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 symmetrical 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 the 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 beforehand 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 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 on 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 it 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 the 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 at 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 it 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 I 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
it would cause him 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 became
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 the 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 the
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 would
be 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, I 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 we 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 what had happened to Carl to happen to me.
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 predestined 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 then 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 was 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 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 for 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
my 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
life at least one baby when I prayed long ago at Arkansas Children’s 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 flyer 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 decreased 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 had 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 not to 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 was 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 not to 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 not to 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 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.
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,
whenever he started 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
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 on 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 go 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 was 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 it to 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!
Labels: Commitment, Love, Ozarks, Parents, Promises
