Testimony

Survey says!

Ding!

The Bible. Genesis to Revelation.

The first Bible I ever read was given me By Father Verde, my old priest from Capulin. I spent an entire summer reading it. Now, this is that Catholic version which has several books in it you won’t find in the Bible most of us know. Book like Macabee’s and such.

And then I drifted away from it.

I like to call those the self reliant years. the years spent listening to my thoughts and no one else’s, much less God.

And it didn’t work at all well for me.

And then came a day in Saudi Arabia.

I’s been under awful stress. My first marriage had ended, I was suffering from PTSD after tackling a soldier with a knife, and to be truthful, I was doing a pretty good job of falling apart.

We were getting ready to make the move from TAA (Tactical Assembly Area) Thompson to FAA (Forward Assembly Area) Garcia in preparation to the invasion of Iraq as part of Operation Desert Storm. I’m working with a detail trying to do seven thigs at once when out Platoon Daddy came up to me and started shouting at me.

To this day, I haven’t a clue what that was about and I sure can’t remember what he said, but when he turned to walk away, something in me said, “Screw him!”

It was like some part of me had been shoved aside and something else took over. That something was rage. And I was focusing all the rage and hurt on that one man.

And then there was a hand on mine, and a voice whispering in my ear, “Rich! He isn’t worth it.”

My pistol was halfway out of the holster.

Had Mac not been there, see it coming, and stopped me, I wouldn’t be typing this now.

I shoved the pistol back into the holster and was terrified by what I’d almost become. All my life, I was the one who enforced the law. I was the one chasing the murderers, the rapists, the drug pushers.

And here I was. I’d almost become the very things I loathed. I’d come within a heartbeat of doing something from which there is no turning back.

Years later, I’d write a book titled Event Horizon which is the point we cross that changes life forever and from which you can’t turn back.

Well, I did cross an Event Horizon that night.

I didn’t become a killer.

But I did see me for who I was.

That night, after we stopped, I climbed up on top of the Humvee to sleep. But I didn’t sleep. I lay on my back, looking up at the stars. My mind connected the stars with lines and drew the shapes of legends of old. The stars had always been a comfort to me.

Tonight they winked their accusation that the man I thought I was, wasn’t enough.

And I remember looking at them and thinking, “God! if you’re really out there and care a lick for me, I need you. I almost did something today I still can’t fathom. If you’re out there, I need your help. Get me out of this alive and sane and I’ll serve you.”

And then I took out a small pocket New Testament that the Chaplin had given me. and I opened it straight to Luke 18, Verse 9. That’s the story of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. I read the story and realized I was reading about me.

“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted”

I was the Pharisee. I believed in my intelligence, my inherent goodness. And events proved I was anything but.

And that night, under the stars and the eyes of God, I began a process of humbling myself.

It would be a year before I met this amazing woman who I’d eventually marry before I knew how to take the next step. She gave me a Bible I have to this day.

And in the pages, I found God and myself.