Larger Than Life: My Testimony

[Jerub_Baal]

Taken from my testimony on a different forum.



Larger Than Life: My Testimony



God is bigger than your problems.

Early Life

Psalm 139:13-14
For You formed my inward parts;

You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

Marvelous are Your works,

And that my soul knows very well.

As cliche as it sounds, my testimony does begin at my birth. I was born at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, which is about twenty miles outside of St. Louis. There are a few unique circumstances regarding my birth; one of the less obvious facts is that I was born on Easter Sunday (7 April 1985).

Ephesians 4:11

And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers...

...and some "disabled." I have never really liked the term "disabled," because it doesn't quite capture the uniqueness which I have in Christ. I am enabled more than disabled, and I have been blessed immensely through my spina bifida and hydrocephalus.



I was born with these two conditions, and was treated for both of them almost immediately. Medical experts, after thoroughly examining me, stated as a matter of fact that I would never walk or have any function in my legs, that I would find it necessary to catheterize my bladder (or have it catheterized for me), and more than likely, I would have a vegetative mental state.

John 5:8-9

Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your bed and walk." And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.

In my case, it was a bubble-blowing toy lawn mower. You know, the kind where you pour the soapy water into the gas tank, and a fan in the middle of it blows the bubbles as you push it along? It was great. I just kinda...got up and walked, with almost no treatment and absolutely no surgery. My parents (much more the doctors) were greatly surprised.



Skipping a bunch of stuff that I don't remember, let's get to the cool part. I was baptized after having received Jesus into my heart. I was baptized by a redwood of a pastor by immersion in a Southern Baptist church, as if you needed to know all that.

Shortly after that, we got orders for Peterson Air Force Base, in Colorado. We moved, and I couldn't have cared less. I was just a careless five year-old, where my biggest problem was which bug to put in which girl's hair.



We started attending a relatively small Baptist church just outside of Colorado Springs, and I started...

 

[Jerub_Baal]

My Education in the Inferno

All hope abandon ye who enter here.

~The Inscription Over Hell's Entrance in The Divine Comedy

Ring #1: The Virtuous Pagans

Comparably, first grade was a quiet state in which nothing terrible happened, but neither did anything good. I was rejected, for the most part, and ignored. I figured I was just the new kid, and over time I'd make friends.



Ring #2: Those Who Lust

Physically, I am two years behind my peers. Although, at twenty, I am pretty much "set" mentally and anatomically, my body is still two years behind my friends. The same was true when I was younger. However, as a young boy, my interest in women came exceptionally early in life. At around the age of seven, I just knew I was in love. Her name was Tabitha, and she was...she was...she was...completely unaware of my existence. It wasn't until second grade that I took an interest in her (or any other girl) physically, though. Nevertheless, when I became physically attracted to women, it hit me like a freight train. I couldn't handle what my mind was going through, and I handled it rather poorly. I began to lust without knowing what lust truly was. I felt the need to hide my sexual attraction from my friends and family, but inside, I knew (as early as the age of nine) that I was going to be married. Some day.

1 Corinthians 7:9

but if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

That was the verse that confirmed it for me. I have and will always burn with a passion for that companionship, and I'm a firm believer that she's worth waiting for.

Unfortunately, the rejection continued, causing doubts within my advancing mind about my sexuality. Maybe I wasn't cut out for this attraction stuff. Maybe I wasn't meant for girls. Maybe I was a homosexual and just didn't realize it yet. Maybe is a terrible word, and I was caught in a terrible emotional storm, wondering if I would ever be able to have that touch I longed for.



Ring #3: Gluttons

Gluttony for food has never been my problem. Gluttony for punishment, however, has always been a problem for me. I am, in some sense, a sadomasochist. I find pleasure in being uncomfortable. I find pleasure in rejection. My mind is comfortable with it. And yes, I'm getting the help I need here at Youth on the Rock.

In third grade, I became what you'd call an ass. I'm the kid that would poke you in the back until the teacher made me move, simply to get the attention. I picked at people and was just a general pain in the neck just for the attention. I hated it. But it was all I felt I had.

We'll be nice to them if they be nice to us!

Bullcrap. I tried being nice for two ******* years. Now you've pulled out my demons, and I'm going to stay on your back until you pay attention to me. I'll push your face in the mud and tear you to pieces until you pay attention, cause I'm hurting. What a horrible, horrible, horrible year. I went home and cried every day that year, but not because of the way I was treated. I cried for the way I treated others.



Ring #4: The Greedy

Indeed, I was greedy. I was greedy for attention, but I was starving for love. I got all the love I needed at home, but it was in social relationships that I suffered. Like pushing two rocks in opposite directions at the same time, I was a regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I could be your best friend one second and your worst enemy the next.



Ring #5: The Wrathful and Slothful

Fifth grade was the first year of the rest of my life, I was told. This is what would prepare me for middle school, which would prepare me for high school, which would prepare me for college. Riiight...I couldn't care less. I hated myself, and I hated everyone around me. I actually seriously considered blowing up my elementary school, though I didn't know the first thing about making a bomb. I just wanted to express my anger.



I had friends who weren't my friends when that morning bell first rang. After the dismissal bell rang in the afternoon, they were my friend again. I was harassed and beaten on the school bus every day for the half hour it took to get home. I distinctly remember the "Kindness Campaign," where some yahoo handed out pin-on buttons that said, "Practice Random Acts of Kindness." What my peers did is try to bleed me like a stuck pig with the bent-back needles of those buttons. That was the first year I started to believe what they told me when they said I was gay, was anatomically challenged in regards to my sexual organs, and couldn't get a girl if I paid her. That sounds like chump change at our current age, but then, to me, it was a big deal.

I became lazy, apathetic, and depression reared its ugly head for the first time. That, ladies and gents, was the first time I ever attempted suicide, but the razor didn't cut deep enough into my wrist, and it hurt too much to cut again.



Ring #6: The Heretics

In sixth grade, I became a heretic. At school, I was a hypocrite and proud of it. I was so confused that I could spout praises and curses simultaneously, holding a Bible in my right hand and my sin in my left. I was a wreck. That was a stagnant year, but my heart was simply a tomb, set ablaze and slowly killing me.



Ring #7: The Violent

In seventh grade, I wanted to destroy something. I tried killing myself more that year than any other (except maybe ninth grade), and--when that failed--I made threats against my peers. I would go up to the biggest guy I saw and push him in the chest just to tick him off so he'd hit me. Within me there was a mix of emotions, all of them with one goal: kill or be killed.



Ring #8: The Fraudulent

This was a year that began my rebellion. I began to go out of my way to abuse people in any way I could. I hated. I slandered. I seduced. I blasphemed. I lied. I wore a mask. I stole. I purposefully gave horrible advice. I betrayed friends just to see them scream at each other. Above all, I hurt. I hurt anything and everything I could, including myself, in any way possible.



I remember one distinct day when the guy who was always on my case was being himself.



"Hey faggy!"



I wasn't going to dignify his idiocy with a response.



"Hey, queer boy!"



No response.



"Lookit me when I'm talkin' to you, you ****** son of a bi--"



That's as far as he was gonna go.



"WHAT IF I AM GAY? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!"



I was done. I broke down into tears as the entire class watched. I'd cried in front of them before; it was nothing new. What made this different is that they had finally gotten through. For the rest of that year and all of the next, I began life as the "****** reject." The worst part was: I believed it.



Ring #9: The Traitors

It all starts here with my disgrace.

I give you my life then I run in haste.

I'd given my life to Christ at age five. I know that because of the pain I continued to feel at the way I treated my peers.

In this false life something needs to give.

And on 20 April 1999, something did. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into ColumbineHigh School in Littleton, just an hour north of where I went to school. Though their actions nor their plans never inspired me in developing my own conspiracy, I admired their bravery. I began to wonder if I could ever do something like that.

 

[Jerub_Baal]

The World Needs Heroes

No one sits with him, he doesn’t fit in

But we feel like we do when we make fun of him

Cause you want to belong do you go along

Cause his pain is the price paid for you to belong

It’s not like we hate him or want him to die

But maybe he goes home and thinks suicide

Or he comes back to school with a gun at his side

And a kindness from you might have saved his life

I had tried killing myself, which--truth be told--my peers would not have minded. Now, it was time for them to die. I hated them, and began plotting their demise.

To save myself a bit of typing, allow me to take from a post I've written previously:

As one who had previously planned to complete an act of terrorism on my public high school several years ago, I can tell you what motivates someone to kill others, or to even have that desire.

...

I spent nine years in the public school system; I doubt anything will ever change my opinion that such an "education system" is subterranean of the ninth circle of Dante's Hell. The harassment and ridicule I suffered at the hands of my peers is a breed of castigation I would not wish upon the worst of men. My opinion regarding such punishment was very different five years ago, however.

The basic idea of an attack on our school was bred in telephone conversations between a friend and myself. We began to toy with the idea of killing our peers in gruesome, impractical ways. Please understand, we were not in a proper mental state at the time, and half our macabre jesting was insincere.

The planning "phase" of our strategy took around a month; to be quite honest, I was more of the "brain" behind the operation. My comrade, although not as intellectually adept as I, was certainly resourceful...and intimidating. We amassed a limited code with which to communicate so as to seem benign. We made a hit list, but abandoned the idea in favor of a yearbook; our plan from that point was very simple, in our minds: if you were in the yearbook and happened to be at school on the day we committed our atrocity, you would die.

The last thing we did was get a basic rundown of how we were going to operate. The set up of the school was extremely simple; the gymnasium was at one side of the building (along with the cafeteria); the classrooms wrapped around in a rectangular design, with the main office in the center of that rectangle. In front of the main office was the front door; the exterior entrances to the cafeteria were along the same wall as the main entrance. The library was left of the main entrance, and was designed in a half-circle shape.

We had several options; we wanted to get the most individuals in our sites, so we had small fuse-operate pipe bombs. There was one guard, whose only weapons were his hands, feet, and teeth (that and a nasty attitude). The plan was to bring our "gear" in by way of our gym bags, stash it in our lockers, and go through the day as we would normally. We would then stay after school to work on "art projects," but we would use the time to plant the pipe bombs in the most inconspicuous places that we thought of (i.e., inside the toilet mechanisms). We would then take the activity bus home.

The next morning would go as the school planned; around lunch time is when we'd show up. We had played with the idea of buying a bus and driving it to block the only road that led to the school at the time. We would drive it about halfway up, turn it so that it was perpindicular to the road, and leave it there. There was one catch: all of the seats were to be filled with rucksack explosives, which is basically a bomb in a backpack. It weighs about fifty pounds. If the police tried to come up the road, we'd blow the bus (full of explosives and shrapnel) by remote control.

After we would have parked the bus, it would've been my responsibility to use a scoped .22 rifle to kill the guard (who always stood outside near the lunchroom doors, but in such a way that none of the students would notice). After that, we would walk into the main office, where the most we would've had to deal with are three secretaries, a principal, a vice principal, and a nurse. There was some debate between my comrade and me as to what we should use; I favored shotguns, he favored handguns. Thank God it never came to the point of making a decision.

We figured that students would've heard the shots, the plan was to simultaneously blow out the main entrance (rigged with pipe bombs), the cafeteria exits, and the two fire escape exits in the back of the school. It would've been disgustingly easy with rolls of homemade detonation cord or electric fuses.

After that, it was simply a matter of using the PA system to direct everyone into the gynasium. We truly didn't care if people escaped or not; we had timed it so as to be done before anyone could've walked to the nearest authority.

I've purposefully left out details, because I don't want some MORON doing what we did. Suffice it to say that we were caught and by the grace of God we were not charged with anything, nor did we ever even start to commit this terrible act!

To me, my friend's sister was a hero. To this day, several people owe their lives to her bravery in facing her brother and being willing to call the police on him (and consequently, me).

Last day of the rest of my life

I wish I would’ve known

Cause I didn’t kiss my mama goodbye

I didn’t tell her that I loved her and how much I care

Or thank my pops for all the talks

And all the wisdom he shared

Unaware, I just did what I always do

Everyday, the same routine

Before I skate off to school

But who knew that this day wasn’t like the rest

Instead of taking a test

I took two to the chest

Call me blind, but I didn’t see it coming

Everybody was running

But I couldn’t hear nothing

Except gun blasts, it happened so fast

I don’t really know this kid

Even though I sit by him in class

Maybe this kid was reaching out for love

Or maybe for a moment

He forgot who he was

Or maybe this kid just wanted to be hugged

Befriend the kid who you think might do something like I did. If I had known a substantial number of people had cared, I may not have done what I did. It may end horribly, but one of two things can happen:



1. The kid befriends you, but he does what he's going to do anyway. At least it won't be on your conscience.



2. The kid befriends you, and you love on him so much that he doesn't want to kill anyone anymore.

Joshua 1:9

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go."

Stand up, be strong, be courageous. It may save someone's life, and you may be that someone.

 

[Jerub_Baal]

The Emaciated Man on the Beach (and Other Stories)

My tenth grade year was the year I was investigated. By that time, I had transferred to my sister's alma mater, a private Christian school in the Springs. It was there that I discovered one of my better subjects: vocabulary.



We had these vocabulary books with lists of words, and all kinds of exercises we had to do to learn the words. My tenth grade year, I had a love affair with one word in particular: emaciated.

Emaciated

To make or become extremely thin, especially as a result of starvation.

I don't know why I loved that word, but I did. Part of our vocabulary exercises included writing original sentences on the board using that word in the proper context (i.e., as a noun, verb, adjective, etc.). I had just seen Castaway with Tom Hanks, and decided to develop that theme in my sentence with "emaciated."



I can't remember exactly what I wrote, but apparently, my class just thought it was weird that an emaciated man would be on the beach. I was thinking "deserted island." They were apparently thinking "South Miami."



When my English teacher stopped laughing at my sentence, she turned to me and asked, "And what was the emaciated man doing on the beach, Robert?"

Before I could reply (with an explanation concerning Castaway), a classmate of mine called out: "He's wheeling his wheelchair along the beach! Duh!" Thus, a legend was born.



That night, I went home and put all of my sophomoric imagination into what amounted to a three-page short story (handwritten). I took it to school the next day, and asked my teacher if I could share the story with the class.



Bust. a. gut.



I had them laughing. I had them grimacing. I had a few of them wiping tears from their eyes. Above all, I had found something I was reasonably good at. I continued to develop that story for the rest of my high school career. It became like a "Free Willy" saga, except with better characters, and no whales. Lots of beavers and roaches, but no whales.



My eleventh grade year, I took a composition class, and the creativity just flowed. Unfortunately, I got ticked off during my senior year and trashed the entire file.



It wasn't until after high school that God showed me that I'd been like that emaciated man on the emotional beach. I was disgusting. I was revolting. But I covered it up by being witty and clever. Inside, like my character, I was rotten and crawling with spiritual maggots. I was dying.



God used such a stupid story to show me who I really was, and so I committed to becoming...



Nothing But a Jesus Freak!

Separated, I cut myself clean

From a past that comes back in my darkest of dreams

Been apprehended by a spiritual force

And a grace that replaced all the me I've divorced

Unfortunately, it wasn't until after high school that I realized how powerful that grace was, and to this day I need reminders occasionally. But God is always faithful to give me those reminders (even if they do come in the form of a 2x4).

Kamikaze, my death is gain

I've been marked by my Maker

A peculiar display

The high and lofty, they see me as weak

Cause I won't live and die for the power they seek

There was a man from the desert with naps in his head

The sand that he walked was also his bed

The words that he spoke made the people assume

There wasn't too much left in the upper room

With skins on his back and hair on his face

They thought he was strange by the locusts he ate

The Pharisees tripped when they heard him speak

Until the king took the head of this Jesus Freak!

Like John the Baptist, I desire to be marked by my Maker. I want people to think of me as strange because I go against social normality. I also want to die, like John the Baptist, as a martyr, but--unlike John--I want to die quietly, preferably in Vietnam. God knows that such a thing is the desire of my heart, and so I'm sure He'll take that into consideration when that time comes.