My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
My Journey:
The Antics of a Pilgrim
Chapter 1~ In The Beginning.....
My journey began (I'm told) on October 1st, 1957. I don't know of any unusual things happening in my beginning, although I began as Danny Lee Shook. My parents are John Calvin Shook and Lucy Irene (Weatherman-she was adopted) Benfield Shook Cartner. Mom was adopted when her Dad was struck and killed by lightning and her Mom died after giving birth to who would have been my Mom's sister, had she lived and then her Mom got sick and died of some illness not too long after that. I had brothers Johnny (died in 2002), Jerry (died of self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 14), Rick(y) and one sister, Sandy, who lives with my Mom now.
I don't remember life with the Shook family. My first recollections are of myself being an only child (WOO-HOO!) and living in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It was me and Mom and my Step-Dad, Robert Cartner. I remember starting school and enjoying the experiences of growing up in the "city" with my friends at Hawthorne Elementary. When I started school I was ‘Danny Cartner’, and I think that maybe the reason for that was to appear as a normal family since I didn't remember my "other" family. I was around two years old I think when we left North Carolina for the Oklahoma Territory!
I actually liked school at the elementary level....before the times of trying to impress girls (I always enjoyed making them laugh, though) and the times of peer pressure and trying to fit in. Remembrances of friends like Sparky Snodgrass (he could really draw some cool war pictures...I wouldn't be surprised to find out he was an artist now, he was that good) who was popular with everyone and another friend named Bob something, which were my two best friends in the first five years of school.
I remember teaching a boy named Mark Little how to kick a kickball so that it would fly thru the air instead of just popping over the infield...he could kick it a long way too!!! Danny thought he was the "man" because somebody thought he could kick a ball better than anyone else enough to ask me how to do it!
Nancy Peoples and Terri Dudley were friends too and a girl named Lorelei Lee. Nancy is probably in politics because she was a talker...maybe even a lawyer, Terri could have become Miss Oklahoma and if I'm not mistaken Lorelei wanted to become President. She was so smart! My first girl friend was a girl named Buttercup or Butterflower....or something like that (honest!) and she moved away not long after our "becoming girl friend and boy friend", however you did that back in 1962 and being in the first grade.
Everyone was crazy about Elvis and the Beatles....especially the girls....Me, I thought Batman was real! I had a friend named Dean who called me a "cool and groovy dude" in my "autograph book" that we passed around and had friends sign right before the end of school one year! I always wondered if I really WAS a cool and groovy dude!!
I was always a loner while at home. I could occupy hours and hours with my cars and airplanes and just me and my stuff! Can't remember ever having a friend over for the night, part of the reason for that was we didn't actually live in the school district that I attended school in. I stayed with "Aunt Mae" my baby-sitter from first thru fifth grade who lived caddy-corner across from the school. I assume we had to maybe have special permission for this to happen but maybe being in the 60's that wasn't such a big issue.
I remember the day President Kennedy was killed and also seeing the funeral with the horse-drawn carriage and the sound of those bagpipes playing the sad music. That was the first funeral that I had ever "witnessed" and last June when we went to Washington, D.C. for the caisson of President Ronald Reagan, it brought back a flood of memories from 1963.
I always envied my other family members who got to grow up here in North Carolina. My "MawMaw" Benfield was the BEST!! Remembering her and "Pop" eating a big breakfast of eggs and livermush and home-made biscuits and "Pop" drinking his coffee by pouring it from his cup onto the saucer so it would cool and then sipping it from the saucer! They had a well and that was the best water and the coolest water that I can ever remember drinking!
My Pop played a banjo and he played in a band! Once, while we were here for a visit we went to hear them play and he was awesome!! He had a big ol' green Chevrolet or Buick back then and I remember riding in it with him and feeling important! When we were in, we stayed with MawMaw and Pop and I would wind up sleeping with Pop in a big double bed. If you woke up in the night you had to use the "jar" because they didn't have an indoor bathroom and the Outhouse was too far away. I used to wonder why that thing was so far away since it seemed to me if it was closer it would have been a little handier to use, especially at night. They had chickens running in the yard too and if you missed your chance at the Outhouse those chickens were always around to give you what-for because they seemed to think that everyone that came out the back door had something for them to eat! How smart is a chicken??
Tetherball and kickball were my favorite sports as a young Danny. I can't remember being the best at either but I wasn't picked last so that must have meant something! Just walking around the playground and talking with my friends and picking on girls (they used to chase us guys and kick us...what was up with that??) during recess. My teachers and me spent some quality time together during lunch more than one time as I recall. I think they liked me!
In the fifth grade me and Sparky and some other guys were doing a play in front of the class where we were doing a spoof of the "Tonite Show"...... I was a "ham" back in the day before I became shy and downcast. We had everyone cracking up!
My sister was born when I was 8 years old and I was no longer an "only child" and I enjoyed the company and the playmate although I got in to a lot of trouble when I somehow made her cry.
The first time I ever heard about Jesus was when we bought a big picture of Him hanging on a cross. It was like an 11x14 and had a light and it hung in the living room. I remember Mom going around the house singing a song about "The devil is a sly old fox, I'd like to catch him and put him in a box. Lock the door and throw away the key, for the many tricks he's played on me." (I must need some therapy to remember all this stuff!)
My life changed dramatically in the sixth grade when Mom and me moved to California...
DC
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
~Chapter 2
In 1968 we moved to California, Los Angeles County, the name of the suburb was South Gate. I went to Stanford Avenue Elementary School starting the sixth grade there. My recollections there at first was when the teacher asked questions, I would raise my hand for the answer and it seemed like the other kids were getting annoyed at me. In truth, I think that the schools in L.A. were behind those that were in Oklahoma and so, it would be easier for me to know answers. I soon realized my actions were not friend-producing and so I became (mostly) a quiet child.
There were a LOT of kids on campus (DUH, we were in California!) and I made some friends.....Claude Price (we had nicknames for each other but I won't go into that) and a boy named Robert Concha. There were many Hispanic kids and that was my first experience with people who spoke a different language than myself. To tell the truth, I was very annoyed thinking that they spoke Spanish JUST to annoy me! (Can you imagine the mind of a sixth grader who thinks the world is made just for him?) My friend Robert taught me that they were "Chicanos" and NOT "Mexicans". They were American citizens and proud of it. Boy, did this "Okie" have a lot to learn!
I remember my first girlfriend there, Yvonne Hernandez. She was my partner as we were learning how to "square dance". Now, THAT had to have been a site....me dancing....I use that word VERY loosely by the way.....And there was this girl Estella Rubio. She looked like she could have been a girl from a magazine. She had the prettiest hair and the biggest brown eyes of anyone I had ever seen! She went with a boy named Kevin (dog) and when they finally broke up I asked her to be my girlfriend and she told me that "her Dad didn't want her having boyfriends"....something about being too young or something. What it told me of course, was that I was not good enough and Kevin was. But she was a doll anyway and she has probably made millions in a modeling career!
Most importantly in my early years in California, I discovered my first (TRUE) love: BASEBALL! Back in Oklahoma, my Step Dad watched baseball on the Saturday Game of the Week. I remember watching games with him at home and at the barbershop. Denny McClain won his 21st game one day while we were at "Bob’s Barber Shop". Harman Killebrew stretched out for a throw at first base and pulled muscles in his legs during an All-Star game that I was watching. In 5th grade my teacher let us watch every World Series game on TV during class! Back then, the World Series was played during the day, like real baseball is supposed to be played! It was 1967 and the St. Louis Cardinals played the Boston Red Sox for seven games before a winner was decided and the St. Louis Cardinals won and thus became my favorite team!
The Cards had a player named Lou Brock who played left field. Man, was he an exciting player and he was my favorite for LIFE! I have MANY Lou Brock baseball cards; I got his autograph a few times in Atlanta after I became an adult (another story!) and other Lou collectibles. I even have an autographed Lou Brock framed poster that Denise got me for Christmas a few years ago hanging in our bedroom! Lou was the best as a base stealer who had great speed and could play left field like Abner Doubleday invented it just for him!!
Baseball was my escape from real life, which was somewhat stressful, even for an 11 year old. One time I thought I was having a mental breakdown even. Other things were going on in my life that I will choose not to write about right now but anyway...We lived in this one apartment complex and I remember playing baseball with a super ball. Just a little hint here....do NOT hit a super ball with a wood bat when there are a lot of windows around, if you know what I mean! I hit that ball in the air and crash right through a window across the parking lot and across the street. It seems like I lost my allowance for a time after that one...
We moved to an apartment building where I met a boy names Jeff Theis. Jeff was a big Pittsburgh Pirates fan and I was the big Cardinals fan!. When we played baseball together, he played like Roberto Clemente and I was always...you guessed it....Lou Brock! A funny thing was both men were black, (Roberto was Hispanic) and Jeff and I were white but we didn't ever care about color...what IS prejudice? I still remember us making great plays and being the sportscaster calling the great plays of "Lou Brock" and "Roberto Clemente"!! "Back goes Brock....to the warning track.....to the wall....he leaps up and grabs the ball!!" The greatest days of my young life were spent with Jeff and "becoming" great at the game of baseball! We played some football too but me and football weren't too much of a thing....I weighed only 120 pounds when I graduated from high school....
I stayed after school some days and played tetherball....a game played with a big ball "tethered" by a rope to a pole. Two people played each other and the object of the game is to get the ball to go all the way around the pole in your "direction" so that your opponent can't play it anymore because it is tightened around the pole at the top. Anyway, one day I was playing and this girl was playing down from us and she somehow had fallen to the ground (there at the playground it was ALL blacktop and NO dirt or grass, for some reason...another reason I didn't care too much for football during gym class!) and split her head open and was bleeding pretty bad. OUCH! I was still pretty good at tetherball!
I remember we went to Disneyland and to Knotts Berry Farm, which was another new amusement park in Anaheim. We went to see the Dodgers...when they played the Cardinals!!!!!!! Can you imagine me the first time that I actually got to see the great Lou Brock in person??!! I was so excited I thought I was gonna be sick, literally! He stole some bases during the times that we went; he just HAD to get his "unie" dirty!
We went to see several games during the years we were living in L.A. Once, Lou hit a three-run homer that eventually won the game and I thought the Dodger fans were going to throw Mom and myself out of the stadium for making such a scene! LOL!
It was the greatest day of my life up to that point! We were waving our St. Louis Cardinals pennant and screaming! I can still see the ball disappearing into the night and landing in the right field bleachers and me and Mom jumping up and down as he circled the bases! WOW.
We also went to see the California Angels play the Red Sox in Anaheim and it was "Bat Day" and I got a free baseball bat.....(signed by Rick Reichardt).
And I also got to see Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton pitch! We sat down the third base line once and had seats that were about 10 rows from the field and we were dangerously close to a certain left fielder! I watched as Steve Carlton warmed up to pitch and that was a thrill because Steve and I both throw left handed. I felt like Ray Consello from "Field of Dreams" (Yes, my favorite movie...I simply MUST get it on DVD sometime!) when he was asked, "Is this heaven??"
California was great! We lived with my Uncle Bob for a time and he lived in Huntington Park. I got a bicycle for my birthday and I rode the streets all over. I got a $5 allowance per week back then and it provided me money to buy...yes, baseball magazines and baseball cards! (I still have them!) I got into the comic books thing too, Superman, Batman, The Justice League of America, Flash Gordon.
As a kid I was also a big Daniel Boone fan and that led me to not only watch the "Daniel Boone Show" but I also read books on ol' Dan'l. History would have had to been my second love started by my love of Daniel Boone and it grew to interests in other areas of history too. I still enjoy history, mostly Civil War and World War 2 stuff and also the plight of the Jewish nation, starting with Abraham and continuing even until today!
My Uncle Bob drove a big truck and he used to bring me things from different trips he made. Once he brought me a deck of cards from Las Vegas! We were shopping one day at the grocery store and I wanted this big can of Chef-boy-ar-dee Spaghetti and I told him I wanted him to get that for me. Uncle Bob told me I couldn't eat that much spaghetti and I said I could. He bought it with the condition that if he did I would eat every bite and of course I did! He could make the best scrambled eggs too! He would put a little milk in the eggs as he stirred them up and it made them so fluffy! I think I once ate a dozen (honest!) cooked like that. (I did it once after I became an adult too).
One morning in 1971 I was awakened by what I thought at the time was the end of the world. It was an earthquake. It was like 7.1 on the Richter scale and it shook hard enough to wake me up. As soon as I woke up and sat up in the bed the lights and power went out. I remember sitting there and seeing the mirror on my dresser move back and forth and the light cover shaking before the lights went out. As soon as the lights went out I jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen where Mom was. Then the lights came back on. The walls were swaying back and forth and it was hard to stand up.
There was a story on the news that day of a man who rode with two other men to work every day in a pickup truck. The man telling the story said that he had overslept that morning and when the other two guys got to his house he wasn't ready to go so they went on. Their truck was driving under a bridge on the interstate when the earthquake hit and the bridge collapsed killing the two men. Talk about Divine intervention! It wasn't too long after that that we moved back to Oklahoma. (Not really just because of the earthquake though).
While we were still in California, we happened to go to a Revival Service there at a certain church. I remember the Invitation was given and Mom went down to the alter and I went with her because I didn't want to stay in my seat alone around people that I didn't even know. When the Minister came to me to ask what I wanted I said I wanted to be saved. But in retrospect, I know now that I didn't have a clue what that even meant. My church attendance ended there that night for the most part and later in life I always used that night as my "salvation" experience, even though there was no relationship with Jesus or with God in any way after that.
Next up.....Danny Returns to Oklahoma!
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
~Chapter 3
Mom and I moved back to Oklahoma in 1971 and moved around a few times there. I spent my freshman year at SouthEast High School, in Oklahoma City. That's the same high school that baseball great Darrell Porter went to, although I didn't know that until years later. Darrell Porter was a catcher and was the catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1982 when he was named MVP of the World Series, in which they won!
I remember during my freshman year I took typing (which doesn't really help me now, because I cheated and peeked at my fingers then and now too!!) and I was in Boys Glee Club. I remember Glee Club mostly because we had this dedicated teacher, Mrs. Nichols and her son was in the class with me and we practiced and practiced and PRACTICED the "Hallelujah Chorus", which they performed somewhere...I don't remember where or why I didn't go....but I thought the song was cool! We sang several different Christian songs, one song "Clap your hands, ye people clap your hands; SHOUT to God with loud songs of joy!" and we sang it in rounds......
Anyway, after my freshman year, during the summer of 1972, my Mom and Step Dad got back together and we moved back here to Statesville, NC! I was really happy to finally live where I was born...my MawMaw had fallen and broken her hip and was in Blowing Rock Hospital (which might have been part of the reason for us moving back here??!!) and we went up to see her every Sunday! I remember that it was a beautiful ride up there too!
I started at South Iredell High School and didn't know anyone except for my cousin Sue Benfield and my neighbor, who had become my new best friend, Eddie Pendergrass. I had to take several Freshman classes here because in Oklahoma there were more electives than here, so I missed out on my P.E. class and Physical Science so I had to take them my first year here as a Sophomore. So that threw me to meet even more new people and to make me stand out even more because the sophomores didn't know me and the freshmen didn't either!
I hated changing schools...(I had done it a few too many times besides the times listed in this story) and I hated meeting new people and always being the "new kid" in school. I remember one school I was in while we were in Oklahoma this guy used to call me "slick" and it always made me mad!
I got to know Eddie during the summer before we started school and we were almost like brothers because we went everywhere together! We rode bikes back and forth to Tom Wilson's Store; his Mom & Dad were in a bowling league and we went with them bowling on Friday nights; we hung out around his house or our house and we just did everything together! I don't think I ever had a friend like him before...or for that matter since. We were both the same size back then and we even traded shirts that we wore to school. He had this red knit shirt with a pocket on the front (he even had burned a hole close to the pocket once) and I traded him something for that shirt and it became my new favorite shirt! You know "red"...St. Louis Cardinals (red)....ok. Eddie's parents had woods below their house and we would go down there and Eddie would sneak and smoke (I think that's how he burned a hole in "my" red shirt!). I tried smoking one day but it just made me cough and it stunk pretty bad too (and I knew I couldn't convince Mom to let me smoke AND have long hair!)
I had never been to the fair before and Eddie's Mom & Dad worked in a burger place there at the fair that year and Eddie & I went to the fair (and ate pretty good too!) every night that year....even the nights that it rained! That was fun...walking around and meeting people that Eddie knew...... going and checking out the girls (that I didn't know) but Eddie seemed to hit it off pretty good with them too! We didn't ride many rides...just walking around and around......they even had the "Hoochie-Koochie Show" there and we were tempted to try to sneak in but there were always several big guys there who seemed to frown on that....I would have been too embarrassed to try it anyway.
Eddie and I hung out a good bit that year...he went to school long enough to get his driver’s license and then he quit school. I missed Eddie being around school but we still hung out on weekends and stuff.
We lived in my Maw Maw’s trailer until we got our own later that year and Eddie, Sue and I got on the bus together. We would walk up the road (not street like in Okla. or Cal....LOL!) and catch the bus at Mabel & Lem Hoover's house. They let us wait on their front porch if there was rain or bad weather...they lived in an OLD house...I had never seen a house so old before. It was an old farmhouse...they heated with wood...the house was wood and it just had that "old" smell to it. That was great and Mabel & Lem were so nice to us! They were really old and their son lived beside them in a trailer and his son was one of the kids in the neighborhood that we played ball with.
I got to see my brother Johnny after we moved back here. His wife, Pat used to cut my hair...when I got it "cut". For my 15th birthday I told my Mom that I wanted to let my hair be "mine" and she conceded (she probably regretted that decision for years to come!). I had always had it cut in a "burr" when I was little and sometime in my "California" years I got to let it grow out a little bit longer than a "burr". That (at 15) was the beginning to what I affectionately call my "hippie years", which just ended a couple of years ago. My hair got ridiculously long there for a while and it's a wonder that I didn't catch it in something, LOL!!!!
We never went to church that I can remember. Like I said, we went to see MawMaw on Sundays and that took pretty much the day. After she got out of the hospital in Blowing Rock, she moved back down here to Hill Haven Rest Home and we went there to see her. I really loved her. She was the one person who always made me feel super special...I guess it was because we had lived away for so many years of my life. She and Pop and my Uncle Bill and Aunt Fannie and cousins, Bobby & Sue came to see us once when we lived in Oklahoma. I must have been around six or seven and every time we went to the store my MawMaw would buy me toys because I "needed" them so bad...at least I thought that I did! That was a wonderful time having them there to visit with us!
~~~Parenthesis~~~
As far back as I can remember, I have always had this feeling that God had something special for me to do. I had that feeling even when I didn't "know" Him. I didn't and don't know what it is or if it is ever going to be true. I used to think that I was going to play an important part of history...like Abraham Lincoln or Oskar Schindler! Sometimes I still have that feeling but I don't know if it will be something that I will live to tell about or if it will be something that will be written about me, like Cassie Burnall. I do know that all the things written here in "My Journey" and the things yet to be written are a part of a larger plan and a plan still "in process".
>>Next time....a look at my Junior Year and the day I drive!
DC :o)
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
~Chapter 4
My junior year started out innocently enough, you know, same ol’ same ol’ stuff. I took Driver’s Education the first semester and finally got to drive…yes, in my junior year! Remember back in “the day” you couldn’t just get your permit right after 8th grade graduation like today.
I drove with 2 other people, a boy and a girl and guess who got in the back seat on the first day of driving and guess who had to drive first the first day. Yep, me! (I had been practizing down in Duke Power State Park because there were nice paved roads all over the place and not too many people were down there in the winter time.(Me and my Step Dad went down there and I drove and drove and I finally got to where I could keep the car on the road.) So when the big day came I was still nervous but the girl driving got yelled at as I recall for she had some issues with the car and the road.
I was the first to drive on the interstate and the first to parallel park too. I hated driving in Statesville because of all the traffic and trying to “square” all my turns with cars and parked cars sitting everywhere. Finally, later that year (1974) I became a “Licensed Driver”! Of course, I didn’t have a car but my parents let me drive theirs once in a while.
As I look back, one of my biggest days that year (never told anyone this story…..) occurred when the fair came to town. For some reason I was talking to this girl named Robin and she was super-popular and we were just talking and I asked her if she was going to the fair and she didn’t know…blah, blah, blah and anyway I asked her if she was going this particular night and I was thinking that maybe I would see her there at the fair that night but she said that she had to work. She was really nice and she didn’t act offended that I had “implied” that we meet there or anything and she didn’t treat me like I was week-old vomit like most of the popular people treated us “nerds” (for lack of a better word!). I never had the opportunity nor the courage to ask Robin out on a real date but it has always been “my moment” from high school that has been a special memory for me.
I was and am still very shy (no, really!!) and in my English class (Mrs. Killian) I met this other girl who eventually became my first wife, Debra. She sat beside me in that class and we talked like all kids do whenever we got the chance and she told me she was talking to someone on the phone one day and I told her “Why don’t you ever call me on the phone?” and she said, “I don’t call young men.” What do you answer to a thing like that??
We started dating not too long after that. Her Dad was a Pentecostal Holiness preacher and on our first “date” we went to a Revival Service in Hickory although we didn’t ride together, we met there and sat together. Of course, back in those days my defensive response to the “God Question” was: “I got saved back when I was around 12” and that usually got the “God Police” off my back for another day. But in reality I really did think that I was saved not even knowing or realizing that there were no fruits or growth in any way to go along with that statement. I remember them always saying “You need to be saved, Sanctified and Filled with the Holy Ghost” like Salvation in itself was not enough to get you into Heaven. I was so confused on the issue and stayed that way for a long time.
Debra and I did get to go on dates after that and her curfew was 11:00 which we missed once by about 15 minutes for some reason (I can’t remember now) and so we weren’t allowed to go out the next weekend. Some of the thing was I had long hair (the hippie thing) down to my shoulders and I didn’t fit in too well with the “Pastor’s Daughter” scenario I’m sure.
My baseball boys were at it again and the Cardinals had a pretty good year although they faded at the end of the year. Lou had a GREAT year and he set a record for “Most Stolen Bases in a Season” (118) and I was SO happy for him! I remember sitting out on the car listening on the radio when he stole number 105 (to break Maury Wills record of 104). These were the days before Cable TV and ESPN so listening on the AM radio was the only was to “see” a game if you weren’t actually there! I can still “see” him running down there to second base and the throw down to tag him and Larry Bowa puts the tag on him but TOO LATE…he’s SAFE! Man, Lou was the best!
Also in the summer of ’74 I got my first job: Harmon’s Food Store! Robert ‘Cotton’ Morrison was the manager and he had an assistant manager named Charlie Anderson who reminded me of Sam Drucker (Green Acres) without a sense of humor. Charlie was nice and his bark was worse than his bite. I worked afternoons and all day on Saturdays making $2.00 an hour. I always had money in my pocket and enjoyed buying my school clothes.
My Step Dad bought another car and was letting me drive the 1969 Ford Torino so I thought I had it made! I started Harman’s in July so I had worked for a few months before starting back to school for my senior year!
~~My Senior Year, a new school and a new life…NEXT………
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
~Chapter 5
Welcome to your Senior year!!!
I was a part of the “First Graduating Class” of West Iredell High School. Just so happen, we lived in the newly re-defined West Iredell district and thus I became property of W.I.H.S. A lot of my friends were left behind at South Iredell High School but as they say ‘Life goes on’. Several of our top athletes got special permission from the school board to return to South and so we had a terrible football team. I think we lost all our games or maybe won just one but needless to say: we stink, stank, stunk!
I wasn’t really into the whole “football thing” anyway but it did leave a bad and sad taste in my mouth to think back on it. In fact, Danny wasn’t into sports much at all. I had gotten my first job at Harman’s Food Store on Front Street in Statesville and I was dating and just having a good ole time! I really loved my job too…getting to meet people…bagging groceries and carrying them out really MEANT something back in 1974-1975. “People Pleaser” was my motto…do NOT smash the bread or crush the eggs!! We got tips back then too!!! I remember bagging some cigarettes for these people from New York once….they got two or three buggies of nothing but cigarettes and I carefully bagged them in PAPER bags and delivered them to the trunk of their big ole car and placed them in there with a big smile on my face…made BIGGER by the $2 tip they gave me!! WOO-HOO!!! That was an hour’s pay!!!
I was going to Statesville Pentecostal Church where Debra’s Dad was Pastor and I was in their youth (I think there were 4 or 5 of us). I remember trying to teach this lady how to play the guitar…she was really old and very nice. I heard years later that she had died during a Worship Service there (what a place to go Home from!). I was still ‘playing the Christian’ and avoiding the confrontation of dealing with the “You need to be saved, sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost” thing…and looking back I can see how that period of my life was detrimental to my future outlook on church and Christians.
There were some really nice folks who went to church there, one was the piano player, Karene Howell. She was also a teacher at North Iredell High School. She was a very nice lady and she had such a sweet spirit. I wish I had been the person back then that I was trying to portray.
It was a very interesting part of my life and in the years to come I discovered how a pastor and his family react to the things that happen in the ministry that many people don’t even think about or have any knowledge of, such as being on call 24 hours a day 7 days a week year around. Even on vacations you are subject to your flock and emergencies that seem to happen. And how pastors and their families are just like other families with the same hopes and dreams and also the same problems. Pastors need friends just like everyone else does and I guess that remembering that has been part of the reason that I have been able to be ‘just friends’ with some friends of mine who happen to be in the ministry. (Isn’t it funny how God can lead us thru what we see as valleys and unimportant places in our lives that often later become ‘learning experiences’ that we can rely on!)
Needless to say I didn’t get along too well with Debra’s parents. I was a ‘hippie-boy’, long hair down to my shoulders (I sure miss it too!) and just a step or two out of ‘line’ as far as being a conformist. I guess to tell the truth I am still that way… just a little to the ‘non-conformist’ side and quite frankly, not too ashamed of it. I was NOT a ‘wild-child’ back then, I really wanted (most of the time) to please my parents and those around me and I wasn’t extremely rebellious other than my hair issue. I cared about my grades in school even though I didn’t kill myself studying I made ok on my report cards. It seemed like the answers came to me and I wanted to do well, although I had no desire to go to college.
I had planned on going either to Catawba Tech. Or Rowan Tech. and study drafting but, with me and Debra planning to get married, all I thought I needed to do was get a job. I had taken drafting back in California and also at South and it seemed like a good profession to get into. Actually, I always had this desire to play professional baseball but my a) birth certificate saying “Shook” instead of “Cartner” and b) my hormones telling me I needed to get married, I didn’t go out for the baseball team. I wasn’t a ‘jock’ anyway…it seemed like all the guys that played football played basketball and/or wrestling too and then baseball so my chances of breaking into that outfit seemed ‘slim to none’. So my baseball dream was put on hold.
I was taking D.E.C.A., which meant I was going to school until lunchtime and then getting out to go to work every day and I thought that was cool. I would get out of school around 12 and go home and then go to work at 3 and work until 7 except on Saturdays when we would work from 7 until 6 with an hour for lunch. We had to unload the truck and then bag groceries all day because Saturday was our ‘big day’. Then I would get off work and go pick Debra up for a date, which was ‘going to get something to eat and riding around’ and being back at her house before 11.
June came and Graduation night. I was one of the first students to get my diploma. My friend ‘Carl Lee Aiken’ was the first (in case you ever need to know: WHO was the first student to get his diploma from West Iredell High School?) in line and I was so nervous. 12 long years of work that ended up with the big ceremony! We didn’t have “5th grade graduation” and “8th Grade Graduation” back then just the one that really counts! I walked thru the line and got my hand shaken by Superintendent Tom Poston and my diploma stuck in my hand by Principal Wayne Miller and it was all over except for the turning of the tassels and the screaming at the end! We celebrated by going to McDonald’s for a well-deserved burger!
~~Wedding day and Welcome to Kewaunee next…
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
~Chapter 6
Wedding day and welcome to Kewaunee…
On June 28th, 1975 Debra and I were married. My brother Johnny was my best man and Debra’s parents didn’t attend the festivities because they were very against us getting married in the first place, they wanted Debra to attend Emmanuel College in Georgia instead. We were married at Eufola Baptist Church, where Johnny and his wife, Pat attended. Although I wasn’t truly a Christian man (boy) I did intend to make my marriage last for a lifetime if for no other reason than to be able to allow my children to grow up in a real family and to break the mold that was set before me by my own parents.
I have never resented the fact that I grew up in a home where we were a blended family… no one even knew what a ‘blended family’ was back in the 1960’s. I was kindof sad to find out that my Mom and my ‘Dad’ were actually my Mom and Step-Dad and then to find out that I had two brothers living in North Carolina that I didn’t even know. (We were living in California at the time that I found out…something to do with my birth certificate and me wanting to play baseball!) I had another brother, Jerry who had committed suicide at the age of 14 and I never knew him either, I can only hope that he knew Jesus and I will get to see him in Heaven one day! I really did want to make my marriage work out and marrying your ‘high school sweetheart’ was something to be proud of! We used to kid each other and say “We can’t even USE the word ‘divorce’…
Debra and I lived in my Grandma’s empty trailer for a time, my Uncle Bill and Aunt Fannie lived in our front yard and my Mom and Dad lived in the yard beside them. We moved to Statesville into a block house not too many months after our ‘big day’ and we lived a few doors down from Debra’s family (yes, they eventually got over our getting married anyway….sort of). Living on Baker Street was close to my new job at Kewaunee Scientific Equipment Corporation.
I started at Kewaunee on August 4th 1975 altho my records somehow got mixed up in the years that followed and they showed me as June 4th. I know that is not correct because that is the day before we graduated and I was still at Harmon’s Food Store! I had gotten a raise while at Harmon’s from $2.00 up to $2.10 and when I applied at Kewaunee and they offered me $2.36 to START at Kewaunee I thought that I was moving to ‘easy street’!!
The early days at the ‘Big K’ were years that I remember as the best of times! My boss was a Christian man by the name of James McLelland and he was like a ‘second Dad’ to me! He used to fuss at me for coming back from lunch late (I usually went home for lunch because I lived like a mile from work) but he treated me like I was his son too. More than one time James let me borrow his nice pickup truck when I had an emergency and for some reason no car with me. (Debra and I only had one car back in ‘the day’)
Every morning James would come by like clockwork and say “Good Morning!” and he was always fair in his decisions. James made me feel important almost from the beginning. (The guy in Personnel thought that it was something that I ‘had my diploma’ when I signed on to work there!) I wanted to learn everything in our department and all the “Whys” and “How’s” of what we did. Eventually when I learned enough, James wanted me to be able to answer questions for other people when they had a question about something when he wasn’t around. James had a way of telling you to do a job. He wouldn’t say “Go do this or go do that” he would say “How about doing so and so ‘for me’!” and it always made you feel like you were doing him a personal favor by doing it! I always wanted to please James and to do as he asked mostly because he treated me so nice and I had a lot of respect for him and his authority as my boss! It nearly broke my heart a few years ago when I found out several weeks after the funeral, that James had died and I had missed paying my respects to his family.
I made some real friends while at Kewaunee, one a man named Clarence Gary. Clarence is a black man and I only mention color because he taught me so much about how blacks and whites treated each other in years past…things that I didn’t even know occurred! And he taught me how he and others think and react to things that happen to them and around them. (I’m not a prejudiced person and I have never been. Prejudice is something that you TEACH your children! I thank God that I was spared that lesson!)
He told me a story once that was way too funny except for the fact that it actually happened! He was working one day and a man came by him and accidentally touched Clarence on the arm and he looked at his arm like some of Clarence’s color had magically rubbed off onto him and Clarence told him “don’t worry, it won’t come off on you”!!!
He was the funniest person that I’ve ever worked with and around! Working with Clarence made you feel like you hadn’t even been working at the end of the day! Clarence became one of the best friends that I ever have had and I’m glad to know that we’ll be spending Eternity together too!!
Another great friend that I made at the ‘Big K’ was a man named Billy Sharpe. Billy was putting in glass when I first met him and I took doors to him off the line for him to put the glass in to and we became friends. Billy later became James’s Assistant. I really felt for Billy because the plant manager used to really get on Billy’s nerves pretty bad whenever James would be out. Billy built the house that he and his family lived in; he spent months and months working on it until he had it finished! His Dad helped him out a lot too! They worked on it after work and on weekends until I thought he was going to just pass out from all the hard work!
Billy had a son who contracted Leukemia and they had to take him back and forth to Baptist for a long time. I remember he wanted to grow up to be a preacher but the disease took his young life and it took a lot out of Billy’s too. I found out a couple of years ago that Billy has had a stroke and is disabled now.
On June 24th 1976 my oldest daughter Betsy was born. I was 18 at the time and still a child myself and I’m sad to say that I was not a very good parent. Betsy was the stuff tho and she was the prettiest baby I had ever seen! I know now why Grandparents and children get along so well and it’s mostly because of the time and energy that they can contribute to the child, unlike the parent who has to make a living and attend to all the other things that life throws at you (I am NOT making excuses for my poor parenting skills here…in fact I think I just have poor ‘relationship’ skills as a whole!). Betsy was a very smart girl and a very gifted child but in the years ahead I’m sad to say that the changes that came made her rebel even more.
~~Next: Genie, Kim and the years roll on…~~
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
~Chapter 7~
~~A little side-note on Betsy…she was to be named “Alan Thomas” had she been a boy, named for St. Louis Cardinal great Alan Thomas Hrabosky~~
Not too long after Betsy was born…in June of 1977...I received a letter from the St. Louis Cardinals from their ‘Scouting Supervisor’ inviting me to tryout for the Cardinals in Gastonia. I was really torn with the opportunity, my life’s desire was to play professional baseball and I knew that this kind of ‘gift’ would only come once in my lifetime and I was right! The letter was in response to a letter that I had written to former Cardinal Great Stan Musial who was at that time Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations. I told him that I would like a tryout if one was in the area and months later came the reply.
There are no doubts in my mind whether I could have actually ‘made it’ because I had both the heart and the talent that may have produced good results. I could make a baseball do some funky things and as a lefty I was in the high-demand category for a baseball player. But I also knew that life in the minor leagues was no place to try to raise a family and the constant moving would have been a terrible strain on a newly wed couple with a new baby girl. I also suffered from a terrible ingrown toenail that had me hobbling around like a cripple most of the time and I have in recent years discovered that a simple solution to that would have been to buy a larger pair of shoes. (Can you imagine the guilt…a baseball career stopped before it starts because of an ingrown toenail and a brand-new family?? Of course, I COULD have ‘went for it’ and did like the guy in the movie ‘The Rookie’ and just burned up the phone lines as I went from town to town throwing my stuff!!)
In my heart-of-hearts I know that I could have made it but I also realize that was not the path that God had in store for me. I continued my ‘Kewaunee days’ and in August of 1981 our second daughter Genie was born. (Later in her childhood, Genie was the athletic one!).
Debra’s parents had moved from Statesville to Troy, North Carolina and every other weekend we would go down there for the weekend and come home after church on Sunday afternoon. Of course I ‘was saved’ when asked (so as to keep those pushy Christians at bay!) and my relationship with God was as a spectator at best…and not a voluntary one either! I think I always resented the fact that we had to make that trek every other weekend and therefore messing up my ‘sleep day’ on Sundays! (In later years I appreciated the opportunity to see a pastor and family interact with ‘the flock’.)
It took several hours to drive to Troy, which is below Asheboro. One time we were coming home after it had snowed and we were topping a blind hill and the D.O.T. had pushed a pile of snow into the middle of our lane and when we topped the hill and saw the pile of snow I swerved and spun the car around in a circle and didn’t even leave the road, altho approaching traffic had to stop to avoid a head-on collision! I know that God was protecting us and still there was no evidence of Him in my life after that.
After a few years in Troy they moved to a smaller town in Virginia. Of course our visits were planned the same and one Easter Sunday I received a speeding ticket coming home while zooming thru Davie County (66 in a 55) as I was passing a semi truck. It was a very peaceful town up there but I can’t remember the name of it but the parsonage was right beside the church and it was a really neat little town. And I remember that Virginia taxes were a lot higher than in NC.
After living on Baker Street for a while we moved to a trailer park on Buffalo Shoals Road called ‘The Pines’ which was down below where Mom and my Step Dad lived. I would ride to the ‘Big K’ with Mom in the mornings and back in the afternoons so that Debra could keep the car if she needed it. We had a dog named Smokey who was a black mix with some Cocker in him. He was our guard dog because he would bark at people…birds…other dogs…and probably even the wind because he barked a lot and he could keep the other dogs in the community company by communicating how he must have hated being chained up outside while we were inside!
I remember 1982 pretty much because my beloved Cardinals beat the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series and I was Mr. Happy!! The North Carolina Tarheels won the National Championship and the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl so ALL my teams were successful in the same year! Never in the history of Danny had anything like that happened nor since!
Betsy and Genie received a little sister, Kim in March of 1983. Kim was very hyper when she was little and she was very prissy when she got older. (She’s getting married in May of 2005)
I used to see my brother Johnny pretty regular because his wife Pat used to cut my hair. They started having trouble and they broke up with Johnny and his new wife Alice moving to the big city of Vashti North Carolina, which is above Hiddenite (another metropolis). We visited them pretty regularly and we moved up there beside of them in late 1983. We lived in an old white farmhouse with a wood stove. There was a chicken house right below Johnny’s trailer and the Vashti Grocery Store. The man that owned our house and Johnny’s trailer also owned the store and the chicken houses. When they cleaned out the chicken houses you wanted to have a ‘road trip’ because it wasn’t pretty being at home, if you know what I mean!
I loved living up there even though it took me 30 minutes or more to get to work but it was worth the drive home to see the beautiful mountains in the distance as I drove! There were fields of tobacco growing and fields of corn and Rocky Face Mountain was on the left as I drove up the road. Old farmhouses and a neat pond greeted me along the drive also.
I had my first experience with gardening as an adult whilst helping Johnny and Alice pick corn and green beans for the freezer! Alice was the best cook…she could make homemade biscuits and homemade French toast everything you could imagine! No wonder Johnny was crazy about her too!
Debra got a job in a furniture factory in Taylorsville and she also started taking the girls to church on Sundays while I got my Sunday sleep… and eventually we started drifting apart. Sadly to say in early 1984 we separated and she moved to Winston-Salem where her Mom and Dad had moved to a couple of years before that.
I’m ashamed to write all the causes for that breakup but the bottom line of it would be I just messed up. A family without God in the center of it is asking for trouble and even in the best of conditions things can go wrong without you even expecting it. Satan loves doing that… I believe that the destruction of the family is his greatest joy. A breakup not only affects the adults but it affects everyone involved and especially the children. I’m sad to say that my girls have grown up and I hardly know them and the sands of time just keep on slipping by.
~~Next: 1985 and now WHAT????~~~
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
Chapter 8,
Filling In Some Gaps….
I really wish I had grown up with my brothers… it’s really weird knowing that you have family although you don’t know them hardly at all. Don’t get me wrong, life before Sandy as ‘an only child’ had its perks! That’s probably where I became so independent and willing to spend a lot of prime time with Danny because for the most part there was no one else. My Mom worked as a nurse as far back as I can remember and so she was gone a lot of time during the weekend days and my Step Dad had things to do too but I actually had a happy pre-Sandy life.
I can’t truly say that my Step Dad and me weren’t close because we did spend a bunch of time together. I got my love of baseball from him because he didn’t miss too many games on Saturdays and when we went to the Barber Shop the game was always on! HURRAY! We watched ‘Gunsmoke’ and ‘Daniel Boone’ and ‘Mission: Impossible’ and ‘Green Acres’ etc. etc. etc. All those shows from the 60’s that were clean and fun we watched together! Those were the days when the kids watched what the parent wanted to watch and you liked it or went and did something else! Those were the days! ‘Red Skelton’ taught me more lessons than I can count and when I would go to bed at night I could always hear “Heeeerrrreeee’s Johnny!” on the ‘Tonite Show’! All that to say that we spent a lot of time laughing together.
I remember when I was really little, that I would sit on his lap and try to catch the ‘smoke rings’ that we would blow but of course that was impossible to do but I remember at least trying! He asked me once when we were driving to the laundry mat “What happens to the hole in a doughnut when you eat the doughnut?” I still remember trying to figure that one out and of course every answer I gave wasn’t the correct one because “how can you eat the thing that you cannot see?” he would say!
One day when we left the laundry mat he took me to this park that was nearby and there was this giant slide that I played on that day. It must have been a hundred feet tall because I surprised myself that I could climb that high and sit down and then actually let go of the sides so I could slide because, I was and am, terrified of heights! But that was another fun time that we had. At the laundry mat he always bought me a cold Pepsi out of the machine…man those were good!
We were driving home once from downtown Oklahoma City and I must have been around five or six years old. We were on this four-lane road and a small dog ran out in front of us and across the other lanes of traffic too. An instant later a bigger dog came chasing the smaller dog and he crossed in front of us too. But there was this man in a car in the lane meeting us that watched as the first dog ran in front of him too and he was watching it go up into a yard but didn’t see the larger dog who was chasing the small dog until the larger dog ran into the man’s car…right into the driver’s side! The man jumped so high in his car that he must have hit his head on the roof of his car and the dog rolled back and was staggering around there in the street and me and my Step Dad laughed so hard at the two of them and we were crying and laughing at the same time! That was the funniest thing I ever saw and when we got home we re-lived it for Mom over and over and were laughing and crying all over again! That was a memory that we shared from time to time even after I became an adult we would talk about the dog that hit the man’s car! It’s still funny to this day and I can see the dog shaking his head trying to figure out what was going on just like the man in the car was probably trying to figure out! I’m not sure yet if that man actually knew what had hit his car door!
My Step Dad worked at ‘Oklahoma City Machine Works’ and he was a supervisor there. He was under a lot of stress because he often came home with a headache. I got to go to work with him a few times and I thought that I was ‘the man’! I’d sit back in his ‘office’, which was a table in the tool room and I’d look at blue prints and mess with tools. He’d even let me sweep the floor with a big broom at the end of the day for ‘pay’, which was change for the Coke machine!
The owners and his bosses were Mr. & Mrs. Cole and they went to Mayfair Baptist Church. My sister Sandy went to the nursery there and Mr. & Mrs. Cole would come by on Sunday mornings and take me to church with them. I had to get all dressed up and everything because it was a pretty ‘high-fallooutin’ church too! It was also my first experience with any knowledge of God and Jesus, except for the big picture of Jesus on the cross that hung in the living room that had a light over it in the frame.
My Sunday School teacher’s name was Mr. Gault and he was a good teacher as I remember. He would give us Bible verses to memorize and after you did you would get a lapel pin which was a shield with some words on it…I can’t remember what it said other than the red and blue that was on the shield and the feeling of accomplishment in winning it! Mr. Gault took me to ‘Big Boys’ for my birthday after church one Sunday and he took me home also. That was the first time that I remember going inside to a sit-down restaurant in my life! We would always go to McDonald’s or to a drive-in like ‘Sonic’ down in Bethany, Oklahoma, which wasn’t too far from where we lived. But Mr. Gault was so nice to me and it wasn’t long after that that he died and I was really sad.
From that early church experience I remember people would stand up to join the church and the pastor would invite them to come forward and you could hear people all around the church crying and I never knew why they would cry just because someone wanted to join with them. It really confused me because it gave me the impression that joining up was a sad thing and not necessarily something that you should do, especially as a fourth or fifth grader like myself!
~~MORE gap fillers in a later chapter!
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
~Chapter 9
1985 saw the Cardinals go to the World Series again, even tho they lost to the Kansas City Royals. Baa-humbug! The important thing is the trip TO the World Series, right??!! And besides that, it was a great year for baseball cards! Mark McGwire’s rookie card is 1985! And Roger Clemens…in a RED SOX uniform!
It was also the year that I married Lisa, Ricky’s mom. I suppose the lesson learned there was not to do things… even terribly STUPID things… without giving it time AND prayer to think about it and to properly sort it all out. One should not go from one relationship straight into another one without some kind of ‘therapy’.
I’m not saying that I left Debra to marry Lisa it was nothing like that. I knew Lisa’s Mom, Linda from work and the three of us went out one night to eat pizza or something not long after Debra and I separated. And after that I think we started hanging out and anyway…
Lisa and I got along ok, I thought. Of course, we didn’t go to church or have anything to do with church, altho her Aunt’s church gave us some things for Christmas the year Ricky was born (I think that was when). The thing I remember is how jealous of everyone she was, from the girl at the checkout at Food Lion to any female who even would speak to me in a friendly way. We did have some fun times and did some totally strange things at times and went thru a lot of bad situations too.
On August 21, 1987 Ricky was born and in October of 1988 we separated. She asked me to leave and I couldn’t believe that she wanted me to but in the end I did. A strange sense of relief followed that and it took me some time to figure out all the ‘whys’ of that feeling. It’s always sad when a marriage breaks up and I can’t even imagine how terrible it would feel to lose a spouse to death. Divorce is a ‘death’ of sorts and all those involved are touched by the decision two people make. It’s funny, but even as an un-saved ‘kid’ when I first got married I even then wanted to NEVER experience the term: divorce. And then at the age of 30, I was about to become a ‘twice-divorced’ person. How sad.
Another sad event in 1988 came earlier in the year when my Step Dad Robert died, because he was the only ‘Dad” that I had ever actually known. He had been experiencing various ‘pains’ and had kidney stones ‘exploded’ (at that time) and later he found out that he had cancer. And it had spread all over… his brain, kidney, lungs, (smoker!). Dr. Stout told him on Valentine’s Day that he had cancer and had “about 6 months”. I never remember seeing a person cry the way my Step Dad cried that day and the memory of that event still haunts me to this day. He underwent radiation treatment at Catawba Memorial Hospital for ten treatments and then three weeks after they told him of the cancer, he died on March 7th, 1988.
I didn’t even own any ‘dress clothes’ to wear to the family thing at the funeral home nor to the funeral. I had to borrow a suit and bought a white shirt and tie. It rained the day of the funeral and that just added to the sadness of the loss. We used to make pilgrimages to Rowan Memorial Cemetery on Sundays just to take flowers to the grave and to ‘be with’ him for a few moments and to feed the ducks there at the small lake. It was probably a pitiful statement for a family that was at best, separated from the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I don’t think it was very long after that that my Mom and sister, Sandy started going to Fellowship Baptist Church, which was within walking distance of their house.
My Uncle Bill died in July of that same year, and like I said, my marriage died in October. I moved in with Mom and Sandy and tried to piece together the events of the past year. Unknown to me then was the missing and most necessary part: a real relationship with Jesus Christ!
I think back of all the things that I have done in my life, things that I am NOT proud of yet Satan likes to bring them back to memory… especially as I sit here and type away my ‘story’. In my lifetime before Jesus, some of the things I have experienced include: being evicted from a home, having a new truck repossessed, drinking alcohol a few times, (even naming a dog ‘Jack Daniels’) trying marijuana once (but I HONESTLY didn’t inhale!), taking things that didn’t belong to me (from people, not a store) and other things too, besides destroying two families. I list these things here not to glorify sin, but to denounce the power of Satan and the schemes that he leads us to believe are OK and “go for the gusto’ and all that. He is, however the FATHER of lies, right?
But FEAR NOT…Help was on the way!!!
~~Next time~~DC, meet your God!
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My Journey: The Antics of a Pilgrim
~Chapter 10
In October is when I moved in with Mom and Sandy and it began a time of both confusion and peace. I spent some time reflecting on the mistakes that I had made in the past and wondered what I could have done differently that would have possibly made a difference, both in my failed marriages and in my life in general. At the time I didn’t realize that the problem had been there since birth and I didn’t even know.
Like I said, sometime after my Step Dad died in March of 1988 Mom and Sandy began going to church. When I moved in with them they invited me to go but I was not interested in being told by someone that I didn’t even know how bad and awful that I was and besides… Sunday was MY day to sleep in. And then one Sunday morning as ‘I slept in’ there was a knock at the back door and it was for me: a Deputy Sheriff had me a nice summons to court to ‘show cause’ as to why I was not paying child support. At the time of our breakup, Lisa had told me she wanted “nothing from me but to get out” of which I knew in time would become a different matter. I was already paying child support for my girls and was left with little to take home anyway, which was part of why I was living with Mom and Sandy to begin with. Let’s see… where else could I have been on a Sunday morning???? (I knew…I HAD to help support Ricky)
In December they were having the Christmas Contata at Fellowship on a Sunday night before Christmas and with my love for music anyway I decided to go and hear it. As I walked in the door I met a young couple, Jack (who worked at Kewaunee in the Metal Department) and Lisa Lee. And it was that meeting that would prove to change my life forever. They were and are the epitome of what the word ‘love’ means and even from the start they showed me the Love of God. They didn’t even know me but the love was there in their words and in their eyes. (It’s true what they say about the eyes being the mirror of your soul!) They invited me to come to their house the next night for their Youth Christmas Party, which included spaghetti and fun! Normally I would have felt out of place but they made me feel not only welcome but also a part. Jack and Lisa became my mentors and they were very instrumental in my realizing that I really didn’t know Jesus as Lord and Savior. The night of the party they asked if I would like to come to the Youth Meetings at church on Monday nights to assist them… like they needed assisting but I said that I would. And I just started. I didn’t even know why I said that I would other than the fact that I didn’t have anything else going on in my life other than working.
And also Mom and Sandy were pretty close to the Pastor there at Fellowship, Don Phillips and they were going to Don & Mary Lou’s for Christmas… just a drop-in and a little fellowship and I went with them. (Don and I became very close in the years to follow and he has been like a Dad to me since).
New Year’s Day was on a Sunday in 1989 and Don was preaching and I felt so much conviction inside I thought I was going to die before he got done with the sermon and when he gave the invitation I was going to go down to the alter but I was sitting beside Mom and as I was starting to move out I felt her leave the seat beside me and go down and I did NOT want to make another decision based on what she did (like I did at age 12) so I decided to stay there and then the service was over and I was still feeling the convicting of Jesus on me.
I had a friend who asked me a day or two after that, what it was that I wanted in life and I said ‘to be happy and have a nice home etc.’ and it hit me that the thing that I needed in my life was a relationship with Jesus and the rest would take care of itself! So on that Tuesday afternoon I tried calling Don at his house and his son Gary answered the phone and said that his Dad wasn’t there. I called later that afternoon and Don said to meet him at the church at 7:00 and we would talk. We went into Jack’s Sunday School class and I told him the story of the previous Sunday morning and that I wanted to be saved. So we prayed the ‘Sinner’s prayer’ right there in Jack’s class (fitting, huh??) As soon as I finished praying I had the Peace of God flood over me like nothing I had never felt before nor since for that matter. It felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders and I could actually take a breath and relax, knowing then that I didn’t HAVE to pay the penalty for ALL my sins!
>>While I’m on this important subject of Salvation, I just want to add this in retrospect. This is one of my ‘Life Verses’…
“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus FOR good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
--Ephesians 2: 8-10
What this says to me is this: GRACE alone has saved me…
The GRACE of God…His Love for me was much so that He sent His only Son Jesus to be my Redeemer from my sins. (John 3: 16) God’s Grace… HIS gift saved me. Period! Nothing I did or can do will purchase my ‘ticket’ to heaven. The BLOOD of Jesus did all that was required.
But I am created ‘in Christ Jesus for good works…” I’m not to sit on my ‘Heavenly Assurance’ and wait for His return. What if ALL Christians did that?? There would be a quick END to the multiplying factor of the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus!
The last words written in the Book of Matthew tells us in Jesus own words what we are to do until His return:
“…All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the (1) Father and the (2) Son and the (3) Holy Spirit (TRINITY!), teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” –Matthew 28: 18-20
And thus began my walk with Jesus, starting in a small Baptist Church on a dark Tuesday night, January 3rd, 1989. As I talked to Don I thought that that would be it and I was good to go but he told me that I had to go before the church body on that next Sunday to ‘publicly proclaim’ my decision. And I was really nervous about that! So nervous in fact that I found me another life verse really quick: “And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 and it was in the King James Version…which gave it even MORE power (just kidding!)
(I really AM shy…………..)
~~~NEXT: Amy Grant and Cajamarca, Peru
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