“Sole Survivor: One Man's Testimony for Christ”, by Rev. Paul J. Bern, rated 4.5 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.com!
Watch the video at http://youtu.be/5Bxi7x0nUc0
The
next time I had an encounter with God – which interestingly enough
never occurred when I was in church – was about a year later. By this
time the abuse that had been going on had gradually gotten worse. The
animosity between my parents and myself had grown a lot right along with
it, and the beatings had become more frequent. I remember hating not
just my parents, but my entire family situation as well as detesting
school. Quite frankly, I was bored nearly to the point of insanity with
school. Second grade was a rehashing of first grade, third grade a
rehashing of the second, and so on, as if we needed to learn everything
twice in order to grasp its meaning. I have heard some talk and read on
the Internet about the “dumbing down” of America primary and secondary
schools. Well, this has been going on ever since the 1960's at least,
and probably even before that. It's just that no one noticed it at first
because it began so gradually. To this day, education reform has been
one of the causes I have undertaken in my adult life.
By
the time I was age nine I had decided to take matters into my own
hands. So I prayed to God and I told him, “Lord, I can't stand my home
life any more. But I can't leave because I have no where to go (at this
time it was during the winter, and Ohio winters can get very cold). If
you won't do something to make my dad go away or to get him off my back,
then I will be forced to defend myself when the time comes”. At the
time I got no reply at all, and I remember being concerned that God
hadn't heard my prayer. I had been saving the small weekly allowances my
parents would give me, 25 cents here and 50 cents there, that sort of
thing. And so I resolved in my mind that I was going to settle things
between my parents and myself once and for all by spending what I had
saved on a cheap handgun and shooting my parents. Fortunately, at the
time I prayed this misguided prayer I barely had a third of the money I
would have needed to buy a cheap 22 caliber handgun, and I had also
forgotten to include the cost of ammunition, not to mention the fact
that I was only nine years old. But I will tell you without a doubt that
I was serious about wanting to kill my adoptive/foster father because I
was very afraid of him. I couldn't even stand to be in the same room
with him. I recall that the consequences didn't matter much to me at
that time. As before, fortunately, I never got to carry out my dad's
assassination. But it is what occurred a couple of years later that made
me understand why such a heinous act would be unnecessary. It was not
just because it would have been a grievous sin and a capital crime. It
was because God wanted to show me that I wasn't alone, and that He was
standing beside me.
After
this prayer with no response, about two and a half years went by.
Things were continuing to get gradually worse, and I continued to hate
school all the more. I kept waiting for God to do something about my
parents, especially my dad, but I saw no sign of change. So I would do
things that would get me away from home more often so that my parents
and I couldn't argue about anything. I played in the band at school and
took music lessons, and I discovered that I was good at music. I joined
the Boy Scouts so I could finally have a chance at having a few friends,
and because it was one of the few things my 'adoptive' parents would
let me do. The rest of the time I was kept cooped up in that little
house, and the tension at times was unbearable. One Saturday morning a
year or so later some of the boys from the scout troop and a number of
their dads went on a 10 mile hike in the Kentucky countryside. My
foster/adoptive dad went along too, much to my surprise, since he only
occasionally took me anywhere. So we left Cincinnati in a small caravan
of cars and drove south down I-75 into Kentucky to our starting point,
with our destination being a monastery near the central Kentucky town of
Bardstown. I recall that there were about 20 or maybe 25 people
altogether. So we started out on our hike together on a mild November
day, and we'd been hiking about 3 hours or so when my dad suddenly
stopped walking and crouched down on one knee. When one of the men asked
him if he was OK, I remember him saying, “I've got this pain in my
chest”. So we stopped for five or ten minutes and rested before starting
out again after my dad said he felt well enough to finish the hike (at
this point the monastery was in sight in the distance).
Unfortunately
for him, we had only walked a few more steps when my dad abruptly
collapsed to the pavement. I remember turning around in complete
surprise, only to hear that little soft voice within me that I had heard
three years before saying to me, “Now watch what I do for those who
wait on me.” It was the same low, soft voice that had told me how I
couldn't possibly imagine what God has in store for me. It was only then
that I made the connection to my misguided prayer nearly three years
earlier about shooting my parents, a prayer that by this time I had
almost given up on. Even though God saw fit to wait until just after my
12th
birthday, I saw my dad collapse into a heap on the ground and I stood
there and watched him die. God took my dad's life to prevent me from
attempting to do any such thing myself. He knew I would have been making
a horrific mistake in my young life long before I ever could have. What
I still failed to understand at the time was that God was interceding
in my life on a regular basis, and that this happens with all people
whether they realize or believe in it or not. God had something really
good in store for me. I didn't realize it at the time because I was
still too young to comprehend the insurmountable power of God.
I
was in the sixth grade when my dad died, and I remember feeling an
enormous sense of relief at his passing. As I began to get older I
gradually started doing better from a mental health standpoint, but I
still hated school and I stayed bored most of the time. This was also a
period in my life where I began drifting away from God. I had never
cared for all the ritual, pomp and circumstance of the Catholic masses I
was required to attend as a child (in Catholic schools the kids go to
mass every day). So I was never really drawn toward the God of the
church. It was not until much later that I learned that the true God
does not live in buildings, he lives inside human hearts. But long
before this occurred, my disconnecting from God as I understood him at
the time had already begun to take me down the wrong road. This is
usually what happens to people who turn from God like I did.
Get yours on-line directly from the author at www.pcmatl.org/books-and-donations (tax deductible) for $9.95.
Get the e-book ($4.95) on Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=sole+survivor%3A+one+man%27s+testimony+for+Christ&rh=n%3A154606011%2Ck%3Asole+survivor%3A+one+man%27s+testimony+for+Christ
Also available in audio format at https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daudible&field-keywords=sole+survivor%3A+one+man%27s+testimony+for+Christ&rh=i%3Aaudible%2Ck%3Asole+survivor%3A+one+man%27s+testimony+for+Christ
No comments:
Post a Comment