My story with God, Part Four
My wife Zeny, didn’t want the church. All she wanted was me, and I was perfectly fine with that. The day we married was my last day for seeing my Christian friends and church pseudo-family. Now that I was secure in my new wife’s love, I could bravely put behind me an extremely heavy burden laid on me by God.
That next Sabbath would be the first Sabbath I had ever worked on a job. We were cleaning off a foundation in preparation to frame a house. I was feeling very uneasy and guilty about working on the Sabbath, but I reassured myself that this was the beginning of a happy new life without God and without the church. I just happened to be cleaning the foundation right next to the street, while the rest of the carpenter crew was further away from the street along the far side of the foundation.
A pickup truck pulled up right in front of me and the driver lowered his window. He yelled out for everyone to hear, and I really heard it since I was directly in front of him. He hollered, “Hey everybody, guess where I should be this morning?!” “In church!” Nobody cared about what he had said, but I was waiting for lightning to strike me dead! I felt a little dizzy and hot. I thought, “God is following me!” I was afraid to look up to the sky for fear that somehow He would let me know He was looking back. So I said to myself, “Act non-challant. Don’t worry. This will pass. Nobody will notice.” And it did. Jesus never warned me like that again. He used another method to get my attention.
Living with Zeny, I could forget about God and His following me. And life was excellent—at least for a few years. Then Zeny convinced me to join the Navy since being a carpenter didn’t pay much 4 to 5 months of the year during the late winter and spring. So I went into the Navy. Immediately I realized that separation from my beloved family was going to be a big part of military life. My son was one year old when I joined, and he didn’t understand why I immediately left for 6 months, came home for 2 weeks at Christmas and then left again for 3 more months. That was very hard on me.
I began to see that joining the Navy meant long, hard hours of work away at sea, little pay, and worst of all, I lived with people who hated me, and spent very little time with the only people I really loved. I didn’t get to see my daughter born because I was at sea. She was 3 months old when I saw her for the first time. For the next 8 years this torture went on. I kept re-enlisting for Zeny’s sake, but I hated to do so because of the children’s sake.
One long patrol at sea, I decided to stop studying the Navy material and read a novel. I went to the small ship’s library and picked out a little book, one of a thousand other similar short novels. “Voyage to the 1st of December”, was it’s title. Why I picked a book about going to sea is still beyond me when I was so sick of going to sea and being separated from my family!
I found the book to be very engaging. It was based on a true account from a ship’s doctor. In the middle of the story the ship pulled into Philadelphia and the doctor got off the ship to go to a pub. An stranger talked him into going to another part of town. They ran in the pitch black, trompsing through the muddy streets of old Philadelphia, dodging muggers, and ended up in an establishment run by Millerites. The year was 1842 and the workers there were waiting for Jesus to return in glory and take them to heaven. They had signs hanging on the walls and they played hymns on the piano concerning Christ’s soon coming, and even witnessed for Him to the waiting customers.
The book really took me by surprise. I had known about the Millerite movement that gave birth to Adventism. I was well versed in the story of William Miller and I was probably the only person onboard the submarine who had ever heard of the Baptist preacher so familiar to SDAs. It reminded me of better days in my past, as well as confirming in me that the Millerite movement had really taken place. I was seeing it from a completely different source than Ellen G. White. The expectation for Jesus to return wasn’t just an Adventist fable. It had really happened, as the doctor logged a snapshot of it in his diary. I would never have been reminded of it if someone had handed it to me through Adventist literature, because I would have politely turned it down. So God used an outside, very unsuspecting source.
That day I fought it, but was forced to ponder, that God could prove Himself to me while I was so long gone from His church, and being a sailor in a submarine hidden out in a great big ocean, under a lot of water between me and the sky. I was realizing how true it is that you can’t hide from God. He always knows where you live.
But my marriage was failing. Zeny didn’t love me anymore. When I finally got some shore duty and would finally be home every night, she refused to move to the new location. Now, when I could work at a shore command and be with the family I loved, I still would have to move away completely from them and spend the next 3 years on shore, but alone, except for weekend visits each month. Meanwhile my children would continue to grow up without their father, and I would remain away from my little children, ages 10 and 7, who I loved so much—an overwhelming ordeal.
I made the move from my family 12 hours by car. At first I lived with another fellow who had his ex-wife’s female cousin visit him all night, every night. After five months of that, I had to leave there. I lived in the back of my pickup truck for a month during the cold Connecticut winter, because we didn’t have enough money for me to rent an apartment. Then I found someone who would let me live in his house if I helped him do carpentry.
One morning as I drove to work, out of nowhere a word popped into my thoughts, like ticker tape running past, letter by letter. That word was “Redemption.” I hadn’t remembered that word for 13 years, but as I thought on it, it seemed wholesome and welcoming. It again ran past my mind’s eye a second time. The Holy Spirit was working.
Eventually, the fellow who shared his house with me met a woman, and he moved in with her. Now I was alone in a house that was falling apart, with no one to talk to except during the day at work with other sailors. Finally, the Lord had me where He wanted me. One more move and He would checkmate me. So not long afterwards, one cold night my car flipped over because of black ice on the road. For 3 days I didn’t even have a car to get out and drive around to forget my family problems.
I had no one, no love, no close friends. But what I had was a problem that really began to eat at me. Finally, at the end of my rope, I was forced to go to God for help. I knelt and prayed directly and forcefully. I prayed like I had never prayed before. In desperation, I talked straight to Jesus. This wasn’t like the prayer in the church closet; this was a heart pouring out for Jesus to take me back, and change me. And He heard me. A sensation came over me from my head to the floor. Like a snap, my problem immediately disappeared and a hunger for my early life with God took its place. I knew Jesus accepted me again. He took me back! Now I thought to myself, “I want to read the Bible, so badly! Oh, if I only had a Bible!” Just then a voice broke into my mind, “It’s right behind you.” I turned around and there, directly behind me on a bookcase, was my old Bible from long forgotten days. I had always taken it with me wherever I moved, maybe one day to open it again, which never happened.
I opened that Book and found it all to be so good and refreshing, and so wholesome and welcoming. Decades later, as I looked back on that event, and it’s sensation over my head and body, I remembered a verse from Psalm 133 that I have read many times—the anointing of Aaron—but hadn’t connected it to my experiences:
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descend upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.”
That next Sabbath would be the first Sabbath I had ever worked on a job. We were cleaning off a foundation in preparation to frame a house. I was feeling very uneasy and guilty about working on the Sabbath, but I reassured myself that this was the beginning of a happy new life without God and without the church. I just happened to be cleaning the foundation right next to the street, while the rest of the carpenter crew was further away from the street along the far side of the foundation.
A pickup truck pulled up right in front of me and the driver lowered his window. He yelled out for everyone to hear, and I really heard it since I was directly in front of him. He hollered, “Hey everybody, guess where I should be this morning?!” “In church!” Nobody cared about what he had said, but I was waiting for lightning to strike me dead! I felt a little dizzy and hot. I thought, “God is following me!” I was afraid to look up to the sky for fear that somehow He would let me know He was looking back. So I said to myself, “Act non-challant. Don’t worry. This will pass. Nobody will notice.” And it did. Jesus never warned me like that again. He used another method to get my attention.
Living with Zeny, I could forget about God and His following me. And life was excellent—at least for a few years. Then Zeny convinced me to join the Navy since being a carpenter didn’t pay much 4 to 5 months of the year during the late winter and spring. So I went into the Navy. Immediately I realized that separation from my beloved family was going to be a big part of military life. My son was one year old when I joined, and he didn’t understand why I immediately left for 6 months, came home for 2 weeks at Christmas and then left again for 3 more months. That was very hard on me.
I began to see that joining the Navy meant long, hard hours of work away at sea, little pay, and worst of all, I lived with people who hated me, and spent very little time with the only people I really loved. I didn’t get to see my daughter born because I was at sea. She was 3 months old when I saw her for the first time. For the next 8 years this torture went on. I kept re-enlisting for Zeny’s sake, but I hated to do so because of the children’s sake.
One long patrol at sea, I decided to stop studying the Navy material and read a novel. I went to the small ship’s library and picked out a little book, one of a thousand other similar short novels. “Voyage to the 1st of December”, was it’s title. Why I picked a book about going to sea is still beyond me when I was so sick of going to sea and being separated from my family!
I found the book to be very engaging. It was based on a true account from a ship’s doctor. In the middle of the story the ship pulled into Philadelphia and the doctor got off the ship to go to a pub. An stranger talked him into going to another part of town. They ran in the pitch black, trompsing through the muddy streets of old Philadelphia, dodging muggers, and ended up in an establishment run by Millerites. The year was 1842 and the workers there were waiting for Jesus to return in glory and take them to heaven. They had signs hanging on the walls and they played hymns on the piano concerning Christ’s soon coming, and even witnessed for Him to the waiting customers.
The book really took me by surprise. I had known about the Millerite movement that gave birth to Adventism. I was well versed in the story of William Miller and I was probably the only person onboard the submarine who had ever heard of the Baptist preacher so familiar to SDAs. It reminded me of better days in my past, as well as confirming in me that the Millerite movement had really taken place. I was seeing it from a completely different source than Ellen G. White. The expectation for Jesus to return wasn’t just an Adventist fable. It had really happened, as the doctor logged a snapshot of it in his diary. I would never have been reminded of it if someone had handed it to me through Adventist literature, because I would have politely turned it down. So God used an outside, very unsuspecting source.
That day I fought it, but was forced to ponder, that God could prove Himself to me while I was so long gone from His church, and being a sailor in a submarine hidden out in a great big ocean, under a lot of water between me and the sky. I was realizing how true it is that you can’t hide from God. He always knows where you live.
But my marriage was failing. Zeny didn’t love me anymore. When I finally got some shore duty and would finally be home every night, she refused to move to the new location. Now, when I could work at a shore command and be with the family I loved, I still would have to move away completely from them and spend the next 3 years on shore, but alone, except for weekend visits each month. Meanwhile my children would continue to grow up without their father, and I would remain away from my little children, ages 10 and 7, who I loved so much—an overwhelming ordeal.
I made the move from my family 12 hours by car. At first I lived with another fellow who had his ex-wife’s female cousin visit him all night, every night. After five months of that, I had to leave there. I lived in the back of my pickup truck for a month during the cold Connecticut winter, because we didn’t have enough money for me to rent an apartment. Then I found someone who would let me live in his house if I helped him do carpentry.
One morning as I drove to work, out of nowhere a word popped into my thoughts, like ticker tape running past, letter by letter. That word was “Redemption.” I hadn’t remembered that word for 13 years, but as I thought on it, it seemed wholesome and welcoming. It again ran past my mind’s eye a second time. The Holy Spirit was working.
Eventually, the fellow who shared his house with me met a woman, and he moved in with her. Now I was alone in a house that was falling apart, with no one to talk to except during the day at work with other sailors. Finally, the Lord had me where He wanted me. One more move and He would checkmate me. So not long afterwards, one cold night my car flipped over because of black ice on the road. For 3 days I didn’t even have a car to get out and drive around to forget my family problems.
I had no one, no love, no close friends. But what I had was a problem that really began to eat at me. Finally, at the end of my rope, I was forced to go to God for help. I knelt and prayed directly and forcefully. I prayed like I had never prayed before. In desperation, I talked straight to Jesus. This wasn’t like the prayer in the church closet; this was a heart pouring out for Jesus to take me back, and change me. And He heard me. A sensation came over me from my head to the floor. Like a snap, my problem immediately disappeared and a hunger for my early life with God took its place. I knew Jesus accepted me again. He took me back! Now I thought to myself, “I want to read the Bible, so badly! Oh, if I only had a Bible!” Just then a voice broke into my mind, “It’s right behind you.” I turned around and there, directly behind me on a bookcase, was my old Bible from long forgotten days. I had always taken it with me wherever I moved, maybe one day to open it again, which never happened.
I opened that Book and found it all to be so good and refreshing, and so wholesome and welcoming. Decades later, as I looked back on that event, and it’s sensation over my head and body, I remembered a verse from Psalm 133 that I have read many times—the anointing of Aaron—but hadn’t connected it to my experiences:
“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments; as the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descend upon the mountains of Zion: for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.”
posted by David | 5:57 AM
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