My upbringing was good in a lot of ways, and I am thankful, but unfortunately, the dysfunctional and hurtful times of our youth are often embedded more into our hearts than the good times. Hurt is amplified 10 times more than the happy times that we had, especially when we are young. I can only see that now that I am older, looking back.
My parents were great in a lot of ways and I honor them. My Dad is gone and I believe he is in heaven. He turned his life over completely to God shortly before he died of a massive heart attack at the age of 54. My Mom, a saint of God, is still alive and in her 80s.
My Dad was an immigrant from Latvia, who immigrated to America with his family when he was 7 years old. They came here with nothing, starting from scratch in poverty and not knowing the English language.
My Dad got kicked out of 3 high schools for fighting, because he didn’t tolerate kids picking on him for how he spoke and for being a foreigner. He never finished high school, but he was a hard worker, and he eventually made a good living for his family. His Dad (our grandpa, who we called “Papa”) drank too much Brandy sometimes and my dad learned to do the same.
When I was young, our family started going to the Lutheran church and us kids were sent to a Lutheran grade school and High School. Even though true Christianity was not displayed well in our home, exposure to religion and the Christian Faith while I was young gave me a knowledge of God and prepared me for the true faith in God I would one day have. This was invaluable.
My dad was overly authoritarian, and he used his leather belt on our bare rear ends to discipline us too often. Instead of talking things out and training us, he just told us to go downstairs and take off our pants; then we would wait for him to come downstairs with his belt so we could get a whipping. This was the “old fashioned” way that perhaps he was taught by his dad. Otherwise, he was a good dad in many ways, but he often drank heavily when we were young, and he was a different person when he drank. At times, I was hurt emotionally by his words and how he treated me, which left lasting scares.
I became troubled and hurt and turned inward. When I was 16, I began drinking and smoking cigarettes, just like my dad, and I also began using marijuana, with some encouragement from some “friends.”
My dad was a “Binge Drinker”, but he remained responsible and built a successful Insurance Agency. We didn’t have much of an extended family and neither did one of my dad’s office partners, so our families became close and we celebrated holidays together sometimes. Alcohol consumption was always a part of the enjoyment at our get togethers.
On Christmas Day night, Dec 26th, 1980, after a family gathering with my dad’s office partner’s family was finished, our friend, the son of my dad’s office partner, and my brother Dan and I went to a bar and stayed till the 2 am closing time. Our friend and I had already been drinking at the family gathering and then we drank more at the bar. When we left the bar, I was drunk and our friend, who was driving, was inebriated, but Dan had just sipped on one or two beers all night. My brother, Dan, did not normally drink alcohol and he didn’t go to bars, but our friend and I talked him into coming along with us to the bar. Our friend was driving. He fell asleep at the wheel on the way home and we went into a deep ditch and hit a tree. My brother Dan was killed. When I regained consciousness, I heard Dan moaning his last breaths in a deep desperate moan. He had fractured his skull and broke his neck and was dying. Dan was 19 and I was 18 at the time.
When we got home from the hospital, where Dan was pronounced dead, we woke my other brother and sister up to tell them the news. Then we all sat in the living room staring into space, in shock, saying very few words. We finally fell to sleep on the sofa, and when morning came, my parents started making funeral arrangements. This time was deeply traumatic for our family, but no one talked much about it. We mourned quietly, while going on with life.
I became deeply depressed. This tragedy affected me profoundly and compounded the struggles I was already having as a young man. I was angry at the world and at life itself and had deep unresolved issues stirring inside that had resulted from the ways my dad had treated me at times when he was drunk, and the things he had said to me, which I always remembered. Instead of helping me figure out what I should do in life as an adult, he said “whether you fail or succeed, it’s up to you. I don’t care.” Another thing he told my brothers and I was: “If I would have known how much trouble you guys were going to be, I wouldn’t have had you”. Between the ages of 16 and 17, I didn’t talk to my dad, and he didn’t talk to me for about a whole year.
I want to say again, that my dad was a very good person and a good dad in a lot of ways as well, and he did reform and get saved before he died of a heart attack at the age of 54. I am just explaining what I was going through and the ways that he had contributed to my mental health at that time.
I knew I was headed down the wrong path, different from what God had intended for me, yet I kept drinking, smoking, and getting high. I experimented with other drugs as well and even considered going off the deep end and moving to skid row somewhere and becoming a hard-core drug addict. I was seriously considering it because I needed to go deep; something was giving way in me. But the Lord prevented me and gave me motivation to start taking steps of self-improvement instead.
My dad was old fashioned and was married with 3 boys in diapers by the time he was 21, so when I was 20, he felt justified in telling me “he was going to be setting me free soon, just like he had set our cat free”, in a ditch by a farm, when he didn’t want our family cat anymore, when we were young. That was his way of letting me know that I should get my plans in place, because he was going to be kicking me out of the house soon. I didn’t know what to do, so I joined the Army. After Basic Training, I went over to Germany for 21 months as a combat soldier, in field artillery, at a hard-core military base.
All my unresolved troubles from childhood kept me angry and troubled while in the Army, but I kept trudging on, and I tucked it all down deep inside. I remained dark, lonely, depressed and empty inside and spent most of my money after each payday, throwing it over the bar for drinks. But all along, there was a dichotomy in place. I was still seeking God in my heart, with all sincerity, and I testified of God to my fellow soldiers in the barracks and out in the field when the topic came up. I did not deny my faith, even though it was not yet a “saving faith”.
About 6 months before my tour of duty was finished, I was invited and started attending Bible studies with a small ministry outside of base. My heart began yearning for God, even though he seemed distant.
At the end of my time in the Army, on April 14th, 1984, we were on one of our 30-day field exercises, and my time was up. It was time for me to ETS (exit the Army and go home). I was taken by jeep, back to base, and dropped off at the barracks to pack my belongings. It was a huge, old gothic building where we lived, that normally housed about 200 soldiers; yelling, fighting, swearing and goofing off after hours… which was totally empty and eerily silent now, as I walked down the corridors to my room. (Interestingly, this was the same barracks that Hitler’s Nazi soldiers occupied during WW2.) The US government had bought it from Germany to establish it as a US Army facility, called Herzo Base.
I walked slowly down the long corridor and around the corner and down another long hall to my room, while my footsteps echoed and all the memories of the past 21 months in this place were being re-run in my mind. I contemplated returning home and going on with my life. I thought about who I had become and who I was about to present to my family and friends back home when I returned. I realized how very empty, dark and dead I was inside. I went into my room and began unpacking my wall locker and looked into the little warped mirror on the inside door of my locker. Looking into my face and my eyes, I began to weep. I looked up and began praying to God. I told him how empty I was and how life had no meaning for me and how I had not become the person he wanted me to be. I cried out unto God and confessed my sins and asked him to forgive me. I told him I needed him. I asked him to save me. I told him I wanted to be his son and him to be my God. I asked him to take over my life. Well… what followed, I will remember all the rest of my life! The deadness inside of me turned to life! My emptiness changed into a fullness of spirit that I cannot explain! There was a glorious light in my soul in exchange for what used to be darkness. My loneliness was gone, and I went from being depressed to having a smile on my face so big that it looked unnatural, amidst my tears. I couldn’t get the smile off my face for hours, even while doing paperwork and processing out of the army at the front desk of the admin building. I remember staff members commenting on how happy I was to be getting out of the Army. …If they only knew the real reason I was smiling… I was just Born Again and filled with the Holy Spirit!!! It was so amazing. It was immediate and miraculous, and it was a lasting change.
I became hungry for the word of God and began reading and studying the Bible daily. I walked progressively more seriously with God as I matured in the faith and have been walking seriously with God for over 40 years now, since that time. That was an amazing time in my life, but what is more amazing is that it was only the start of the rest of my miraculous story. If you had about 5 hours to listen, I would tell you about my miraculous journey since then, even amid sorrows and brokenness. It is a story that should be written and testified of. It is a story that cannot be contained! I will declare the awesome and wonderful things that God has done in my life!!
