__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
The room at the Best Western in Ft. Smith. Ebb was explaining that Green Acres had been cancelled. Even though this happened before I was born, it made me sad still-I love that show! http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00675.jpg
I believe there is a problem with the dating of the pictures. When I first posted these pictures on photobucket, I had my dates mixed up...it doesn't really matter I suppose, but I must realize that some of these may not be the pictures I think they are. I have over 200 pics of Arkansas. They might have been mixed up with those from a later date. But they are still valid. This is Arkansas.
This is where I was that year, when all these things happened to me.
And tho nobody has responded, on with the story...
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
My brother and I are both the sons of alcoholic parents.
Neither of us ever knew our dads. Our mother was...is...an alcoholic, and when she drank, we were pretty much left on our own. Life was not really bad, but it had its moments, between the drinking, cursing, crying, and so on.
My granddad worked at the old Ford plant in Hapeville. Whenever our mother would start drinking, I'd call him, and he'd show up in whatever junk car he was currently working on. My brother and I would live at our grandparents' house for a few weeks, and before long our granddad would have our mother sobered up, so that she could take care of us again.
My grandparents always meant a lot to me...and my granddad in particular was my childhood hero. He would take his grandchildren camping, the dozen or so of us he was continually raising, and set aside our own places for us to play in. He made me wooden swords and cardboard armor, and with these I would attack the pine trees, because they were evil sorcerers or crazy warlords in South America. I was allowed to stay up a whole hour later than the others because I was the oldest boy, and while we roasted marshmallows on the campfire, he told me all he knew about how to be a good man.
My granddad had been killed in an auto accident, my last year in the Air Force.
Racing back from Arkansas, I pulled into the old driveway-the house had gone to my younger brother-and knocked on the door.
My brother Michael answered the door.
...
I had driven from Ft. Smith to Villa Rica in one day.
640.79 miles, evidently. A little over 1000km for any non-Americans here.
At that point in time, I was probably very close to being crazy.
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
As i've said, reality had pretty much been shattered for me. Even when I had been into all my pagan religions, something about it just didn't seem real. I didn't take it at anything more than face value...looking back, there was a dimension to it I never saw. But I had now seen the way things really were, had stepped "outside" the game, so to speak, and...understandably, it *bothered* me. I didn't know what to do. It was nearly impossible for me to deal with. My mind was having a very hard time processing it, assimilating what I had experienced.
My brother answered the door, and my voice was shaking. I remember asking him if I could see him at our mother's house. He asked if everything was okay. Was mom hurt? Was I hurt? Was everything okay?No, I said, but just...just meet me down there.
I made it down to my mom's house and sent my two little sisters away. In the living room, I asked my mother and brother to sit down and listen.
I told them the entire story from beginning to end. I told them all about the alien image in my mind, about missing my old tech school, about the drive to Arkansas, about how sad and miserable I'd been that day, about the self-hypnosis, and the..."people" I'd met above. I was at a loss to explain it all-my ability to handle it was wearing very thin. At the time, it was really all I could do, to not lose it.
I hoped that by sharing these things, one of the two could offer me advice, or at the very least be in awe alongside of me.
I finished the story. My mom turned to my brother.
"So Michael, did you race last night?"
...
My mother had completely ignored me. The two started a normal conversation. My story had lasted at least 15, 20 minutes. Neither one of them even acknowledged I had spoken.
My mother later told me that stories like this were "beyond" my brother. Into New Age herself, she suggested that I was "an older spirit" and that I probably had a lot to teach people.
I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to.
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. My mother let me stay at her house for a few days, because I could not bring myself to go back home just yet. I slept very little-I kept feeling as if I were being pulled out of my body again, and I'd jump awake every time in a panic. I slept in my clothes on my momma's couch with what had once been my baby sister's blanket.
I was out of it. This was something I had to deal with, on my own. Nobody else would even believe me, let alone try or be able to help me.
The days passed as my supposed trip to Arkansas expired.
Eventually, because there was nothing else to do, I went back to my apartment.
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
My roommates had eaten all my food. My buddy Jason told me he'd drank the last of my Dr Pepper the moment I'd walked out the door. There was a mass of people in my apartment when I walked in. I sent all but my roommate Jason and my buddy Andy back home.
I then went to my own room and sat on my floor. For the first two or three days back I just kind of spaced out, switching between laying down and sitting up every once in a while. I'd go downstairs for food and say hi to my friends without really paying attention, or stay in my room and let some music play. Everything was quiet and peaceful, and I just sat there, to myself...
Eventually my mind settled down enough for me to think again.
I reasoned to myself that all this nonsense with angels and spirits had begun with Wicca and New Age when I was 13, and so I decided that I'd have to cut myself off from any kind of influence with those things. This was my decision.
The first thing I did was to go through all my things and throw away anything that was even remotely occult-related. This included candles-they were colored, red, blue, green, yellow, and white. I then and there vowed to myself to never try to leave my body again. I trashed all my saved internet pages on witchcraft and magick. I threw my Tarot deck in the dumpster, bypassing the trashcan in my kitchen. I didn't want the things in my house. Anything, material or otherwise, that presented a question, was thrown away.
The thought continually came to me that there was no "scriptural evidence" that any of these things-cards, candles, so on-was contraband or sinful. But I took it on faith that they were. I didn't need to be convinced by text. I was already convinced by experience, that these things led to problems and separation from God.
The next thing I did was to open my Bible. I began with Genesis and Romans and decided to read both at the same time. I began to sneak into a nearby church on Sundays, sitting near the back and not saying anything to anybody.
Despite what had happened, I felt a continuous desire to use my tarot cards to understand the meaning of everything happening around me. I went to Borders at the mall one week and bought another set of cards, only to throw away the set without opening them a few days later.
I locked up my clove cigarettes, and hid away about half my CDs: Rob Zombie, Corrosion of Conformity, Static-X, and Emperor.
I eventually finished Romans and began to read 1 John.
One night, I dreamed that I'd found a passage in the Bible which made it okay to study Tarot and leave your body. In the dream, I had to argue with someone that this was not okay. It was a definite struggle to hold onto this change I was trying to initiate in my life.
...
It was at this time that I was really leaving my old beliefs and putting them behind me forever. It wasn't easy or pretty. I didn't fit in, no one understood me, and I was uncomfortable everywhere I went.
Since I'd been a kid, I'd read up on stories of magic and spiritualism, on out-of-body experiences, aliens, spirits, and so on. I had decided that Christianity was wrong-it was everyone else's idea of God, and their idea was wrong. I wanted God and spiritual things, not baptists and...just everything that went with them. In California I had become miserable, and realized that these things could not give me anything. I had tried to politely ignore them, but now since Arkansas, I saw that this would not work. I was going to have to actively fight them off in order to leave them.
And it was hard, and things were like this for quite some time.
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
Soon afterwards though, life became very easy for me.
When 9/11 happened, my reserve unit was mobilized, called to active duty. This meant that I now worked as military police at Dobbins in Marrietta. I had to wake up at 3:30am and I got home around 7pm. I didn't have time to think or worry. At this piont it was still difficult for me to relate to others or to make simple "let's be a happy person" choices, but not it didn't matter; I didn't have time to do anything but work.
A good portion of the reserves are staffed mostly by older men who have served on active duty for a long time. In my case, most of the men I worked with were Vietnam Vets. A good many of them had killed other men in close combat, although they never talked about it. The war was a long time ago for them, but having to deal with things like this tended to make them quiet and very self-assured. They had made their peace long ago. So it was easy for me to make friends with them, because they were more reserved in their natures than others. So as I began to become a person again, I became a lot like them, keeping to myself and making sure I knew what I thought about myself beforehand.
A lot of what we did was training and busy work. Physically active stuff. Night-firing, relay courses, combat training. And a lot of cleaning our weapons. Thus engaged, all these other things, angels and spirits, began to pass from my mind.
My spiritual life in Christ had really began to grow. I finished the first five books of the Old Testament and began to read them again. I chose my favorite characters and tried to get a feel for what they had to go through and the commitments they made to God. I read the books of the New Testament over and over again. I couldn't make it to church anymore-I worked all week-but I still felt myself getting closer to God.
When the US decided to invade Iraq, I had to go.
We were stationed in Saudi, in an "undisclosed location" later revealed to be Tabuk. I worked nightshift, usually alone. The smallest guy in the fireteam, the other airmen had given me the machine gun. 25lbs, not including ammo. The first day at there, I was taken to "work" and surprised to find that my foxhole was 25ft in the air-it was a lookout tower near the front gate. The other guards at the gate would check IDs. If someone ran the gate, if the gate exploded, if shots were fired, or if it started raining and the base commander hadn't authorized it, I was to stop the next car coming through the gate.
I set my weapon, threw my rucksack on the floor, and peered out the plexiglass window to the gate.
"How do I open this window if I need to fire," I asked.
"Just start shooting," the other guard said, getting his things together to leave. "It'll come out."
So, from dusk to dawn, this was my job. I wasn't allowed a normal flashlight, for fear someone would see me. I *was* allowed to put a red lens over my normal light. Doing this, I lay over my machine gun and read CS Lewis and EW Bullinger. Every once in a while, my Sgt would come by to check on me, and we'd talk about our relationship with Christ.
There's something about living in a tent city that just makes things easy. It's not that you always have someone else telling you what to do. You don't. They don't tell you, they teach you. I knew exactly what my responsibilities were, and I knew exactly what I had to do to perform them.
So I decided my spiritual life with God would be just the same. I knew what I had to do, I knew how I could do this. No more, "I'm too tired/I'm too sick to go to church." My responsibility was to make it, and so I would make it. I was not allowed anything contrary to the Word of God. So I wouldn't accept those things.
So as I grew closer to the Lord, things in my mind seemed to became clearer.
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
I'm going to change a few names and things, but let me see how simple I can keep this for now:
When I was 9 years old, my mom had met a man at the AA named Terry. About a month after they met, they married. Thinking this was finally her "perfect life", my mother called me and my brother to live with her.
My grandparents had been awarded custody of me since I was 2. My brother though, was legally hers and always had been. Because of this, because of him, I always lived wherever he did. This was a choice offered to me. My granddad advised me that "a real man" would not only think about himself, that I should live with my brother Michael so he would not be alone. And so, believing this to be the right choice, I always did. When I was 9 then, we moved back to live with our mom; and since she was with this man Terry, we were forced to live with him.
Terry lived in an apartment with his two children, a boy and a girl. Sara was 2 years older than me. Glenn was...I think a year or two younger. Glenn and my real brother played together-war and baseball, tag and so on. Sly and quiet, I would stay at a distance and watch. I could throw a baseball, but couldn't hit. I couldn't catch a football to save my life. So I wasn't usually welcome to play, certainly not if other kids were around. This being the case, I turned instead to talk with Sara.
There was a tiny park in the apartment complex, just a couple of picnic tables, a swingset and slide, and a little sandbox. Sara and I would go to this place and just sit and talk. She hated my mother every bit as much as I hated her father. We became friends, but the goal between us was clear-we both wanted our parents to split up, even though it would mean we would lose contact with each other. So we both worked towards the same purpose.
Sometimes our talks would turn to God. (Guess this was pretty deep discussion for pre-teens!) This is the first time I really developed an interest in God at all. So for most of my life, whenever I thought about God, I'd think about Sara.
About three or four months into the marriage, Terry and my mom started drinking together.
I think Terry beat Glenn. I'm not sure. When he was drinking, he was a pretty different person than when he was sober. My mom would just lay down and sleep. But Terry (I *never* did call him dad, lol) would get mean and strict. And the meaner Terry got to Glenn, the meaner Glenn would get to me.
I put all my effort to breaking our parents up. One day, my mother turned to me, mad at all the problems I was causing.
"Don't make me choose between you and him," she told me, "because you'll lose."
...and I was a nine-year old kid when she told me this.
I hardly got to talk to my grandparents, never got to see them. Glenn broke the "staff" my granddad had made for me. Sara was just about my only friend at that time, and the park was my only escape. I wondered if she was trying at things as hard as I was. But I could tell even then that things were tough on Glenn and Sara as well. At one point, they started going to their mom's every other weekend. My brother Michael would try to play with me then, but this didn't help-as soon as someone else would show up, I'd be forgotten. So I felt pretty miserable, and pretty lonely. Kids need to be held! They need to be hugged! They need a safe home, breakfast and supper, a clean environment. I never had any of this while my mom was married to Terry.
My brother Michael became submissive to make friends. He'd give other kids his lunch money so they'd let him play with them.
I myself became really quiet and uncaring.
Between Glenn and Sara, things got weird, and they seemed to depend more on each other than normal siblings would. They were together, and they hated their lives, and all they ever wanted I think, was a way out.
And so the point is, there was a man my mom married named Terry. He had two kids, Glenn and Sara. For a little less than a year, we had to live with them. Eventually, the two kids went to live with their mother (who I never met), and my brother and I returned to our grandparents.
What is important though, is how this year of my life screwed me up inside. All our parents cared about was sex, and we were all quickly pushed to the side because of it. My only friend during this time was my new sister Sara. We discussed God and life, and I began to think that death was the only escape to life. Sara thought the same; we both became a little dark because of it. Because of the fact that I was disgusted with my mother, I could not look at any kind of adult relationship in a good light. We all knew that sex was more important to our parents than we were. We all coped in different ways, though. Michael was too young to be affected really, at least to anything so specific. Glenn and Sara seemed to try to make up for the lack of parental affection with each other.
I though, began to kill off my emotions.
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
My mother shot my father in the back when I was two. My granddad rescued me, and after several bouts with DFACS won temporary custody. My dad lived, but I never got to know him.
I lived with my mother whenever she was sober. The rest of the time, I was cared for by my grandparents.
When I was 9, my mother began to live with a man named Terry, and things became very bad as the two drank together and ignored their children. As time went on, the situation affected us all. Terry's own kids had severe problems. My brother became shy and submissive. I became cold and quiet.
One of the only escapes I had came from Terry's daughter Sara. That escape was religion, trying to depend on God for strength and comfort...knowing that my life was wronged, and believing there was a God who was keeping score.
When I was 13, I began to practice Wicca. There was a power in the world, and I was not going to wait while the adults rationed it out to me in Sunday-school packets. I was going to find it for myself. This interest, this devotion, eventually evolved into reading tarot cards, praying to spirit guides, trying spells, and astral projection, or leaving my body. I became emotionally and spiritually dependant on all these things.
Trying to get away from my family back home and grow up on my own, I enlisted in the Air Force and was sent to boot camp. At my tech school though, I didn't study and chased after a girl instead. I failed my course tests. Because of this, I lost the job I'd chosen and was made a mechanic.
Sent into the Mojave desert in California, I absolutely emerged myself into the occult and spiritualism. Two people in particular tried to get me to open up: Dario and Dan were their names. I shunned them off and tried to get them to hate me. I ended up working the night shift by myself in the tool room-the midnight shift, no less-while the other mechanics laughed and joked on the work floor. Everyone pretty much saw me as cold and uncaring, and they left me alone.
I was miserable and bitter. I lived, ate, and slept alone, and spent a great deal of my time remembering what had happened to me. My escape was anything dark and quiet, and most of what I did was try to be alone.
...
...
...
......
But all of this had passed away.
By the time I got back from Saudi, I had about 10 grand saved in my bank account. I bought some new clothes, took my pickup in for a tune-up, and ordered a work-out bench to keep myself in shape. I received an Honorable Discharge from the Reserves-my time in the military was over-and a medal for my time overseas. Out of the Air Force, I started letting my hair grow out for the first time since high school. I felt liberated.
When I got back, my mother was once again drinking, and my buddies hadn't paid rent in 2 months.
I helped Jason and Andy move back to their parents' houses, cleaned and rearranged the apartment (Godbless Spic & Span), and picked up my little sisters from my mom's house.
At the time, Amanda was in the 6th grade and Ashley was in the 3rd.
Kids are expen$ive.
I took a job at the nearby Sony plant, working security on the 2nd shift. It barely paid enough, but the girls' dad wrote checks for whatever we needed. My schedule was packed:
4pm: Work.
12am: Go home.
1am: Sleep.
5am: Take the girls to school.
8am: Sleep.
1pm: Get ready for work.
3pm: Pick the girls up from school.
4pm: Leave for work.
Being a single parent is tough.
Despite all the stress, we all had fun. Amanda was my baby doll, and Ashley was my hero. The first night I tried to cook, I didn't know I had to simmer the steaks. Amanda made chocolate-chip pancakes instead. I love spinach, but Ashley was afraid of it. I chased her around the house with a bowl of it one night. We'd go to the park and sit together to talk, get fast food and eat it at the lake, or drive out to the pond and run from the ducks together.
Amanda turned to me one night and smiled.
"I love you more than bark on a tree," she said.
She loved to spout nonsense like that.
Soon enough, our mother sobered up and the girls went back to live with her. I moved into a tiny, 2-bedroom duplex across the street, and continued to work at Sony.
...and as I did so, I continued to grow in my relationship with Jesus Christ.
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
"So. So you had a strange vision on a hiking trip to church and thought you saw some sort of malevolent spirit in the sky. Pretty weird, Kol. But how does all this about your family life play into it all?"
In answer to that, let me just say: hang with me. This story might seem to take a turn out in left field. Sorry. This is the way things happened, and...just trudge along with me, please.
...
Originally, there were two jobs in Carrollton: Southwire and Sony. Sony shut down production in 2001, just a few months before I had come home from California and enlisted in the Reserves. Most of Sony's building became an unused, empty warehouse. 70 workers filled a single dayshift, and security was a total of 12 guards. This was perfect for me. It gave me plenty of time to sort myself out and get things ready for college.
For a long time, everything was quiet. After a while business began to pick up, and Sony started working in a new incarnation, this time as a distribution center. I took the job of shift supervisor in the afternoons. Overtime was unreal; our boss was not the most well-educated person, and her managerial skills were severely lacking. I averaged most times 120 hours in a 2 week period. One of the younger guards joked that our boss didn't 'plan' schedules...instead, she wrote them by casting lots with the bones of unborn babies.
All kidding aside, Sony was a creepy place.
From the very first, everyone was convinced there was a "ghost" in the unused part of the plant. I remember laughing at the thought. I had spent years in dark rooms trying to contact other spirits...and I had felt no such thing at Sony. I think I was kind of arrogant back then. But soon enough I was convinced. There was a very strong presence in the empty warehouse in both Tape Coating and the end of isles 42/43. Seemingly random places...not the darkest or the quietest. At the time, I felt a little tug to try to go "ghosthunting"...I took a few pictures and made a few "white noise" tapes, but then decided not to go any further. I no longer wanted anything to do with dead people or spirits or the spirit world. So, as strong as I wanted to do anything, I resisted the urge.
Nobody swears like a mechanic, and from my time in California I'd picked up some pretty foul language. One wouldn't suppose the f* word to be so easily combined with various parts of the english language. One of the things I was working on then, was my language. Once when I had to put a seal on a truck, I tugged too hard and broke the little plastic ring. Before I could think, I spitted out a single bit of obsenity. My hand involuntarily went to cover my mouth. The truck driver (an older man) looked at me as if I were a little kid and said, "don't feel bad for saying that word. I say that word every day." I knew I looked like an 18-year old fresh out of high school, but considering the dark life I'd come out of, the twisted things I'd seen and done in California, and the fact that I could have kept swearing for another couple minutes on end, all I could do was look at the driver and laugh.
Unfortunately, one of the things I'd grown to love in California was death metal. My favorite band called themselves Emperor:
The heavens are lit by the stars where years of secret universal secrets lay hid they shine so bright, yet they have seen more evil than time itself Reflected in the depthless lakes, they are drowning in black elements They are the planetary keys to unlimited wisdom and power for the Emperor to obtain...
I packed all these away and began to listen to gospel music instead. I found I liked bluegrass gospel the most. I bought a 3-disc Johnny Cash set named "Love, God, and Murder." On this, he even sang a few Kris Kristofferson songs, which I liked:
Why me Lord what have I ever done to deserve even one of the pleasures I've known Tell me, Lord, what did I ever do that was worth lovin' you or the kindness you've shown
Lord help me, Jesus, I've wasted it so help me Jesus I know what I am but now that I know that I've needed you so help me, Jesus, my soul's in your hand...
Work consisted of patrolling the afternoon warehouse for an hour, then sitting on my backside and stuffing my face from the vending machine while the other guard patrolled for an hour. I used my free time to read several books: the Apocrypha, Enoch, Jasher, books by Dr. Raymond E. Capt, books by Rutherford and Ginsburg, CS Lewis, and so on. Of course, my Bible was at the top of all of this.
I began to make notes of how I was growing as a Christian.
You have to understand, at this point I thought I was the only "real" Christian there was left in the world. I had become convinced of my beliefs because of what I had experienced working in occult techniques. It was beyond me to suggest that anybody else would understand that what Christ had claimed was true. I knew there were other Christians, but I couldn't comprehend that they might actually believe what they said they believed. How could they? They didn't know what I knew. They hadn't walked my path. A little childish to think this way, but...at the time, it was how I thought.
I wrote a paper entitles "Opiates of the Fallen Nature" alongside a summary of the Bible I intended to read to my kid sisters. I began to make notes as well on my thoughts of how similar alcoholism and sin were, as well as how to fight each. I remember a tiny coin my mother had from AA:
THE TIME TO CALL YOUR SPONSER
IS BEFORE, NOT AFTER;
THINK BEFORE YOU DRINK.
I continued to grow stronger in my choice, and stronger in my self. I knew how to focus my will and I knew how to direct my thoughts towards action...and so I did so, only now I directed them towards the God which Christ preached.
...
__________________
__________________ In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. -John 1:3
This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and that life is in his son. He who has the son has life; he who does not have the son does not have life. -1 John 5:11
Linear Mode
