If You Love Me, Please Read This

“You might even think I am speaking like an expert in the matter of troubled, abused, and dysfunctional young men. I am an expert. I was such a troubled young man. Allow me to prove my point. I was born into a dysfunctional home. My mother lost the first baby she carried and blamed my father, who beat her regularly. They separated and divorced early in my life because she became a prostitute and wandered the country. I was given to my father to raise. He wasn’t up to the task. When my uncle, my father’s eldest brother, came to pick me up “for a few days”, he found a two-year-old eating a breakfast of moldy corn flakes and sour milk—alone in the apartment. I am told I was left unsupervised quite a bit of the time. My uncle meant well, but he didn’t confer with his wife on the matter. She was not thrilled to have another child in the house, already caring for five of her own. I stayed in that home for 15-1/2 years. Those years were filled with psychological, as well as physical abuse. My aunt once tried to drown me as I was taking a bath. To this day, I don’t know what stopped her. I was about eight years old at the time. I can remember holding my breath, just looking into her eyes. She must have held me under for about 20 seconds. She suddenly let go and walked away. That was the day I began to believe in guardian angels. She and I never discussed the incident—but I pondered it often. I have been viciously attacked with kitchen implements. I have been publicly humiliated. She purposely underfed me as a teenager. I wasn’t allowed to sit with the family for meals. I had to eat in the kitchen, standing at the counter. All the while, I mowed the grass, pulled the weeds, took out the trash, and shoveled the snow without being told. I would mow lawns in the summer, but I wasn’t allowed to keep any of the money I earned. I shoveled driveways in the early mornings before school, put the money I had earned in her hand, and never saw it again. They were not a poor family—my uncle was a corporate president. I was a good student and was involved in the school choir, the speech and debate team, and did some acting. I never missed school, because the worst day at school was better than any given day at home. My aunt’s anger lasted until I went to college. My downward slide began in college. I had earned a full scholarship to study at Indiana University, Bloomington, IN and thought I’d like to study pre-medicine. But I had been so abused and stifled as a teen that I didn’t know how to handle my instant freedom. My grades plummeted and I flunked out. That dream was gone. I struggled to live on my own and I worked some factory jobs to support myself, but I knew I was capable of more. One day one of the cousins with whom I was raised uttered the magic words, “You are going to be just like your father”. Those few words carried a depth of meaning for me—none of it positive, none of it good, and none of it well intentioned. When my father was born, the attending physician accidentally pulled off his right arm at the shoulder. My grandmother catered to his every whim and babied him all his life, until her death. My father was no fool. He could play baseball with just the one arm. He played the trombone in school. He rode a specially designed ten-speed bike. But all he could aspire to was to become a cab driver and later a dispatcher for that cab company. He was offered college training, but turned it down. His brother gave him a job in his accounting agency, but he wouldn’t come to work. He was a slacker before the term was invented. Those magic words, spoken by my cousin, galvanized me into action. My mantra became, “I’ll show them!” I applied to a little college in Mishawaka, Indiana (Bethel College) and entered in the winter term of 1971, on probation, with a 0.89 grade point average (GPA). That’s not even a D average! I graduated in 1975 with a 3.60 GPA (out of a possible 4.00) and earned the status of Magna Cum Laude (that’s Latin for “With Great Honor”). I was the editor of the college newspaper for three years and student body president my senior year. I was known as the “Campus Radical”. I then went off to West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV and earned a Master of Arts degree in 13 months, complete with research thesis (3.81 GPA). After that it was off to Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN for a year of study on the Ph. D. level (5.11 GPA out of a possible 6.00). I have had several good business opportunities and have won awards for my business endeavors. Later in my life I entered the ministry and earned another graduate degree, the Master of Divinity (3.785 GPA) from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, on the campus of Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. I am the only one in my biological family (3 half-sisters, 3 half-brothers) who has any college training. I am the only one in the family with whom I was raised who has an advanced graduate degree. I did show them. I could have quite literally “gone to hell” as a result of my childhood experiences. But something got to my soul. My cousin did not mean me well when she uttered those words, but I turned them to good. I used them as a springboard to change my lot in life. And don’t give me that old song about “Well, you’re smart and gifted”. My IQ is just above average, but I know the great secret. You see, I have the “make up gene”. I can make up for any deficiency with hard work, perseverance, and determination. I was willing to work awful, horrid jobs through the night so I could go to classes in the day. Some of my classmates would ask me to sit away from them, because I smelled so badly after working all night around fetid and stinking industrial processing water. But that didn’t bother me. I was happy for the chance even to be attending college classes. I wore old jeans and blue work shirts all through college, but that was okay. I didn’t care that the others dressed better. I was rescuing my life. I once worked in a brass foundry where it was so hot my jeans would occasionally catch on fire at the bottom of my pant legs. The fumes were so bad from the processing of scrap metals, there was always a thick haze at the furnace, and the smell of chlorine from the burning of old, insulated copper wire left the air rank. But my morning class was World Civilization and I read my textbook every chance I got by the glow of that 50,000 pound blast furnace. I was paid $3.10 an hour and was grateful for the opportunity. So, if any person has the right to write this book, it is I. I’ve seen it, I’ve experienced it, and I’ve overcome it. And you will too, if you just give it half a chance.”