VL - Issue 17 - August 2015

A PERSISTENT GOD by
Chris B.
This is my life story. I don’t know why, but I feel
an urgency to write it down and send it to your
publication. This is a first for me. I must warn whoever
reads this—you may want to take a Tylenol, as my life
story is certain to bring on a headache!
In the beginning, life was good. Things changed,
however, at the age of eight, when my stepdad
came into the picture. Although there are many
fitting names that I would have liked to call my
stepdad at one time or another, I’ll just stick to his
given name, Roy.
Roy wasn’t a very nice person. He was physically
abusive at times and verbally abusive all the time. This
may sound crazy, but the physical abuse wasn’t as bad
as the verbal. I was a tough kid and could heal from
the physical pain; the verbal abuse damaged me for a
long time. I couldn’t get away from the hateful things
Roy had spoken into my life.
I can still remember our first time playing football
together. He laughed at my feeble attempts at
throwing, catching, and kicking a football. “You
should go put on a dress and go play with dolls,
you little sissy! You catch like a sissy, kick like a sissy,
and you throw like one, too!” And that was that. He
walked off laughing as I sat there and cried.
No matter what it was, I was never good enough,
strong enough, smart enough, or fast enough.
According to Roy, I was a complete failure; a waste of
time and space. He told my mom she should have had
an abortion instead of having me.
I tried to prove him wrong many times, but I always
failed. Even when I gave something my all, I still
messed up. I soon gave up trying and just accepted
Roy’s words as truth. He must be right; I must be a
failure.
Roy often looked for ways to get me out of his hair,
even when it meant sending me to church. One day
when I was ten years old, an old bus operated by a
couple in their eighties came into our neighborhood
to pick up kids to take them to Sunday School. Seeing
a great opportunity to get rid of me for a few hours,
Roy put me on the bus.
When we arrived at Sunday School, we were
escorted to our classrooms according to age. My
teacher looked a lot like Roy Clark from the television
show Hee Haw. At the time, I really liked that show
and began to loosen up a bit. The Roy Clark lookalike
showed us a big bag of coins. He told us that
each Sunday, he would read from the Bible, and then
the following Sunday, he would ask questions about
what we had read. He explained that each question
we answered correctly was worth a certain amount
of money.
This got my attention, because my family wasn’t
too well off. I listened closely to what the teacher read.
I even asked for a Bible so I could study at home. The
first Sunday I made $16! The teacher was amazed.
Each week, I studied and answered questions. I
brought home so much money, my stepfather accused
me of stealing from the church. Finally, the teacher
began to pay me $10 just to keep my hand down so
other kids could have a chance to answer.
Even though things were bad at home, I could
always look forward to my Sunday School class. They
were the best hours of my whole week. Of course, I
really liked making money, but I also enjoyed all the
Bible stories. The Roy Clark look-alike really made the
whole experience enjoyable.
But as the saying goes, all good things must come
to an end. When I turned eleven, I was put into a
class for older kids. And just like that, bye-bye money
and bye-bye cool Sunday School teacher. I was very
disappointed.
I did make a friend in this new class, however. Since
I didn’t have many friends at the time, this was a nice
addition. The only problem was, this kid was totally
anti-Christ. He hated even the mention of Jesus’s
name. He was there only because he had to be.
I found myself stuck in the middle. On the one
hand, I liked hearing about Jesus and all the other
people in the Bible. On the other, I really liked this kid.
It was nice having a friend. I would start out listening
to the preacher, but then I’d get caught up with this
kid, making fun and playing around. He told me these
people were just there to brainwash me. I was torn.
A couple of weeks after meeting this guy, a woman
preacher came to our church. She was a real hellfireand-brimstone
preacher, if you know what I mean.
HE IS HOLY; HE IS
LOVE. HE IS JUST AND
MERCIFUL AND FULL
OF GRACE. BUT TO ME,
MORE THAN ANYTHING,
HE IS PERSISTENT.
She yelled and cried and told us we shouldn’t smoke
or do other things to defile our bodies. She seemed so
serious and genuine about what she was saying, but
my anti-Christ buddy was laughing the whole time.
I laughed right along with him, even though I was
halfheartedly believing what she said.
After the service, my friend and I went to the bus to
be taken home. Wouldn’t you know it, there was the
woman who had just been preaching to us about not
defiling our bodies—and what was she doing? She
had lit up a cigarette in the church parking lot and was
hanging all over some man who wasn’t her husband.
My buddy began jumping up and down in the bus,
yelling, “See! I told you it was all a bunch of crap!
Look, she ain’t even married, and she’s practically
jumping that guy’s bones in the church parking lot.
And she’s smoking!”
In my young, eleven-year-old mind, I was thinking
the same thing. How could I have been so dumb to
almost have fallen for this load of crap? And just like
that, my Jesus days were over. I refused to go back to
church after that incident.
Life went on. I made a few new friends, compliments
of my anti-Christ buddy, but they were all just like
me…miserable! They, too, had messed-up families in
one way or another. Pretty soon, they introduced me
to cigarettes, weed, and alcohol. To pay for my new
habits, I started stealing.
By the age of sixteen, I’d quit school and moved
in with one of my so-called best friends. It was in his
home that I was introduced to heavy drugs of all kinds.
More than once, I almost died from an overdose. You
would think these near-death experiences would
wake me up, but they didn’t.
For years I continued this cycle. One day my boss,
who’d noticed I was having trouble staying awake on
the forklift, introduced me to crystal meth. One hit,
and I was addicted. I simply couldn’t function without
it, even though I could clearly see the physical toll the
stuff was taking on my body. I looked like death, and I
felt like death. In less than six months, I went from 180
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