More History

Hi! Welcome to Drums In The Deep. If this is your first visit I encourage you to read the older posts below or this one won’t make as much sense.

Last week I talked briefly about the kind of childhood I had. I mentioned that I grew up going to church but none of it really took hold until much later in my life. This week, I thought I would expand on that a little bit.

In high school I had been a pretty good kid. I was an ‘A’ student and got along pretty well with my family. Didn’t hang around with the wrong crowd or anything like that. I earned some scholarships and went off to college with high hopes. But that was when the trouble started.

Since I was now an ‘adult’ and could make my own decisions, I decided to stop going to church. At college, I spent most of my time drinking and partying instead of studying. Inevitably, I flunked out my first year. Not long after that I got in trouble with the law for stealing. Yep, as an adult I was an immediate success.

Then it was discovered that my dad had cancer. That was in April of 1995. My family and I spent the next six months watching him slowly die, and by October he was gone. He was 50 years old and I was 24.

To cap things off, not long after Dad died I got a girl pregnant. It felt like the whole world was crashing down around me. The little amount of faith I had was eroding fast. The world was chipping away at it and I was doing nothing to reinforce it, see?

Well, guess what I did next; I made like an egg and beat it. Just ran away. I ran away from the pain of my father’s death; ran away from all the mistakes I had made and the trouble I had caused.

That seemed like a good plan, but oddly enough running away didn’t make my problems go away. It didn’t stop me from creating new problems either. Soon enough, I met someone and married her, more out of desperation than love I think. Three years later I was divorced.

I’m not trying to impress you with what a hard life I had or anything like that, I’m just setting the scene for you. By this time I had completely convinced myself that God did not exist. I wasn’t just doubting, I was sure of it. Where was the proof after all? Well, eventually God slapped me upside the head and gave me all the proof I needed, but that was still several years away.

So why am I writing all this down? Because I want you to understand how far from God I had fallen. And also to point out again that even though I gave up on Him, He never gave up on me.

Some of you may have read a book by Stephen King called ‘The Stand’. There is one scene in this book that I think of often. Nick and his companions have been drawn to the home of Abigail Fremantle in Hemingford Home, Nebraska by some inexplicable force. Upon their arrival, Nick and Mother Abigail sit down to talk, at which time she explains to him some of the things that are going to happen. When Nick asks how she knows all this, she tells him frankly that it is God’s plan. Nick says, “I don’t believe in God.” Mother Abigail just laughs and says, “It doesn’t matter Nick. He believes in YOU.”

I can’t put it much better than that. And I see that I’ve been rambling on quite long enough for today so I think I’ll stop here for now. Just remember this:

GOD BELIEVES IN YOU!

My History

Hi there! If you’re reading this then I’ll assume you’ve read my first two posts. If you haven’t, you really should to give you a little background on why I created this blog. You’ll find older posts below this one. Go on, it’ll only take you a minute and I promise I won’t go on without you

All done? You’re a fast reader! Well, now that we’re all on the same page (pun intended) let’s get started!

It’s hard to know where to begin. I suppose I should tell you a little of my history. They say that if you don’t study the past you are doomed to repeat it. That is so true! It’s okay to make mistakes but if you don’t learn something from those mistakes then you’re really in trouble.

My childhood was pretty typical. I grew up on a farm in Nebraska. That almost sounds like a cliché doesn’t it? Well, I won’t bore you with long descriptions of farm life in the Midwest but there are a couple of points that bear explaining.

The two sides of my family were almost complete opposites. On Mom's side were the wholesome church-goers. On Dad’s side were the drinking and swearing farmers. I have a great deal of respect for farmers. Dad’s family were honest and hard working, but they didn’t know God. That was fine with me as a child because I didn’t know Him either.

It was Mom, however, that was in charge of raising us kids and her rule was “As long as you live in this house, you’ll go to church”. So we went to church every Sunday.

I can’t speak for my siblings here, but I only went because I had to. Church was boring and, as far as I was concerned, a waste of a morning when I could have slept in. I learned the Golden Rule, and stories like “Noah’s Ark” and “Jonah and the Whale”, but I never learned about God; about who and what He really is. That wasn’t because I had bad teachers, it was just because I didn’t care. When I was old enough to choose for myself, I quit going to church and never looked back.

After that my life was perfect and idyllic. NOT! No, during the years of my early adulthood I caused a lot of problems for myself and sometimes for other people as well. I was very bad at managing money and so I never had any. Also, I had a habit of making bad decisions. I bounced around from place to place and job to job, always struggling and fighting to pay my bills.

Now, here are the two points I would like to make.

Firstly, even when I had turned my back on God, He was still looking out for me. I never had to live on the streets, and I never went hungry (although I did live on mac ‘n’ cheese and hot dogs for a while). My basic needs were always met.

Secondly, look at my life now. I am actively seeking out God. It was my mother’s nature that won out in the end rather than my father’s. Her steadfast persistence in taking us kids to church every Sunday was eventually rewarded. As it turns out, some of that stuff penetrated my thick head after all.

Wow! You know, I never really thought of things this way until just now as I typed it. What a perfect example of how God’s nature wins out in the end.

Well, with that revelation, I think I will close for today. I hope you got as much out of this as I did! :-)

See you next time okay?