My testimony.

I have been an official follower of Christ for about 11 years but in God's eyes, I have been one for 45 years. I have an amazing wife, who always seems to get me into situations where I am doing something way out of my comfort zone…like speaking at church and giving me the confidence to start a blog where I write, among other things, my Faith, I also have 5 kids...more on them another time 😄.

Today I wanted to tell you about my journey to get here and writing this blog, I already explained my wife is to blame for that, but how I managed to stay alive as a young person to be able to even share my story with you. I was hoping that the alive line would get you thirsty for this story so hopefully I got some of you…I am no preacher and I am better off the cuff and in person but let's give this a shot. 

I was born in Tennessee, Livingston Tennessee to be more specific, but my family didn’t stay in the south long. My Dad and Mom were both originally from Michigan so when my dad heard about the automotive boom happening up there we packed up and moved to Detroit when I was 3 years old. Now I wish this part of the story was things like ‘my father was loving and we played baseball together all the time or my mother was always there for me whenever I had a problem’…but that would be lies and one of the things I learned while Googling how to write a testimony blog is lying is bad. 

So my father was an alcoholic and usually would only hold on to a job for 3-6 months at a time and then go on a bender for the same amount of time. My Mom tried to keep things together but my life was constant chaos, it was hard for her to shield myself and my 3 sisters from the craziness living with an alcoholic brings. We lived on Detroit’s Eastside in a 900 square foot house, yep 900 square feet for a family of 6…there were no secrets in that house. The house is a whole other story but just know that it was condemned after we finally moved out and we heard the landlord was arrested for being a slum lord. The house was the least of the issues as a child, with my father only working when he was sober that left a heavy burden on my mom to provide so she worked and my sisters and I tried our best to make it…there were a lot of nights waking up to a drunk father stumbling around the house and getting violent as we heard my mother try to keep him quiet but again 900 square feet. Now, this is the part I explain how we started to go to church on Sundays and my Dad found Jesus and so did I and all was well, nope. 

We did go to church sometimes, usually when dad was sober and he felt guilty but that never lasted long so I never got a true connection to the church. Except for one memory that at the time meant nothing about the church to me but looking back, it very much did. One of my favorite memories as a child was one Christmas we received a box from Focus Hope. Focus Hope is an organization that does a ton of work in Detroit from food banks (that we often visited) to job training and so much more, it was started right after the race riots in the late sixties by Father William Cunningham. 

As a child, I didn’t realize what Focus Hope was but that Christmas my sisters and I received that box, I was so happy. It had a shirt, pants, and a toy. It was not much but I remember being so excited that a stranger cared enough about me to give me this box, they didn’t add a bible or devotional in the box just the essentials. They didn’t scream they were Christians and doing God's work, they just did it and it planted a seed in me that I didn’t know was there until way later in life.

I was on the street at 15, when I say on the street I mean on the street. My mother had enough of me and kicked me out of the house, my father was already gone by this time and I was not a great kid, to say the least. I slept in parks and under overpasses but some nights my friends would sneak me into their basements when their parents went to sleep. I sold drugs, stole stuff and cars to make a little money, usually enough to buy booze and food. By the age of 16, I had my first kid so needless to say with that and everything else I grew up fast. One day I will fill in the blanks with stories from my life on the streets but to make sure I address the being alive line I mentioned a little while ago I will share one story- 

I seemed to have beef with a guy named Jimmy since second grade and it escalated over the years to include his friends and mine. So when I was 15 we were driving in my friend Matt’s 1979 Chevy van when we happened upon these guys driving around Detroit. There were 4 of us in the van and we jumped out and my friend James threw a baseball bat through their back windshield of the car. 

I remember they threw the bat back out of the window and I always thought that was odd but anyway, that began a car chase through Detroit side streets and we were chasing them all over until we came down one street and they pulled into a driveway and then a car pulled out in front of us and another pulled out behind us and blocked us in the middle of the street. Now at this point, you would think we would realize “this may be a set up” but we were not the brightest at this time so we all jumped out ready to fight. I was first and the rest followed me…well we got out and the front door opened and guys started to pile out of this house and after a few seconds, we finally realized we were in trouble. By the time I turned around all my friends were piling back into the van, I was on the back floor with my head down while Jake, who was my best friend at the time, and I was holding each other trying to protect each other from the bricks flying through the windows. I got a brick to my lower back and Jake took one in the back of the head, we also were hearing the sound over the commotion of POP, POP, POP. We recognized the sound quickly as gunshots so we looked up to see why Matt wasn’t driving yet… Matt never got back in the van. He took off running and he had the keys, we were sitting ducks…we were able to get out and run a few houses down where an off-duty police office lived and had come outside with his gun and the police showed up a little later. Maybe one day I will write about this story in more detail but this was the cliff notes version.

 A few weeks later when Matt got the van back from the police impound we looked at the van and the back doors were filled with bullet holes and the windows were broke out when we opened the van doors you could hear the bullet slugs rolling around in the doors.

Luckily for us, this was a 1979 Chevy van, the 22 caliber guns they were shooting could only make it past the outer sheet metal and no farther…on the other side of that door was where myself and Jake were holding each other trying to protect each other from the bullets and bricks. 

**Not the actual van but pretty close

This should be the part where I explain I knew the Lord was watching over me and I professed my devotion to Jesus but…nope, not even after that did I think of the Lord. I don't have any moment I can pinpoint in my life when I knew I was saved and that I was born again. I still have a lot of that thug in me that ran the streets of Detroit as a kid, ask my wife about my road rage, but I also have something else… I have the realization I wasn’t lucky when things like the van happened, it wasn’t just Jake trying to protect me that night.

Psalms 46:1 says

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.- Psalms 46:1

No, it wasn’t luck that kept me safe all those nights sleeping on the street, it wasn’t luck when I had guns pointed at my face or put in my gut and walked away in one piece, it wasn’t luck when I went down the wrong aisle at a Ford plant I was working at a over decade ago and met the love of my life, who just so happened to open my eyes and heart to Jesus. No it wasn’t luck, it was the Lord, He kept me safe from an alcoholic father, from my bad choices of selling drugs and stealing from people, he kept me safe when I was in crack houses buying drugs to sell, but why would God care about someone who didn’t care about themselves, and why would God protect me, when I was sinning day and night?

I ask my self this question almost daily, I ask why did I go through so much and came out the other side, I also ask why I HAD to suffer, why do I still have nightmares about my childhood, why am I scared of crowds and people, why is it my sweet son can come up behind me at night and if I am not aware he’s there and I get startled I feel like I could kill him. I don't have all the answers yet but I know that I went through all that to be here today to share my story and to try my best to help others. I would not change a thing about my life because all of those things made me into the man I am today and I am far from perfect but I am pretty happy with what I have become and where I am.

Ephesians 4:28 says

Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need

So that is a very condensed version of my early life lets fast forward to today, in the summer of 2019 we moved back to Michigan from Tennessee, which was very hard for me. I felt like I grew so much down there on every level but especially in my faith. I was worried that I would lose something coming back to Michigan where I was not a bad person but not a good person either. I was worried I would lose what we built in Tennessee, my bond with my wife, my family and my connection with Jesus. Well so far so good, I have found myself slipping into using more curse words than I did down there but I am a work in progress and I always will be. I will never live up to my goal of being like Jesus Christ and that's OK, none of us will be as good as him but as followers we fail and fail and fail, no person not even a follower of Christ have it all together we are all sinners and all fall short of that goal to be like Christ… but that's ok. 

As followers of Christ we have the power to see our errors and failures, we will always fail and fall short but instead of just saying oh well, we say I am going to try and do better, be better for me for my neighbors and God.

So in closing know this, it's ok to fall short, it's ok to fail but recognize it, see it and try to do better, you never will be perfect and that's ok. Only one person who has ever walked this planet was and as long as he is our goal, we will be ok and we will always be loved.

Like Paul wrote in First Corinthians 13:13

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Larry