The Story Continues…

The difficult part about getting to this phace of the story is how to finish it, for it won’t ever be finished.  The new life that began all the way back there in that jail cell on my 40th birthday will never end.  Though this earthly existance will be extinquished one day, that new life will last for an eternity.

But, in an effort to wrap up this writing and to give a status update, there is certainly no better time to type these words than in the early hours of this Christmas morning.  In the fresh moments of this 3rd post-prison Christmas, I am humbled to look back at these 782 days and to be able to trace God’s Hand moving in my life.

Upon my exodus from behind the fences of the prison, I spent a week living in an extended stay hotel in Memphis (for I simply could not bear the thought of being housed with any other person) to be close to and spend time with my boys and my brother.  A glorious week of great meals, laughter and reconnection.

And it was during that week that my interim transportation needs were met.  A great friend with a spare car handed me keys but no time-frame.  One of the huge impediments to my transition was removed in an instant and the weeks of worry about that particular situation were proven to be a complete waste of time – God was on top of things.

November 1st found me traveling to Nashville – this time on my own, with the freedom to stop and go as I saw fit – to begin a new life.  The call to the church mentioned in the last chapter resulted in an interview for a position on the maintenance and janitorial staff of the church.  The interview resulted in a job and the following morning, as I awoke in another extended-stay hotel, I was employed and another impediment and cause for worry was removed.

During my third week in the hotel, one of my fellow workers mentioned a house near him that had just come available for rent.  My boss found out and, in typical fashion, he took the proverbial bull by the horns and, in three days, I was spending my first night in a cozy little house in a small community north of Nashville.  For the first time in almost seven years, I went to bed with no shared walls, quiet so pervasive that it was a little intimidating, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

Back to Prison – Part II

Dejected?  Absolutely!  How in the world was this happening….again? 

Confused?  Absolutely!  After trying so hard to do everything right, the lie of an unknown person – apparently someone with an ax to grind – instantly transformed a tolerable situation into pure hell.

But doubting? My faith isn’t as strong as Joseph’s for I did doubt and wonder why.

I was moved from the relative freedom of the annex to the main compound in Nashville, thrown into the smallest cell I have ever seen with one of the biggest men I have ever seen, given only the barest of essentials and left.

A friend went to the annex to pick up my belongings to discover that most of my “free world” clothes had been stolen by staff members.  Stamps were stolen by the mail room.  Phone calls disallowed.

For a month I sat, not knowing why I was there or what my future held.  Every mental picture of life after prison I had conjured during the preceding two years vaporized and I was left with only uncertainly and despair.

On the 33^rd day of this torture, I was shackled wrist and ankle and loaded onto a bus with forty others for the trip back to West Tennessee State Penitentiary – back to where I started all those many months before.  My faith was so weak but, since there was no choice, I started over again. The days were long and the nights were longer.  I was moved from cell to cell, subjected to one cellmate after another, always in a state of flux with no hope for stability of any kind – always fearful that the activities of one of those men would compromise my custody level and thereby lengthen my term.

I tried to secure employment to no avail, finally landing – by default – in the kitchen scrubbing pots and pans for six hours a day for twenty-five cents an hour. As it was with Joseph, the defining quality of these days was idleness, made all the worse coming from a place of responsibility. My nights were also consumed with wondering what was going to happen and why I had been removed from usefulness and productivity.  Every day was consumed with silent prayer asking why I was being punished when I had done nothing wrong.  No answer came but God’s Hand showed Itself.

Back to Prison – Part I

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.  (II Corinthians 4:8-9)

 

Dejected?  Surely!

 

Confused?  Probably!

 

But doubting? Never!

 

Joseph maintained his faith and started over again. Those were days and weeks and months of idleness, made all the worse coming from his place of responsibility. His nights were consumed with wondering what was going to happen and why he had been removed from usefulness and productivity.  Surely he remembered the meals in Potiphar’s house (meals he had planned) as he ate the prison gruel.  Certainly, lying on the straw mat, he thought of the soft bed he so recently had had.  He probably asked God more than once why he was being punished when he had done nothing wrong.  And Potiphar’s wife?  How long before forgiveness replaced the resentment?

 

But he waited on and trusted in his God.  And God did not disappoint—God made him a success.  A successful inmate; now there is an apparent oxymoron.  But God caused the jailer to take notice of Joseph, and, before you know it, Joseph was running the jail!

The 11th Son – Part II

 

I began working for the Agency, a branch of the Military Department of the State of Tennessee shortly after arriving in Nashville; January 27, 2004, to be precise.  After initially serving as a low-level functionary and technician in a position where my equipment calibration duties extended to include vacuuming offices and cleaning restrooms (perfect jobs for inmates in most people’s opinion), I was eventually moved into one of the five main directorates and assigned to the director of the division as an Administrative Assistant.

 

As the months passed, my list of duties and responsibilities increased, so much so that by March 1, 2005, I had been hired on as a full-time State employee with all the benefits that brings.  Not bad for a guy who returns to and sleeps at a prison each night.

 

I felt like I had arrived!

 

Since beginning my life in prison, I had been considering what life would look like upon my exit from behind the fence.  It’s not easy to find employment with a felony record.  And my situation was a bit worse than most since I had no real skill or experience in any field other than Law, and that door was closed forever.  I hate to admit I had been worrying about it, but how I would support myself had definitely been on my mind.

 

Now, however, after being hired in March of 2005, and satisfactorily completing my probationary period on September 1^st of the same year, I finally began to picture my life after prison as a State employee.  I finally felt I could mark that concern off the list of things to worry about.

The 11th Son – Part I

This is a familiar story.  It’s the story of Joseph; he of the many-colored coat fame.  It is a story of a young man whose life was turned on its head for the purpose and the glory of God.

 

He was the eleventh son of the father, but the first son of the mother.  The mother was the favorite wife, so the eleventh son took first place in the father’s heart.  All the blessings, all the privileges, all the father’s love and a beautiful robe were given to the son.  And neither the doting father nor the privileged son bothered to keep quiet about it.  Always, flaunting, always dreaming, always in the face of ten brothers.

 

So envy was born in ten hearts, and that envy turned to hate.  That hate birthed a conspiracy.  No doubt you know the story of ambush, beating, slave traders and bloody robes; of a father’s grief, and the brothers’ guilt.  But God had a salvation plan; a rescue mission only God could conceive.

 

Joseph didn’t deserve the treatment his brothers gave.  Maybe he could have been a bit more discreet; could have saved the treasured coat for special occasions; could have pondered his dreams in his heart rather than broadcast them to his brothers.  But even considering all of that, he didn’t deserve to be sold, chained, enslaved, marched through the desert, probably beaten, surely deprived of water and nourishment, and placed on the block for auction.  But by all accounts, even if a bit prideful, he was a good boy, a dutiful son, and a God-fearing man.  So why did this seventeen year old have his life turned upside down in the desert that day?  Hold to that question for a moment.

Back to the Beginning

How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?  How long will my enemy triumph over me?  Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.  Give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death; my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.  But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.  I will sing to the Lord for He has been good to me.  (Psalm 13)

 

So now we’re back to where we started; back to the beginning; back to March 14, 2006;   back to the day when my world turns upside down again.

 

But first, maybe another small detour is in order.

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Dad – Part III

The next several years were spent wandering; moving from one treatment center to the next; one hospital to the next; borrowing money from family and friends with no ability to repay.

 

At one point he was sleeping under a bridge in Nashville.  Desperate, he called one of his few remaining friends—the pastor of the small Nazarene church in Danville, Virginia, we had attended during my high school days.  Rick drove all night, picked up my father and took him back to Danville.  He housed him, fed him, gave him work, and got him help.

 

His dark years were over.  He had finally reached the bottom and made the decision that nothing was worth going through that dark tunnel again.

 

As I write this, nineteen years later, my father has enjoyed those years; sober and helping others.  Now, all these years later, he is back in the ministry, preaching the gospel, exhorting people to turn to Christ and to let Him change their lives.

 

I hate the lost years.  I hate what I saw my mother go through trying to keep my brother and me clothed and fed.  I hate that I lost those years with my father.

Dad – Part II

Years later, as a senior in high school, I was caught breaking the rules—at this point I don’t remember what I’d done—and was, as customary, sent to my room to await punishment.  On that day, however, my father turned the tables on me.  He lay across the bed and made me spank him.  I never forgot that and, for quite a few years after that, strictly adhered to the rules of the house.

 

More years passed.  Pastorates came and went.  The evangelistic field was entered and left.  My college days morphed into law school days.  Then the bomb detonated.  My father’s life of deception was exposed in an instant and nothing was ever the same again.

 

While in the midst of a revival in Kirkwood, Missouri, my father—not for the first time, I discovered later—stepped to the pulpit to preach completely intoxicated.  Feigning an illness, he excused himself and returned to his hotel room.  Unlike the other instances, however, several of those in attendance that night were physicians at and employees of a alcoholic treatment center located there.  They recognized the problem, confronted my father with their diagnosis, and graciously offered to provide treatment if he would only consent.

Dad – Part I

SON.  BROTHER.  STUDENT.  MARINE.  PREACHER. 

 

HUSBAND.  FATHER.  DISCIPLINARIAN.  PASTOR. 

 

EVANGELIST.  ALCOHOLIC.  EX-HUSDAND.

 

 

My Father has been called many things in his life, but it wasn’t until five years ago—after years of estrangement and pain—that he really became my Dad.

 

I really do not know where to start his story—in its entirety, it would fill reams.  But some background is necessary to give you a feel for how dramatically his life has impacted mine in both negative and positive ways.

 

I always idolized my father.  He was a man’s man.  Big and strong—not the strength built up in a gym, but a natural strength.  He was born with it.  It was genetic.  I always admired that about him and wished that I had taken after him in that regard.  I, instead, inherited my body type from my mother—slender with very little natural muscle mass.  I inherited something far darker from my father—a finely honed ability to deceive.

Amanda Clarke

I have great confidence in you; I take great pride in you.  I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds. (II Corinthians 7:4)

 

I want you to know how much I am struggling for you…. My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and unified in love…  (Colossians 2:1a; 2a)

 

Earlier I introduced you to Aunt Ruth and attempted to describe the impact she has had on my life.  Amanda is my mother’s other sibling. 

 

Aunt Amanda and I have been close since my childhood.  Usually living within the same State, and her only child just two months younger than I, resulted in frequent and lengthy visits during my early years.

 

However, that is not what prompts me to include her in this story.  Her inclusion here results from a piece of common ground we share.  For a large block of each of our lives we lived out a form of religion without possessing the substance of it.

 

Each of our fathers were Nazarene ministers.  Each of us suffered disillusionment and disappointment when we realized our “perfect” earthly fathers—idolized and, in some ways, worshipped by us—were not perfect but, in fact, had feet of clay.  Each of them failed, falling victim to the attack of Satan, and left a wide swath of pain and confusion in their wake.

Charlotte Dempsey

We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.  Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.  But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us.  On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us.  (II Corinthians 1:8b-10)

 

Once again, thanks to my father (about whom you will hear later), I was reconnected with another childhood friend in March, 2005.  Childhood companions during my father’s first pastorate in Hampton, Virginia, Charlotte and I had not seen or heard from or about each other in almost forty years.  Trials, healing and restoration in the life of my father had led him back to Hampton to pastor some of the same people to whom he had ministered forty years before, and through him, Charlotte and I made contact.

 

The intervening years had yielded her two master degrees, experience as a counselor in the Wyoming Prison System, and by 2005 a position as a licensed clinical social worker at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.

 

During the next six months she so graciously helped me work through some lingering personal issues and assisted as I prepared for my parole hearing scheduled for September 12, 2005.

 

She wrote letters, offered counsel, eased my anxiety and was a gift from God for me during those days.

 

The hearing went well.  I received the hearing officer’s recommendation for parole.  Unfortunately, the seven members of the Board did not agree and yet another two year delay was imposed. 

 

I was shattered!  Once again I had put my trust and confidence in man—in letters from Governor-appointees, friends and family and my institutional record and work release position with a prominent and influential State agency.  I believed I had done enough time and that it was my time to go.

Jack Massey – Part Two

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!  No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, He will provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.  (I Corinthians 10:12-13)

 

I met John Massey in 1973, strangely, if you will remember, at about the same time as my addiction began.  Jack, Sr. was the Minister of Music serving with my father at a church in Jackson, Mississippi, and we were introduced and thrown together because of the closeness of our families—we were friends from the start.

 

Being close in age and similar backgrounds and, consequently, interests, we were inseparable.  Weekends were spent skiing around the Ross Bennett reservoir or dirt biking around the yard; fireworks in season; teen choir trips to Six Flags.  Life was good.

 

Contact was lost for several years when our family moved to Roanoke, Virginia, but we quickly caught up when our families were reunited in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in the summer of 1978.

 

I started college that fall, and Jack was finishing high school, but the summers—two of them—found us together again; working at the shipyard during the days, dating girls from Biloxi and just hanging out on the weekends.

 

Again, as my father re-entered the evangelistic field in the fall of 1980 and moved to Memphis, we lost track of each other, each involved in his own day to day life.  And so it was until December, 2003, when my father informed me that he believed Jack and his family still lived in Nashville.

Jack Massey – Part One

Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith; be men of courage.  Be strong.  Do everything in love.  (I Corinthians 16:13-14)

 

After the denial of parole in the fall of 2003, Frank used his influence to get me transferred to a minimum security facility in Nashville.  I had another two years until my next possibility for parole and I could not bear the thought of serving that time in the hyper-structured routine of West High. 

 

So, on November 7, 2003, I followed Billy, who had been gone for weeks, and rode the prison bus to Nashville to begin the next phase.

 

The benefits of the new facility were numerous and immediately observable.  The openness and freedom of movement were wonderful.  Virtually unlimited access to the weight room and exercise areas was unbelievable.  Meals were better.  The whole atmosphere seemed more relaxed.  The thought of leaving the compound during the day to work like Billy did, and maybe to make it into one of the thirty work release spots available in the whole State, outweighed the minor negative aspects of open bay living and the complete lack of privacy in the rest rooms and showers.

 

Through the fall, winter and early spring, Billy and I would work our jobs during the day and spend the evenings and weekends walking the compound’s perimeter planning the future.  He would be out in May of 2004, and, surely, sixteen months later I would make parole.

 

It was during the fall of 2003, shortly after arriving in Nashville that, at my father’s suggestion, I wrote a strange letter.

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Go on to Chapter 43…

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Frank Sullivan

If you make the Most High your dwelling place—even the Lord who is my Refuge—then no harm will befall you, and no disaster will come near your tent.  For, He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.  (Psalm 91:9-11)

 

The day I took the test to see if I was intelligent enough to serve as an aide to the Teacher’s Supervisor, my boss was to be a man for whom many adjectives have been used in description, none of which were complimentary in nature.  I’d never met the man prior to that day and would not have refused the job even if I had.  I wasn’t looking forward to the experience, though, and upon meeting the man later, I have to admit I didn’t disagree with the general consensus.

 

However, God was watching over that situation, too.  Before my first day on the job beginning the next morning, a substitution had been made and Frank Sullivan introduced himself as my new boss.

 

Frank and I were, and still are, I guess, the same age.  Really, our only two differences of any consequence that I can recall were: a) he was a former Baptist minister; my background was Nazarene.  However, we both served the same Lord and the doctrinal differences never made any difference; and b) he was not incarcerated while, of course, I was.

Billy Garrison

I am sending an angel ahead of you who will protect you as you travel to the place I have prepared.”  (Exodus 23:20)

 

The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble.  Those who know your name will trust in you, for you, Lord have never forsaken those who seek you.  (Psalm 9:9-10)

 

One night in May, 1997, Billy Garrison, a deputy with the Sheriff’s office in DeSoto County, Mississippi, crossed several lines.

 

The first line of the night (a night that would forever change the course of his life) was the Tennessee State line as he entered the State with a friend to attend a bachelor party.  His life was on track with his plan, and in a short two weeks his plan was to move to the Mississippi Gulf Coast and begin a new assignment as beach patrol with one of the gulf-side counties. 

 

Somewhere during that night he crossed the line between sobriety and intoxication.  This was a line he had crossed so many times in his young life that it was just a way of life; no second thought; all in the name of fun and a good time.  But tonight would be the last time…ever!

Rick McKeel – Part Three

What then shall we say?  Is God unjust?  Not at all, for He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”  It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.  For the Scripture says to Pharoah:  “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”  Therefore, God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and hardens whom He wants to harden.  (Romans 9:14-18)

 

Freedom wasn’t God’s will and two days after the hearing, on December 12, 2002, I returned to West High to start my life in prison.  And Rick was there.  He arranged for me to share a cell with him.  He got me a job (a big deal here due to the sentence credits awarded in exchange for menial tasks); first as the flunky who cleans up the trays after meals, and later as a library clerk. And he introduced me to the next of God’s special people.

 

I’m ashamed to report I’ve lost track of Rick.  He made parole, and the last I heard, he was living in Memphis.  I hope he reads this and knows how he positively affected my life.

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Rick McKeel – Part Two

If I am like a deaf man, who cannot hear, like a mute who cannot open his mouth; I have become like a man who does not hear, whose mouth can offer no reply.  I wait for you, O Lord; you will answer, O Lord my God.  For I said, “Do not let them gloat or exalt themselves over me when my foot slips.”  For I am about to fall, and my pain is ever with me.  Many are those who are my vigorous enemies; those who hate me without reason are numerous.  Those who repay my good with evil slander me when I pursue what is good.  O Lord, do not forsake me; be not far from me, O my God.  Come quickly to help me, O Lord my Savior.  (Psalm 38:13-22)

 

I met Rick McKeel during those first sixty-nine days at “201”  He was one of the four of us who had the smallest something in common during those days, and we would play cards, laugh at our mutual misery and talk about the stupid things that got us where we were.

 

He was moved out of my pod shortly before Tim bailed me out and, good intentions notwithstanding, I lost track of him.  So on October 24, 2002, fourteen months later, lying there absolutely freaking out, the very last face I expected to see in my small window was that of Rick McKeel!  He was another of God’s special angels, and was proof that even then, God was in control—not me.  I wish I had come to that conclusion sooner, but more about that later.

 

Anyway,

Rick McKeel – Part One

O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger or discipline me in your wrath, for your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me.  Because of your wrath there is no health in my body; my bones have no soundness because of my sin.  My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.  My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly.  I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning.  My back is filled with searing pain; there is no health in my body.  I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart.  All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you.  My heart pounds, my strength fails me; even the light has gone from my eyes.  My friends and companions avoid me because of my wounds; my neighbors stay far away.  Those who seek my life set their traps, those who would harm me talk of my ruin; all day long they plot deception.  (Psalm 38:1-12).

 

Through the fall of 2002, I sat idle in the bowels of the Shelby Country jail, more commonly referred to as 201 Poplar (or simply “201” to those unfortunate enough to have resided there.)  As I sat, I waited; waiting for the unfolding of events I was certain would result in my release.  I was looking forward to reliving the feeling of freedom I’d experienced the previous year.

 

Disgusted—downright angry—over the ineffectiveness and inattention of my attorney, I had engaged the services of another. 

Ruth Simmons

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and deeply loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.  Bear with one another and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.  Forgive as the Lord forgave you.  And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.  Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.  And be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.  (Col 3:12-16a)

 

My mother’s younger sister became my port in the storm.  You never know when your life experiences—the trials and storms through which you’ve traveled—are going to provide the tools needed to guide another through their times of trouble.

 

My Aunt Ruth is a perfect example.  After years of tumultuous marriage to my uncle, he, having found another, walked away from their marriage.  She was left to face many years of loneliness, heartache, education, and preparation which had given her a huge capacity to provide encouragement, empathy and the straight “I’ve been there and done that” talk which I needed so desperately during that period of time.

 

Upon my release from jail, I lived with my brother and his family for six weeks.  While I was so thankful for them and their hospitality, I began to feel my presence there was causing conflict in their marriage and disruption in their lives.  It was time to go.

 

Ruth, still living alone in a beautiful house situated on a lake outside Memphis, graciously took me in, gave me the downstairs master suite and fed me for ten months. 

 

From her recent letters, I feel confident she would agree that we helped each other in a symbiotic way through those months.  She provided a safe and stable home environment – a serene haven where the weekly visits with my children could occur within the terms of the court decree.  I helped with the upkeep of the property and was a companion to fill some of the lonely hours.

 

Together we ate, watched television, went to church.  We wept, laughed, prayed and rejoiced.  She advised, chastised, instructed and loved me through those days, and she will never (this side of heaven) fully comprehend how much I appreciate and love her for her help, love and sacrificial spirit.

 

She was my third angel!

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Tim Jacobsen

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.  Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.  In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so they may take hold of the life that is truly life.  (I Timothy 6:17-19)

 

Shortly after my arrest, and as the first step in the long and frustrating criminal justice process, I was arraigned and advised of my $150,000 bond.  For the uninitiated, (and I pray you stay that way) freedom can be obtained by the payment of ten percent of that amount and the pledging of assets valued at more than the full amount.

 

Consequently, since Sally was in control of all of our assets, the thought of freedom never even entered my mind for the first few weeks.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate, freedom was a constant thought and prayer, but there was little hope, short of a miracle, that it would become a reality.  I don’t know why I made the comment on that particular day.  It wasn’t the first time I’d spoken to him since my arrest, but on that day I pled with my friend to get me out.

 

I’d had the privilege of meeting Tim Jacobsen in 1992.  He was a prominent and successful real estate agent, and I was a closing attorney in need of new clients.  Our first meeting was more of an interview.  Unhappy with his current attorney, he was looking to make a change and I was thrilled.  He was a blessing for my business then, but became much more than a client during the years that followed.

 

In the weeks following my arrest and unknown to me, my family, not quite sure about my frame of mind or what I would do if released, sought an agreement that Tim would not assist in obtaining my release.  He refused but offered a compromise.  He agreed not to initiate bail or bring it up in conversation with me.  But he went further to say if I ever asked he would do whatever he could to affect my release from the jail.

 

So when I made my plea to him on that mid-August morning, he set wheels in motion, collected six thousand dollars from two other families, added two thousand dollars of his own, and pledged his property as collateral.  On August 25, 2001, still uncertain as to my future, I walked out of the jail on a dark and steamy Memphis evening.  Nothing has ever felt so good!

 

Through the following months, during this time of restricted freedom, Tim and his wife “hired” me to help them paint their house, fed me more times than I can count, gave me access to their Arkansas lake house, and, most importantly, took me to church, prayed with and for me, provided the court-mandated chaperone for visits with my children and allowed me to weep on their shoulders. I’ve never had a friend like Tim.  I’m still in contact with him and thank God every day for his presence in and impact on my life.

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Gene Lee

God is our refuge and strength, an ever present help in trouble (Psalm 23:20)

 

See I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you.  (Exodus 23:20)

 

The county jail in Shelby County, Tennessee, ranks in the nation’s top five for both internal violence and size.  The number of inmates housed in those seven stories averages around 4000.

 

I spent my first ever night of incarceration on the lower level of that imposing facility which is more like a dungeon than anything I’ve ever imagined.  I was on suicide watch.  This meant I was issued neither sheets nor blanket and was awakened every fifteen minutes all night.  I reckon someone figured that at some point through that night, lying on an old bare State mat, shivering in that subterranean hell-hole, I would realize the severity and desperation of my situation and decide to end it all.  The thought never crossed my mind.

 

The next morning I was moved to a pod (or group) of cells on the third floor of that behemoth.  I’d heard the stories.  I was nervous, but the day passed without incident.

 

Morning #2 found me moving again.  It wasn’t a big deal, you understand.  I mean, all I “owned” was a couple of pair of County-issued clothes.  I didn’t even need a bag.

 

Anyway, I guess it was in my file that I needed my Celexa (the “wonderful” anti-depressant) which surely kept me from doing something really stupid, so I was assigned to the second floor.  Floor two is where all the inmates receiving medications are congregated in order to ease the severely overwhelming burden imposed on the nursing staff by reducing their travel time.  I’m being a bit facetious here but the wide-spread disbursement of the drugs would certainly have medications being sold and exchanged more than already occurs. This latter reason for the special existence of that floor is dubious.  Drugs—both legal and illegal were readily available.

 

The point of all this is to introduce you to my first “angel”.  Gene Lee and I could not have been more different.  He was black—I was not; He was the father of thirteen children by four different women—I had only three by one; He had been incarcerated multiple times aggregating to over twenty of his forty-six years—I was a rookie; He was a self-admitted drug addict who was never sober unless he was incarcerated—I’d never even seen drugs unless they were prescribed; He smoked—I didn’t; He was a gang member—I was scared to death.  However, in spite of our differences, I thank God for Gene Lee.  He was quiet and steady and, for some reason, took me under his wing and taught me how to “jail”.  He spread the word that I was to be left alone.  He taught me some card games, and we would sit in the cell, play cards and talk about God. He helped me survive those first 69 days and taught me things that continue to serve me well.

 

I left Gene in the jail on August 25, 2001, but I stayed in touch with him.  When he was later transferred to the Penal Farm (a work camp in the county), I was his only visitor.  When it came time for him to be released, I was able to take him some “street” clothes (since his had been lost in the system), outfitted him with some of the necessities from K-Mart, ate Church’s fried chicken with him and delivered him to his aunt’s house.  The last time I heard from Gene, he called to tell me he was being baptized at the little church he had been attending.  And, even though I have not heard from him in over six years, I consider him my friend and thank God for him. 

 

Maybe he’ll read this and get in touch with me again.

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Go on to Chapter 35….

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God’s Faithfulness

Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.  (Psalm 22:11)

 

The faithfulness of God was evident through these days in spite of my actions, in spite of my lies and in spite of my feeble and misguided attempts to manipulate the outcome of all of this.

 

It didn’t take long for me to determine that the consequences of breaking the law outweighed any actual or perceived benefit from doing so.  It’s probably not too far from the truth that such an epiphany was reached my second night in the Shelby County jail.  I was too freaked out that first night to think about much at all. 

 

Anyway, as I said, God was faithful even during this time; time when I surely did not deserve His protection and provision.  So through the rest of this story I will introduce you to some wonderful, and, no doubt, God-sent people who entered my life just when I needed them the most.  Some are Christians—some are not.  But all were just what I needed.  Their appearance in and effect on my life can only be described as miraculous!

 

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Go on to Chapter 34….

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The Barrier Is Finally Broken Down

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion.  Blot out my transgressions.  Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.  For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.  Against you, and you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.  Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.  Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.  You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.  Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me and I will be whiter than snow.  Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.  Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.  Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.  Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.  Save me from blood guilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.  O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.  You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.  Psalm 51:1-17 (emphasis mine)

 

I wish I could report that after my forty-first birthday, deception was no longer a part of my life—I really do.  But I can’t!  I wish I could report that my deceptions from that point on served some high and lofty purpose, such as sparing someone’s feelings—something, anything, independent of the ME that had ruled my life.  But I can’t, though there was a mixture involved.

 

Having made such a mess of things, having hurt everyone I cared about—everyone who ever cared about me—so deeply, having conceived and then confessed to such a diabolical plot, I felt as though I had to do something to mitigate the damage somehow.

 

So, even with the confession written and signed—even in the face of the taped conversations and messages in which I had expressed my frustration and anger at the failure of the chemical—I changed my story.  I claimed that the confession was made to satisfy the detectives’ request that I corroborate what Wesley had already told them.  That I believed the police when they promised that it was really Wesley they were interested in and, if I would cooperate and corroborate, I would be released the morning after my arrest.  I claimed that I never actually used the chemical!  I fiercely maintained this position through the 12^th of December, 2002, when the pressure finally became too great, and I broke down to Tim Jacobsen and confessed the whole truth again.

 

Why did I do that?  Why in the light of all that had happened, did I feel the need to lie?  Partly because I didn’t want to believe I was capable of such a thing.  Partly because I wanted friends and family to think that I wasn’t capable of such a thing.  Partly because I wanted to diminish the amount of time I would have to serve in prison.  But mostly, I desperately wanted Sally to believe she was never in any real danger, that I wasn’t capable of actually carrying out the awful thing I had contemplated for those weeks and to which I had confessed, and to, hopefully, remove some of the fear which I had brought into her life and heart. 

 

 

Did it work?  I don’t believe so.  The only thing my deception accomplished was to keep me away from my God—the only One who could have helped me.  If this is ever widely read, my friends and family, and the victim and her family, will no doubt conclude that I’ll never change, or they will be hurt further by my admissions—or both!  But while I deeply regret these possible outcomes of my decision to finally tell the whole truth, I must be totally honest, transparent and accountable before my God and my Savior.

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Go on to Chapter 33…..

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August 30, 2002

So now maybe you understand what happened.  A short fourteen months before, I had been a moderately successful Real Estate Closing Attorney.  I owned my own practice, and the thirty-six hundred square foot building in which it was housed.  Five people looked to me for a semi-monthly paycheck and writing those paychecks, including my own six-figure salary, was rarely much of a stretch.  I was married with three of the best and brightest little men any dad ever had the privilege of calling sons.  The six thousand square foot house on the hill had been appraised at over six hundred thousand dollars and its seven-car garage contained new vehicles for Sally and me, along with three Harleys, as many dirt bikes, and all the other toys I could ever have dreamed of having.  The 130 acre farm was a short drive away and life was set—outwardly.

 

Do you know now what happened?

 

At the church I was a respected leader; president of the church board, former Sunday school teacher; trumpet player in the church orchestra, bass player in the praise band, and section leader in the choir.

 

But that was all gone and, while sitting in a jail cell with a very uncertain future, I broke down and wept.

·        Ellie was at home by herself—sad and afraid.

·        Sally and my boys would be finishing up their dinner and getting ready for a fun weekend after a bad week of school.  Sally would surely have all manner of activities planned to distract the boys from the reality of what I was facing.

·        My great friends, the Jacobsens, would surely be upset for a while, but life’s demands would intervene and distract.

·        My aunt, in whose home I had lived for the past ten months would feel the loneliness settle back in the house, but she could—and would—fill the void with her friends and her business.

·        My brother, caught in the no-man’s land between loyalty to me and maintaining peace in his home where his wife and Sally were the best of friends, would throw himself even more ardently into his work and would lose track of time.  His contact with me, together with any support of me, would, by necessity, disappear.

 

In short, time would continue to march on, even fly, for everyone but me.  For me, time seemed to be grinding to a halt.

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Go on to Chapter 32….

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Saturday, June 30, 2001

“The wicked man will see and be vexed.  He will gnash his teeth and waste away; the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.”  Psalm 112:10

 

“…But he frustrated the ways of the wicked.”  Psalm 146:9b

 

“My days have passed, my plans are shattered, and so are the desires of my heart.”

Job 17:11

 

So, thirteen days later, as I sat in a cell in one of the worst jails in the country, I realized several things: 

• Sally would never trust me again, and I don’t blame her. 
• My children had indeed lost a parent, but under much more painful, embarrassing and humiliating circumstances than either a death or divorce would have generated. 
• My church, while trying to remain supportive was shocked and hurt. 
• My family was torn between the love they felt for both sides and the disappointment over my actions. 
• My career was over.
• My employees had all been displaced. 
• The economics of the situation were beyond horrible. 

 

The only good thing to come out of this hideous mess I had made was that the life of deception I had led for so long was finally over.  On that, my 41^st birthday, sitting in that cell, I could start again.  No more lies.  No more secret life.  No more deceit.  No more double-mindedness.

 

God had forgiven me.  I hoped people would someday.

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Go on to Chapter 31….

The End of It

“He who is pregnant with evil and conceives trouble gives birth to disillusionment.  He who digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit he made.  The trouble he causes recoils on himself; his violence comes down on its own head.”  Psalm 7:14-16

 

That Sunday evening, like most such evenings, I was at church early for Praise Band practice when I received a call from Sally.  Not feeling well, she was planning to stay home and rest.  The boys, she said, were going to a movie with her dad.

 

On my way to Sunday school an hour later, I phoned to check on her, but got no answer.  No answer on her cell phone either.

 

I panicked!  Racing to the house, I found the garage door open, the house unlocked and her vehicle gone.  An unfamiliar phone number was written on a slip of paper lying on the kitchen counter—the same number was the last incoming call on the caller ID—right after my call!  I dialed it.  A man answered and, when questioned, indicated he had misdialed. Wrong number.

 

I was frantic; so afraid something had happened prematurely, off-script, or worse, that word had failed to make it all the way down the chain that this whole thing had been called off.

 

Intending to go to the theater to find my children, praying that she had decided to go with them, I hurried up the street.  That’s when I noticed my father-in-law’s vehicle in the driveway of one of my neighbors.  I knew these neighbors, but was unaware that he did.  I stopped in.  There was no show down; no stand off; nothing that sensational.

 

Wesley, despite all his boasting and sinister assurances (they were surely all part of his original plan) never intended to harm anyone.  Money was the sole motivation.  When he discovered I was through; that the flow of money had stopped; he attempted to collect from a Crime Stoppers tip and turned over the voice-mail messages and a detailed statement to the police.  Even his attempt to lure me out of church that morning to “identify Sally’s vehicle” was a ploy—the police were waiting for me then.

 

Sally and I were sitting outside on our friend’s patio talking.  I was so relieved that she was there and unharmed.  She was nervous, on edge, since she knew what was about to happen.

 

The boys left with her dad.  The police came and, twelve hours later, in the early hours of June 18, 2001, I was in a cell with a signed confession sitting somewhere in a police file with my name on the cover.

 

Thank God, angels were watching over my family.

 

In spite of me!

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Go on to Chapter 30…

Sunday, June 17, 2001

But to the wicked, God says:  “What right do you have to recite my laws or take my covenant on your lips?  You hate my instruction and cast my words behind you.  When you see a thief, you join him; you throw in your lot with adulterers.  You use your mouth for evil and harness your tongue for deceit.  You speak continually against your brother and slander your own mother’s son.  These things you have done, and I have kept silent; you thought I was altogether like you.  But I will rebuke you and accuse you to your face.”  Psalm 50:16-21

 

The sun came up.  It was Father’s Day.  Sally had the boys, and we met at church early.  There were cards.  We had breakfast together.  My frame of mind was even worse than you might expect it to be since it was the eve of the day of the new plan.

 

It happened during the service—during the pastor’s Father’s Day message.  I came to myself.  Like the prodigal son waking up in the pig pen, long out of touch with reality, I came to myself and took the step back from the brink.  No matter how bad the repercussions of divorce were, no matter the loss of image and what others would think, I knew I’d never be able to live with myself or ever look my children in the face again if I were the cause of their mother’s death—if I were the one responsible for taking their mother away from them.  My children needed her.  God had a purpose for her.  Who did I think I was to selfishly short-circuit that?  So I called it off!  Just in the knick of time, or so I thought. 

 

After the service, in the men’s room, Wesley said he needed me to come outside and identify Sally’s vehicle “so there won’t be any confusion”.  I declined.  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore – it’s over.”

 

The family was to eat together at the house.  On the way Wesley called.  I didn’t answer.  As I approached the house I called him back.  Voice mail: “Don’t call me again.  This is over.”

 

Over dinner the five of us discussed the following evening’s events.  We all agreed that Jon would miss his game, and we would all ride together.  Sally’s vehicle would remain in the garage.

 

It was over.  I was horrified at what I had almost done; at what I had tried to do; and I was so relieved at the same time.  I could breathe again.  I could think again for the first time in weeks.

 

But it was too late.  As I said before, nothing I did, or didn’t do, mattered.  I was done!

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Go on to Chapter 29…

Return To Sanity

“The wicked are brought down by their own wickedness.”  Proverbs 11:5b

 

“Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished…”  Proverbs 11:21a

 

Sometime during that week another meeting took place and another plan—one once rejected as too gruesome—was decided upon.

 

The following Monday evening the boys all had ball games scheduled—the twins and their team at one field, and Jon and his little team at another.  I was to end up with the guys that night which would leave Sally alone, in her vehicle, heading to an empty house.  It was supposed to be a violent car accident.  How stupid!  How did I ever convince myself that such a plan would work?  What about the other driver—another witness to testify against me?  There was the possibility of serious, debilitating injury rather than death—then what?  What if whoever got his times confused and the boys were hurt or, God forbid, killed?  What if?  What if?  So demented!  So insane!  So depraved!  I was all that and more, and I finally realized it!

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Go on to Chapter 28

Monday, June 11, 2001

“Whoever of you loves life and desires to see many good days, keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking lies.”  Psalm 34:12-13

 

“Do not grant the wicked their desires, O Lord, do not let their plans succeed or they will become proud.”  Psalm 140:8

 

By the next morning, I was worked up.  I was not just mad, I was furious!  I had paid a lot of money, forgiven a lot of debt, for something completely worthless.  How dare Wesley scam me that way!  I didn’t have any to spare, but wanted to give him a piece of my mind.  So I made the call.  No answer.  Voice mail.

 

Now I’m sure you realize that, at this point, only three beings in the universe knew about this:  Wesley, God and me.  If I had only stepped back from the brink that day, everything would be different today.  It would have been Wesley’s word against mine—no contest.  And surely God would have forgiven me, right?  But I couldn’t.  I wouldn’t.  I was possessed.  I was insane.

 

I left a message; not a benign, “call me” message; not an innocent, “sorry I missed you.”  No, I left a doosey—a full blown admission forever memorialized:  “the stuff didn’t work.  She’s alive!”

 

You’ll hear more about this later, but for now, suffice it to say that I sounded like a crazed killer.

 

I didn’t know it.  I was still walking around, going where I wanted, when I wanted, but, as I finished that message and terminated that call, my life—what was left of my old life—ended.  It would take a few more days for me to fully realize it, but from that moment on I was done.  Nothing I did mattered much at all.

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Go on to Chapter 27…

The Longest Day

“The messenger (from Joab) set out, and when he arrived he told David everything Joab had sent him to say.  The messenger said to David, ‘the men overpowered us and came out against us in the open, but we drove them back to the entrance of the city gate.  Then the archers shot arrows at your servants from the wall, and some of the King’s men died.  Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead!’  David told the messenger, ‘say this to Joab:  Don’t let this upset you.  The sword devours one as well as another.  Press the attack against the city and destroy it. Say this to encourage Joab.’” II Samuel 11:22-25

 

It was the longest day of my life to that point.  Every second was a year; every minute a lifetime.  I sat with her through church waiting for her to collapse and praying she wouldn’t.  To and from the campground I must have seemed strange, as I waited for some sign, dreading the moment, steeling myself for the aftermath.

 

But, as I said, everything was perfect.  There was no effect.  God had protected her.  We all arrived home.  I was at once relieved, confused, frustrated and inwardly devoid of life.  What the chemical had failed to do to her physically, it accomplished in my soul.

 

I felt dead.  I was dead.  Spiritually, emotionally, in every possible way, I was empty and dead.  I had crossed a line.  I was beyond hope.

 

I was so far gone that I couldn’t even appreciate the reprieve I had received.  The web in which I was caught further constricted, and the downward spiral accelerated even more.

 

I was lost and desperate, which may explain the phone call I made the next day. 

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Go on to Chapter 26…

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Sunday, June 10, 2001

“In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah.  In it he wrote, ‘put Uriah in the front line where the fighting is the fiercest.  Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die!’  So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were.  When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David’s army fell;  moreoever, Uriah the Hittite died.”  II Samuel 11:14-17.

 

The kids were at the house, not at the apartment, not with me.  The church praise team, of which I was a member, was to travel to and play for the closing services of camp meeting.  Since we were to leave right after church for the campground, it just made sense to ride to church together.

 

Of course, this facilitated The Plan too.  At no time through that day would Sally be alone, driving with the boys, after ingesting the poison.

 

Everything was perfect, and as I write this five years later, I’ve come to realize and to thank God that everything was, indeed, perfect!  You’ll understand how that is meant in just a moment.  I had coffee.  I made tea.  I added the chemical.  And today I am horrified, absolutely disgusted with myself at how I sat and made small talk with my wife in those early Sunday morning hours as she consumed a substance I believed would kill her.

 

How did I get there?  How could I have done that?  I still look back on that morning completely mortified that I was so depraved that I was able to do that!

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Go on to Chapter 25…

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Thursday, June 7, 2001

“There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to Him….a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil”  Proverbs 6:16,18.

 

It was late.  I don’t remember where the kids were.  It was my week to have them so they must have been with me at the apartment.  And as messed up as I was mentally, emotionally and spiritually, I very possibly could have left them sleeping, although I don’t believe, even in that state, I would have done that.  School was out so maybe they were at their grandparents’ house.

 

In any event, it was late; after dark on that late spring evening.  And Wesley called.  He had it and wanted to meet.  So we met.  At 11:00 p.m. that Thursday night I met him in a parking lot just off the interstate and took delivery of a small vial of clear liquid.  No markings were present, only the rubber stopper which appeared to be of a medical nature.

 

There was no satisfaction, no relief, no excitement.  I wasn’t even nervous.  It was just a fact—I had it.

 

Now What?

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Go on to Chapter 24…

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Monday, June 4, 2001

“Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man?  Why do you boast all day long?  You who are a disgrace in the eyes of God?  Your tongue plots destruction; it is like a sharpened razor, you who practice deceit.  You love evil rather than good, falsehood, rather than speaking the truth.  You love every harmful word, O you deceitful tongue!  Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin.  He will snatch you up and tear you from your tent.  He will uproot you from the land of the living.  The righteous will see and fear.  They will laugh at Him saying ‘Here now is the man who did not make God his stronghold, but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!’”

Psalm 52: 1-7

 

The exact time of day is unclear and irrelevant, but the meeting took place and Wesley laid out the new plan.

 

There was a colorless, odorless chemical, which once ingested, would act to stop the heart within a couple of hours.  Fool proof, trauma free, undetectable….perfect!  Sounds like something “Q” would give to James Bond or that Tom Clancy would write into a novel, but in real life?  Ridiculous!  However, I was acting so far outside normal parameters and so far below my intelligence and experience, I swallowed the bait and asked him to get this magic liquid for me.   

 

More money was required, of course, but with the prospect of there being an end to all this hell, money didn’t matter.

 

Neither did the three-day delivery period.

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Go on to Chapter 23…

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Sunday, June 3, 2001

“An oracle is within my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked:  There is no fear of the Lord before his eyes. For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his own sin.  The words of his mouth are wicked and deceitful.  He has ceased to be wise and do good.  Even on his bed, he plots evil; he commits himself to a sinful course and does not reject what is wrong.”  (Psalm 36:1-4)

 

It was Sally’s week to have the kids.  I would have them with me starting the following evening.  On my way to church that morning I stopped by the house, dropped off a few more things—again, to promote the idea that I was moving home, and made Sally a cup of tea, which she drank as I sipped the coffee I had brought.  It wasn’t all a farce.  I remember thinking as I sat there in the early, quiet moments of the day, that I really didn’t want to throw all of that away.  I wanted to keep my promise of New Year’s eve.  I wanted to preserve the family and protect the kids.  I wanted to do the right thing for the right reason.  But, while those thoughts were not uncommon during those weeks, they never lasted very long.  I could not let go of “the Plan”—the idea that sprang to life the day Wesley made that awful offer.  As stupid as it was, with all the cop shows I’d seen and all the detective novels I had read, with the knowledge that the husband was always the prime suspect, I just couldn’t shake it off.  The lure of the possibilities, the “positive” side of the equation, if you could even label them that way, was too strong.  The idea was there, the seed planted and Satan had his hook set.

 

Wesley was both resourceful and unrelenting.  He picked up on the fact that my main problem with all he had suggested to that point was the way the scene would look after the fact; the trauma which would be captured and seen by the boys either then or at  some point in the future.

 

I now realize how ludicrous it seems to worry about that and yet be so unconcerned with the impact that the permanent removal of their mother would have on their young lives, but that’s the way sin works—that’s the nature of self.  That day the thoughts—the good thoughts—lasted through morning worship.  On the way to the apartment that early June afternoon, Wesley called.  He had an idea.  We decided to meet the next day!

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Go on to Chapter 22…

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The Fateful Day

“….The advice of the wicked is deceitful.”  (Proverbs 12:5b)

 “The Lord examines the righteous.  But the wicked and those who love violence His soul hates.”  (Psalm 11:5)

 The day dawned like any other.  I don’t remember the specific date, but May would soon be over and the pressure was mounting.  The first week of June was just around the corner, and I was expected to discuss divorce with Sally.  And, with each passing day, the stress over losing my perfect image, my standing in the church and community, my place in the family as the ideal husband, the perfect father and the wonderful son was increasing.  Something had to give, and little did I know as I drove to work that day, that that very day I would cross yet another and much more horrifying threshold.

 Wesley actually called in advance this time and asked to see me.  Another sob story—he had lost his job and wanted to see if I had any contacts in the construction industry where he could obtain employment.  I made a couple of calls and got him an interview.

 Then he told me it had always been a dream of his to open and run his own self-defense school, and would I be interested in investing in him to get a venture like that off the ground.  You see where this is headed.  I told him I would consider it.  After all, I would be helping my fellow man and giving my bruised conscience a much-needed salve.

 Business being concluded, the conversation turned again to his personal life, but I had no more absolution to give.  My hypocrisy had reached its limit, and I began to spill a little of what I had been dealing with in an effort to convey the fact that, regardless of appearances or what I functioned as at church, I wasn’t perfect and was, in fact, dealing with some of the very things with which he was struggling—just to let him know he wasn’t the only one having problems.  

 I explained I was separated from Sally, that I was feeling hopeless and helpless about the relationship, but that I didn’t want my children to have to live like I had for so long, torn at the holidays, loyalties divided between parents.  I told him, as I had already told my pastor and my counselor, that I wished God would take one of us out of the world so this whole mess that my life had become could finally be over.  It was a serious conversation.  I was weeping, and strictly to lighten the mood a little, I said the dumbest thing, “Do you know a hit man?”  I laughed.  He didn’t!  With dead eyes and a straight face, he told me he had been in that business.  “I can take care of that if you want me to.”

 Emotionally numbed by the CELEXA, desperate for a third option besides reconciliation—equating to the loss of Ellie—and divorce with the resultant loss of image, this one statement seemed to open a door leading to the best of both worlds.  There was no visual response—no repulsion as a result of the comment, but my mind started reeling as I imagined life after he “took care of it.”

 Sally would be in heaven.  After all, she was and, thank the Lord, still is one of the most godly women I know.  The boys wouldn’t have divorced parents and all the baggage that it brings with it.  My church would still be my church, and it went on and on.  So I started down that road.  He was full of scenarios, and the fact that the boys spent their nights with me every other week completely eliminated the possibility of their being directly involved.

 He described a fatal car-jacking, a home invasion, an automobile accident.  One after another, events and results were described in detail, and each time, despite my insanity—for that is what it was—insanity, I would picture the scene after the fact, her lifeless body lying broken in the aftermath of my scheme, and I could not do it.  Every idea—every possibility—rejected.  However, I was desperate.  Wesley was desperate.  I wanted some peace—some resolution to the situation.  Wesley wanted relief from his debt.  So neither of us would let it drop.  For reasons, personal and precious, to both of us, we kept working on a plan.

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Go on to Chapter 21…

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Helping the Wicked

 “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the Lord?  Because of this the wrath of the Lord is upon you.”  (2 Chronicles 19:2)

 “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.”  (Psalms 1:1)

     During my years at Olivet, I was blessed to meet and develop a friendship with Brent Patterson.  As a fellow member of the Orpheus Choir bass section, we were thrown together in a wide variety of circumstances—both socially and spiritually—and a bond was forged.  But as with far too many such relationships, time and distance interrupted, and by the time the new millennium dawned, I had not even thought about Brent for years.
     Early in 2001, Brent did return to my mind when his cousin, Wesley Patterson, moved to Memphis and began attending my church.  I had not met Wesley during the college years and even his cousin, Brent, had considered him to be a nere-do-well—the family’s honorary black sheep.  He arrived in town, knowing no one but an aunt with whom he maintained a tenuous relationship, and me.  He brought an ex-wife, with whom he was again cohabitating, and her son along for the ride.  To say the least this was not the best of living arrangements for any involved.
     Either life was extremely tumultuous for him, and he was beginning to feel the strain, or he had quickly identified me as an easy mark—or both—because for which ever reason, he began to visit me at work, usually unannounced.  The meetings typically followed the same format.  He knew about me, the positions I held and my status at church, but he didn’t know me, so our conversations always took a quasi-confessional tone.  The topics of our discussions included guilt over his divorce, regrets about his life-style, remorse for past acts, worry about the impact all these factors, in general, and living with his ex-wife again out of wedlock, in particular, were having on her son.
     I would sit there, trying to be sympathetic, while attempting to hide the agony I felt about my own life and deceptions.  I would offer advice, make assurances of my prayer support while being overwhelmed by my hypocrisy, and right from the start, the meetings would end with a request for a small loan.  I couldn’t refuse.  I had plenty—or at least to him I appeared to have plenty.  Not only that, but to refuse would only exacerbate my feelings of despair and guilt.  How could I sit there and listen to this man pour out his heart to me while I lived like hell?  “Well”, I rationalized, “how could my father preach while intoxicated?”  Really all that mattered was that someone received help, right?  So I would give him the money and wait for the next visit.  By the time April was over that year, he owed me just over a thousand dollars for a trip up north to a family funeral, a return trip to settle the estate; little things; little amounts; always swearing to repay.
     Mid-May came, and with it another meeting.  Since no attempt had been made to repay the existing debt, I expected to hear another sob story and another request for an extension.  I got the sob story, but instead of an extension, the request was for an additional five thousand dollars.  It seems he was having trouble with the IRS, Ford Motor Credit was about to repossess his truck, and his live-in ex-wife was insisting that he move out “for the sake of the kid.”
     Now, the thousand he owed me wasn’t enough to bother me, but five times that was serious.  I’ve already laid out my financial situation so you will understand why this request made me swallow hard a couple of times.  But, I had an image to uphold, and I had a little stash of cash at the office.  Not a lot—ten or fifteen thousand—rainy day money in case I couldn’t make payroll one month.  And, by the way, to say it was “cash” conjures up a lot of bad connotations.  This money was in a bank account—nothing shady was going on.
     Anyway, I had this money, and this image and a serious lack of trust in the heretofore employed handshake repayment plan. So I gave him three checks: one to the IRS, one payable to Ford Motor Credit, and a small one to him to cover the deposit on an apartment.  He signed a promissory note for the aggregate–$6,000.

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Go on to Chapter 20…

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Double-Mindedness Revisited

     But a double-minded man is truly unstable.  By the end of the first week of January, all my well-intentioned New Year’s promises to God and my children were broken.  I knew I had to get out of my marriage.  Serious contemplation was given to the when and the how of the thing.
     My youngest son was part of Sally’s class for his second grade year.  Before I moved out the previous August, Sally had asked, if I ever came to the place where divorce was the solution I chose, that I wait until the school year was over–a reasonable and understandable request.  She didn’t want to look at our son everyday, having to function and deal with the emotional trauma divorce always brings.  So I began planning on the first week in June.
     The intervening months would take me down yet another horrible and unthinkable path.  My idea, that things couldn’t possibly get any worse, was about to be shattered.  Things were about to get much worse.

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Go on to Chapter 19…

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Another Promise

 “I shook out the folds of my robe and said, ‘In this way may God shake out of His house and possessions every man who does not keep this promise.  So may such a man be shaken out and emptied.’ “   (Nehemiah 5:13a) 

      Each year on New Year’s Eve, the church held a prayer service.  It was loosely organized and well designed for families to break away from their secular celebrations and include God in the crossover to a new year.  Like every other year, we were there in all our dysfunctionality.
     While kneeling there, in the quiet of God’s house, with my precious sons around me, feeling the weight of the Holy Spirit’s convicting presence, I knew the deception—the double life—had to end.  I made that promise to God.  What happened next remains a clear picture in my mind after all this time.  I pulled my three little boys into a back room.  On my knees in front of them, weeping just as I am now while writing this, I promised them that I would not break up our family and that everything would be all right.

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Go on to Chapter 18…

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No Rest

 “But the wicked are like the tossing sea, which cannot rest, whose waves cast up mire and mud.  ‘There is no peace’, says my God, ‘for the wicked.’  (Isaiah 57:20-21) 

     By the time the market completed its free fall somewhere around July, huge amounts of unsecured, or under-secured, debt loomed, stocks were sold at bargain-basement prices to cover the daily margin calls, and business was off due to the depressed economy.  Most damaging, however, was the simple fact that I just didn’t care anymore.  The misery of my situation—my duplicity—was an all consuming burden.  And to top it all off, Ellie was tired of waiting for me, tired of sneaking around, and displeased with the secrecy I demanded.  So she retreated and began dating.  Jealousy consumed me—possessiveness overwhelmed me.  I went crazy, absolutely off the deep end.  I stopped sleeping.  I stopped eating.  Functioning on even the most basic level, whether at home or church or work, was out of the question.
     Sally would find me downstairs, in the middle of the night, folding the many piles of laundry scattered around the house or washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen.  I would watch movies (not pornographic ones), and do just about anything to distract myself for a while.  I was a mess!  And, to make matters worse, there was still no one with whom I could share my burden.  I couldn’t tell anyone.  I couldn’t share this load.  I felt trapped, caged, imprisoned.  I needed freedom, if only the illusion of it.  So, in August I moved out!  I rented an apartment a short distance from the house, and within walking distance of Ellie’s, and set up house.
     I still remember so vividly the night I told my sons I was moving out.  I remember the shock on their faces, and the pain and sadness in their eyes—the look of having been betrayed.  I remember tears streaming down their little faces, and the feeling that it just couldn’t get any worse.
     I was wrong!  So wrong!
     Anyway, the move to the apartment eventually led Ellie to believe that she did have a future with me, and she became emotionally attached again.  My budget, already screaming, began shrinking with a new intensity.  I bought furniture.  I bought house-wares.  I even signed up for cable.  Sally and I arranged a visitation schedule for the boys.  It was all very civilized, and I was back in my personal hell—caught between two things I really wanted, my family and my fantasy.
     Even during these months, Ellie and I had trouble.  I was still attending church with the family and carrying on all of my “spiritual” responsibilities.  To keep Sally’s suspicions assuaged, I started seeing a Christian counselor, pouring everything out to him except the real cause of my dilemma—my relationship with Ellie.  I even submitted to a complete physical examination and on the advice of my internist, began taking an antidepressant called CELEXA; something else I recommend against unless you really need it.  I didn’t—I was play acting.  I knew what my issues were, but my deception required these drastic measures to maintain my façade—cracked and crumbling as it was.
     All of this activity, which was impossible to hide from Ellie, made her fearful that I would continue our cycle, regret my decision to move out and return to my family.  This fear and uncertainty caused her to continue exploring her options, which she, in turn, could not hide from me.  This only served to enhance my jealousy and possessiveness.
      And yet another cycle was born—a wheel within a wheel.

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Go on to Chapter 17…

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My Treasure

 “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of Godliness, but denying its power.  Have nothing to do with them.”  (2 Timothy 3:25) 
 

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  (Matthew 6:21)

 

     The storm with which the world concerned itself through the fall and winter of 1999–the whole Y2K fiasco–fizzled out.  It turned out to be nothing more than a bit of increased profits on the various software vendors’ bottom lines.
     But as winter gave way to spring, my personal tsunami was cresting, and all with which I felt so secure.  The foundation upon which I had built my life was about to be swept away.
     One of the things of which I was so proud was my stock portfolio.  Through what I believed to be my exceptional abilities, coupled with some very fortunate timing, I had transformed between thirty and forty thousand real dollars into a collection of various publicly-traded stocks valued at over 1.3 million dollars.
     “How did you manage that?”, you ask.  By being overly confident and taking much more risk than I ever should have.  I was margin trading which, in my opinion, is a virulent form of legalized gambling.  I strongly recommend against it, no matter who you are, how wealthy you are, or how market-wise you think you are.  No deal is ever “sure” enough to assume that risk.  It is deceptive (there’s that word again), and it takes no time at all to dig a cavernous pit for yourself.  When the tsunamis of life crash in—and they do crash in—everything is lost in an instant.
     Until April, 2000, I never understood the psychological process involved with suicide.  After all, it was only money, right?  But that year, in that month, with all the other stressors I had bombarding me from all sides, the “correction” that hit the stock market made me understand.
     If you will recall, in April of 2000 the market started a slow, but steady decline, punctuated by huge single-day drops.  It was like being in an airliner, descending through the clouds and hitting multiple air pockets that cause the big craft to drop hundreds of feet at once.  Your stomach stays in your throat while your fingers burrow into the armrests.
     Early on, and while I still had margin credit available, I actually continued to make purchases after these large drops, confident that the market would only sag so far before investors would step back in.  After all, these were safeguards built into the market!
     However, it kept sagging.  I kept hitting those air pockets.  Through the spring and summer, while the Dow was only slightly affected by this correction, the NASDAQ, where most of my investments resided, dropped from a high of over 5000 to around the 1200 mark.
     Needless to say, these days brought on a dramatic change in my psyche.  With the market in such turmoil, no one was closing any real estate.  My relationship with Sally was in serious trouble; and needing something, just anything on which to focus my energies, I spent money; or more accurately stated, incurred debt.  Tractors, SeeDoos, motorcycles, ATVs, oriental rugs, furniture, in-ground sprinkler systems and finally, a huge addition to the house, all unnecessary expenditures.  However, I bought them to serve as distractions from my compromised morals, my crumbling marriage and my despair and guilt.

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Go on to Chapter 16…

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My Pride

 “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”  Proverbs 16.18

 “Do not be wise in your own eyes…” (Proverbs 3:7a)

 “This is what the Lord says:  ‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches.’ ” (Jeremiah 9:23)

     1999 came and with it a new office—bigger and better—built to my specifications, thirty-six hundred square feet of space on the main boulevard in Bartlett, accompanied by yet another load of debt.  But it was alright.  I had made some very shrewd investments and felt pretty good about things.  The house was refinanced at a ridiculously low interest rate.  The payments on the farm dropped on their own.  The stock portfolio topped the million-dollar mark, and I was meeting with investment advisors to figure out how to best accelerate my financial growth.  I was determined to retire at 45 and enjoy the good life.
     You would think I would have been happy.  Much to the contrary!!  Nothing had changed.  I felt guilty at home, guilty at work, stressed over either too much business for the staff to handle, or too little business to pay the salaries.  I was covered in debt, obsessed with pornography, and you can imagine how I felt when I was at church sometimes four times each week.  Misery doesn’t even begin to describe it.  And, just when I thought nothing could get worse, we crossed over into the year 2000.

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Go on to Chapter 15…

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When Kings Go Off To War

“In the spring, at the time when Kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the King’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.

“One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, ‘Isn’t this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, and the wife of Uriah, the Hittite? Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to Him, and He slept with her. Then she went back home.” (2nd Samuel 11:1-4)

     She had been working for me for almost two years, but on that day I saw her in a different light. She was petite, cute, funny, hyper-organized and detail-oriented. These were all qualities that made her a good employee and a great receptionist. She was the first one most people met upon entering our office and first impressions are important—with her there I had no worries.
     But on that day, something was different, better, more attractive. I didn’t plan it—had never given it any thought prior to that day. I was on shaky ground in every aspect of my life—like I was falling through a vast emptiness; adrift, without any anchor.
     So on that day, after everyone else had left for the day, I expressed my attraction to her. She was shocked. She was married. She was the mother of two. She didn’t do anything to initiate it. She gently refused my advances, but I wouldn’t leave her alone. There was emotional distance, even abuse, in her home. We shared a common emotional detachment and a deep feeling of emptiness.
     I pursued; she relented; and we started down a slippery slope. Naturally, any romance left at home died immediately.
     On Labor Day, Sally and I attended a concert in an outdoor amphitheater; beautiful night, wonderful music—I was miserable! I knew that night that my marriage was over. But I tried desperately to keep up appearances.
     Sally suspected something—could obviously sense my emotional withdrawal, but, whenever the subject came up, I vehemently denied any outside interests and asserted that the problem was stress and it would pass.
     It didn’t pass. I was in another cycle. The woman at work and I both knew it was wrong and had constant discussions about how we simply could not continue. One or both of us would start feeling guilty and end it, feeling relieved. I would always covenant to pour myself in my marriage only to become frustrated, return and plead to be let back into the adulterous relationship.
     This went on for four years! I was playing all sides against the middle, and the middle was coming apart. And on top of it all, the pornography addiction raged on.
     One day during this period I made a horrifying discovery—each Internet site I visited left a footprint called a “cookie” or a temporary Internet file, buried in the Windows subdirectory on the computer’s hard drive. Since I was constantly visiting adult sites, my computer was full of these footprints—this evidence. I panicked. I cleaned out this subdirectory, chastised myself for thinking this activity was never going to catch up with me and vowed never to access those sites again.
     You already know where this is going. The vow went the way of all my other vows—in fact, it didn’t last 24 hours. All this did was create something else about which to be anxious. As network problems would arise, and along with them, the need for outside technical support, I would stand by—paranoid—ready with an “explanation” or a hopefully convincing look of confusion and disgust in the event one of these cookies or files would surface unexpectedly. I was in hell, but could not stop.

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Go on to Chapter 14…

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Guard Your Heart

     Things moved to another level in 1997. Financial success had eliminated my dependence on God, and I was worshipping things.
     In 1994, the office relocated back to Bartlett and into a small building I was able to purchase. The staff expanded to ten, and business life was great. A blessing which I felt I had achieved and, consequently, took for granted.
     Sally was still at home with the boys–a mutual decision– and was a good mother. Since money wasn’t a concern, we both felt our children deserved to reap the benefit of a full time parent rather than the day-care alternative. And now, twelve years later, I can honestly say it was worth it. William, Andrew and Isaac are the best sons a father could ever hope for–smart, articulate, quick-witted and gifted in so many ways. I attribute the bulk of their success to their mother. But despite all of her prowess as a mother, Sally was not the woman I had married. Difficult pregnancies had taken their toll and had left her less appealing physically than when we were first wed. I am ashamed to admit this for it should have nothing to do with upholding one’s wedding vows but, during those years, with my addiction raging and physical appearance being so important, she simply didn’t measure up anymore. As I mentioned, she was a great mother, always had wonderful meals planned and was devout in her faith, but while all that was important to me, it wasn’t enough.
     Gym memberships were purchased and rarely used. Exercise equipment of varying description and expense sat idle around the house. And every time I would go into or clean out her vehicle, I discovered a collection of wrappers from various food items. It just didn’t seem to matter to her. Other things—minor things—became irritants, as well. They were little daily issues—part of any married couple’s life—but I had built too big a structure on a foundation that was too small and unstable, so these little things started the whole structure swaying. Piles of unfolded laundry were always in multiple locations around the house. Television remotes and cordless phones were never to be found. I would call home before leaving work to see if she needed anything–she rarely mentioned anything–only to arrive home to find no milk in the house, or the absence of some other staple. I lost track of how many times I would run into her closet door while passing through our bedroom in the dark—it was always hanging open. Petty, little, minor things; too small to do any harm.
     Growing up I never heard my mom or my father raise their voice in anger toward the other. Never! I guess I unconsciously internalized that and, consequently, never raised my voice to Sally. We would have conversations about things. I would bring up these little irritants in a somewhat joking or lighthearted manner. But there was never any change.
     Later, during a joint counseling session, while discussing these very things, she recounted an incident from early in our marriage—one that I had completely forgotten. Evidently, I had developed a habit over the years of removing my undershirts so they were inside out when I put them in the hamper. She made a comment one day of how it would really help her if I would leave them right side out. She told the counselor that from that day on I changed the way I removed the shirts so they would, in fact, be right side out.
     Looking back from my perspective now, I know I should have handled the situations differently. I should have explained to Sally how I was feeling about things, but instead I suppressed my anger over these irritants. I stuffed it down inside until there just wasn’t any room to stuff any more.
     It wasn’t until that moment, sitting across from that counselor, that I realized what all these little things had done. Sally’s failure to pick up on my subtle hints and comments, continuing with unchanged behavior after numerous incidents and efforts to gently effect change, had made me feel that I was unimportant to her; that my opinions and desires just didn’t matter. I was left with a gapping emotional void; an emptiness waiting to be filled.

 On July 22, 1997, I filled that void!

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Go on to Chapter 13…

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The Internet

 “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the well-spring of life.”  Proverbs 4:23”

 “The eye is the lamp of the body.  If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”  Matthew 6:23-24

 “Turn my eyes away from worthless things….”  Psalm 119:37

      I’d like to stop the narrative here and preach for just a bit.  I’m a firm believer in and a staunch proponent of the benefits of the internet.  I, and millions of others, have used the internet in the way I believe it was intended—the sharing of vast amounts of information with which to work and live more effectively, productively and healthy.  I have researched products, read the latest news on health and money management, conducted business and banking, invested money, tracked weather changes and communicated with friends and family.  And, if you have moved with the rest of society into the 21^st century, so have all of you.  One of my greatest joys recently was the ability to listen to audio streams of sermons to which I would not have had access otherwise.  But, for all its benefits, just like many other inventions originally meant for good, man has perverted this valuable tool.
     My discovering the internet with its easy and anonymous access to the mushrooming pornography industry sent me over the edge.  It was the effective equivalent of an alcoholic working in the brewery, or the pill addict working in the doctor’s office.  I couldn’t not look!  It was so easy.  No more purchases made at the risk of discovery; no more magazines hidden around just begging to be found; and nothing of substance to dispose of during those recurring guilt phases.  Surf, find, save and view.  Wow!  What could be easier?  Nothing!  And that was the problem.
     If you are reading this and have children, especially pre-adolescent boys, obtain one of the many content filters available on the market.  And use it!  If you suffer from this addiction, as I do, there are accountability services available, run by Christian organizations.  Knowing your internet use is being monitored is not a fail-safe cure-all by any means, but it is an effective deterrent.  And regardless of who you are, if you think you’re standing above all this, take heed lest you fall!  Satan prowls around like a roaming lion.  Think about that for a minute.  Does a lion stalking his prey announce himself with a roar?  No!  Not a sound is made until after the prey is disabled.  The fact that Satan is roaring now indicates his belief that we are already his—that we are helpless.  The audacity!  Greater is He who is in you!  But we must guard our eyes!  We must guard our minds!  We must guard our hearts!

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Go on to Chapter 12…

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The War Within

 “I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do.  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.  As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.  I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature, for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is the sin living in me that does it.  So I find this law at work:  when I want to do good, evil is right there with me, for in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work in my members.  What a wretched man I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  Romans 7:15-24

 

     The next two years were an unbelievable ride.  Interest rates bottomed out at thirty-year lows.  The mortgage market feasted on the rush of consumers to lower their rates and take “cheap” cash out of their homes.  And I rode the crest of the wave.  Work multiplied.  My staff increased from one to five and the office moved into a larger suite.
     Suddenly, paying the mortgage wasn’t the focus of every waking thought.  I felt in control again.  And most importantly, our third son was born, a true and for certain blessing from God.
     But the addiction was still there.  Even with the hand of God so evident in my life, just like my father before me, the addiction raged.  I always had pornography around of some type or description.  As my experience with computers increased, I found I could more easily hide my material by scanning the images and storing them in password-protected subfolders where only I could find and access them.  I went through time-consuming and elaborate steps to scan, store and bury these images, but the cycle continued.  Hours were spent engaged in this process, only to delete it all when the guilt phase ensued.  I didn’t want it in my life, but I couldn’t seem to resist the impulse.  There were times when I would stand for fifteen minutes at a time staring at the scrambled images on the television screen hoping the picture would clear long enough for me to glimpse a little nudity.
     Many times I would sneak downstairs in the middle of the night to rent adult pay-per-view movies while the family was asleep upstairs.  Of course, to cover my tracks, the cable bill had to be re-routed to the office.
     One night in particular I had ordered a movie and set the VCR to record it through the night.  Uncharacteristically, Sally woke up before me the next morning and found the tape.  Have I mentioned that deception defined my existence?  It did.  And I lied my way out of it—yet another chink in the armor of trust.  That armor was pretty beat up, but would take many more poundings before finally disintegrating altogether.

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Go on to Chapter 11….

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They Meant It For Evil

 “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done…”  Genesis 50:20 

 

      The ensuing month was spent working through two processes.
     Gradually I got used to the idea of being the father in a single income home.  I still didn’t have it all figured out (which in and of itself nagged at me given the fact that I freely admit I’m a control freak at heart), but at least I was sleeping through the night again.
     The other was the realization that things at work were not going well.  The relationship, or talk thereof, with my boss/partner wasn’t going to improve.  I was miserable and began to speak with some other firms in the area to find a place to land once I came to the point of leaving.
     I don’t remember the exact details of it, but on Friday, July 13, 1990, (and no, I’m not superstitious) the proverbial camel’s back broke.  That weekend was spent anxiously contemplating resignation, and, come Monday, that’s exactly what I did.
     At the meeting, brief as it was, my now former boss informed me that he did not want the branch office or the assistant who was working there.  And, since I had signed the $1300 per month lease with him, as well as the twenty-five thousand dollar line of credit, he wanted—no demanded—indemnification from his liability for that office.  All my thoughts of working for another firm were instantly annihilated.  I was stuck with rent, an equipment loan payment and a salary for my assistant, all before I took home a dime.
     I was overwhelmed!
     I met Sally at 2:00 p.m. to hold her hand through her first ultrasound.  It’s a good story, and I could expand on the details ad nauseam, but the relevant point for the topic at hand is that at 2:00 o’clock, I showed up to see the first images of my first baby, and when I left an hour later, it was with images showing two.
     Yeah, it was twins!
     So let’s review:  just sixteen days past my thirtieth birthday, head of a no-income household (actually, Sally continued to work through Thanksgiving, but I wasn’t thinking about that at that particular moment), professional and personal debt that would choke a whole herd of horses, and twins on the way.
     Did I mention before that I was overwhelmed?  Yeah, well……
     But God blessed.  Remember, this is part of the good years!
     He blessed with Sally’s paycheck and insurance—the paycheck through November, and the insurance through May of the next year.
     He blessed with two fine sons, born seven weeks prematurely and from a pregnancy which threatened Sally’s life near the end.  But the boys and Sally all made it home, the twins after a brief stay in the neonatal intensive care unit, and all was well.
     He took care of an eighty thousand dollar hospital bill—my out-of-pocket expense was one hundred dollars.
     He blessed with money from unexpected sources arriving just at the moment of need.
     He blessed with real estate closings from sources I could have never imagined.
     He blessed with a shining example of Genesis 50:20 that is worth the telling for the glory it will bring Him.
     Part of my deal (my employment contract) with my former boss was a strictly worded agreement not to compete with him should I ever leave his employ.  Nor could I practice within five miles of the city limits of Bartlett, a small bedroom community on the outskirts of Memphis where his office was located, for a period of two years.
     The office I “inherited” was beyond the five mile limit, and even though I didn’t know how I would survive and build a practice without contacting those with whom I had interacted during the years I worked for him, I was very careful not to.
     As I said, God blessed me with work from unexpected directions, and my former boss’ neurosis played into that.  He was just egocentric enough to believe my continued survival must be due to my violation of our agreement.  He thought surely the work I was getting was really intended for him.  So he issued a letter that he had one office, and that I was no longer affiliated with his firm.
     He sent the letter to everyone I could not contact!
     My business took off!  And, since God’s timing is always impeccable, this happened right around Thanksgiving—just when we lost Sally’s income.  A Genesis 50:20 moment and it wouldn’t be the last.

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Go on to Chapter 10….

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The Good Years

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.  Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.  But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.”  I Timothy 6:10-11

       Everything wasn’t dark and depressing.  Although there was always a shadow lurking just off stage, there were some good years; some very good years in which God blessed in spite of everything.
     By the fall of 1985, I had graduated from law school, passed the bar exam, obtained employment with a local real estate attorney, purchased a small house and a new car, and met the woman I would marry.
     Our first date was on January 3, 1986, and, from there on, it was a whirlwind.  I truly felt that since I had met my life’s companion, the addiction with which I had struggled for over thirteen years would finally be broken.
     After dating for just over six months, on July 12, 1986, Sally and I were married at our church in Memphis, and so began the five or six good years.
     We bought a dog—the cutest little Keeshond puppy we had ever seen.  When she started to get harassed by the neighborhood children, we bought her a guardian—a big black lab who, as it turned out, wasn’t much of a guardian.   
     With our two incomes, attorney and teacher, we began acquiring things; new cars, furniture, china, investments, and finally a lot in one of the premier subdivisions in the area.  We were thrilled.  The debt load would be huge, but the house would be designed by us, built for us and would be our forever home.  So what did a little (or a lot) of debt matter?  The old saying is “if you spread it out for enough years, you can afford anything.”
     So we jumped in with both feet, and in the fall of 1989, we moved from our little twelve hundred square foot cottage into the forty-four hundred square foot mansion.  Our “cottage full” of furniture looked pretty pathetic in the new place.  We moved ourselves and were able to fit just about everything we owned into a friend’s horse trailer for the move across town.  I still smile about that move today with Sally riding in the back of the pickup, in the rain, holding the glass top to the breakfast table.  What a scene!  I’m sure the neighbors figured the Clampetts had moved in. 
     For some time my boss and I had been talking about opening a branch office in another part of town.  In early 1990, he turned me loose to secure office space and the furniture and equipment necessary to establish our presence in the new area.  Partnership had also been in the works for a while and this new venture was to be my contribution to the enterprise.  As the new office grew and as the years passed, my share of the business would increase.  Sounded good to me!
     Spring of 1990 marked the opening of the second office.  I was thrilled, but working hard.  Trying to break into a new area and helping with the work load at the main office kept me busy.  The new office grew slowly through the spring and early summer without, strangely enough, assistance or support from my boss/partner.  Looking back over things, I probably should have seen the writing on the wall, but I was too caught up in the excitement and stress to notice his withdrawal of support.  I would notice soon enough!
     Fathers Day came around, and Sally and I bought the obligatory cards for our respective fathers.  The surprise—shock—came when I got one which was Sally’s way of telling me we were pregnant.  It was that “nervous/excited/I’m going to throw up my lunch” kind of feeling that I figure is common to all men who find themselves in that position.  Sally and I had had four good years as a couple, and it was time to start our family, but I couldn’t help looking around at the huge house—with the huge mortgage—and wonder how we were going to manage on my income.
     And, by the way, stay tuned—this isn’t the last Father’s Day that will dramatically change my life.

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The First Storm

 “….And you may be sure that your sin will find you out.”  Numbers 32:23b 

 

     My father’s addiction—the building storm referred to earlier—broke open and ravaged our lives in the fall of 1986.  My father, the preacher, the doting husband, the strict disciplinarian, the one I had always thought invincible, was an alcoholic.  It was the unveiling of a secret of half a lifetime.  A secret my parents had kept from me and my brother—from the world—for over thirty years.
     And it explained a lot.  Why my father, always quick to make a joke, failed to find humor in certain things.  Why there was such a large gap between my birth and that of my only sibling.  Why my father had stopped on the way home from the fair one night when I was nine to buy a Colt 45, only to vomit all night in the bathroom across the hall from my bedroom.
     Unknown to me, buried beneath the surface, while I had been battling my addiction, he had been caught in his own hell–his own cycle.  God knew, Papaw knew, Mom knew—no one could help him either.  Papaw kept quiet.  Mom made excuses and covered it up.  Heaven was silent.  And we moved a lot—different churches, different career paths, and different cities—until a group of doctors, specializing in Substance Abuse, sitting in a Nazarene Church, recognized, confronted and reached out to him as he tried to preach under the influence of an earthbound spirit.
     All was revealed–all the years of deception and rationalization; all the fresh starts which had failed.  Sound familiar?  It should.  And it was a revelation that, instead of scaring me into seeking help, only served to further confuse and disillusion me.
     So my father was destroyed—lost credentials; tarnished reputation, vanished influence.  Mom was done—unable to trust the man she had loved and unwilling to stay in the never ending cycle she had endured for so long.  My brother, an early teen at the time, lost his faith in everything.  And, I struggled on with my cycle.
     The divorce was expected.  The remarriages of each, in direct contradiction of all those earlier lectures regarding adultery, was not—they affected me deeply.
     So, in addition to the deep-seated and pervasive deception which defined my existence, my rationalization of it all was reinforced by my parents to the point that it seemed to take on a life of its own.

Anything could be rationalized and, consequently, justified.

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Compartmentalization

 “…He is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”  James 1:8

 

      The most terrifying part of this period was that I developed my ability to compartmentalize into a fine art.  Of course, through the years there was always the double standard—the high school years spent worshipping in the little Nazarene Church in Danville; singing and proclaiming the greatness of God with the Virginia District Impact Team; traveling and singing with the Orpheus Choir during the college days.  But Memphis saw all that and raised it to a new level.
     Riddled with guilt and shame, I was still able to divorce myself from it long enough, and to such an extent, that I would serve the congregation of my church as their Minister of Music, boldly leading praise to God, weepingly proclaiming the wondrous Savior and His ability to save and heal and deliver.  I rationalized it.  Maybe I was not where I needed to be spiritually, but I could certainly use my God-given talents to help others approach the throne.  And I did.
     And, without realizing it, I was following in my father’s footsteps.
     So I led the music.  I served on the church board.  I even had the audacity to teach a Sunday school class.  While, in another compartment, the cycle continued—the war raged.
     I knew this compartmentalization—this division of my life into separate and morally opposing components—was wrong, a weakness in my personality.  I longed for someone—anyone—in whom I could confide; someone to hold me accountable in this area of my life.  But there was no one;  no one with whom I could share this.  An admission of this magnitude would be too damaging to my image—too disappointing to too many people.  I was so caught up in what others thought of me that I absolutely refused to disclose my addiction to anyone but God.  And, as you will come to see, this overwhelming concern for my image was both inherited from my father and would be the basis for my personal crash still looming in the distance.
     In February of 1984, on Valentine’s Day, of all days, the long distance relationship with my girlfriend ended.  I was devastated.  As a result, I threw myself into school and the school scene, running with a group of fellow law students, seeking acceptance, frequenting night clubs and drinking heavily.  But, all the while, in spite of my “off-stage” activities, I continued my duties at church and appeared to be what everyone wanted me to be—the perfect churchman. There was no joy in life, only deception and the constant fear of discovery.
     During the twelve months following my breakup with my girlfriend, and before I met the woman I would eventually marry, while the struggle with pornography raged on, I began dating a divorcee’ from the church.  I was amazed at the reaction—the negative reaction—this news received at home.  Adultery was discussed openly, fervently and frequently.  I was the adulterer for dating a divorcee’.
     For a variety of reasons, not the least of which were the feelings of my parents so ardently expressed, I stopped seeing this person, but became bitter and confused, believing there was no one in the world for me.  I was twenty-five and still a virgin.  I didn’t see that as a good thing.

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Memphis, Tennessee – The Cycle Continues

“ ‘Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see Him?’  declares the Lord. ‘Do I not fill Heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.”  - Jeremiah 23:2.

 

     In the fall of 1980, during my junior year at Olivet, the family made its last move, as a family anyway, to Memphis, Tennessee.  My father left the pastorate again, re-entered the evangelistic field and used the centrally located transportation hub as a base.
     So it was Memphis to which I returned after graduation in the spring of 1982.  I arrived in this new city with a diploma, a girlfriend, an admission certificate to the law school attached to the then Memphis State University….and a secret—all the more determined to make the last fresh start.  I threw myself into church and school with a determination born of frustration and fear.  But, try as I might, the cycle continued as before.  I lived in constant fear of discovery.
     Two doors down from the University bookstore was a small shop specializing in the purchase and reselling of used LPs—music albums for those of you born after 1985.  Wandering in there one day in search of a Chicago album missing from my collection, I made the most damning of discoveries—the little shop also peddled used pornography!  Off I went again.  Large purchases were made and smuggled into my parents’ home only to be thrown away once the guilt phase of the cycle came around again.  Perfectly willing to enter the store and make purchases, I was too embarrassed and afraid to return to the store to re-sell the material.  Hundreds of dollars—money I really didn’t have to spend –disappeared in search of quick fixes for my addiction.  I was quickly becoming just as broke financially as I was morally bankrupt.

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The Cycle

 “You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell.  The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.  You destroy those who tell lies; blood thirsty and deceitful men the Lord abhors.  Not a word from their mouths can be trusted; their heart is filled with destruction.  Their throat is an open grave; with their tongue they speak deceit.  Declare them guilty, O God!  Let their intrigues be their downfall.  Banish them for their many sins, for they have rebelled against you.”  Psalm 5:4-6; 9-10. 

 

       Yet another fresh start was attempted in the fall of 1978.  After my high school days were concluded, my family moved yet again—this time to Pascagoula, Mississippi, where my father was to assume the pastorate of another church. There was a strong pull in that small Gulf Coast town.  This church had been pastored, and, for all practical purposes, built by my Papaw.  My father had been there many times over the years for revivals, and, of course, because of Papaw, our whole family was loved by the people there.
      At that time I was consumed by my own life and plans, so little thought was given as to why my father was leaving the evangelistic field again—no questions were asked and no explanations were offered.  We just moved.  Again.
      So it was from southern Mississippi that I traveled north to the little hamlet of Bourbonnais, Illinois in the fall of 1978, and began my higher education at Olivet Nazarene College.  During that first year, my fresh start seemed to hold.  I fell into college life well and was generally successful and happy.  But over the following summer, working in a shipyard in Pascagoula, I relapsed and even carried pornography back with me upon returning to Olivet in the fall of 1979.
      The cycle was relentless.  Fall back in—purchase, or even steal pornography, revel in it for a time until the images no longer excited me or until the guilt was overwhelming,  then sink into a deep depression, struggle with unbelievable conviction, cry out to God for forgiveness and discard the material.  Over and over.  Time after time.  Nothing seemed to help for very long.  Deception defined my existence.

  “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.”  Galations 5:17.

     During my years at ONC, I dated three wonderful young ladies, and, at different times, became fairly serious with each of them.  Additionally, there was also a more casual relationship with a girl from Gulfport, Mississippi that lasted during the summers and holidays of 1979 and 1980.  
     Having been fairly sheltered during my high school years and as a result of both an extremely strict home life and a collection of fairly tame—or boring—friends, I arrived at Olivet a virgin.  I felt dirty and soiled in my soul, but I had never had sex with a woman.  
     So, it was more than a little frustrating when, as much as sex was on my mind, I found I was unable to function during the numerous opportunities that presented themselves during those years.  All this time later I firmly believe it was because of my addiction and the resultant fantasy life that caused reality to pale.  This one aspect of the whole situation was not entirely bad—it more than likely spared me a multitude of other problems and heartaches, but the impotence was real, and it was troubling.
     The fall of 1981—my senior year—found me absolutely head over heels in love. Dating through the fall, meeting her family and traveling to see them, and the ease with which we communicated all conspired to convince me that she was the one—THE one!  After all, here I was a senior and aren’t you supposed to marry someone you meet at a Christian school?
     But the fact that she was wonderful, that I loved her and wanted her as my life’s companion, did nothing to diminish my hunger for pornography, nor was I able to complete the act of intercourse with her.  When I wasn’t in the throes of passion, I would thank God for not allowing it to happen, and I truly believed God was “saving” me for marriage.
     But, all the time, the cycle continued.    

 

 

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The Beginning

 “The wicked….. His mouth is full of deceit and fraud; under his tongue is mischief and vanity.”  Psalm 10:4-7.

       I turned thirteen in the summer of 1973.  My family was living in Jackson, Mississippi, where my father pastored the First Church of the Nazarene.  This was when it all started.
     Before this time there are very few memories.  My early childhood and the days of transitioning into adolescence were probably happy ones, but I simply do not remember.
     Born in Nashville, Tennessee, to wonderful and loving parents, I was cared for, doted on by maternal grandparents, provided for, protected and taught the ways of God and the church.
     I have early memories—vague ones—and probably more from the repeated retelling than the living of them of visiting grandparents and other relatives, of fishing with my Papaw, my mom’s dad, of visiting the farm of Papaw’s sister, Aunt Hazel, and trapsing through the woods behind the house to fish in the small ponds that dotted the acreage.
     But, by and large, the years prior to the summer of 1973 are empty and hollow—a void.  
     And I lament over this.  Friends reminisce about their childhoods, and it saddens me greatly to realize that, now that my father is getting older and mom is advancing through the early stages of Alzheimer Disease, I have lost that part—that very precious part—of my life forever.
     At the end of our street there in Jackson, just outside the entrance to our subdivision, was a shopping center—not a mall—those didn’t come into fashion until later—but a strip center housing, among several smaller stores, a Jitney Jungle grocery store, and more importantly, a Woolworth’s which sold the sunflower seeds, on which I am still hooked, and the long strings of green apple bubble gum. 
     Those were the good old days, as I remember them.  Days filled with bike riding, collecting Coke bottles (they would still pay you for returns at the Jitney Jungle), playing baseball and water skiing with the family at the nearby reservoir.  My brother, Will, was just a little guy toddling around, cute as a bug, and unable to properly pronounce any word that started with the letter “F” (frog came out Pog.  Even the refrigerator couldn’t find its “F”).
     But even then, in those “happy days”, there were dark clouds brewing; the foretelling of a storm that wouldn’t hit for another ten years; a storm which would be both devastatingly painful and the birth of a hope.  That will all become clearer later on.
     Across the intersection from the shopping center was a convenience store.  I don’t remember how often I had visited that store before that day; it was certainly a lot, given its proximity to our house, but I know I frequented the place after that day, and for one very specific reason.
     Behind the counter where the register sat was a rack of adult magazines.  Ordinarily there was a piece of cardboard covering each brand, shielding the covers from both under-age patrons and those who might find them offensive.  On that certain day that summer, while standing in line with my purchases, I looked up to discover the cardboard censor missing from the stack of Playboys.  I was able to see the cover of that month’s offering from the Playboy Mansion—it was sitting there in clear view.  It was a picture of a woman’s torso, waist to neck, clad only in a zip-up red top, unzipped to her navel and exposing as much of her breasts as possible and still avoid too much of a frown from the watchdogs—remember this was 1973 and things have changed quite a lot.  You can see much worse than that on network TV every evening now.
     Tame as it was by today’s standards, it made an impression on me.  No, that’s a gross understatement.  It was seared into my brain to the point that I can still see it now, thirty three years later.  I don’t remember if that was the first time I had ever seen something of that nature or if, on that day, my journey into adolescence had progressed far enough that there was a sufficient level of hormones in my bloodstream to make me pay closer attention.  Whichever was the case, I did pay closer attention.  The image had the effect desired by the publisher, and I was hooked.  That summer marked the beginning of an addiction and the resultant endless struggle and deception that would rule my life from that day until my forty-first birthday—June 30,2001.  No one but God ever knew, and He could not seem to help me with it.  Over the intervening years, I turned this problem—this plague—over to Him so many times, but I would always find myself back in the stronghold of this addiction.
     An obsession was born.  I was constantly on the lookout for pornography of any kind.  Before the summer expired, the family relocated to Roanoke, Virginia.  I remember the old house with the basement where the church newsletter was diligently prepared by my mother.  I remember the eighth grade in yet another school.  I remember the new contact lenses and the old church building across the street from the parsonage.  I remember, vaguely, being in the Boys Scouts, and sneaking off during a rare absence of both parents and sibling to buy my first Chicago album which I played on the family HiFi.  I could only do this when my parents were gone, and I lived in constant fear of the record’s discovery when they were home.
     But, more than any of that, I remember the quest for porn.  Once, while exploring a section of woods in the shadow of Mill Mountain, I stumbled upon what I figure now was a teenager hide out.  The spot was littered with beer cans, dirty mattresses, a well-used fire ring and some old, faded, rain-soaked magazines.  I felt I had hit the jack pot.  Taking the parts I wanted, I stuffed the treasure in my jeans and ran home to hide it.
     1974 found us sixty miles farther south in Danville.  I learned to drive the family Volkswagen, my modest proficiency with the trumpet provided a niche in which to weather the uncertainty of high school, and my father re-entered the evangelistic field.  My father being away so much and the resulting, diminished supervision at home enhanced my opportunities to continue indulging myself.
     I don’t have specific memories of obtaining or hiding pornography during those years, but I know the problem persisted.  My suspicion—or theory—now about the lack of memories from those years is that the shame, guilt, frustration and helplessness I felt over this addiction have combined to block the memories from me.  I also firmly believe that is why I have so few memories of any kind from my high school days.  I was so consumed by this hunger and the seeking of self-gratification that everything else simply faded.

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August 30, 2002

     I didn’t break down until dinner was served.  I had known this day was coming.  The exact date had been determined thirty-one days before, and I had known for quite a while before that it would probably—eventually—happen.  Justice demanded my incarceration for some period of time.  I deserved it—as you will come to see.  I surely deserved it.  The wages of sin are truly death, and I had experienced the death of just about everything.  You’ll come to understand all of that as we go.
     But it wasn’t until I sat there, alone in my cell, staring down at a tray of lukewarm, institutionalized food on the State-issue compartmentalized tray, that it really—finally—hit me.  I was in jail and didn’t really know when I would walk out again.
     How did this happen?  How did I end up here?  How did my life—a life that seemed so perfect—turn so completely upside down?
     Just the previous evening I had helped Ellie finish her day at the office, and eaten recently-frozen egg rolls with her at ten o’clock.  And the egg rolls were a far cry better than the Salisbury steak patty with a side of cold mashed potatoes I was staring at and crying into.
     The previous weekend we had been at Benihana’s eating sushi, laughing and dreaming of our life together.
     I was a long way from Benihana’s now, too.  So where did it all go so wrong?  Maybe it will help to make another jump backward—back to the beginning of the thing….

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March 14, 2006

     A click, or maybe it is better described as a pop.  Whatever it is, it is electronic—the surge of electricity that turned on my television.
     Ten minutes to five, and thanks to the programmable TV, another day has started.  Like so many before and like the 609 to follow, the day begins.
     And, as always, the first three things that pass through my mind are (in order) “Good Morning, Lord”, my three sons, and the ever-present question: “when can I go home?”
     As I roll out of bed and make my way to the bathroom, toothbrush and face cloth in hand, I have no idea that, before the end of the day, my life will be turned upside down….again.
     But I am way ahead of myself.  To appreciate the shift this day would bring, you have to be better informed, and that requires a trip backward.

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