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My name is David. I spent my early years like so many other kids, I went to Sunday school every week and enjoyed my time there. However, when I was six, I entered the world of competitive sports. It began with AAU swimming which required us to be out of town almost every weekend for meets. Baseball season meant traveling with the all star team. Later came track and cross country. I participated in all of these sports through high school and was actually all state in swimming and track and played on every all star team I was eligible for in baseball. Swimming meant that I was around older kids all the time.
At about the age of 15 I was introduced to beer and liquor and I enjoyed it, and partook of it very regularly. Two years later I began using other illegal substances. During my first trip to college I took a part time job as a bartender, that makes a lot of sense huh? I began all night every night at the bar, and beer became like water to me and speed became a very important part of my life just to keep me going. After three semesters of majoring in drinking and playing pool, I was asked by the university to not return due to my double digit grade point average, that’s below 1.
After four years at home working and partying, I decided to give college another try and traveled from Oklahoma to North Carolina to attend North Carolina State University. I didn’t know a soul when I got there, but God was really starting to play a role in my life without my even knowing it. How could I? I didn’t even know God. While I was at school, I met and later married my wife and best friend. After our wedding we settled in suburban Atlanta and I began attending church at the request of my wife and was baptized at the age of 27. But my career as a golf course superintendent required me to work long hours and long stretches without a day off. In the summer of 1993 my first daughter was born. That summer was also one of the hottest and driest summers on record. After a week off for my daughter’s birth, I went back to work and basically missed the first four or five months of her life. But my life was beginning to change. After holding that baby in the delivery room, I began to realize that only through a miracle could something that beautiful and perfect be given to someone like me. But being a good husband and father to me meant putting food on the table and paying for a place to live, so work still took priority. Church attendance was more regular, but I still didn’t get it. I was a great church member, we tithed and I served on and chaired committees. I was a treasurer’s and nominations committees best friend. But the only reason I was there was because I thought it made me look good and it was what people expected me to do. After a move to north of Atlanta for a better job, and ultimately more hours on the job, our second daughter was born in November, so at least I got to spend a little more time with her as a baby. But when spring came, I was right back at it.
A year later, God began to really play hardball. My wife and daughters again went to see her mother in North Carolina in August. Another vacation I was forced to miss because of work. One night while they were gone, I got out of my bed and hit my knees. I talked to God for the first time in my life. I told Him that I couldn’t go on living like this, and I needed His help. It was very obvious that leading my life my way wasn’t working, so I needed to live my life His way, and to please help me do that. During that talk, I realized how truly close I was to losing my wife and daughters, and that realization petrified me. I told God that I would do whatever it was He wanted me to do. After the talk, and through the tears, I heard an unmistakable voice tell me, “Everything is going to be all right. Get up now, and everything will be OK.” I had a feeling which started inside and went outward and upward which felt all the weight I had carried aroung forever was lifted away.
It’s funny how God plans things when you look back on them, but the next week, I signed up for a Disciple bible study class. Throughout the following nine months, my life was forever changed. Late the next summer, my daughter, six now, looked me dead in the eye and asked me why I had to be gone so much on weekends and holidays when all of her friend’s dads were home. You couldn’t have hurt me worse if you would have cut out my heart.
I immediately started looking for a new job. At the same time, while missing yet another August trip, I volunteered to help with a youth group lock-in. People had been hammering me for 12 years to get involved with youth ministry and I had come up with every excuse in the book and then some. But now it was different. What was supposed to be a four hour shift ended up being an all night shift, and I’m not sure who had more fun, the kids or me. That started my youth ministry career. After years of running, I was now on fire. Still, God kept pushing and I kept coming up with excuses. I did the best Gideon imitation known to man. And God kept giving me sign after sign to answer my requests. Finally, after two and a half years of volunteering, I entered the candidacy process for ministry and accepted a position of director of children’s and youth ministries. God has blessed me in so many ways I can’t begin to count them all, and He had more than enough reason to give up on me. But because of His unending love He never did. I will never be able to understand the depth of the love, but I am grateful every day for being taken care of regardless of everything I did to run away. For these reasons Romans 8:38-39 will always have special meaning.
David |
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