My story with God, Pt. 6

Not long afterwards, Mark shipped out to Hawaii and I was on my own. A new sailor joined our team in the office. He had talked his wife into letting him build a pre-fabricated home. You just buy the package and put it together! Easy! Anybody can do it! But he got as far as the basement and started getting really nervous about the project. He asked around the office and found out that I had been a framing carpenter. Would I help him just as a favor? It had been many years since doing any real carpentry, and my hammer and nail pouch yearned to build another house. Yes, of course I would help!

So we spent many afternoons and weekends through the fall and winter putting that house together. He loved it because he finally got to learn and do what he had wanted so badly; and I loved it because I got to reuse my old skills and to be of help. I had a friend in him and his wife.

One day in the middle of the house-building project, as I was driving to my Navy job after eating breakfast, a word popped into my thoughts. It came out of nowhere, a word from the past that I hadn’t entertained for what seemed centuries. Redemption streamed across my mind, each letter being distinguishable as they passed for my review. I heard/saw the word twice, like it echoed back from the depths of my brain. A feeling of wholesomeness seemed attached to it. With that thoughtform came the warmest, welcoming sensation.

Finally, we were finishing up the interior of the house one Sunday and it snowed. The air wasn’t real cold, so the snow only accumulated on the grass. I left the house after dark, and my friend was going to lock up and leave after me. I had never before experienced “black ice,” although I had heard of it. It is caused by the road freezing after some light precipitation. Black ice isn’t shiny, yet just as treacherous as sheet ice. The air was moderately cold and the road just looked wet with snowmelt. The narrow two-lane road from his house was full of simultaneous turns and elevation deviations. As I came off of a slight hill the road turned to the right. My tires lost traction and on-coming headlights were heading toward me at that moment. Somehow I kept the car away from a collision, but in the process I over-compensated and went up on to the bank which was on my edge of the road. At that point, the car somehow rolled over—what seemed like in slow motion—and me and my car landed upside down.

There I hung, suspended by my seatbelt. I got out, shaken and confused. My friend drove up from behind me totally surprised at the sight of my up-side-down station wagon. We picked up my tools from the road and put them back in the car. By then, an emergency medical vehicle had come, and against his protests, the paramedic helped us roll the car back over onto its wheels.

I wasn’t hurt and my little station wagon was fine except for the missing roof rack and the big hole in the windshield from the corner roof support being bent it and shattering that part of the glass.

Up until that day, I was often depressed about being separated from Joe and Betania. My children were the only people I had a bond with on this planet, but I never got to live with them on a long-term basis. Now that I had the chance to be with them all the time on a shore duty, they were living far away and under the influence of a person who didn’t love me and who was voicing her destructive comments about me to them. I felt I was becoming the loneliest person alive. I was convinced that my kids would grow up and not know their father. If I fought it Zeny might divorce me, and I still would lose my children. That would ensure her work to destroy me and my relationship with my kids. I was stuck in a hard life for the rest of my life. I didn’t like working in the Navy, so I had nowhere to experience any real joy.

Relics from my past Christian experience with Richard kept causing me to hate what the world loved and to long for what everyone despised. I missed the love and grace I had immersed myself in as a youth. I had tasted and seen that the Lord is good; so I had a severe distaste for the substitutes for grace and love—the alcohol, the assertion of self into every sentence, the exaltation of prestige and wealth and self-made achievement used by everyone who were ignorant of the things I had experienced. After many years of watching TV during my married life, I was now growing tired of it. The television broadcasted every principle I had come to hate.

In the old Connecticut house where I lived in its unheated attic for free rent, we had only one channel with reception. And during the evenings, the only show that displayed clearly was Seinfeld. As I watched, it dawned on me that I detested that show because its comedy came through the undermining and making a fool of someone else. The hero was the one best at one-upmanship. One-upmanship had been done to me all during my Navy days and it disgusted me. I could not do it well, so I didn’t do it at all. But I also realized how petty and childish it was, and turned off the Seinfeld show and then the television altogether.

But when I was depressed over missing my children or being ticked off about Seinfeld or just bored, I still had my faithful car to help me forget my woes. I could drive to the Coast Guard Academy to eat a nice meal real cheap, or drive to Rhode Island, or wherever. Now, after I had rolled my car, I had no wheels of my own. I was dependent on my friend to get me to work until my car could be fixed.

My finances were in a shambles. My marriage was on the rocks. The Navy didn’t satisfy. I had nothing to be happy about, nowhere to turn for relief. All I had left was the God who had now and again reminded me He was following me. I had proven to myself that I was a total failure. That’s where God met me—when I had no one else, not even myself. I was completely hopeless and without any real human support. My world, all my brightest hopes, had finally come crashing down; and it all drove me to my knees. The destitution of being left alone without a single confidant overwhelmed me. I knelt and pleaded for my old God’s help, like I had never prayed in my whole life. It was a prayer of utter need and deep hearted sorrow. I was Peter in the garden of Gethsemane begging the Lord to take away my pride and to change me. Immediately, He took away a personal problem I had developed. It was gone. I was clean, and God had done it. Maybe it was a selfish prayer, but because it was relationship oriented, the Holy Spirit honored it. He was still there for me, after my long 13 year sabbatical from Him.

My next thought was, A Bible. Oh, if I only had one! Just then, an answer shot back in my head, It’s right behind you. And sure enough, I turned around, and my old Bible, which I always seemed to pack with my other stuff but immediately forget about, was sitting on the bookshelf directly behind me. I hadn’t opened it for 13 years. My father had owned it and given it to me when I was 16 years old. I had marked it up after he had, underlined a lot of it, weathered its pages with my wetted finger. It had been falling apart long before I left God, but my Dad had bought me a zipped cover to keep it together. Now that zipper had dry-rotted, but when I got it unzipped and opened those pages, what hunger I found I had for it all. How tasty those old promises and admonitions were now! I read all those old familiar words and read and read. It was like I had never left them! Now it made so much sense! My friend, the Bible, was wiser than it had ever been!

I still held dark feelings toward the church. I wanted to keep the Sabbath holy and I studied my new old Bible, but I stayed away from the local SDA church. Then, two weeks later I couldn’t stay away any longer. I missed the fellowship of brothers and sisters and went to the church early Sabbath morning. We had a nice Sabbath School, and worship service. Two married couples my age told me they were trying to have a Bible study in the afternoons each Sabbath and invited me to join them. I hadn’t done that for ages and found Bible study in a group as enjoyable as it had always been.

I broke the news to my parents, who were overjoyed. They told me they had begun praying for me and my siblings. I was an answer to their prayers. Thank God for a parent’s prayer. If they don’t pray for their kids, who will?

Soon after that, we had another sailor join our office. Chris was a ship’s diver on a sub down on the river. One morning onboard his boat, he found he couldn’t breathe. They took him off in a stretcher. He was athletic and in perfect physical shape, but somehow (don’t underestimate providence), he developed a hole in one of his lungs. It acted as a check valve, closing when he inhaled, but opening when he exhaled, thus sending some air into the cavity between his lungs and his ribcage. The cavity finally filled up with air and wouldn’t allow his lungs to expand anymore and he was unable to inhale. So, after medical treatment, he came temporarily to Submarine School and the school billeted him to our office. Since I was working on calibrating recorders, my chiefs put him with me.

We got to know each other quickly and became good friends. We had many values the same, which were different from the typical sailor. So I told Chris I was a Christian. He said he also was the spiritual type, but didn’t say he was a Christian. He told me he was Catholic. So we talked as we worked and I shared what I knew about Jesus and the Bible. We grew closer and closer. He wanted the faith I had. I had recently bought a new Bible, a little one that I could carry around in my pocket without scaring people. It was like the one us students received from SVA when we graduated. It was a pocket Bible, but had both Old and New testaments.

Chris saw me read to him from it many times and even looked at it himself. He confided that the past Christmas he had asked his mother not to give him any more “stuff.” He told her that all he wanted was a Bible. But Christmas came and once again he got more “stuff” and no Bible. So the next time I visited my wife and kids in Norfolk, I bought the same pocket Bible for Chris. When I gave it to him he received it with such awe that I wanted to cry. He promised me he was going to read that Book from cover to cover. Soon afterwards, he was sent back to another submarine and we lost track of each other. But I will see him in heaven one day. Not long after that, Zeny decided to move up to Connecticut. So, our family finally lived together for the last half of my stay at that Connecticut duty station.