Why I Write

I got an e-mail a few days ago asking me why I write. For that reason, I’m including some personal information that may help you to understand who I am and what message, if any, I have to convey.

I write because I know what it feels like to be beaten in the night by those who claimed to love me.

I write because the words of my mom tore my heart in two.

I write because God’s hand has preserved me through nights of shame and hopelessness.

I write to touch just one broken heart.

I write because I have stood at the edge of insanity, asked God to take me home, and all God did was take my hand.

Yet these are not the only reasons why I write.

I write because I cannot stop!!! These words, which are not theology, will not stop for they come from a deeply grateful spirit that has been lifted from a bed of shame so deep and remote that the words cannot be fully spoken.

I write because I have been touched by God's intense concern for me, and He has not let go.

                                                                      

I write my stories to help you to better understand exactly who God is and how much He loves us for it was through story that God touched me.

When I was young boy, my adoptive mother was a very unhappy woman. In reality, she hated me. She hated my dad because he did not hate me. Beginning when I was about in third grade, my mom began using the Bible to punish me. I don’t think King James would have ever thought that reading his version of the Bible would be punishment, but when you’re a young boy with a speech impediment and told to read it out loud every night after supper for one hour while standing, it can actually be a form of punishment. I later learned that this was done to humiliate me. And it did. In fact, this psychological abuse caused me great damage. Lest you think that I’m off on a tangent, I just want to illustrate how God uses the terrible things in our lives to bring about good. How He turns what is destructive and harmful and brings forth beauty and insight.

Even though being forced to read the Bible out loud was meant to humiliate me,  I learned that the Bible is filled with real people. In a home that brought new meaning to the word abuse, God used His Word to bring hope through the halting voice of a third grader whose reading skills were so terrible that he was constantly mocked by his own mother. With a speech impediment that plagued me until seventh grade, I read. But as I read, I gained hope! I don’t believe that’s what Satan had in mind! I don’t believe that’s what my mother had in mind! But that’s what occurred. God used the daily reading of His Word to teach me about a young boy named David.

I can barely speak of the things that happened in that home. But in that home, I read a book from the Bible that was so filled with hope that I secretly read it on my own so that I could find out how the story ended. It is from the eyes of that broken child that I see David. It is through the eyes of hopelessness and pain that I write about this boy who gave me the hope to believe. When I talk about David, I cannot teach as a scholar for I am not trained as a scholar. I cannot instruct for I am not trained as a professor. And I cannot teach the intricacies of Hebrew or Greek because I failed both in my first semester of college.

But I can teach you about a young boy who changed history. I can teach you about an errand boy who was so devalued by his father that his father had nearly forgotten he existed. I can teach you about a young boy who was picked on by his older brothers and was likely mocked for being too young, too clumsy, too stupid, too everything else to amount to a hill of beans. From that perspective, I can show you the love and grace God has used to cover me and give me hope in some of the darkest times of my life. That’s why I write about David.

When I was a boy, I hid under the covers and thought about what it would have been like to go up against Goliath. I wondered if I would have had the courage. Many times I sat there for what seemed like hours thinking about the five smooth stones. In my mind, I could touch and feel them, and wondered what it would have felt like to walk that distance toward certain death. What I didn’t realize then is that Goliaths come in all shapes and sizes. I also didn’t realize that God’s love is so strong that Goliath and all of his raging could not keep me from Him and His great love. But one thing I did know: I wanted to be like David.

But to be like David, I had to get angry deep within my being at my fear and indecision. I had to live on the rash side of life, and walk out from behind the crowd of Israelites into full view of my Goliath and look him in the eye. I had to step out so he could see me. And when I stepped out, I found that I was in the power of the Holy Spirit and in the company of God’s angels.

As many of you know, I recently had a stroke and before that I had cancer and struggled with deep, recurrent depression. For so many years, I wondered whether I had the strength to survive. I cried out for God to heal me for so long that I thought He had gone as stone cold as death. But finally, after months of prayer, God slowly started to move. As I listened to my pastor preach sermon after sermon, tears streamed down my face. And God saw the tears! God saw the heart crying out to him. God looked back in time and saw the little boy hiding under his covers. God saw that little boy and had mercy on him! That’s why I talk about Goliath! Because I want all my friends to understand the richness of God’s love for little boys and girls whose Goliath seems so big and terrifying.

That’s why I write!