My mom survived the bombing of London as a child during WW II. Her dad died when she was 5. She started working at the Bank of England at 15, immigrated to America at 20 on her own, but had sponsor and a job awaiting her. She grew up in the Anglican Church.
My dad was a Share Cropper’s son. One of his brothers died when he was a child. He picked cotton, plowed fields with a mule and hunted squirrels with a 22 single shot rifle for family meat. Joined the Navy at 16. He grew up in the Methodist Church.
They met & married in El Centro California.
I was an only child. My mother couldn’t have any more children after I was born, but not spoiled as most people would say to me. I told them that I got to do both the “boy” and the “girl” chores after I turned 6, like mow the grass and wash the dishes; because, both my parents had to work. Military pay for dad back then was “dirt.”
My family almost never went to church when I was a boy. I remember a storm of despair and hopelessness that Satan brought upon me at the age of 15. I didn’t realize that he was the culprit then. We had moved to Alabama, the heart of the Bible belt, when my father retired from the Navy in the summer just before I turned 15. That was where he grew up. It wasn’t so bad there but all I saw as a young man was a world destroying itself. I thought Darwin’s theory of Evolution to be true science so I could only think that man’s scientific advancements would save our species and what significance did I have in that. I later came to know that my Grandma was praying for me back then.
I started thinking about just ending it all, even experimented once, with a knife. For some reason (GOD) I picked up the dusty unused Bible that had been laying around all my childhood but never read by anyone and started reading it at night in my room. I later found out that my Grandma had given it to my parents after they were married. Of course I started at the beginning of the book, Genesis. I really did not have any grasp of what I was reading but GOD is Faithful. Within a few months, we moved back to Arizona, (not Yuma, my dad’s last duty station) but to the small town of Cottonwood.
I call that my Alabama Exodus. I had finished Genesis and was now in Exodus.
All GOD’s timing!
A coworker at my mom’s new job came and gave me a ride one night to a youth group called Young Life. Within a month I came to know who JESUS is. Within another month I had some Faith and Hope. At age 16 on Thanksgiving weekend, I asked JESUS to be my Savior and accepted Him as LORD of my life one night under a pine tree outside of Prescott in the Prescott Pines Camp. I read my Bible from cover to cover and was now understanding more of what I read (Holy Spirit teaching me).
The next summer; before I turned 17, I got a job with Youth Conservation Corp. Every Friday after a couple hours of work we took a field trip. One of these trips was a hike on the side of Mingus Mountain above Jerome. Our supervisor was the Cottonwood Middle School Science Teacher; he was also a man of Faith in Jesus. After hiking to the top of a hill on the side of the mountain, we stopped. He told us to look around. When I looked down at the ground, I saw seashells! Not fossils of shells but actual seashells! They were partially uncovered. I surmised from the monsoons causing erosion. Immediately I knew from having read Genesis chapter 6, that this was evidence of the Great Flood! And, that the ENTIRE Bible was true and could be trusted. These were shells, not fossils, only thousands of years old, not millions! I said this out loud to all the others, 8 of us teenagers and a couple of them also went to Young Life. After I did, my supervisor came over to me a said “I knew you would figure it out.” God and he had given me the connection between my heart and my head that I had to have, to not waver in my walk with Jesus.
l now had hope and knew that I was significant to the GOD of all Creation. I’ve been in more storms since then but HE is always there to weather me through them. About 2010, I went to a men’s camp at Prescott in the Pines, sat under that same pine tree, where I had asked Jesus to come into my heart and save me.
Never give in. Never give up; JESUS is in the storm with you. Reach out to Him desperately! Especially when you stumble along the way or start to sink in the waves! HE shall grab hold and not let go of you! Ever since He walked on the water of my storm and pulled me up from drowning in darkness and despair, He has walked beside me through every storm in this life and imbedded in my soul a Hope that no person, enemy, deceiver, or destroyer can steal from me. First: He Shall Return in my lifetime, if I live long enough! Second: but most importantly an Eternal Life with HIM in a universe that HE Created and that He shall restore just as He restored me to Himself.