Wednesday October 19, 1994
One day I was sitting at my house watching a movie, when I got a phone call from Ames department store. They told me that I had five rolls of developed film that had been sitting at the store ready to be picked-up for a while. I told the lady on the phone that I would be right over. As I got off the phone, I couldn't believe I had forgotten about all the rolls of film I dropped off. While I was driving over there, I was trying to remember what could possibly be on the rolls of film, because I couldn't even remember dropping them off.
When I got to the counter, the cashier gave me five packages of pictures. I grabbed the first package and started looking at the pictures I had taken, then the second and so on, until the lady behind the cash register was getting annoyed. I gave the packages back to the lady so she could ring me up.
When I got home, I anxiously began looking at the rest of my pictures. Then I saw it! A picture of the full moon. I dropped the pictures to the ground and grabbed onto a chair to steady myself.
As I slowly sat down, I couldn't believe how fast so many visions and thoughts were going through my head. I could see everything like it had just happened, from when my roommate and I were taking pictures of the full moon to Greg coming over and shaking our hands. I could hear Tonya's scream when she found Lori's body, and see the way the house looked the night after everyone left. I felt like I did whenever I opened up the front door.
As the last thought went through my head, I felt compelled to open up the front door. I couldn't understand, but it was like I was being drawn to go outside for some reason. As I opened up the door, I kept my head down so I wouldn't have to look at Greg's house. When I got to the porch, I couldn't help but notice what a clear night it was. It was dark, but my surroundings were lit up like that of a full moon. I walked down the porch steps and looked to the sky in dismay as my eyes fell upon what was to be another full cycle. (To read the full story go to navigation bar "Full Moon")
A Lonely Place
Two days later, my parents and brother Russ came home to celebrate my sister Penny’s Birthday along with her family. It was a relief to be around family again, but by the time everyone left, you could cut the tension with a knife. I blamed my father but everyone else blamed me. My mother told me that she would never take my side again because it caused to much tension between her and my father and she was never going to take a chance of losing him again. She also told me that they weren’t coming home for the holidays and to this day, I can’t remember what I did for Christmas that year. I do remember feeling abandoned by my family and I thought that all hope was lost. It was by God’s grace that I survived the rest of the year because I was on a path of destruction and I felt all alone.
You are not alone.
You are not alone in suffering.
Most of us suffer in one form or another.
So says scripture:
"Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble."
Job 14:1
"Seventy years are given to us! Some may even reach eighty.
But even the best of these years are filled with pain and trouble;
soon they disappear, and we are gone." Psalms 90:10
You are not alone.
"If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask
the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you
forever - the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him,
because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for
he lives with you and will be in you." John 14:15-17
You are not alone.
God sees, hears, and forgives you.
Often our problem is not with God forgiving us,
but in us forgiving ourselves.
God has forgiven us long ago, but we still carry the guilt.
Life is not futile, it is full.
It's just that everything in life is not pleasant.
You have considered ending it all.
What you have not considered is that ending it may put you in a
far worse place.
Believe it, there are much worse places and conditions.
You are ready to give up because you think no one cares.
You honestly feel that you are alone.
If only you could see the angels that surround you.
If only you knew the things that you have been kept from.
If only you knew the disasters you have been protected against.
Each breath that you take is a gift.
Even when it is hard to breathe,
you are still surrounded by love.
Author Unknown
Therapy
Drawn 1994
One day I called home and told my parents I needed psychiatric help because I thought I was going crazy and I couldn’t handle all the voices in my head. My mother told me to give it to God and He would calm my mind and put me on a better path, at the time I didn’t believe in God’s faithfulness, and it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, instead I started writing, drawing and painting to ease my thoughts. Over time my art started to provide answers to some of my questions that were haunting me, but then I received a letter and a page of the daily bread with a part of the story highlighted from my mother. It meant so much to me that I ended up reading it years later at my mothers Memorial Service
Mother's Memorial Service
My Mother,
Not only was she the best mother a son could ask for, but she was also my best friend.
My sister Penny was right. Letting go of my mother was the hardest thing I have ever done.
I have been through the valley of weeping,
The valley of sorrow and pain.
But the God of all comfort was with me,
At hand to uphold and sustain.
Author Unknown
As I reminisce about the words I said to my mother and how the life I am living gave her peace, I think of a poem I wrote many years ago called. 'Letting go.'
Everybody needs a holding hand, but is there a time to let go of the ones who keep holding on? How hard is it? Are there fingerprints left behind for you grip, but sometimes slip.
Everybody holds on and everybody let’s go, but when I was 23, I didn’t know how much I was holding on to my mother until it was time for her to let me go.
I realized, I didn’t give her much of a choice because of the way I was living, but at the time I felt abandoned and all alone. Then one day I received a letter in the mail with a clipping attached to it, which read
Received December 1994/Highlighted from Daily Bread
There's so much pain in watching someone you love distance himself from You Lord. It hurts to watch him reject your love; to see him make poor choices and go against everything You taught him. But there has been some good in this painful ordeal. I have come to a better understanding of God's love for me. I can’t help but think how deeply it must have hurt God when I had rejected His love. I wonder if He feels such pain when I distant myself from Him. As this has made me realize the depth of love I have for my son, I realize Gods love is even greater. He waits with an open heart for me when I go my own way to change my ways and return to Him. Not unlike how I feel about my son. My son is accountable for his actions, but God decides his future. And I am reassured when I remember that God loves him even more than I could, so I do what I feel God put mothers here to do. I hold my son up in prayer. I give him to God so that my confidence lies not in the mistakes I have made as his mother, but in a just and loving God. A God who knew my son's future before he was even born.
God knew that my mother would get down her knee’s every day and pray for me to let go of the world I was living in and start living for the Lord
I thank God for my mother’s prayers because it was so much easier for my mother to let me go one more time knowing that I was living for God and that we would be reunited in heaven one day
Anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you'll have it forever, real and eternal. John 12:25
"I pray you'll be able to feel and understand, how long, wide, deep, and high Christ's love really is; and to experience this love for yourselves." Eph. 3:18,19
Too Far
By December of 1994, I came to realize I hadn’t gone too far but I wasn’t ready to commit my life to Christ, because I wasn’t ready to stop smoking marijuana. I truly thought I would lose my creativity if I stopped smoking dope.
This is the final piece that was finished in 2017
HALF AND HALF
Good, bad, its only what one thinks. No goodness means that we are to be morally pure. Our conduct as Christians must be good and acceptable to God. Despite our culture of political correctness there really is such a thing as right and wrong behavior.
"We can choose the sounds we want to listen to; we can choose the taste we want in food, and we should choose to follow what is right. But first of all we must define... what is good." Job 34: 3-4
The battle to be good begins in the mind and that is why Paul instructs us to think about good things. When we allow evil into our minds, whether it comes from books we read, television we watch, music we listen to, or movies we see, it will be much harder to be good
"I urge you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent of what is evil.” Romans 16:17-19
Warning Against Falling Away/One foot in Christianity and one foot in the world
We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:11-14
Readiness for a turnaround
Is the prerequisite for progress
But more wisdom is to be found
In frequent circling
Then in a quick one time success
Author Unknown
I still can’t believe I let spiritual warfare bring me so far away from who I was in Christ in 2019. I know it was God’s grace that saved me from Satan’s intentions, which is why I called the video, “Spiritual Warfare”. After I came back to the Lord in 2002 I experienced spiritual warfare here and there, but never like I did in 2019. When I look back, I see how and why I gave Satan a foothold and how I allowed him to get me to the place I ended up. I am so thankful, I was able to put on the full armor of God before it was too late.
Spiritual Warfare
2020 Election - It really doesn't matter who the President of the United States will be because their are millions of people who know about all the corruption our Government has been involved in. The swamp could be drained but over time, it would be worse than it was before. The deep state is being funded by the elite and money talks. People will do just about anything for money, power, control and fame.
Daniel blessing God in Daniel 2:21 “And He changes the times and the season; He removes Kings and raises up Kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.”
Speaking of the future
On Thursday, June 28, 1787; the Constitutional Convention of a fledgling American nation was locked in a bitter debate. The well-respected Benjamin Franklin rose to his feet with a suggestion that they seek God’s guidance: “How has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain… we had daily prayer in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard… God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid.”
Dr. A. T. Pierson said, “Prophecy and Providence are… twin sisters… Back of all the apparently capricious, conflicting, and accidental changes of human history, there is an infinite God whose omniscience and omnipresence forbid anything should escape His knowledge or evade His power, and whose goodness assures a benevolent design, even behind seeming disaster.” As this age draws to a close, do not forget that God governs in the affairs of men. He will orchestrate the final acts of history, so it truly concludes His-story.
Escape the Coming Night Volume 2 Pg. 116
Letter to the U.S. Navy
On December 1, 2000, I successfully completed a Basic Still Photography Course at Fort George G Meade, Maryland and became a Photographer’s Mate in the US Navy.
It was the proudest day of my life and I was so thankful that my parents, sister and brother-in-law were able to come to my graduation, unfortunately my brother wasn’t able to come but I knew he was very proud of me.
December 25th 2002 - was the first time in my whole life that I truly understood the significance of the birth of Jesus Christ and how much grace and mercy He had shown me over the years because I had come back to the Lord that year.
December 20, 2009 - I called my mother to wish her a late Happy Birthday.
December 25th 2009 - my mother went to ER and the Doctors found 2 tumors on her brain. She passed 3 months later March 17th 2010
December 19, 2010 - I realized I would never be able to wish my mother a Happy Birthday ever again.
December 25, 2019 - Forgiveness, restoration and a new beginning for my family.
December 2, 2020 - Bill Burdock died in jail. (Full Moon 1994)
December 25, 2020 - Thanked God for having more of an understanding of who God the Father is and how important it is for a son/daughter to forgive their earthly fathers and to have an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father.
December 29, 2020 - The Cold Moon.
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