I sat in the hallway of our large Butte, Montana home holding a gun. A thought crossed my mind: “Look how you have ruined your life.” It wasn’t supposed to be this way. My wife, once my best friend and the love of my life, now lived several states away in Oklahoma. How could this have happened? How could I have overcome so much adversity as a child only to have the rug pulled out from underneath me as an adult?

My parents divorced when I was three and I was sent to live with my mother in another town. It wasn’t long before she remarried. The new man in her life owned a bar in our little town. As a kid, I have memories of “skating” on the shuffleboard tables and generally getting into all kinds of trouble.

I also have vivid memories of the severe punishment I received when I did something wrong. To say my stepfather was strict would be an understatement. My half brother and I were whipped with his belt at the drop of a hat. Once he told us to pick up the trash in our front yard before he got home from work. His work hours were unpredictable, just like his temper. My brother and I went to work right after school. We worked as diligently as possible because we knew what would happen if he decided we hadn’t worked to his standard. He came home late that afternoon and began to inspect the yard. My brother and I watched his inspection and felt terror as he leaned down to pick up one cigarette butt we missed in our diligent attempt. As he made his way to the house, we were in tears. You can imagine what happened next.

I wouldn’t say I lacked anything materially, but there wasn’t much love in our house. This added to my troubles later in my teenage years. As the mental and physical abuse continued I began to lash out at my schoolmates, teachers, and anyone else who dared to cross me. I had something to prove. While I was made to feel weak at home, I wasn’t going to let it happen at school. As a result, I began to run with the wrong crowd. I liked being friends with people others feared. It gave me a sense of empowerment.

Eventually, my friends led me into drug and alcohol abuse. Smoking and drinking helped me disconnect from the pain of losing my grandfather, the only male figure in my life that mattered. I knew deep down that my lifestyle was disappointing to him. Unfortunately, our relationship had deteriorated sharply once I entered high school. One night I was sharing one of my crazy plans with him. He responded, “Jerod, when is this going to end? It’s time for you to grow up and be a man.” His words so upset me that I called him stupid and hung up the phone. Forty-eight hours later he was dead from heart failure.

After the death of my grandfather, I dove heavily into drugs and even began a profitable drug trade that put some cash in my pocket. My actions grew more reckless as a friend and I provided crystal meth to kids as young as 12 and 13, just to see how long it would take them to become addicted. When our gifts stopped, we would watch them suffer from withdrawal. Most of the time the kids would rob their own parents to get the money to buy more drugs. I was the guy your mother always warned you about. My friends were worse.

Her name was Katina, a five-foot-two-inch beautiful blonde. She accompanied me to Dallas for a drug buy. While we waited for the dealer to show up, we sat beside a pool in the apartment complex where we were staying. Suddenly it hit me. “I love this girl.” I had never told her, so I leaned over and whispered in her ear, “I love you.” She almost fell out of her chair in amazement. Thankfully she shared my feelings.

We were married in 1995 in Augusta, Georgia while I was in the first month of my Army technical training. Joining the Army was the decision we felt we had to make to get away from the “business.” It worked, sort of. I left the drugs behind, but not the alcohol. We spent four years in the Army where Katina gave birth to our son. It was the first time in my life I felt I had accomplished something. The Army gave me the discipline I needed to face life.

I returned to the civilian world with a drive and a desire to make something of myself. My substantial telecommunications training in the Army helped me land a great job in Butte, Montana as a consultant. The job was with a start-up company that appeared to have a bright future. The company paid us by the hour and extremely well. In fact, they told me I could work as many hours as I wanted because they wanted this company to get up and running quickly. Work long hours I did. It was great for our wallets, but wreaked havoc on our family.

My new job found me leaving the house at 5 or 6 am and returning at 10 pm each night. As you can imagine, my wife grew weary of this quickly. We decided that with all of the fighting we were doing maybe a vacation would be good for her. So I put my wife and young son on a plane for Oklahoma. One week later I received a call from her. She informed me she was not returning to Montana and that our marriage was over.

I was devastated. My desire for money had destroyed the most important thing in my life. The next few days were terrible. I began to drink heavily and couldn’t sleep at night. I decided that ending my life was the only way to remove the pain of losing my wife. At 3:00 am I went to our bedroom closet and took down the case containing my .45 caliber pistol. I walked up and down the hallway trying to build up the nerve to commit the unthinkable. Finally, slumped in the hallway, I put the gun into the roof of my mouth. As I began to move my finger onto the trigger, God spoke to my heart as if to ask, “Where have you been?”

I spent the rest of the night in bitter weeping and repentance. The next morning I got into my car and drove to Tulsa. Katina agreed to meet me at a park. As we sat on the back of our car, tears rolling down our faces, we wondered how we had arrived at this place. Through a river of tears Katina turned to me and said, “I think all of this has happened because we don’t have Jesus in our lives.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I hadn’t told her anything about my encounter with God in Montana. God was moving to repair and restore our family. We drove to a local church where the minister counseled with us. After much conversation, we gave our lives to Jesus Christ, for we realized Jesus left his home to come to ours so we could be rescued from sin.

My family and I now serve as missionaries in Rwanda, Africa. Many people have asked why we traveled so far from home to minister. We respond to them, “There are people abroad who are suffering without Jesus, just as we were. We go to them because he came to us.” |L