I wasn’t raised a Christian. Neither of my parents had any real interest in God at all, except for my mom who professed a superficial belief that God exists, but otherwise only used the name of God and Jesus as curse words. Other than that, and going to church with my grandmother when I was visiting her during the summer, I had no real exposure to Christianity of any substance. When I was 9 years old, my parents got divorced and I ended up with my mom, and we (mom, my brother and myself) moved to the next state where my maternal grandparents lived. A couple years after that my mom decided she couldn’t handle me anymore. I was always bullied in school and didn’t have any friends, so growing up that way and finding things to do on my own wasn’t easy, so I found “creative” things to do involving pyrotechnics (burning stuff) in my bedroom which was the last straw and made my mom decide to ship me back to live with my dad. She put me on a Greyhound bus, and then called my dad to let him know I was on my way.
While living with my dad, the bullying continued at school. Dad and I ended up moving to another town due to break-ins of our house, and the bullying continued there as well, even though I was attending a new school. When I was 16, my life started falling apart. I started contemplating suicide because I didn’t see life getting any better. I had no friends and there was nothing to do to occupy my time. I did get my first job at that point as a janitorial assistant, but it didn’t give me any real fulfillment. The thoughts of suicide increased to where I would go out at night when I couldn’t sleep and climb up a hill and try to get myself to jump off the side. It was about a 50 foot drop down to the street below, which I thought would do the job of ending it all. I never ended up jumping, but I started telling people about my thoughts. My Dad had no idea what to do about it. At one point in school, I just came to a point where I had decided that I’d had enough of life. I told a teacher privately that I wasn’t going to do any more schoolwork and why it didn’t matter anymore and about my suicidal thoughts. I had also talked to her about carrying a BB pistol to school for protection on the way there and back home because I was getting attacked by kids I encountered while walking to school and back home. Word of this got to a school counselor, who then referred me to a psychiatrist who then had me placed in the psychiatric unit at the hospital. A month later, I was released to go back home, although my dad wasn’t too happy about that. No matter. The suicidal thoughts came right back and I blabbed about it during one of my court-ordered weekly appointments with a psychiatrist which landed me right back in the hospital again, followed by a 3 month stay at a psychiatric facility, followed by 10 months at a group home until my 18th birthday. It wasn’t until I was about 17 that I considered whether or not God was real, and what it would mean for my life if he was. I had a few “lucid dreams” that made me wonder about spiritual realms, and that got me to researching New Age ideas. During my time in the group home, I was going to school again on a limited basis (they weren’t comfortable with me being there after talking about carrying a BB pistol).
Then I was basically kicked out of school because, as I was told, they thought my needs were more vocational that academic, and again, they were afraid I might carry a weapon to school. I was then told to attend a vocational training center where they teach very basic vocational skills to people of rather low IQ, and with disabilities. I met a teacher there who was a Christian and she was answering some of my questions. Without God, I didn’t see much use in being alive. All I had otherwise was being bullied, no friends, and trying to figure out ways to protect myself against being bullied. This teacher answered a lot of my questions about God and Christianity and this furthered my interest. After graduating from this vocational center pretty much at the top (my IQ turned out to be college level), I was then referred to a service where they help people find jobs. My job coach was a Christian (funny how I kept running into these guys!) and he told me about a home bible study he was attending and invited me to go to it with him. I gave it a try and was impressed with the guy who led the discussion. He really knew what he was talking about and was able to answer all my questions. Believe me, I had quite a few! It helped that we had the same interest in things like computers, video games and Star Trek. I ended up asking Christ into my life early on in the time I was going to this bible study. I continued going because it was far different from any “church” I had ever been to, and it gave me a sense of belonging. We could ask questions and discuss things. I had never been in a Christian-based assembly like this before. So I learned more about God and the bible, and then I took a particular interest in the idea of bible prophecy, because I thought it related not only to real life, but also our present time. In other words, it became more real to me. I was really interested in how the bible had prophecies about things that were happening right now. At the time, “right now” was just before the first Gulf War. A passage in the book of Daniel was shown to me to be the war in Iraq. At first, I thought it was kind of far-fetched, but it turned out to be eerily true. There’s been debate about that, so I won’t get into it in detail here. There were others shown to me as well.
While living with my dad, the bullying continued at school. Dad and I ended up moving to another town due to break-ins of our house, and the bullying continued there as well, even though I was attending a new school. When I was 16, my life started falling apart. I started contemplating suicide because I didn’t see life getting any better. I had no friends and there was nothing to do to occupy my time. I did get my first job at that point as a janitorial assistant, but it didn’t give me any real fulfillment. The thoughts of suicide increased to where I would go out at night when I couldn’t sleep and climb up a hill and try to get myself to jump off the side. It was about a 50 foot drop down to the street below, which I thought would do the job of ending it all. I never ended up jumping, but I started telling people about my thoughts. My Dad had no idea what to do about it. At one point in school, I just came to a point where I had decided that I’d had enough of life. I told a teacher privately that I wasn’t going to do any more schoolwork and why it didn’t matter anymore and about my suicidal thoughts. I had also talked to her about carrying a BB pistol to school for protection on the way there and back home because I was getting attacked by kids I encountered while walking to school and back home. Word of this got to a school counselor, who then referred me to a psychiatrist who then had me placed in the psychiatric unit at the hospital. A month later, I was released to go back home, although my dad wasn’t too happy about that. No matter. The suicidal thoughts came right back and I blabbed about it during one of my court-ordered weekly appointments with a psychiatrist which landed me right back in the hospital again, followed by a 3 month stay at a psychiatric facility, followed by 10 months at a group home until my 18th birthday. It wasn’t until I was about 17 that I considered whether or not God was real, and what it would mean for my life if he was. I had a few “lucid dreams” that made me wonder about spiritual realms, and that got me to researching New Age ideas. During my time in the group home, I was going to school again on a limited basis (they weren’t comfortable with me being there after talking about carrying a BB pistol).
Then I was basically kicked out of school because, as I was told, they thought my needs were more vocational that academic, and again, they were afraid I might carry a weapon to school. I was then told to attend a vocational training center where they teach very basic vocational skills to people of rather low IQ, and with disabilities. I met a teacher there who was a Christian and she was answering some of my questions. Without God, I didn’t see much use in being alive. All I had otherwise was being bullied, no friends, and trying to figure out ways to protect myself against being bullied. This teacher answered a lot of my questions about God and Christianity and this furthered my interest. After graduating from this vocational center pretty much at the top (my IQ turned out to be college level), I was then referred to a service where they help people find jobs. My job coach was a Christian (funny how I kept running into these guys!) and he told me about a home bible study he was attending and invited me to go to it with him. I gave it a try and was impressed with the guy who led the discussion. He really knew what he was talking about and was able to answer all my questions. Believe me, I had quite a few! It helped that we had the same interest in things like computers, video games and Star Trek. I ended up asking Christ into my life early on in the time I was going to this bible study. I continued going because it was far different from any “church” I had ever been to, and it gave me a sense of belonging. We could ask questions and discuss things. I had never been in a Christian-based assembly like this before. So I learned more about God and the bible, and then I took a particular interest in the idea of bible prophecy, because I thought it related not only to real life, but also our present time. In other words, it became more real to me. I was really interested in how the bible had prophecies about things that were happening right now. At the time, “right now” was just before the first Gulf War. A passage in the book of Daniel was shown to me to be the war in Iraq. At first, I thought it was kind of far-fetched, but it turned out to be eerily true. There’s been debate about that, so I won’t get into it in detail here. There were others shown to me as well.
