"And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death." Revelation 12:11
After I believed in Jesus as my personal Savior in August of 1977, with a reasonably intelligent understanding of what that meant, I still had a lot to learn about what was involved in actually living the Christian life. From the very moment I first believed, it was my heart's desire to live my life in a way that would be pleasing to my heavenly Father and to Jesus. The problem is, we're all living in a fallen world, and every influence that is not divine in origin tends toward corruption and is, therefore, a hazard to one who truly desires to live a Christian (Christ-like) life. Even if none of these influences existed, we still have our own sinful nature (self) to contend with, even after we've trusted Jesus as our Savior and Lord, and that has proven to be (as, no doubt, all other honest Christians would agree on their own account) my most formidable enemy.
It was my intention, as I said, after I first became a believer, not to do anything that would displease Jesus. However, something that one of my mentors said to me shortly after I had accepted Jesus, became my first "loop-hole" when temptation came my way. She said, in effect, "don't be too hard on yourself if you find that you slip into sin from time to time." She then went on to relate a story of something that happened to her not long after she first became a Christian. It seems that she was visiting with an old girl-friend and before she even realized what she was doing, they were sharing a marijuana cigarette with each other. She said those things may happen from time to time, and that since Jesus had died for all our sins, past, present and future, there was no need to worry that I had lost my salvation because of sins like that. I'm sure she didn't mean to, but she had just given me permission to sin, and not to be too concerned about the consequences because Jesus understands our weakness, and He will save us in spite of them.
After I had sufficiently recovered from my bicycle accident, one of the people who lived with my friends George and Jerry gave me a ride home. I knew that he was not a believer and that he liked to smoke marijuana. I decided that I would give him an almost unused ounce of Columbian pot that I had purchased just before my accident (the first and only illicit drug I had ever actually purchased in my entire life), since, now that I was a Christian, I wouldn't be needing it anymore. He seemed grateful, and asked me if I wanted to share a joint with him before he left. Remembering what my mentor had said, I thought, well, it won't hurt anything just one last time. I reasoned that Jesus would understand, because, after all, I was getting rid of it, wasn't I? What I didn't consider is that I had just missed a golden opportunity to be a good witness by politely declining his offer (let alone not destroying it rather than giving it to him to begin with!).
I spent the next two years learning at the feet of the same teacher my friends, George and Jerry, had been listening to, and who had helped bring them back into the church they had abandoned in their youth. He was a brilliant man with a very persuasive and charismatic approach to the gospel. I could see that my friends had a lot of respect for him, so I paid close attention to every word he had to say. In essence, his message was that there was nothing I could do to contribute in any way at all to my salvation, except to believe that Jesus is my Savior. In fact, as I understood it, he said that anything that I might try to do, in terms of my own effort, would be working at cross-purposes with Jesus. I was taught that if I would just put my trust in Jesus, He would transform my character and give me victory where I needed it most, but that the concept of total victory over sin in this life was unbiblical. He often repeated the idea that even mature Christians will continue to sin until Jesus comes.
The effect of this teaching in my own personal life was that I had very little, if any, victory over sin. As much as I desperately wanted Jesus to reproduce His character in me, the more I endeavored not to put forth my own effort to overcome sin, the more enslaved to sin I became. Because I knew I couldn't blame Jesus for my failures, I could only come to the conclusion, based on my best understanding at that point, that I must, in spite of myself, be trying to overcome by my own efforts. So I would try even more diligently not to put forth my own effort, and resolve more fully to trust Jesus to transform my character and give me the victory I so much desired.
In the meantime, in February or March of 1978, I met Laurie. My sister, Sandra, was living with me at the time. She had befriended Laurie at a time when she was being evicted from a house that she had just moved into because her roommate had failed to pay the rent for several months. Since Laurie didn't know what she was going to do, I suggested that she could stay with us until she found some place else to go. Sandra had already thought of that possibility, but she knew that I preferred living alone and didn't even want her to be there any longer than necessary, let alone taking in another person, but Laurie seemed like she needed help, and I found myself attracted to her, so I invited her to stay with us and she agreed to move in (temporarily).
We hit it off pretty well right from the start and we began to develop a more serious interest in each other. I remember thinking she seemed so pretty, energetic, fun and wholesome. She was just what I was looking for in a potential life partner. We got along so well, that Sandra began to get jealous of the time Laurie was spending with me. So, I think it was in May, Sandra decided to go to southern California to visit with some of her friends down there for a while. While she was gone, Laurie and I became engaged to be married.
The day I asked her to marry me, I told her not to answer right away, but to wait at least a day and think about it. The next day at work (I was still working with mentally disturbed teen-agers at Napa State Hospital), one of my patients became angry about something at dinner and proceeded to turn tables and chairs over in the dining room. In an effort to bring him under control, I began to chase after him, and as he ran out of the dining room he slammed the big metal hospital door behind him, which, of course, I ran into and my glasses were slammed into my face which tore a four inch gash in my forehead above my left eye. After receiving fourteen stitches and the appropriate sterile dressing, I was sent home. I looked like something akin to Frankenstein's monster with a bandage wrapped around my head. With Laurie's innate compassion and nursing tendencies (she has always wanted to be a nurse), she never had a chance. She accepted my proposal that evening, and three months later, on August 26th, 1978 we were married.
About two months before we got married, I attended my first Bill Gothard seminar which at that time was called The Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts. Laurie had already been to one before, maybe two or three years earlier, so she already knew pretty much what it was all about. These meetings impacted my life profoundly. It was at these meetings that I learned the importance of asking forgiveness from those I had wronged at some point in my life. It was also the place where I first came in contact with the idea that there might be something wrong with "Christian rock" music (let alone rock music in general). Another thing I learned at these meetings was just how important it was to have the approval of both sets of parents before a couple gets married. (Since then I have also learned the importance of parental approval even before courtship.) I also learned some important principles about courtship and engagement that Laurie and I had not followed.
At some point during these meetings I made the suggestion to Laurie that maybe we ought to postpone our wedding until we were sure we had gotten to know each other well enough to be confident we were doing the right thing. That made Laurie cry, so I put the idea out of my mind. In retrospect, I think it would have been a good thing for us to do. It might have helped us to avoid a lot of unnecessary conflict in later years that was based on assumptions we'd made about each other because we really didn't know each other very well. We have been married now for twenty years, and most of the time we have been happy with each other. But I think if we had followed God's principles more carefully, much pain could have been avoided.
One of the conflicts we had fairly early in our marriage was based on the fact that Laurie's family had very different views concerning faith than I did. They were convinced that unless I had the same experience they did, I could not be considered a full-fledged Christian. Add to this my desire to remember the seventh-day sabbath as enjoined in the fourth commandment of the decalogue, and you have the ingredients for real conflict in a family. This caused such strain in our marriage that Laurie and I were almost alienated from each other because of it. Thankfully, by God's grace, we were eventually able to resolve this conflict, but it's something that would better have been dealt with before we were married.
Although I wasn't a very good sabbath-keeper, it was one of the things that made so much sense when Jerry explained to me why they went to church on Saturday. I told Laurie before we were married that I wanted to keep the Sabbath, and she didn't seem to have a problem with it. But once we were married, and I became more and more serious about it's observance, it began to become a real point of contention. Through the years we have both learned what a blessing the Sabbath can be, but even today we don't always agree one hundred per cent on everything concerning our faith. Not that any two people ever entirely agree on everything, but it really is important to come to terms with your differences before you are married as far as possible in order not to place inordinate strain on future family relations.
About eleven months after Laurie and I were married we had a baby boy whom we named Michael John. About seventeen months later our daughter Jessica was born. Michael was a "normal," healthy and happy baby whose only potential handicap was that he was so "cute." Jessica, on the other hand, because of some difficulties Laurie had during her second pregnancy due to her recurring problems with heart palpitations and the prescription medication she was on to control it, was born with cerebral palsy. Interestingly enough, however, at the time she was born, I was working at Sonoma State hospital with the developmentally disabled, and therefore was not entirely unfamiliar with the challenges that faced us. I have been amazed as I have looked back on my life to see how God has orchestrated circumstances, even when I have been out of harmony with His will, in such a way as to make abundantly clear to me how much He loves and cares for me.
The next crisis in my life occurred when after having worked in the state hospital system for five years, I determined that I could no longer do so and remain sane. Whether working with the mentally ill or the developmentally disabled, I could never escape the fact that the "system," as it was set up, was not designed with the best interest of the patients/clients in mind. At best, these institutions provide a venue to house, feed and clothe members of our society who are not welcome in the "normal" world. As such, they serve a useful purpose, I suppose, but not a particularly therapeutic one. From my perspective, if anyone ever got "better" or "rehabilitated," it was usually in spite of the "system," not because of it.
The only thing for me to do at this point was to move on to some other occupation. However, having no training in any other field, and with the economy not doing so well at the time (1982), I wasn't sure what I was going to do next. It was at this point that my mother invited us to come to Texas to stay with her until I could find or be trained for another job. After talking about it, Laurie and I decided that under the circumstances that seemed like the best plan. So we sold almost everything we owned and packed the rest in a four by six U-haul trailer and our 1965 Ford pickup and moved to Garland, Texas.