words usually fail when describing moments that we cherish. our children's births, our wedding day, etc...for me it was the day i was able to go back to the place least expected. three years and three months ago i was excommunicated from the first baptist church of parker, texas, on grounds of adultery. the deeper, more pervasive sin was my full on deceit about who i was when i called myself "christian," but the other was more tangible, more identifiable. it was born out of the deceit and the ultimate reason for it. in the end, i was removed from fellowship. they broke all contact with me. most see that as harsh and not "loving." to me it was the most loving thing they could have done. they did it right. they did it well. and on 11/15/2009, at 1:15pm, i was able to look them all in the eye and say "thank you."
the following is my testimony. it's actually more my life story and so it's a little bit long. it's not what was exactly said this afternoon but with this many of you will understand to a greater degree what they already knew to be true. it's a little lengthy, but my hope and prayer is that if you do read it, perhaps you will be either encouraged in your walk with Christ or, if you need it, an exhortation to deal with the sin that so easily entangles before you get to the point where i was three years ago.
God bless you.
my story as i've seen it:
It has become increasingly intriguing to me how we relish the idea of “stories.” We read books, watch movies and TV . . . we even have “our shows” which we schedule for each week or watch all at once. We even claim a right to manipulate the stories because the producers and writers sometimes stink . . . we tell bedtime stories to our children and grandchildren, and facebook has basically made us into web voyeurs, watching the stories of our “friends” play out on an LCD. We have an inherent desire to safely walk in the shoes of others. We want to walk where others have already walked. We like the road most traveled and mapped out roads are the easy roads, roads of low risk and a relative escape from pain.
The Christian’s story, however, is anything but safe.
Throughout the years I have had the privilege of listening to many of them. Each of them has been unique yet in a place and time that is close to my own. These stories have not been a place for escapism and pleasure, they have been, instead, places of pain and struggle. Each story, while unique to the storyteller, has in a way been my own story played out with different characters, in different places, and for different reasons. And these stories, or what we more commonly refer to as testimonies, are stories of redemption, and inherent in the Christian’s story, unlike other stories, is a natural mirror where we, as Christians, end up seeing ourselves and our stories being played out in the corners of our minds as we listen. Each individual story is also a part of a larger story; a story of which we are all a part and in which we all have a voice. The following is my story and I have seen different reactions to it: surprise, sympathy, anger, judgment, compassion, pity, empathy, and so on. In my flesh I try to see these ahead of time, miss the hard ones and target the good ones. This is selfish, and instead my prayer ought to be that as I relate my story to you that you will find your mirror, wherever it may be, and see the work of Christ in your own life and worship Him as a response to His love and grace. This is the only response acceptable to any account of God’s love and grace in the life of any of His children, and it is my prayer that it will be yours.
Henri Nouwen's book
The Return of the Prodigal Son is based on a painting by Rembrandt of the same title. It changed Nouwen's life.
For me, it was Mozart.
On a cool Thursday night, in November of 2006, I laid down to sleep for what I believed to be the last time. This sleep was going to be an eternal sleep. I wasn’t taking my life, I was simply convinced that it was going to be taken from me. I brushed my teeth, I changed my clothes, I readied my bed, and I put on a CD. I lied down in bed completely at ease. No fear. No emotion. Just the truth and acceptance of what was about to happen. As I was lying there I listened to the words of the music on the stereo. It was Mozart’s Requiem. His, “mass for the dead.” Fitting, I thought, for the night that was about to ensue. A little dramatic? Maybe. But when you’re that alone and that ready to say goodbye . . . all you want is what’s real. And for me, death was real. It was the only thing that was real.
The only part of the Requiem that rang over and over in my head that night were the first three stanzas of the Lacrimosa . . . the same three stanzas that sent Mozart running out of his final rehearsal before he died. They read like this:
Mournful that day
When from the dust shall rise
Guilty man to be judged
So there I was. Mournful. Guilty. And about to be judged.
Three and a half months before this night was a Monday. I was sitting at home, awaiting a phone call from a friend to make plans to go out for wings, when there was a knock on my door. I opened the door to 5 men, men I knew, and men who in that moment made my heart sink into the pit of my stomach with such fervor that I nearly became sick. Although unexpected, I knew why they were there. Turning around to face the inside of the house I saw my wife already taking our then 4.5 and 3 year old children upstairs. She knew too. She had called them there.
This was the beginning of the loneliness.
The 5 men were from my church. One was the pastor and the other 4 men that he, and the church, highly respected, devout men, lovers of Jesus, seekers of the Truth. Men you should fear. And I did.
They asked me to leave. They were there to see that my wife and children were cared for, in a safe place, and their every need attended to. So, I left. I drove and I drove and I drove and I drove. And I went nowhere. That tends to be the place we most often end up when we run . . . nowhere. I finally settled on a little park near my home and waited. For 2 hours I waited. Have you ever waited to hear the worst news you could possibly hear? No surprises, you know it’s coming but nobody will say it? If you haven’t, it’s nothing short of awful. Those two hours felt like being chained to the bottom of the deep end of a pool, able to come up high enough to see my last breath but not actually take it.
The phone call came, and my lungs reacted as though I had just hit cold water. I met the men in the pastor’s office at the church. “Your wife has left you. She is with friends. Your children are with her. Do not contact them. Do not try to find them. Go home, we’ll be in touch.”
And that was it. No more. No less.
The left me with my thoughts, and they did it on purpose.
I went home and I went directly to my son’s room. I lost control of my knees and sobbing I fell to the floor. I began pounding the floor with my fist, saying “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” over and over again. I was begging for things to be different, begging to have them there with me, begging for the opportunity to take back the last 10 years of my life. I screamed into the dark void of a Godless night and begged for the opportunity to take back 10 years of lies . . . 8 years of neglectful marriage . . . 5 years of fake ministry . . . and 2 extramarital affairs spanning a total of 4 years.
Phil. 3:4-6 says:
“put no confidence in the flesh, although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.”
I was born in Houston, TX. Feb. 24th, 1975. Both of my parents are still living and still married. I have 2 younger sisters and a younger brother. I was raised in a Christian home where my father was a deacon and my mother in the choir. I was in church 3 times a week for the first 18 years of my life . . . the same church, for the first 18 years of my life. I confessed Christ when I was 9 and for the next 9 years was the model Christian child. I was a leader in the youth group and an advocate for Christ at my schools. In high school I decided that full time ministry was my future. I was leading worship, bible studies, and was a “go to guy” for most of what we did. My family had a reputation of the “model Christian family” and for the most part we were. We had our struggles, but all in all . . . it was good. Except for me.
I was introduced to pornography at 9, about the same time I felt neglected by my father. I developed a sinful craving that was never satiated and so I fed the craving however I could. I grew more and more distant from my father especially as I saw him taking what I perceived to be more of an interest in my younger brother than me. Resentment ensued and I clung harder and faster to relationships outside of my family. My intimate relationships were numerous and always serious, casual dating wasn’t something I was interested in. I needed the connection. I needed my needs to be met and I sought relationships that could do that, manipulating them to fit my needs. All the while outwardly being the model Christian boy. Typical struggles? Maybe. Maybe not.
I went to college at a small, private Baptist university in central TX where I double majored in literature and religion. I was the worship leader for a bible study on Thursday nights which ran anywhere from 100 to 300 in attendance and I did this for 3.5 years. During that time I met my future wife and pursued with her a relationship which was outwardly godly but privately sinful. We were married in the summer of 1998 and the following year I started at Dallas Theological Seminary with two of my closest friends. There we had the reputation of being “forefront thinkers.” A little “ahead of the curve” in terms of what was being taught. Expectations were a little higher. At least, I thought they were. My wife was teaching and I was going to school, and it was here . . . in a mecca for Christian study and preparation for ministry that I truly died. I still had a craving for relationship, and because my marriage was based on my selfish needs and not a desire to freely give and cherish and love and exhort her, my attention turned else where and I became involved in what was at first an emotional affair then later physical. The dualistic life continued and now to an even greater degree. I was living 2 lives. The seminarian, the good Christian, the youth pastor, the decent husband life . . . and the sinful life of an adulterer.
I graduated seminary in 02, 8 months after the birth of Benjamin, my son. I was in ministry at the time and the first affair was with someone at the church I was working at. During this time, the time in seminary and 2 years afterwards, I was well aware of my sin. It haunted me every night when I lied down next to my wife, as I picked up my children, as I taught scripture . . . as I prayed. I was also well aware of my status in my family, at my church, with my friends, in my “circle” . . . and being as how I always had a fear of disappointing someone I had only one option and that was to lie. And I was good at it. It would be said by someone years later, after all of this had happened, that it’s possible that one of 2 things were true: I was either so lost in sin and without God that I had no moral compass at all and therefore lying on a whim at any moment, each moment trying to cover up the last . . . or I was psychologically broken, that my brain actually believed there to be multiple life situations that were completely separate from each other and that’s how I functioned in them. Who knows, but at any given moment I could cover up 1 lie with two or three other, non-related lies and completely cover myself. I was good. Too good. And I knew it.
In August of 2004 we left that church. I was actually “let go” because the staff didn’t think I was reaching enough youth, but I knew and God knew that He was actually just protecting the congregation there. We went to another church, now with 2 children, not to work but to attend. My two friends, previously mentioned were there, and a host of other people I soon got to know quite well, including the pastor. Early 2005 marked the end of the first affair. For the rest of that year I fully believed I was scot free. No one knew, it never came out, and it was over. I did it!!! I actually accomplished it. Whooda thunk? I was still living the lie of a wonderful Christian man, but the guilt was not as heavy. I was working 60 hours a week and had no relationship with Christ, an empty one with my wife, and for the most part locked out my friends.
September of 2005 I started stressing out. I don’t really know why, but I did. I was still looking for authentic relationships and in Dec. of ’05 became involved with a co-worker and thus my second affair. The lies picked up right where they left off. And all the while I was getting more involved at church, staking more of a reputation, and all around me . . . my wife, my kids, my best friends, my pastor, my church, my family back home . . . clueless. All of them absolutely clueless.
And then came August 7th, the knocks on my door, and the 5 men . . . it was the day after my daughter’s 3rd birthday. The beginning of August is always bittersweet for me.
The day after the knocks on my door and the meeting in the pastor’s office, I received an email stating that I was to come to the pastor’s house to discuss things. At this point, they still don’t know what’s going on in my life currently or what had happened in the past. At best they have an inkling of something not being right or a very advanced educated guess. My wife had found some mildly incriminating evidence. It wasn’t enough for outright guilt, but enough to cause some concern. So, because they didn’t exactly know, I had a choice to make. “Do I confess? Or do I perpetuate the lie. I’ve gotten this far. Why wouldn’t I be able to go farther?”
1 john 1.10 says:
“if we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.”
While sitting on a couch, surrounded by the 5 men, an interrogation began. Questions of what’s and who’s and how’s and why’s . . . an interrogation that I was expecting, and just an hour earlier had decided in my heart to go along with. The pain of my heart, the outright anguish of fear and pride and selfishness and lying and lust had taken its toll. Even if it wasn’t for the right “spiritual reason” or for the sake of saving my marriage, I had decided to let it out. All of it. For 10 or so years I had been saving my own life. Covering up the truth with lies to “save face” and to show everyone around just how good I was. It had proved to be too much. My soul was crushed, my mind was void of truth, and my body was in survival mode . . . whoever I truly ever was had vanished and had been consumed by what I had become. I was no longer a son, a brother, a friend, a father, or a husband. I felt as though I was nothing.
After about an hour, my head was pounding from the tears. Multiple times we had to stop so I could catch my breath, often times not breathing for what seemed like eons. But for the first time in my life . . . somebody knew something. The proverbial weight lifted off of me, and I physically felt as though something actually lifted off my shoulders
Then my pastor asked me to follow him.
I followed him through his kitchen and down a short, dark hallway into his study. When I entered the room the weight which had just been lifted off came crashing down with the force of what felt like all of the judgment of God pressed by His own hand down directly onto my soul. Across the room, on a couch, sat my wife, with my pastor’s wife close by her side.
In the next few moments I confessed everything I had just said to the men, directly to her. Uncontrollably weeping she nearly fell to the floor. Uncontrollably weeping I nearly fell to the floor. Hell. It’s the only word there is.
We returned to the living room. More questions. More confession. And another trip to the back. This walk was longer. This walk was harder. This walk was darker. This walk was the walk of a man to his execution. Unlike the last time, I knew what awaited me.
I cannot tell you what ten years of torment being piled upon you all at once feels like. And I cannot tell you what 10 years of lies and betrayal from the one you trusted most does to your heart. But I can tell you what it looks like . . . and if I never see that look again it would be too soon.
I left there and went home, exhausted. Relieved. Anxious. Afraid. Hopeful. Desperate . . . and alone
Nouwen writes in The Return of the Prodigal Son:
True loneliness comes when we have lost all sense of having things in common.
The following Sunday I was excommunicated from the church. They held a service which has been reported to me as being akin to a funeral service. “a brother is dead,” would have been the mantra. No one was to contact me. I was cut off completely. I was a severed limb from the body of Christ. And that chapter closed. Except for my family back home, all that I had known for 30 years was gone. Friends. Family. Church. Respect. . . . all gone. All in a moment.
About a week later I saw and spoke to my wife and kids for the first time. It was a tearful reunion. I was served divorce papers in early September and it was final the first of Novermber, just before the evening of Mozart and only three months after it all started. Those three months I lived in sin. Completely alone, and left by nearly everyone I knew, I turned to a sinful relationship, the only thing I knew. All of the confession, all of the tears, all of the pain and all of the “I’m sorries” . . . self seeking and empty. True repentance had not come.
Then came Mozart . . . and things began to change.
Another Nouwen quote:
“that voice called me ‘son.’ [but] the anguish of abandonment was so biting that it was hard, almost impossible, to believe that voice.
I obviously woke up the morning I wasn’t supposed to, and shortly after that two old friends found me and invested in me. One a friend of 17 years and one of 18, did what no one else had . . . they played the part of the prodigal son’s father. Throughout the rest of 2006 and through 2007 and into 2008, these two men walked with me. I made a ton of mistakes, sinned, fell, got up, walked, fell again . . . yet they never wavered. I made baby steps towards repentance and a true relationship with Christ. They were patient with me when they needed to be, harsh when they needed to be, and always loving.
Then, on an early February day, after a series of events and mistakes that had me leave the church I was attending, while driving a long stretch of road between McKinney and Frisco, God and I had a fight. Listening to a sermon on grace I began to feel hate for the idea of it boiling up inside of me. It repulsed me, and I let God know it. I had been working so hard for righteousness, to be what Christians are supposed to be. All of this church I was now attending, and bible I was reading, and bible studies, and service and church and more church and more service and more bible was all adding up in my head and in one swift movement my hand came crashing down onto the steering wheel in three quick movements along with a screaming exclamation . . . “I GIVE UP!!” I quit. I was done with this game of church. I no longer wanted it. I was done with the prayer. I wasn’t good at it anyway. Everything I did failed. Everything I was doing to be what everyone else was telling me I needed to be had gotten the best of me and I did not like what I was becoming. So, I told God. And I quit. I crossed my arms, stuck out my bottom lip, took my ball, and went home.
In that moment, on that road, in that car, and with tears streaming down my face he placed his hands on my bruised and broken soul . . . gently . . . firmly. He kissed the top of my dirty head and said “good, now I can do My work.” Just as in one moment he had taken everything away, he gave me new life and everything I would ever need. Grace.
A dear friend of mine, shortly before my car conversion, gave me a CD with a song on it containing these lyrics.
Son, you're trying to earn
What is far beyond you
Son, you're trying to earn
What is freely given
Every time that you try to just reduce
This to a give and take
You spit in my face
And tell Me that this blood was shed in vain
I began seeing a counselor and attending a recovery program. Although much like AA and other addiction therapy programs, this one was Christ centered and biblically focused. Hearing the stories of countless others and their struggles. . . . drugs, sex, alcohol, abuse, rape, anger, adultery . . . those having both committed and been sinned against, i found out what it truly meant to live freely. The process to see it wasn’t easy, taking an inventory of my life, digging deeper than I really cared to, in order to find the real reason why I chose to sin the way I did. There was more junk in there than I cared to see . . . but to be free of it gives me hope for a future.
Yet another Nouwen quote:
A step toward the platform where the father embraces his kneeling son. It is the place of light, the place of truth, the place of love. It is the place where I so much want to be, but am so fearful of being. It is the place where I will receive all I desire, all that I ever hoped for, all that I will ever need, but it is also the place where I have to let go of all I most want to hold on to. It is the place that confronts me with the fact that truly accepting love, forgiveness, and healing is often much harder than giving it. It is the place beyond earning, deserving, and rewarding. It is the place of surrender and compete trust.
Living free means confessing sin. “I goofed” or “oops, I did it again” is not confession. I have learned that confession comes from a contrite heart . . . a heart that gives up all that he is (the son) and reduces his own stock to that of something much less (a hired servant). That is humility. That is confession.
Living free means giving up and then taking hold. I have learned that the truly repentant person will not simply give up sin; he will instead run and cling to Christ. If this doesn’t happen, he is not truly repentant.
Living free means realizing that it isn’t about me. Living free means believing that everything that I’ve have been through is the vehicle that will bring glory to my God. Living free means being me, letting others see me being me, and giving up every pretentious bone in my body. It’s not about me. God isn’t circling around me, making my salvation about me so I can be praised, and applauded. God is the center of it all . . . with us circling around Him, loving Him, worshiping Him, serving Him, enjoying His presence and showing others life outside the dark cave of their sin . . . showing men who know only of dark, the sun that rises in the morning.
Living free means that I must see my life on the path of becoming the father in the story of the prodigal son. Receiving with love and compassion the lost and hurting. Redemption and reconciliation. We are all the prodigal and we are all the older brother. But we are all called to be the father.
So, where am I now?
I have made amends with most of those I have sinned against, and attempted with the rest. I have given up the pretentious life of the “good Christian,” having found it displeasing and useless. I am re-learning what I believe. In fact I am relearning what it means to believe. I’m taking my seminary education and letting it penetrate my heart and mind, a road I should have traveled years ago. I’ve spent the better part of two years, with friends, pastors, and family, in both discussion and debate, trying to decide what I believe about divorce and re-marriage . . . still working on that one. (wink wink, nudge nudge). And in all of that I have learned to no longer come to scripture with my life questions, looking for answers in proof texts. Instead I try to come to scripture in search of Christ and have been amazed at the questions that have been answered. I still struggle; temptations are real and present and always will be. Jesus promised me this. But he also promised me that if I draw near to Him . . . gosh that is SO key . . . that He will draw near to me. The ultimate relationship. So I am drawing near as best I can.
I am also thankful, and I’ll finish with this:
1. I am thankful for my friends who through perseverance and love did not quit until God broke me. A good friend does not let you get away with sin.
2. I am thankful for my church. A recommendation brought me to Christ church . . . coffee with 2 priests kept me there. I saw compassion, truth, and hope in those 2 men. I had not seen that for a long, long time with regards to church staff.
3. I am thankful for the 5 men that knocked on my door, especially the pastor. Ironically, it was the last time I saw compassion, truth, and hope from church staff. Most people who hear my story do not look so favorably on those 5 men. Most feel as if their tactics and practice were harsh, out dated, fundamentalist, even mean. But for the past 2 years I have been their best advocate and defending them and their actions to all who challenge it. They acted biblically . . . “they expelled the immoral brother” of 1 Corinthians. They were not fighting me they were fighting sin. Open and heinous sin. This past October I met with those 5 men and shared with them my life and what Christ had done in it. I left that same office where they told me my wife had left me, with an embrace from each one. Loving and gentle . . . 5 fathers welcoming home the prodigal son. You see, they let me go . . . in hopes that Christ would bring me back. If only more men would have such backbone. If only more men would have the backbone in their own lives and families.
4. I am thankful for my children. BLESSINGS!!! Words cannot describe what these two angels mean to me. Through them God has raked me over the coals. About 2 months after the knocks on my door my then 4.5 year old son, Benjamin, asked me, “why did you lie to mommy?” At 4.5 he understood sin, that I committed it, and he needed to know why. My heart broke. Every time my daughter Cait looks at me I melt. For everything that I have done so wrong how can they still look at me as though I hung the moon?
5. I am thankful for my ex-wife. A year after the divorce was final, in November of 2007, she and I went to dinner. She looked me in the eye and with small, silent tears said, “I forgive you. completely.” She was the true father in this prodigal story. Last year, in November (do you see a pattern?) She remarried. She married a man who loves my kids and who, in turn, love him. I am thankful for him, too.
6. And lastly, I am thankful for you, and for anyone who will sit and listen to my story. Not because I need you to or necessarily want you to. It doesn’t really paint me in the best light. But the opportunity to share what Christ has done for me . . . about how He let me go to squander my life, my mind, my body, and my soul and then after all of my sin so gently lay his hands upon me, and bless me. I want you to feel the same touch, the same grace, the same freedom . . . the same love. I could have said much more about my story. I left some out due to time and details to protect others, but I am more than willing to take you to get a cup of coffee and share more, or even hear your story, which I would love to do. Each day adds one more to the story of His grace, and no number of books written could contain all that He has done in my heart.
The focus of it all is the glory of God. My story is only the tiniest fraction of the whole story of redemption, played out through all of time unto God’s glory. It’s why I exist. It’s why you exist. It’s why Jesus came and did what He did. And it’s why we must embrace it . . . beating, cross, blood, death . . . all looking forward to our future resurrection. I couldn’t think of a better time to let God get hold of you.
I’m still a work in progress. Trying to serve my God and my church. I love my new friends and cannot wait to see what relationships transpire. Thank you again for being here . . . and for listening.
