The Detour That Changed Who I Was Forever
I remember arriving at the farm in August on a hot day. I was around 16 years old. I remember sitting at the kitchen table talking to my foster parents.
At 16, I had an attitude.
But that attitude changed overnight. They put me in check real quick.
Life on the farm started early. I would get up around 5:00 in the morning. Before breakfast, I had chores. I had to feed the hogs, feed the animals, gather the eggs, take care of the pigs and make sure everything had water.
Then I would come inside, eat breakfast, shower and get ready for school.
Around 7:00 in the morning, the school bus would pull up outside that limestone house.
We lived out in the country around Ashgrove, Kansas. It was a small community, probably around 500 people. We were away from society. The bus ride to school in Sylvan Grove was almost 45 minutes.
I mostly kept to myself on that bus.
Sometimes kids made fun of me because I didn't have the best clothes. I was shy. When I got to school, my emotions would take over my heart, mind and soul.
I didn't want to be there.
I wanted to run away.
Kids would ask me, “Do you have parents?”
I would say no.
They would make fun of me because I didn't have parents.
I didn't consider my foster parents my parents. To me, they were like demons in the night.
School would end around 3:00, and then I had another 45-minute ride, sometimes almost an hour, back to what I called the dungeon.
Other kids could play basketball, go to the library or do whatever they wanted after school.
Not me.
When I got home, I knew exactly what I had to do.
Chores.
Every day.
No time off.
After supper, I could finally sit in my room and try to understand my homework.
My grades were F's and D's. I don't think I ever made an A, B or C during my teenage years.
But there was something I always loved.
Writing.
At night before bed, I would write in my journal. Sometimes I would write for hours. I would write on paper. I would even write on an old Sears Roebuck catalog if that was what I had.
Writing released the pain, the shame and the agony of defeat.
It gave me an out.
It gave me peace.
It helped build my confidence.
And it gave me hope.
One thing I remember writing was:
“If you believe, you're halfway there.”
I tried hard to believe in myself.
There were times I failed.
There were times I wanted to give up.
And there were times I went ahead and faced the Hell.
Facing the Hell meant living on that farm under somebody else's ideology, vision and mindset.
You were chained to their rules.
If you didn't follow those rules, those rules would come back to haunt you.
As a child, and later when I got older, I realized I didn't have much of a choice. I had to follow the rules instead of making my own rules.
Then another turning point happened.
I had a caseworker from the state of Kansas because I was a foster child.
What should have been someone there to protect me became another source of emotional damage in my life.
What happened between us was inappropriate and sexual. It happened during her visits, and every time it happened, I felt like I lost something I could never get back.
I couldn't understand what she was trying to prove in her own life or what she was missing.
I only knew what it was doing to me.
Every time it happened, I felt like it destroyed more of who I was.
I couldn't build myself back up.
Eventually, I gave in.
That's when drugs and alcohol started entering my life.
Some kids at school would say, “Try some of this. Try some of that.”
So I did.
I didn't want to deal with the pain anymore.
One snowy day, while the foster family was gone, I took the farmer's red 1978 Chevy pickup truck.
I was trying to escape.
I wrecked it.
There was a big dent in the front bumper.
That night, I pulled the truck back into the shed where the tractor was and left it there.
The next morning, he saw it.
When I got home, I experienced a beating I will remember for the rest of my life.
It happened right there in that garage where the tractor was.
He was mad as hell.
I think I only weighed about 110 pounds. He grabbed me and threw me around like a rag doll.
The rage in his voice and his actions scared me so badly that I wanted to run away from everything.
Then I started hanging around some kids I had met while taking a tractor training course.
Their dad was an alcoholic.
I guess you could say we became friends.
It really wasn't friendship, but it was friends.
I would hang around them because I wanted to go to ball games. Anything that kept me from having to go back home to the dungeon sounded good to me.
One night, one of the farm workers picked me up. He worked part-time for my foster dad, helping with the tractors and things around the farm.
I had been playing midget baseball in Sylvan Grove.
There was beer in the truck.
He started drinking.
I started drinking.
He became really drunk.
We were driving down a gravel road.
I remember a pigtail curve.
I remember flying over the railroad tracks.
Then everything happened so fast.
The next thing I remember was rolling inside the cab of that truck.
We hit a telephone pole and snapped it off.
I went through the windshield and landed on the embankment underneath a small stone bridge.
I was wearing glasses, and when I tried to see, I couldn't see anything.
I didn't know where my glasses were.
Eventually, I found them on the floorboard of the truck.
I had cuts, but nothing I thought was too major.
We never told anybody that night.
I never went to the hospital.
Somehow, we drove that four-wheel-drive truck up out of the ditch and back to the farm.
I went upstairs and went to bed.
The next morning, everything exploded.
“Why didn't you tell me you guys were in a car accident?”
The young man who had been driving was scared too. He couldn't believe what had happened or that we could have been killed.
And inside of me, I kept asking:
Why is it one thing after another after another?
When am I going to release this?
The farm.
The abuse.
The caseworker.
The drugs.
The alcohol.
The accident.
The emotional drain from my heart, mind and soul.
That was the moment when my identity started changing.
I realized everything I was doing wasn't building things.
I was destroying things.
So I used reverse psychology on myself.
I decided to become the lone wolf and start making decisions.
Then I met a family who went to a Methodist church.
I remember sitting in that church pew beside an older gentleman.
He could tell I was emotionally drained.
I was lost.
But he was patient.
People would ask me how my day was, and sometimes I wouldn't say a word.
That man didn't push me.
Every Sunday, he would sit there.
If I said something, he would say something.
If I didn't say anything, he would just sit there.
Patient.
One day I finally said:
“You know, I think it's time for me to turn to the Lord.”
My journey with God actually went back much further.
I remember being eight years old, kneeling beside my bed in a dark room at night, wanting to take my own life.
I believe the angels saved my life.
Throughout my childhood, I experienced things in the spiritual world that I couldn't understand. Seeing spirits. Speaking in tongues. Things I didn't know what to do with.
I didn't want those gifts.
I kept pushing God away because I didn't understand what He had planned for me.
But after that accident, and after everything that had emotionally drained my heart, mind and soul, I started realizing that maybe the gifts God gave me were part of what could make me whole.
The change didn't happen overnight.
It happened slowly over time.
I had to build my confidence.
I finally had direction.
I had motivation.
I needed to light that fire inside of me.
The spirit is like a vehicle.
You have the match to light the fire inside of you, but you have to have the desire.
If you want something bad enough, you have to have determination.
Once you have determination, you have to have the discipline to stay on track and align your life.
And most of all, to keep that vehicle moving, you have to have self-confidence behind the wheel.
When God is there, He will always take the wheel.
Life is also like a Hula-Hoop.
When you're first trying to Hula-Hoop, you're unbalanced. You struggle trying to find the rhythm. The hoop keeps falling.
That's how my life was.
I experienced free will, but I couldn't find the balance I needed.
Once I began finding my identity and gave God a chance, I started finding the rhythm.
The inside of that Hula-Hoop restored and balanced my life.
That's when I started becoming a different man.
I forgave my parents.
I forgave myself.
I apologized to people I had hurt.
I realized forgiveness could become a new pathway in life.
I learned that if you apply yourself, you take action.
When you take action, you take responsibility.
When you take responsibility, you become accountable for your actions and the choices you make in life.
And your life can change forever.
But there is one thing I always remember.
I have to stay dedicated to the path if I want to make it to the end.
Today, when I look back at that accident, I see it differently.
That accident saved me.
It helped keep me on the path in the right way.
Everybody has gifts.
It's really sad that sometimes we want to know more about somebody else's gifts instead of discovering our own.
I want you to remember this first and foremost:
You are just as important as anybody else in this world.
Every story has a face.
Every story has a heart.
Every story has an author.
And every story has a depart.
Throughout your journey, remember:
Never give up.
Never give in.
And never disguise your spirit for no one.
God has given you gifts.
I believe we weren't brought onto this Earth just to be happy. We were brought onto this Earth to learn and suffer.
That is reality.
I have always tried to take the negative and turn it into the positive.
Sometimes we say we lose and win.
That was back then.
Now I say:
We learn and win.
And that's the legacy I'm going to leave within.
