My Testimony
1. A Quick rundown of my childhood. I don’t want to spend too much time on this, but I think it ties in to the glory God poured over my life and a quick understanding of my walk to Him. I’ll start with the fact I was born to young parents. Dad was just 18, and my mother was maybe 19. They got married after I was conceived and tried to do the right thing, but life happens and it didn’t work out. I guess mom had me for the most part at first, like usual, but before my 2nd birthday my dad was bringing me back to her after our weekend together, and my mom made the comment “ It must be nice to have him a couple days then be able to just drop him off for the week”. This is one of the things I love my dad so much for, but he heard that and with NO hesitation at all, he about-faced and walked right back out the door with me, and from then on raised me without feeling I was a burden. I’m sure there was a bit more conversation, and some kind of an agreement, but that was the last time I’d see my mother until I was much older. From there my dad met my step mother, and she raised me as her own, taught me manners, and how to be accepting of all people regardless of race, differences, or anything like that, but I was not raised in a religious family. My father knew a little about the word from his Grandma, but we were not practicing Christians, never went to church, never talked about God, to be honest we never even referred to ourselves as Christian, and didn’t give too much thought to the whole thing. So I was not raised in the church. I was raised well though, I always had love, never went hungry, was then and am still very grateful for everything I did have. However there was a huge void in my chest caused by not having my biological mother around. I didn’t know that at the time, nor did I ever think about it much, but it did rear its ugly head later in life that’s for sure. We had what appeared to be, a pretty average, happy, family. My brother was born 4 years after me, my sister 4 years after him. When my brother was born, I feel we were considered equal, we did everything together, and I remember no problems, but once my sister was born things seemed to change. In retrospect I can see why everything happened the way it did, but at the time it was confusing. Apparently this whole time my step mother was fighting with herself internally about her sexual orientation. I guess she was trying to do the “socially acceptable thing”, with my dad and the family, while fighting her own desires the whole time. This caused resentment towards my dad and in turn towards me as well. Once she had a boy and girl of her own, I became a 2nd class citizen in my own home. It seemed she couldn’t look at me or dad without the lie she was living eating her up. After 13 years of marriage, she found a reason to kick my dad out of the house, and it just so happens, almost to the day a year later, found a reason to get rid of me as well. Dad was trying to keep us kids together, but didn’t realize the kind of stuff I was dealing with. It was at this point I went to live with dad, right before the start of high school and giving me a whole new level of freedom I had never known, nor did I know what to do with it.
2. High school, oh what can I say about high school? I was definitely high at school most the time, and this was the beginning of the time where I started learning about the uglier side of life, you know the “real worldly life”. I had been pretty well protected from the ugly side of the real world most my life to that point, so I didn’t really know what to look out for, or stay away from, or any of that. I had just discovered marijuana and loved it, so at that time my main objective was to get weed and smoke it, that along with my lifelong love of video games was enough to keep me distracted from any pain or responsibility (like most kids these days). It only took a year and a half to get myself expelled from school for the first time, it was for having weed. (I traded half a joint for half a pack of cigarettes before school and that kid got caught and told on me) I was also arrested for this offence at 16. Of course I was still young, but even for my age I had exactly 0 ambitions for anything at all. I also was put on probation at this point and through violations and new charges I’d rack up over the next few years I would stay on probation for the next 10 years. The concept of my soul, or the future in general was completely foreign to me, and of no importance. I just didn’t care at all, I had plenty to distract me from any kind of truth or future, and plus I had no one around me that even knew how to guide me in the right direction. Of course God wasn’t distracted; he was blessing me even then despite my complete lack of faith and strait up anger towards him (My anger towards Him is ironic because at this time because I’d claim there was no God, yet when anything bad happened He’d be the first one I would cuss). This was also when I met my beautiful wife to be, a key part of my journey to Christ, but I was still just as lost as one can be. The high school pot smoking quickly turned into pot selling, and then trying and selling acid, eventually coke, then just whatever may be around at that time, I also found myself to be a very angry person; I was a scrapper and built my image off what people expected me to do, and that was fight for the most part. Thank goodness I was never a drinker; I just didn’t like it much, taste or effect, and it never became a big thing in my life, God was looking out for me here too, me being the only one in the family that didn’t love alcohol.
3. At 17, after a big fight with my dad and his girlfriend, I decided to leave home. From there the partying just escalated more and more until the day I was kicked out of high school, for the 2nd time, and in the last 6 weeks of my 12th grade year. From there I went to work for the family Tree Service, and lived in a tiny little trailer at the lot we kept all the business equipment in. This is when I went full on wild and learned the ways of life for myself. It’s around this time my best friend shot and killed himself, a couple weeks later my grandpa, who was fixing up a place to sell Krissy (my wife now girlfriend then) and I, passed away too. I fell off the deep end; I was medicating the pain as much as possible. This is also when I met someone who was much, much, more street wise than I was. His dad and my Grandpa ran together back in the day, so it was a kind of natural thing for us to hang out. He introduced me to an underworld I had only heard about in rap songs. He started real small and before we knew it we were running 100’s of pounds of weed, and kilos of coke up and down the highways. It got to the point the “big dealers” in town I knew from before, would come up and try selling me the coke we brought into town and they didn’t even know it came from us, so we were supplying our old hookups and the people above them without them even knowing. I had never seen so much money stacked up as I did with him at that point. Just to be clear, I didn’t stack much; even then I didn’t care about money as much as I did the experience. God was watching out for me then too, not only by giving me a natural resistance to the love of money, but also kept me protected from addiction at that point. I would do coke and other highly addictive substances, and often, but after a night of partying hard once I woke up the next morning, unlike most; I didn’t want to see that crap the next day. I was SO blessed it never snared me like it did so many people I knew. It got bigger and bigger, we had money, girls all around (I was with my current wife then too, and was raised not to cheat, and never did then, but the opportunity was all around) clubbing, partying, hookers working for him, it was survival of the fittest, just all kinds if sin and I loved it. The saddest part at this point is that I thought my lifestyle was completely normal and everyone was like I was. All that money to be made and Krissy, who was the only one working a real job, was paying all the bills and was the only one doing right in any way. I just didn’t care about that stuff, and it got to the point that we were way too far behind on our house payments, I saw I was going nowhere and dragging her down with me, and it just so happen at that time her mom in Nebraska was having a hard time with her sister. She asked Krissy if maybe she could come up there and help out. I saw this as an opportunity to get her away from me and took it. I didn’t officially “break up”, but in my heart I was freeing her and letting her go so I couldn’t keep dragging her down with me. The day before she was to leave, I got a knock on the door first thing in the morning and it was a police officer coming to pick me on a V.O.P. (violation of probation), I spent the night in jail for the first time that night, but lucky for me my friend came and bailed me out the next day before she left town, and we got to say our goodbye’s right there in the jail parking lot. I stayed here, and lived with a couple friends here and there, even talked to a couple other women at this point. I didn’t have to talk to too many to realize what I had let go. I had actually befriended a prostitute my street wise partner had brought down from Birmingham. I honestly felt for her, no one ever treated her like a person her whole life, and she was put into the business by her own father, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the only guy that ever listened to her without expecting something else. I mean the poor girl just never had a chance. Well my friend didn’t like that, he thought I was falling in love and he was trying to look out for me, but he would not believe that I wasn’t even having sex with her. I know that sounds all noble and respectful, but it was just as much self-preservation as it was respect, I mean with her history I’d have been nervous with protection, plus I still love Krissy and knew it. Time went on and after a couple other incidents me and my best friend came face to face about to fight over his own paranoid thoughts that existed only in his head over this girl. What hurt most was I was telling him the truth about us and he didn’t trust me enough to believe what I was honestly telling him. This is when I made the decision that I could not live my life like this anymore. I mean I had been with this guy from the first 8 ball to fat stacks of money, giant freezer bags full of coke, and bags of weed you couldn’t even lift, never once did I lie to him even when I could have, and he wouldn’t believe the truth coming out of my mouth and was ready to fight me over it. He couldn’t even trust his own blood brother, so I don’t know what I expected anyway. I was the worst drug dealer in history anyway; I couldn’t take a woman’s last $50.00 while her baby was running around in no diaper, and no food in the cupboard, so I’d give them the drugs, go use their money to buy the food and diapers then bring them back. The thing about that is you can’t be a drug dealer with a conscious when the only objective of a drug dealer is to “get dollars” and that just wasn’t a good enough reason for me anymore. I couldn’t live my life without trust, or preying on people’s worst vices for profit. I no longer wanted to live this way and thought to myself about how much I missed Krissy. Then I had the most brilliant epiphany in the history of mankind, “instead of sending her away because I’m so bad, why don’t I just act right and be the man I think she deserves?” Well this “brilliant epiphany” just happens to coincide with a brand new problem.
It had been about 4 months since I got out of jail the day Krissy left. I had a job at the time and was paying everything off like I should. At that time I happen to work for the only person ever in history to pay his people with a check at 5:30 on Friday. Well I get a call on the 4th month after my release from jail, and I had paid her $300 a month every month for the last 3 months, well she called me that Friday and said if I didn’t have my next payment in to her by 5:00 that day, I was going to be violated again. I pleaded with her to let me pay first thing that following Monday, I told her I didn’t get paid until 5:30 that day, and I’d be waiting when they unlocked the door to open up first thing Monday morning, money order in hand. She just repeated “have it in buy 5:00 today or you’re violated”. So I did what anyone would have done in that situation, secretly called my girlfriend and asked if I could stay with her and her mom in Nebraska, got the OK, then without telling anyone I walked to the bus station and left town. I got up there, got a job, and started learning how to live without all the craziness in my life. It went well but only lasted about 6 months. It was on Krissy’s birthday and we just got back from dinner, we were all sitting in the living room watching TV when there was a knock at the door. Her mom got up and opened the door; waiting on the other side there were 2 uniformed officers with my mug shot asking for me. I had shaved my head in between the picture they had and then, so they were double, and triple checking it. I told them “it’s me”, and they slapped the cuffs on. Krissy, her sister, and mom were all three crying as they lead me out, and all I could say was “happy birthday baby”.1.My incarceration. What can I say about my time in jail? This was only my second time even seeing the inside of a jail, and I had 2100 miles between me and my case. I had no idea what to expect. I had to be extradited, and when you are in transit the federal Marshalls get custody of you, and you only go through Federal prisons for holding. They are also in no hurry to get you there, it took right at 5 ½ months for me to make the 23 hour trip. I flew on con air, stayed in Leavenworth-KS, Oklahoma City-OK, Atlanta-GA, Tallahassee-FL, Santa Rosa County, and finally Okaloosa County. I had never been so happy to see a jail house in my life.
I had to wait a little more than a month for my first court date after I arrived, so at that point I had been locked up for right at 6 months. Another fact was Krissy was moving back into Fort Walton the same day as my court date, so I really hoped to get out that day (not that what I wanted mattered). The day of my court appearance it seemed my chances of being released dwindled with each case that pasted. The judge was handing out time that day like candy, and the inmate right before me was asking for a bond reduction and was denied, so on his way out he made a smart mouth comment that set the judge off. The judge was already handing out time like it was nothing and they called me right after the smart mouth. I found myself in front of the judge with my public defender saying “I guess I forgot his file”, but the judge read off my charges and asked how I wanted to plea. I had paperwork from here to Nebraska proving I did exactly what I was charged with, so I said “Guilty”. The judge looked me right in the eyes and said “You realize you could get up to 10 years for this, don’t you?” I don’t know what I looked like when I heard that, but I felt like my eyes got as big as dinner plates and popped out of my head about 2 feet like a cartoon. I responded with “no sir, I did not know that, if I would have it may have changed a few of my decisions”, he followed with the question, “are you sure you don’t want to change your plea?” I’m sure it seemed like longer to me, but I sat there and thought about it for a good 60 seconds and replied, “As much as I wish I could change it, the truth is I did exactly what I’m being charged with, so I really can’t change it, Guilty your honor.” So the judge said he was going to let me sign myself out until my next court date, but not without the state attorney jumping up saying “No way, he is in here for running!”, the judge looked me right in the eye and told me “Son, if I let you sign yourself out today and you are not here for your court date, you’d better never get caught again and never come back before me”. I looked him right back in the eyes and told him “Thank you sir, and I will be here when I’m supposed to.” Just try to tell me the Lord wasn’t with me even then. Out of everyone from jail that rode with me for court that morning, I was the only one that got out, out of everyone that walked in to the courtroom free that morning only 2 of them walked back out free. God had planted honesty in me, just like the conscious that kept me from being a successful drug dealer. I can see that in retrospect, but was blind to it then, because the blind can’t see. God does work in mysterious ways, not only was I reunited with my “God given” girlfriend and soul mate that very night, but that night was also when my first son was conceived. Now in my new found freedom, “with CC sanctions”, I did not stop liking the buds, so I smoked, and failed a UA (urine analysis) before that next court date. Yes oh yes, the judge that had given me that chance, yea I slapped him in the face with that one, and on top of that I figured I had already failed that UA I might as well keep smoking, and did. All that accomplished was making it even harder on me when the judge sentenced me to a 6 month lockdown drug rehab program. At the time the rehab was rumored to have a 6 month wait, but the judge said if I could pass another UA that day then, I could continue to wait to go to the program on the outside; if I failed I had to wait for the bed to open in jail. Well I failed the UA and had to turn myself in right away. That night I found myself back behind bars with the fear I would miss my first child’s birth. It was just after we found out Krissy was pregnant, but all this was also right after 9-11, and it turns out they had just lifted the freeze on everything federal. There were so many different horror stories floating around about how long it was going to take for me to even get to Keaton (name of the rehab program) to even start the 6 month sentence, it wasn’t going to take waiting too long before there was no way I’d be out in time to see my first child’s birth. I also did not want Krissy to have to go through the whole thing all alone. I had heard tale of people who had been waiting to go to Keaton for 4 months before 9-11 attack and then the Feds locked everything down. It ended up taking them more than 12 months before they could even start doing the 6 month sentence. I was really worried about missing the birth of my first child.
