died, and Mom got her inheritance.  She had no idea how to handle the money and called me to help her.

Her third husband had died, and David was living with Mom.  I knew that she would spend all of it to keep all of it to keep him from going back to prison if she had to.

I wanted to be sure that she would have enough to be taken care of and that Richard would get some part of it when she died.

So, I had her buy a house and a brand-new car.  I then had her put most of the rest in an annuity that would give her money when she retired.  She kept some back so she could do things like pay for Richard to visit her.

So, I was still keeping the promise that I had made to Dad to take care of Mom and my brothers.

I did not know that these things were bringing about a seismic shift in my life.

The same corruption that was in the public schools and criminal justice systems of NWA had grown in the corporate world of Tulsa and had spread from there into the congregations of Tulsa.  Tulsa had lost the revival fires that were burning there when I arrived, and the churches had become satisfied with giving just enough of their life to the Man of Truth to stay out of Hell.

I had noticed this developing for a long time, but each time I had tried to move the Father of Truth slammed the door shut.  For example, I was told on a Friday to call Monday to get my plane tickets to start a job in San Antonio, but on Monday the company lost their government contract, and the job was gone.

I did not fit in with the half-hearted people of Tulsa because I was still burning intensely for the Man of Truth.  They certainly were not going to be any help.  Once again it looked like at the end of the day I was on my own and no one was coming to rescue me, but I knew that was not true.

I felt like I was drowning in a lukewarm sea and I did not know what I could do. Then the Father of Truth told me to write this blog.

The Father of Lies had hit us hard, and Dad had told me when some hits you to hit them back.  Dad had also unwittingly warned me to not run away from the call of the Father of Truth.

So, I did as Dad and the Father of Truth had told me.  I took my fight against the Father of Lies world-wide.  Just like with the bullies in high school, I learned new ways to fight back.

However, I still did not have a job.  Obama had been re-elected and I was now in my second Obama vacation.

However, Miranda had graduated from college and moved back home.  She was teaching and helped us with her salary.

However, after my unemployment ran out it was not enough.  Soon, I was behind on all my utility bills with cut off notices.

I did not want to ask Carl for another loan since I did not know when I would get a job.  I did not want to ask Mom because it was my job to take care of her as I had promised Dad.

I had asked the Father of Truth for a job, but there were none in Tulsa and I could not leave due to the needs of my daughters.  I was out of options and desperate.

So, I asked the Father of Truth what I could do since there were still no job opportunities.  The Spirit of Truth told me to call Dad and ask him for a loan.  I was shocked.

I had not asked Dad for any money since I had made the promise to him when I was seven and began working to take care of my own needs.  It had never occurred to me to ever ask him for anything other than help with car repairs.

Our calls had become monthly, so I called and asked.  To my surprise, Dad was all too happy to loan me the money and told me to pay him back whenever I could.  In strange way, it was the first time that I really felt like his son since the day I had made the promise to take care of Mom and my brothers.

Also, the air conditioning in my car had gone out.  Mom offered to pay to it fixed, but I did not let her.

I did not want it to appear that I was taking advantage of Mom, and it was my job to take care of her.  So, I drove for two years in record heat without any air conditioning.

Then I got another contract.  The work was steady and the pay better than the start-up.  Soon, I was able to repay Dad.

During this contract I made friends with several people including a man from India named Narender.  Narender soon came into the House of Truth.

I was caught up on all my bills when the contract ended.

However I was worn out.

I was getting very ill from the gall bladder damage that Dad had caused me when he kicked with his cowboy boots.

I had needed it removed for ten years.  Four times I had figured out a way to get it done, but each time something would happen to a family member that would prevent me from having the operation.

I was getting weaker by the day, and I was dying.  I had no fear of death because ever since I had surrendered my life to the Man of Truth, I wanted to be with him more than my next breath.  I knew that every follower of him was literally better off dead.

However, on the night before the operation, the sister of Julie was rushed to the hospital and was dying.  Her children wanted her to be with them, but she told them no because I had to get this operation.

The surgeon had told me that your gall bladder is supposed to be the size of your thumb, but mine was the size of my fist.  It was toxic and on the verge of bursting.

If it had burst and the toxins got into my blood stream, then I would have died.  He said it was the worst that he had ever seen, and I was blessed to be alive.

They gave me pain pills after the operation, but I did not take them.  I did not want to get hooked on them and the post-surgery pain was nothing compared to the pain before surgery.  I had learned to live with pain by growing up without any health insurance.

However, the surgery caused me new issues.

The nurse had told me that I should be able to go back to work in a week or so after the hospital.  She was wrong.

My brain hurt under the top of my head.  I was suddenly supersensitive to floral smells and highly allergic to things like lavender that had never bothered me before.

My brain was not performing at near the level I was used to.  It was like I was crawling when I had been sprinting before.

I kept having this short recurring dream where I would see a bright light and people donned in surgical gear looking down at me.  They would suddenly look alarmed and would say something that I could not make out.  Then everything would go black.

When I went back for a follow up, I told the nurse about my recurring dream.  She said that was not a dream, but a memory.  When I asked her what she meant, she said “oh, nothing”.

Despite my lessoned brain power, I could see what happened.  They had not known how resistant I was to anesthesia in general and had not given me enough to keep me asleep. 

When I woke up, the anesthesiologist had to make their best guess because if I moved during surgery, it could have killed me.  It was a little too much and had damaged my parietal lobe that controls things like sensory integration.

My roof then began leaking and Mom wanted to give me the money to get it fixed.  I did not want to short my brothers of their inheritance, but she reminded me of the money that she had spent to help David with his legal issues and helped Richard make visits from Germany.

It was apparent that I was not neglecting my promise to Dad to take care of Mom and my brothers.  So, I took her help this time.

Still, I had doubts about my ability to continue my work with my lessoned brain power.  However, I had promised Dad to take care of Mom and my brothers.  I also needed to take care of my own family. 

So, I taught myself new skills that were more suitable for the Tulsa market.  Then I got a job at HCSC.

Soon, some of the executives told me that I was the smartest person they had ever met.  I told them that I was crawling around on half the brainpower I was used to and was just thankful that I could help.

Later that year, Miranda and Narender were married.  He wanted me to spend more time with Dad, but it was impossible for me to drive to Indiana while taking care of Mom as I had promised Dad.

During this same time, Mom became too ill to take care of her own affairs.

Mom needed me to have power of attorney to take care of things.  So, I continued to take care of Mom as I had promised Dad.

Also, Dad came down to Missouri to visit Richard, who was visiting from Germany in 2015.  So, David, Jerry, and I joined them.

Jerry told me that he felt terrible about how Dad almost beat me to death after he had hit me and began crying.  He had carried the guilt of this for all those years and it was tearing him up.  I told him that it was not his fault and reminded him that he was only about three at the time.

Jerry also told me that his mother would have Dad put the support check in the mailbox and then send Jerry out to take the checks out of the mailbox after he went to work.  She would then destroy them before Dad got home.

Jerry thought that maybe she did it to make sure that Dad would not have another opportunity to beat me.  However, it could be that she just resented Dad sending the money.  Maybe it was some of both.

Either way, Dad thought Mom had been lying about never receiving the checks and Mom thought Dad been lying about mailing the checks.  So, the plot had worked.

Then Mom got where she was in terrible pain, but I knew that she was not ready to die.  If I lost her at that time, then I would have lost her for eternity.

She begged me to stop praying for her and just let her die.  I told her I would do that when she was right with the Father of Truth.

Finally, she understood that she had was not right with the Father of Truth and took the deal.  Then on Easter Sunday, I was called by the hospital to come to Missouri since I had the medical power of attorney.

When I arrived, Mom was fading fast, but I knew that she was ready to go.  After everyone said good-bye, her blood oxygen level dropped to zero.  I told the doctor to pull the plug because Mom was safe now.

I have never been able to cry about losing her in this life, because of the joy of gaining her for eternity.  I had kept my promise to Dad to take care of Mom.

Soon, I got a new manager.

My new manager was one of the most awesome people that I have ever known.  He also had an irritating way of asking me questions about things that I did not want to think about but needed to address.

For example, Deep asked me why I never asked anyone for help.  It took me a while to figure it out, but I realized that I had gotten so used to being the person who took care of other people that I did not really know how to let other people help me.

The Father of Truth let me know that I could trust Deep – contrary to my usual manner of not trusting other people until they proved to be trustworthy.  After that, the Father of Truth would tell me something and then Deep would say the same thing – often word for word – when I got to the office.  It was like they were a tag team.

Not long after that, the Father of Truth told me that I did not know how to be a son, I had forgotten how to be a brother, and I needed to be a better friend.  Then as if to answer any objections before my mind could raise them He told me the following:

There is more to being a son than just being obedient (the primary characteristic of a son in the Book of Truth) and that even though my friends knew that I would step between them and loaded gun, I did not let them help me.  I had been so busy taking care of my brothers for Dad that I had spent less and less time just being their brother.

In October Richard moved back from Germany with his wife and son.  They decided to live in Florida, but I would at least have a chance to do things with him once in a while.

It would have to be sometime after I took the week from Christmas to New Years off.  I always got sick that week, even if I had taken no sick days all year.  It was like I planned when to be sick.

During float week of 2017, I got sicker than usual.  However, Narender and Miranda wanted me to go to Indiana to visit Dad.  So I consented, and they drove me.

We met Dad at a great restaurant in his little town.  Then Narender and Miranda went to a hotel while I went home with Dad.

Dad had been very happy to see me, and all of his anger seemed to be gone.  He had been reading the Book of Truth and began asking me questions about it. 

Dad then told me that he was proud of me for showing with my life what a follower of the Man of Truth really was and never backing down from telling others about him.  This was only the second time that Dad had ever said he was proud of me.  I thought to myself, “Who are you and what have you done with my father?”.

I had told Deep about the picture Dad had torn up when I was a kid, and Deep told me that I needed to give him another chance by drawing him another one.  So, I brought some paper and color pencils to do that.

After I finished drawing my picture for Dad, I gave it to him.  It was not modern art, but it showed a man and his son fishing together in a river with rods and reels.  They both had a fish on their lines, but the man had the bigger fish.

Dad asked me what it was a picture of.  I told him it was a picture of me and him fishing in the River of Life.  I told him that he was the man with the bigger fish, and he really liked that.

I told Dad that all I really wanted from him was to go fishing in the River of Life with me in the Eternal Kingdom.  I told him that everything that had happened to me would all be worth it if I gained him for eternity.

Tears swelled up in the eyes of Dad.  He took my picture and hung it up on the side of his fridge where everyone could see it when they went into his kitchen.

Then I slept in his house for the first time since I was seventeen.  The people in the other part of the duplex smoked and I was allergic to cigarette smoke, but I did not mind.  I was sick, miserable, and happy all at the same time.

The next day, we left.  I was so glad that I had let Narender and Miranda take me to visit Dad.

Yet, more changes were coming.

HCSC replaced their CEO that had led them to record breaking profits with one that was more “diverse”.  Then they introduced a diversity council that lacked any men, European-Americans, or Native Americans on it.

In reality, they were against diversity of thought.  They wanted everyone to adopt company values and then made that part of their performance review process.

Values are defined by the religious beliefs and political views of people.  They really wanted people to ignore those things and accept the entire LGBTQ+ perversity thing as normal. 

They framed this as another feature like skin color instead of a behavioral choice.  In essence, they were using promotions to force people to adopt the company religious beliefs and political views.

They probably had thought that they could just bully everyone into going along with this, but I had grown up in NWA.  I had learned to not let people bully me in order to keep my promise to Dad.

Also, my soft skills had degraded from the seven years of working from home alone and spending so much time taking care of my kids to provide them with what I had lost when I made the promise to Dad – a stable home.

Right after this, I was talking to Dad as I had gotten into the habit of doing every month or so.  As usual, we started off with him asking how Mom and my brothers were doing followed by my report of their condition.

Then Dad began talking about how David had come to live with him.  He then said he wished that I had come to live with him when he had offered me a car.

I told him that I could not have done that and taken care of Mom and my brothers as I had promised him.  He was shocked to learn that I had been doing my best to keep that promise for almost fifty years.

He had forgotten that he had even asked me to take care of them.  He just said that because he needed me to let go of his leg so he could drive back to Saint Louis.

Dad was doing his best to not let me hear the tears in his voice.  He had never thought about the impact that asking me to do this would have on me, but Uncle Terry had.

I now understood why Uncle Terry had told him that I was more of a man at age seven then Dad was.  The truth is the shoulders of a seven-year-old boy were never meant to carry the burden of a grown man. 

Shortly after that, Dad told me that tomorrow is not guaranteed to anyone.  I replied back that no one is even guaranteed the rest of the day.  This had become our routine when our calls ended.

Then things got worse.

I soon had a new manager who the company thought would manipulate me into accepting the company values.  His efforts were in vain, but I did acknowledge that my soft skills were terrible. 

That is the price of developing great hard skills while continually dealing with one crisis after another.   No one ever paid me for my soft skills, and soft skills had not been needed to keep the promise I had made to Dad.

I began calling this manager “my thorn in the flesh” – a messenger of the Father of Lies sent to torment me that the Father of Truth allowed to keep me from falling into pride (2 Corinthians 12:7).  It was possible that my government instilled superiority complex had caused my head to swell as Grampa would say, and this manager was there to instill humility in me via humiliation.

At a company lunch after this, a man who I had never worked with but had seen at the office, sat down with me at my table.  I began talking to him about technology and the things of the Father of Truth, like I always did at lunch.

Andrew had seen the problems I was having with this manager and wanted to hear my perspective.  After I told him, he told me that I needed to think of emotions as another type of data.

He reminded me that all data must be processed and the problems that arise from accumulating too much unprocessed data.  I could see that Andrew was right, but I was not sure what was needed to process this type of data.

I also had another good friend on my side who was coming to my rescue.  Jesse thought that I had been treated unfairly by this manager and the IT Project Manager.  He filed a hostile work environment complaint with HR and things did get a little less stressful after that.

I was learning to be a better friend by letting other people help me.  I knew this time that at the end of the day I was not on my own and someone had come to rescue me.

Not long after that, I was talking to Dad, and he told me about joining the Army.  It was not what I expected.

He had gotten into trouble with the law several times for fighting.  The judge had told him that he had better not appear before him again.

After that, he was driving down the road and shooting birds off of electric lines with a pistol without slowing down.  Soon, he was back in front of the judge.

While the judge was impressed that Dad was able to shoot birds from a moving vehicle, it still could have endangered other people if Dad had missed.  So, the judge gave Dad a choice – go to prison or join the army.

Dad joined the army and the army in its wisdom made him a corpsman – a medic that was not allowed to carry a gun.  It never seemed to occur to the army to put his sharp shooting skills to good use in Vietnam.

Instead, the army sent him to Fort Richardson in Alaska.  From there, Dad was sent out with various units on training exercises all over Alaska.

One day, some of the other soldiers were making fun of him for not being able to carry a gun and joked that it must be because his aim was too bad for Uncle Sam. 

Dad saw a ram on a ridge about a thousand yards away and asked one of them to loan him their rifle.  Dad took it down on the first shot and then handed the gun back.  That silenced their mocking.

Another time, Dad had another group set up targets off to the side of a ski trail. He then borrowed one of their rifles and shot every target while skiing without even slowing down.  He wanted everyone to know that he was able to shoot and fight.

So even though Dad had joined the army and kept the chain unbroken that went back to before the Revolutionary War, it was not out of patriotism.  He just did not want a prison record.

Then I got a new manager at work.

She let me go back to solving problems for the company, but I still continued to work on improving my soft skills.  I had always told my kids to work on their weak spots.

I floated around helping various application teams update and improve their applications.  In one case, I helped a team go from hopelessly behind to ahead of schedule and under budget.

After that, I decided to share with Dad something that I had only shared with a couple of other people – my IQ score on the government test.  I thought that he might understand why I was so different than other people if he knew.

However, Dad did not seem to grasp the significance of what I was telling him.  It was just another number to him.  He would have been more impressed if it had been the Boone & Crockett score of a buck that I had shot.

So, I began to explain it to him by giving the IQ scores of famous people like Edison and Einstein for reference.  I let him know that people like them are incapable of seeing the world in the same way as other people.  This causes them to never really be able to fit in with most people.

I also told him about the government men who had wanted me to go to the institute in Indiana.  I let him know that I never would have done it because of the promise I had made to him to take care of Mom and my brothers.

Dad seemed to lack interest in any of it.  He soon began telling the same story he had told me previously.  He was showing early signs of senility like Grandma Remington had before she died.

Then Covid-19 hit our family in 2020.

My son got Covid-19 at a church conference.  The pastor told the members what the government advised, and then proceeded to rebel against their instructions. 

A week later over 100 members of his congregation that had gone to the conference and followed his lead were hospitalized for Covid-19.  Five to ten of them died.

My son was among those hospitalized, even though I had told him by the Spirit of Truth that if he went to the conference it would be disastrous.  He followed the lead of his pastor to “live by faith” and had refused to take any of the precautions urged by the government.

Julie and I began praying for him as soon as he got sick.  I told him again by the Spirit of Truth what to do to minimize the damage and speed up his recovery.

The instructions would have been uncomfortable to carry out.  So, instead he relied on essential oils because that was easier, and their friends said that would fix it.

So, he ended up hospitalized but was not responding to any of the treatments.  The doctors let my wife know that they did not expect him to last much longer.

However, I became even more determined to fight for him.  The Father of Lies had hit my family again and Dad said that when someone hits, then you have to hit them back!

So, I went to a secluded place where I could not hear anyone or anything other than the sounds of nature to ask the Father of Truth what to do.  I knew that I needed to fast, but my health would not allow me to fast for more than one day.

At sunset on Sunday, the Father of Truth told me to go to all of my groups on Facebook and ask people to join me in fasting and praying the next day for my son.  I was shocked for it had never occurred to me to ask other people for help.

So on the night before Labor Day, I asked total strangers in various Facebook groups who followed the Man of Truth to join me in praying and fasting for my son.  I had asked my own family to join me, but I could not even get his wife to join me.  (Some of them could not do so due to their own medical issues.)

The next day, over three thousand people I never met in my life joined me in fasting and praying for my son.  A couple of families laid aside all of their Labor Day plans to help.

I was overwhelmed by the response.  At the end of the day, I was not on my own in this fight and three thousand people had come to rescue me!

The Spirit of Truth had told me at sunset that he would live, but he would have a long recovery.  I was instructed to post this to the groups on Facebook and on my home page there.  So I did - even as my son got continually worse.

As soon as I finished posting the last post, things began to change.  My son did not die and got a lot better overnight. The doctors and nurse who saw him the previous Friday could hardly believe their eyes on that Tuesday.

I told Julie that our fight was just beginning.  I told her we were going to win this fight, but it would not be easy.

Julie began going to the hospital every day to comfort Danny Ray and to work with the medical staff on his care.  The years of taking care of Savannah had prepared her for this fight.

I continued teaching people about how to pray and fast effectively on his behalf via Facebook.  I was fighting on my knees where I am the most effective.

On September 30, 2020, Danny Ray went into cardiac arrest and died.  However, I had let some of my prayer partners know as soon as Julie had told me that he was in cardiac arrest.

The Father of Truth heard our prayers and eight minutes later, he came back to life.  The story of him coming back from the dead was later carried by two of our local news stations.

I was not shocked by this, for the Spirit of Truth had told me that he would live.  This was not the first time something like that had happened.

Over the years, I had learned to not just believe in miracles, but to count on them.  If someone asks me to come and pray for someone who is sick, but they are dead when I arrive, then my response is, “This is not over yet!”.

I thanked everyone who had continued to fast for him.  I then reported on his condition daily and asked them for their continued help.

After many months, Danny Ray was able to return home.  The fight had been long and hard, but I had learned to never quit by keeping the promise that I had made to Dad.

In 2021, I sent the news story of Danny Ray coming back to life to those in Indiana who were taking care of Dad to show him.  I wanted Dad to know that the Father of Truth had done this to confirm His word that I had been preaching and teaching.

A few days later, I talked to Dad about this during our monthly call.  Dad at first tried to explain it away, but eventually he had to admit that the Father of Truth still confirms His word with signs and wonders.

Then Jerry died.

Jerry was found dead in the woods, where he appeared to have fallen down backwards and hit his head on a rock.  However, the autopsy by the Stone County coroner gave some contradictory evidence.

The toxin screen showed that the he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol at the time.  However, bits of concrete were also found in the wound. 

The nearest concrete to where Jerry had been found was about 100 yards away along the shore of the lake. Yet, the coroner ruled that there was no evidence of foul play.

However, Jerry had been under investigation for child molestation – but no conclusive evidence of his guilt had been found.  Still, they might have concluded that some Ozarks justice had been meted out by a member of a family who believed Jerry had molested their child.

So the child molestation case was closed, and the body of Jerry was released without a homicide case being opened.  Not long after that, Jerry was cremated – ending any chance of later re-examination.

Jerry had rarely talked to me after our visit in 2015.  I do not know if he ever quit carrying the guilt of Dad almost beating me to death when he was three.  That guilt had contributed to his substance abuse.

The times we talked, I offered to do anything I could to help him have a better life.  Of course, I told him to surrender to the Man of Truth because no one ever has a better life without him.   

I do not know if Jerry ever did surrender to the Man of Truth.  Perhaps, he did so as he was dying like the thief on the cross had done.

Then it was time for me to keep my deal.

I had made a deal with the Father of Truth that if He would heal my son and restore him back to his own home, then I would tell everyone what He had done.  He had seen how I had kept the promise that I had made to Dad.

The Father of Truth had done His part.  Now it was time for me to do mine.

So, in 2022, I sent an e-mail to everyone I knew at work with a link to the news story about my son coming back from the dead.  I let them know that the Father of Truth had done this to confirm that there was no other god in all the universe but Him, that the Man of Truth was His Son, and there was salvation in no other name than that of the Man of Truth.

I expected to be fired that day.  After all, the company had gone all woke and preached “diversity”.   This was the most politically incorrect thing that I could have done.

However, I was not fired.  I really do not know why, except that they could not deny that my son had come back from the dead.

Deep urged me to quit the company for my own sake.  He said that I had nothing else to do there.

I was about to take his advice when Dad got worse.

Dad developed immaculate degenerative disease.  He was slowly going blind. 

Dad handed over the keys of his car to his granddaughter as soon as he heard the diagnosis.  He did not want to risk hitting someone while driving.

At work, I got a new assignment on an application that was in terrible shape.  Working on it was very stressful due to the dishonesty of the manager of the application.

The stress was taking a toll on my health.  My wife wanted me to quit my job.

I told the company that I was quitting, but my manager and the application manager pled with me to stay.  Everyone in my extended family except my wife also pled with me to not quit my job.

Finally, I relented.  I had become conditioned to putting the needs of family in front of my own due to keeping my promise to Dad.

However, my heart soon forced the issue.  The incident that killed so many men in the family of Dad happened to me, except it did not kill me.

In eight years, I had only needed to take five days of unplanned PTO due to illness in eight years, but I soon had to use up all of my PTO.  I had filed for short-term disability, but I could not get into see a heart doctor to verify my condition due to the backlog caused by Covid-19.

While I was on unpaid leave waiting to see a heart doctor, I asked Dad what had happened that caused him to refuse to go to church and had caused him to be so against preachers.  However, when he would start to tell me his mind would wander, and he would go into a story that he had told me many times before instead.

It was apparent that his mind was going fast.  I could see that he needed help and asked if there was a way to send him money to take care of him.

However, he told me that he did not need money.  He just wanted me to call him weekly.

I told him that I would do my best to do so.  I also told him that the only thing I wanted from him was to go fishing with him in the River of Life someday.

However, his granddaughter who was taking care of him asked for the family to help on Facebook.  So, I did the only thing I could and began to send her money to help with the expenses of taking care of Dad.

The Man of Truth made it plain that honoring your parents included doing what you could to take care of them when they were old (Mark 7:10-12).  The commandment to honor your parents never had a clause that said, “if they treated you well” (Ephesians 6:1-3).

The Father of Truth had given me forgiveness that I had not deserved.  How could I not do the same with Dad?

At the same time, I was having a terrible time dealing with my heart issues.

I wanted a heart doctor that would help me get to the root of the problem and make lifestyle changes instead of endlessly medicating me.  Soon, Julie got a recommendation for me.

I wanted to get started on this right away and called to make an appointment.  However, due to the Covid backlog the earliest appointment was five months out.

The heart doctor that had been recommended to me caught Covid a few days before my appointment.  They had to reschedule me for another few months.

However a few days before that appointment, the doctor had to return to India unexpectedly due to a family member dying from Covid.  I was rescheduled for his next opening in five months. 

I had seen another heart doctor because he was the only one available.  The medications that he had put me did end one of the issues with my heart, but they caused other issues that left me too weak to do much more than get my work done each day.

However, the company had decided that everyone had to come into the office.  I had refused to do so before, because I would not risk bringing Covid or anything else back home to Savannah. 

I had told them to just fire me back then and thought about just quitting like Deep had advised me before.  However, I needed to bring money in so I could help with Dad.

Then I was fired in May 2023 because I would not quietly go along with the Woke agenda being pushed by the company like a sheep being led to the slaughter.  However, I was finally able to the heart doctor that had been recommended to me before my insurance ran out.

I was out of breath from the five-minute walk to his office when I saw him.  I told him what had already been tried, but I really wanted to make lifestyle changes instead of dealing with more medications.

He agreed with me and worked with me on a recovery plan.  I left determined to follow it and get better. 

I had been hit hard by the Father of Lies, but Dad told me when someone hits me to hit them back.  I was not done disrupting his kingdom.

By this time, Dad had gotten much worse.

I had called Dad as often as I could, but my heart issues had kept me from being able to spend as much time as I would have liked.  Also, Dad got where he would repeat the same stories over and over again without realizing that he had just said that. 

He also remembered things that never happened.  He might as well been in the White House.

Still, he did manage to tell me about growing up with his dad.  Most of the stories were about hunting, fishing, camping, and farming. 

He never once mentioned the things I overheard Grandma Remington tell Aunt Ruth.  He had selective memories that created a happier place in his deteriorating mind than the one he had grown up in.

I tried to ask him what the preacher had said or done that had made him so angry.  However, he could not recall and would soon be back to repeating one of his stories.

Then Dad became convinced that he was an heir of the Remington Arms company fortune because he had the same name as an estranged grandson that the estate was searching for.   He was certain that he was going to receive an inheritance of a quarter billion dollars and gave me instructions of what to do with it if he should die before receiving it.

I reminded him that a family member had researched the genealogies of all the Remingtons in the US.  Their research showed that our last common ancestor with Eliphalet Remington who started the Remington Arms company was John Remington who immigrated to America in 1637.

However, Dad could not be convinced that he was not their heir.  His dementia was getting worse.

I talked to him every chance I had about the Man of Truth, so we could go fishing in the River of Life someday.  He would start to talk to me about the need for everyone to be right with the Father of Truth, but then would go back to talking about being an heir to the Remington Arms company.

Then I ran out of money to help with Dad in August.

I had been denied unemployment compensation because the company had claimed I had refused to work.  I later won my appeal easily because it apparent that it was really fired because I would not go along with their Woke agenda.

Still, I was almost out of money.  So, I let the granddaughter who was taking care of Dad know that I would no longer be able to help.

However, she told me that Dad was going to have to be admitted to an assisted living facility, so it did not matter.  She would let me know what I could do to help with that.

It turned out under Indiana state law, that none of the step-children of Dad could do anything because they were not legally adopted.  Only one of his naturally born children could take care of this.

However, Jerry was dead ,and Richard was considered legally estranged since he had not talked to Dad since his visit from Germany in 2015.  So, only David and I could make any decisions.

I looked into moving Dad to Veterans Center in Claremore near me like I had done with Julie’s mom.  However, he had made arrangements to be buried in Indiana and there was no practical way to move him around.

So, Angie who lived near Dad set up a meeting with an assisted living facility.  When we met, someone had to be the primary and David suggested me since I had dealt with these matters for Mom before.

We found that to get Medicare to pay, Dad had to be declared legally incompetent like I had done with Aunt Sue.  So, we met via conference call to witness the examination.

They asked Dad who his children were, and he answered, “Kevin, Kim, and Angie”.  He did not even remember any of his natural born children.

So, we were able to get Medicare to pay but they would only cover him for a short period of time.  However, on August 13, 2023, Dad died before he was ever admitted.

When we contacted the funeral home, we learned that Dad had given his burial plot away to bury his grandson and had never bought another one.  We began looking for ways to pay for his burial.

We found that Dad had a life insurance policy with the city of Saint Louis that would give us enough for the funeral.  However, he had left everything to Jerry who had always been his favorite.

It would take too long to set up an estate to get the money for the funeral since Jerry was dead.  We were not sure what to do, but then his granddaughter let us know that Dad had left some money with her to take care of this.

So, Dad was cremated, and his ashes were spread out over his favorite fishing lake.  It was done quickly, and no one told David, Richard, or me about it until after it was over.

So, I was not with Dad in death, just as he had not been with me in life.  I have never cried over his death because I had lost him long before he died.

However, it was worth losing Dad in this life if I gained him for eternity.  I hope that one day we will go fishing in the River of Life.

So, should I have kept the promise that I made to Dad?

If you could see my soul, then you would see that it is full of scars.  Most of those came from Dad and keeping the promise I made to him.

I have told you about some of the scars that Dad caused.  I have told you about some of the scars that came from keeping that promise.

The truth is that I have not told the half of it.  I certainly have not told the worst of it.

Still, I am not blaming Dad for any of my own bad choices.  Dad might have put me on a bad road, but I chose to walk down it.

Someone else has been tempted with everything that I have been tempted with but has instead taken the way of escape provided by the Father of Truth (1 Corinthians 10:13).  None of us can have our sins forgiven and be cleansed of our unrighteousness as long as we blame other people for our own choices (1 John 1:8-10).

So these scars are evidence of wounds that have been healed.  They are evidence of sins that have been forgiven.  They are evidence of adversity that has been overcome.

I have no regrets about keep the promise I made to Dad because a righteous man makes a promise and keeps it to his own hurt (Psalm 15:2-4).  The Man of Truth is the ultimate example of that.

If you could see the body of the Man of Truth, you would see that it is full of scars (Isaiah 52:14).  Those came from the Father of Truth and keeping the promise the Man of Truth made to Him (Hebrews 10:9-10).

So these scars are evidence of wounds that have been healed (Isaiah 53:3-5).  They are evidence of sins that have been forgiven (Colossians 1:12-14).  They are evidence of adversity that has been overcome (Colossians 2:14-15).

The only question is: are you going to surrender everything to the Man of Truth? 

This is the only appropriate response to him keeping the promise he made to his Father (Romans 12:1). After all, he surrendered everything to have you as his own (Philippians 2:6-8). 

You must proclaim his name to the world and or the Man of Truth will not proclaim your name to the Father of Truth (Matthew 10:32-33).   He was all in for you and will not accept you being less than all in for him (Revelation 3:15-16).

So, surrender everything to the Man of Truth because you believe that the Father of Truth raised him from the dead (Romans 10:9).  You can be sure that if you do so, then the Father of Truth will keep His promise to save you (Hebrews 10:35-39).

Come into the House of Truth!