We know this author’s story is a candid one, but we wanted to let him explain it in his own words as much as possible – and to show exactly what it was that God, through His sovereign grace and mighty power, saved this man from. This series is lengthy, but an amazing reminder that God STILL works!
In case you missed the first post in “Out of the Darkness” series . . . link as follows:
I write it in the hope it may be of value to those who have not experienced what I have and also to chronicle another puzzle-piece of the falling away of the church.
Out of the Darkness {Personal Testimony} – Part 2
My dad disliked sports, but he did agree to take me to a few professional baseball games each year. On one occasion, we attended an Angels game. Towards the end, he told me he was not feeling well. I should mention that prior to this I had no knowledge of my dad having any physical or mental health issues.
Painted on a wall of the stadium was a caricature of a woman walking with a handbag. Dad proceeded to yell at her and told me how crazy my mother was. In that moment, he seemed to believe that picture was my mother. While in the parking lot, he told me he was dying and how horrible my mother was.
He then proceeded to write his will to me on the back of the Angels ticket in what looked like Arabic so that my mother would not inherit any of his assets once he died. He then sat down, held his head in his hands and appeared to be waiting to die. After some time, I asked him for some change for the payphone so I could call for help.
A few hours later, my mother arrived with an ambulance and the paramedics wheeled dad into the van. At the hospital, he leveled some racial epithets at the Asian doctor and I went home with mom. She explained that his job with a security clearance caused a lot of stress and she believed the government was brainwashing him and that he was having a mid-life crisis.
Some time later, my dad was discharged and started appearing sporadically back at home. He asked me to sit down on the couch with him and started crying, the only time I have ever seen any emotion from him. He told me he had failed as a father and that he was terribly sorry. I told him it was ok and not to worry about it.
I can’t say I ever saw him move. There was never a date or a moving truck or any large furniture that disappeared. I never knew where he went, but the experience in itself wasn’t too traumatic since he seemed to have checked out a long time ago. Over time, the piles of books in his study appeared to get smaller until it was just a large empty room with a butterfly chair in the middle.
That was when the real problems in my life started. At this point, the memories and timeline start to get really fuzzy and fragmented.
Once my dad left, my relationship with my mother changed quickly. Instead of being her darling child, her object of admiration and bragging rights, I began to bear the full force of her ire and fury. What was once a shared burden with my dad became mine alone. Sometimes mom would become very animated and start yelling at me for long periods of time.I was expelled from junior high school and started attending a public school for the first time. It was a strange dynamic being exposed to a number of foreign elements. I was miles ahead of my class in terms of academics, but was enrolled in classes alongside students with learning disabilities and non-English speakers.
While attending university, my mother received a B.A. in psychology and was keen to mention this to anyone who would listen. At this point, she devoted considerable time to determining what was wrong with me and how to fix it.
In my dad’s absence, she began calling 911 whenever she had a problem with me. I should mention I was never violent, was not a drug user or involved in anything remotely pertaining to criminal behavior and the “problems” mentioned were usually pertaining to failing to clean up my room, being argumentative, not following house rules, not doing dishes properly or having played a video game past my bedtime. The police were called dozens upon dozens of time. They all knew my house and I recognized all of the various peace officers over time.
It always surprised me the police would keep arriving for such trivial things, but they did. It was a middle-class neighborhood in a small town, low-crime area and the issues they dealt with were more the order of rescuing cats from trees, not violent criminals. They seemed willing to act as social workers. Initially, I would talk to them and endeavor to explain my position. After a while, I realized mom was using them to intimidate me, so I would run away when she called for backup assistance.
I simply cannot remember much of the details of any of the incidents except to say that my mother would yell at me for hours at a time, tell me horrible I was and that the police needed to teach me a lesson because my dad wasn’t there. I remember she would also yell at my dad the same thing earlier — that he needed to teach me a lesson.
There were many psychologists I talked to from various school boards and assessments. Many of them were kind people but were entirely out of their comprehension as to what was happening or what to do. I also doubt I was very cooperative with their process.
Over time, I had developed a sort of protocol with my mother to ignore her completely as not to even acknowledge she existed when she would start yelling. I noticed that anything I said would just encourage her and there was some dissipation of her anger by remaining entirely silent. I also remember physically shaking after she would yell at me for some time and still physically tremble as an adult when I try to recall any of it.
At one point, one of the psychologists asked me to do an experiment with her. He asked me to do everything she told me immediately when she asked, to be polite and kind and obedient for a week or two. When she asked me to clean up, I stopped what I was doing and cleaned immediately. When she asked questions, I politely answered. I did everything in my power to accommodate her and stopped ignoring her.
Despite this, she still commenced yelling at me for a long time about how horrible I was and that I never followed her house rules. I videotaped her while she was doing this and she then took the kitchen trash, dumped it all over my bedroom and on my bed and demanded I clean it up because I needed to respect her and because I was so messy. I only remember this because I saw the recording later multiple times. I otherwise would not have believed it myself as it made no logical sense.
Mom was still working hard to fix my behavioral issues. Through her psychology degree, professional contacts, school board petitions and much research, she personally diagnosed me with ADD, ADHD, Tourette’s Syndrome, hyperactivity disorder, Aspberger’s syndrome, oppositional defiance behavior and a number of other issues. She also diagnosed my dad with Tourettes Syndrome, saying it was likely genetic. She also told me I would need to be professionally taken care of for the rest of my life.
Armed with these diagnoses, she brought them to the school board and demanded the state needed to accommodate me with my various disabilities and as a single parent she could not possibly deal with this alone. Unbeknownst to me at the time, there were various legal issues that obligated the state to provide public education to all students with disabilities and she demanded that I be provided with an education to meet my unique needs.
The professional diagnosis came from a psychiatrist contact of hers I never spoke to in person. He wrote the prescriptions that mom would dictate to him over the phone. I remember being in his office once with her while she was telling him what was wrong with me and what needed to be done. My presence seemed entirely mute to both of them. The drugs I remember included haldol, tegretol and zoloft. I believe there were several others. I went through a lot of changes at that time with regard to disorientation, weight gain, loosing all of my energy and my sense of space and time and confusion. At times, I’m not sure I knew who I was or where I was.
To be continued . . .
Out of the Darkness Testimony Series
We believe in the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Scriptures. Jesus said, “Thy Word is truth.” And so we not only believe it, we also base our worldview upon it.