BRYAN:
I grew up in a secular home, I remember as a young child that only on Christmas & Easter we would go to church, with my Grandparents. After my grandfather (my biological father’s step-father) died we stopped going. My biological father had a ton of problems and didn’t know Jesus Christ. Our home was a war zone most days. He was very disrespectful towards my mother, sisters, and myself, and was very violent towards us when things didn’t go as he intended them. His actions showed that he didn’t love his wife, cared very little for his kids and, in fact, blamed us for everything that was wrong in his life.
A normal day in my life for 17 years was taking a beating because it was my fault for whatever went wrong that day. During my Junior year in high school, he was arrested for manufacturing meth on a large scale (a story for another day). This is when my life got even worse. Not one single family member: grandparents, aunts, uncles would take me in. My father was in jail, my mother was in jail (she was released when they figured out she wasn’t involved) and my grandparents took my sisters in, but I was too much to handle. My best friend’s parents took me in for about two weeks, but they already had two other foster kids there. It was getting pretty rough, and I was really thinking I was about to be homeless, when Gerry and Ruby Hoss my other best friend’s parents, took me in. I know this is when God stepped in and really started showing me His love (which I still couldn’t see). I didn’t know God, I didn’t know Jesus, I just thought life sucked and people sucked. Anyway, I got to see a family in which the husband and wife actually liked each other.
Moving ahead and getting to the point, I turned out more like my biological father in how I treated the women in my life. I never laid a hand on them, but I was brutal mentally on them. I didn’t see them as God does, until now.
God continued to let me run down the path of destruction, indulging in my addictions, being disrespectful to my wife and others. It’s been almost a year since I openly acknowledged my addiction and I can truly say that today I see my wife as God does. She is not perfect, she is a sinful creature, but I love her and life would really suck without her.
I am grateful that God has allowed me to live long enough to be used by Him. I have been able to talk to other men about how God has truly saved me from me. And now I have a calling to serve Him in ways that I could never have imagined.