Who Am I?

I've alluded in the past to who I used to be vs. who I am today. Other than the 25 lbs I've lost since November (I'm hoping to lose another 20 by summer), I'm still the same guy people have known with the same personality and same quick wit. The thing that's different about me today is what's IN me, or more specifically WHO'S in me.

If you've read my profile you seen that I worked in radio for several years but gave it up to stay at home with the kids for a couple years and to devote my life to following Jesus Christ. After a very stirring and traumatic day, the important things in my life began to take priority.

I'll start at the beginning.

I was born & raised in the St. Louis area about 37 years ago. My parents divorced when I was about 3 or 4 but we continued to live close to where my grandparents lived. I didn't realize it then how much of a blessing this would turn out to be until much later in my life. My mom remarried a man and we moved from the St. Louis suburbs to a small little town on the Illinois side of the Mississippi.

It wasn't too long until I realized things were going to be different.

My new dad was a pretty strict man. No, actually, there was no "pretty strict" about it. He could be downright mean and controlling. To sit here and think about some of the things I endured throughout my childhood and teenage years has the potential to really rip off some scabs and reopen a lot of resentment. Thankfully, I serve a God much bigger than my problems and a God...THE God...who has taken away my hurt and pain.

I think he (my stepdad) must have felt that since he was the new dad in the home, he had to control me and my sister to the "nth" degree, molding us and making us conform to his every whim. It wasn't about even being disciplined a lot of the times. It was literally physical and mental abuse. I saw and felt it, both in the way he treated me and in the way he treated my mom. Yet even in those dark times of growing up, I was smart enough to realize how NOT to treat your wife, kids and family.

I thank my God for my grandparents for so many things. One of the things they always showed us was love. A warm, caring and inviting love that I was starving for. I think it was only one reason why my stepdad never seemed comfortable with them being around...we kids gravitated toward my grandparents, especially me toward my Grandpa. Our relationship is one that is thicker than us just being blood related.

It was sealed and nurtured by his (my grandfather's) relationship with God. He was a minister in the Nazarene church and I can still to this day remember as a young boy walking into that church auditorium with Bapa and us praying the Lord's Prayer together at the altar. It was special moments like this that I treasured growing up...the love of a man toward a child and the interest he had in me...not the kind of relationship I had with my stepdad where he was constantly in a foul, grumbly mood.

I will say a few things about my stepdad so it doesn't appear to become a "slag the dad" post. I'm only revealing a lot of these things so you can know how I was influenced and raised and see how I was changed.

My stepdad provided us all a good life materially and we never went without food or clothing or toys at Christmas or other "stuff", but really didn't give us a "home" biblically, as the Word calls a man/husband/father to do. It was tense and solitary for me a lot of the time.

Something I can see now (although I was too young, naive and stupid to realize it at the time) is that we were always in church. That is one thing I am thankful for...my consistent exposure to the Gospel, the Church and a continuing message of hope, although I was either too busy to really hear it, understand it or be interested in it.

I was a teenage boy, heavily into the things normal boys are interested in: comic books, sports, girls, video games and loud rock music. I had a drumset for a few years that I absolutely loved. I had to pick select times to play it (most notably whenever the family was going to be gone so I wouldn't cause them to lose their hearing as well...LOL). I used to listen to my hard rock tapes through my headphones while I learned how to play and thought I was getting pretty good. Visions of being a world famous rock drummer began to seep into my mind, as well as becoming a big-time radio DJ.

We moved and lived a great part of my teenage years 40 miles west of Chicago so when I discovered "radio", it was WLS and it's jocks that caught my ear. Most notably was Larry Lujack and his daily feature called "Animal Stories". He and another WLS dj, Tommy Edwards, would get together and read odd stories about animal occurences that were often hilarious. I can remember hearing them laugh so hard that the radio would actually be silent for a few minutes as they would gasp for breath. You could hear them wiping away the tears in their eyes as the story would continue and you couldn't help it yourself if YOU began to laugh hysterically.

This kind of morning radio really brightened my day. I began to dream about being like Larry Lujack. His big voice, his personality on the air, the cool music he could play...that's what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Then, one fateful day, I learned we were moving from the vast suburbs of Chicago (after 7 great years with the same group of friends, 5 of those years at a church where I was part of a very close youth group) to a place called "Arkansas".

All I knew about Arkansas 20 years ago was the stereotype image of the Beverly Hillbillies: a bunch of hicks living out in the woods, no running water, only a few natural teeth in each mouth and that sloooooow, suuuuhhhhhtherrrrrrn draaaawwwwwwwllll. Yikes!

I remember my shock and horror of hearing this. How could my parents do this to me? I was going to be a senior in high school the next year and now, I had to not only start a new school where I wouldn't know anyone but I couldn't graduate with my friends or pursue a relationship with a girlfriend I'd just started??? Argh...the anger and resentment began to boil.

One of my dad's board members there in Illinois told me he had a farm in Arkansas and that we'd come to really enjoy living down there. In fact, he told me, I bet you find yourself a real pretty girl down there and get married.

Impossible, I thought. I'm not interested in any girl from Arkansas and I'm not staying once I graduate high school!! Arkansas was for losers and I couldn't believe I had to move away at this time in my life.

But, that day came when the moving truck pulled out and I followed the family caravan in one of our cars.

Like it wasn't bad enough that we were moving...I had to drive, for 10 hours...

a pale yellow station wagon.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the car I dubbed "the beast".

To be continued...