where has the night gone

Well where to start, that’s the hardest part you know in anything we do, the starting I mean. For once you get started most of the time, Now I am not saying all the time just most of it. It’s like that snowball that’s rolling down hill and it just takes on a life of it’s own.

I guess that I have in my life now gone what some folks would consider full circle. Now how to explain what I mean by that. I am let’s simply saying somewhat over fifty. And most of my life I have spent growing up in middle size town in the middle of Kansas. And like a lot of other people I know, I spent most of that time trying to get out of that middle size town. Oh! I made it a couple of times but never for more then a year or two at a time.

But twenty-two years ago a young lady came along and all that changed. I had what I thought was the perfect life. But before we get to the here and now and what is to be, I want to talk to you about what was.

So far in my life I have lived in my hometown, Wichita and McPherson all towns of different sizes and all in Kansas.

That in it’s self is so unusual a lot of people are born, live and die within the boundaries of one geographic location.

The main portion of this book deals with what happened in our lives while we were in McPherson and what it was that brought us back home. Some things good some not. I have been married two times nothing against my former wife but I guess I was just one of them that it took two times to get it right.

OK know you have gotten to this point and you are probably thinking what dose any of this have to do with me and how am I going to get anything from his life that would be a benefit to me? And where can I get ride of this book? Well be patient and keep reading and before were done something just might come along that starts to shed some light somewhere in the dark places of your soul and you will say oh! I get it.

You also need to know that I am not a doctor with a bunch of letters and numbers behind my name nor do I claim to be. What I am is a middle age man with health problems staring down the maul of old age and have a story to tell that just might help somebody in there journey of life.

It’s been my experience that other people who are looking in from with out, do not ever really see the storms that are raging down deep on the inside. Oh that say they know what you must be going through or they say that you are being silly its all in your mind or you poor thing get over it lift your self by the boot straps and al that rubbish. Please don’t misunderstand me. There is a lot of truth in that no one can be helped until they are first willing to help themselves. But until somebody shows me differently, I believe that there is no way for somebody to lift your self up by your bootstraps. " No we all need help from time to time and there is no way any body can know the battles that go inside each of us unless they have also lived the things, have experienced the things, heard the things that some of us have."s no way any body can know the battles that go inside each of us unless they have also lived the things, heard the things that some of us have.

And yes I am one of the us in us. My child hood was I suppose not as bad as some, but worse then others, but weather or not my childhood was bad or worse then anybody else is not important. What is important is that the truth be known. And the truth is that we must start to talk, we have got to stop hiding our secret sins from one another in the dark places of our souls praying ever night that nobody finds them. And no if you were abused or still are as a child or an adult I will proclaim it from the highest mountain top as loudly as I can, it’s not your fault!



There are certain aspects of my own childhood that I will be drawing from in order to write this book. And some other studying that I have done both in collage and out of collage. Here is another fact about my self, I have put this off until now but here we go. I am an evangelist and pastor.

I know some of you out there are thinking oh, yes one of those religious self righteous sort trying to save the world from it’s self. Well yes there is nothing more I would love to see then the world come to a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now you ready for another shocker? That’s not what this book is about. I simply mention my job as a reference. In my chosen profession you come across a number of folks with a number of problems. Abuse not the least of them.

Abuse will not be the only subject of this book. There is almost a lifetime of stuff to talk about. Like I said some funny some not. But I hope all of it can be important to somebody. So with all that said if you are ready get your favorite cup of tea, Make sure have a good reading light, sit in your favorite chair and lets start to get to know our selves once again but this time with the guidance of father god.

We all know that abuse can takes many different forms from sexual, physical, emotional and oral and I am sure that the list just keeps going. I kind of think that when you are talking about all forms of abuse you will end talking about emotional abuse. No I am not saying that all abuse will lead to emotional abuse because I simply do not know, I do not really know that anybody can for sure, but it seems to me to be the logical outcome.

I wonder do the folks who do the abusing really understand what they are doing? Well in some instances I would have to say yes they do, but most I believe do. not The word of God says in (2 Corinthians 10:4) for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal (weapons of flesh and blood) but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds. Now do not throw the book down running and screaming, but from to time I may get a little preachy on you. This is one of those times.

I mentioned two Corinthians for a very good reason I believe that everyone who offends be it oral or sexual and everyone in among stems from some form of demon activity. Yes I understand how one who has been abused will abuse, and I agree, but I believe that is what the Bible calls a generation curse. It is my belief that somewhere back in the distant passed there was and still is to this day a demon involved and no we are not going to get into a discussion of whether demons can or would possess people. Demon Poisson and oppression are two distinct sides of the same coin. And I do not think we should be looking for a demon behind every door! And no this not the only possibility is just stuff to consider. After all some people are just mean.

But just so you don’t think that my childhood was all bows and roses I remember times like when I and my mother were sitting at the kitchen table working on my math homework I could not get the answer right however hard I tried. So my mother's answer was to flip the table over on top of me. And on my eighteenth birthday, you all know the blank sides of cards my grandmother used the blank side of my eighteenth birthday card as a sort of poison pen letter. She proceeded to tell me how little I was worthless and that I only used the family for what I wanted and the world would be better off if I was dead. Or the time I was tossed threw our glass storm door.

And there is a whole lot more stuff from all other family members and the kids I went to school with I know about being bullied. And it did not stop then, I was even told how stupid all my ideas were as an adult in the very store my wife and I owned. And just like so many times before I just laid down and let those people walk over me like a rug. At this point, you are probably thinking what a wimp, what a looser well you would probably be right. Or some of you may even be thinking poor thing; he had such a hard life. Compared to some yes I would agree. Nevertheless, I am not seeking any sympathy. You see I am glad that I have had the life that I have. That has put me in a unique position of having been where a lot of other folks have, or will be.



My hometown

My hometown was I guess like virtually every other small towns back in the sixties and seventies. There was a soda fountain in the lobby of what was and still is the tallest building in town it had eight floors of the most extravagant hotel rooms anywhere. If my memory’s is right, there were marble this hand in hand carved that all over the lobby of the grandest building in the county. But unfortunately, like a lot of other things as time marches on, it has changed. The building is no longer in use and has fallen into disrepair. (Through No Fault of the owner.) And there was that soda fountain; it was this very soda fountain, where I first fell in love with a brown sugary substance known as Dr. Pepper.

Every summer all the kids could be found at the local swimming pool thumbing our noses at the summer heat with absolutely no thought of the past school year or the one to come. Nonetheless, when we were not in the pool for some reason you would find us in a large air-conditioned movie theater. Air conditioning was still somewhat a rare thing in private homes except for the wealthy kids in town.

What we had was called water evaporated cooler. Also know as a pain in the nose to my sister and I. I suppose they were not all that bad except that my sister and I had to go outside every few hours and do what we called water in the cooler. The machines would work by pumping water down the sides through a thick layer of straw while the fan was pulling air in through the wet straw, there by cooling the air in your home, and usually it was just the room the cooler was in that received any cooling. But not if the air was already hummed and Kansas summers were usually hummed. Another problem was, the hotter it was outside the more often you had to go outside and refill the water cooler.

You know smells are a really nice memory trigger. Come on now don't tell me that sometimes when you smell a smell you had grown up with that your mind doesn’t take a trip back in time. They say time travel is not possible, but I put it to you this day yes time travel is possible. The times I smell a new box of crayons and I think about the first day of elementary school. Or a particular perfume that my mother wore all the time and I once again I can see her face. Another thing I remember is the smell of the new wet straw in the cooler. It was a very good smell as it filled our home, it was great. My folks only changed the straw every other year or so, which made it extra special when they did. Now if you think about it can you deny time travel?

The theater I had mentioned a few lines back had a balcony and every kid in there wanted to get to the balcony, the usurers seldom went up stairs, which made it easy to through stuff down on the people that sat below. Or so I have heard. This was a theater that served real butter on the popcorn and they had a cartoon before each movie started.

It was a thrilling thing to be a child when the lights started to dim and the huge red velvet curtains that hung from the ceiling to the floor started to part reviling one massive screen and a whole different world from the one we really lived in. On occasion, you could see just as it gently tumbled to the floor from the rigging above but that was all right after all you see we were not there to check on the house keeping.

No we knew that when those curtains opened an adventure was about to begin. The only question was what would it be this time? Pirates at sea with their chest full of gold or cowboys coming to the rescue at exactly the right time. Nevertheless, you know, as kids we never really gave any thought as to how very much different our lives would really turn out which was almost always nothing like those folks we watched on the screen. Not in the real world father did not always know best. And it did not take many years to learn, that, unlike a movie, the things that came along in the real world, most of the time cannot be settled in two hours or less.



CHRISTMAS!

Nowadays I do not remember this but I have been told that one year on Christmas day our entire family was gathered around the table fully loaded with all the bounties of a loving God. There were ham, sweet potatoes, dressing, and pumpkin pie. The way the story goes is the family had just sat down to the feast but I could not be found anywhere. As it turns out earlier that morning Santa Claus had brought me a toy tool set with a saw and a hammer and a screw driver.

Before anybody knew what had happened, one side of the table collapsed to the floor and all the food in it. When dinner rolls had stopped bouncing, there I was sitting on the floor gravy dripping off my face with my little screwdriver in my hand and a smile on my face.

I suppose There needs to be warning inserted here. Kids do not try this at home. As you can guess the rest of my Christmas that year was a little rough.



Other stuff as well

I also remember that there were little neighborhood grocery stores, lazy summer afternoons at what you thought was your secret fishing hole. And you knew that summer had really started when the Diary Queen opened for its summer business.

Something else was the summer nights. I can’t count the number of times that as a kid I caught fruit jars full of lightning bugs and yes I always-punched holes in the lid so that they could be breath. All though I don’t know why I put the holes in the lid, I never left them in the car long enough for anything to happen to them. I always let them loose, usually in my bedroom. But that is another story. I would lay outside and stare at the stars and try to find the man they said lived on the moon.

But the thing I remember the most are the times when every kid and every parent in my entire neighborhood would get together after dark and play hide and seek. Dads would climb up on the roofs of the houses there was no way we could find them. They almost always won. We didn't know that was where they had until the end of summer one-year which as it turns out was the last year we played him and seek. Everybody was growing up; everybody had places they thought were more important to be. Our kids well we thought we were getting too old to hang out with our families it just wasn’t cool any more.

I wonder how many of the old neighborhood, if they could would go back and play hid and seek just one more time. I also wonder if it could ever be like an episode of the twilight zone I had seen some time ago where a bunch of older folks from a retirement home would sneak outdoors at night and started playing kick the can.

Yes, for you who grew up with computers, we used to kick a tin can be around and called it fun because it was fun. Anyway as it could only happen in the twilight zone all the older folks became children again. No you don’t need to worry about me I know it can’t happen. But looking back I now know that it was all such fun. And even though I didn’t know it then, good times often out weighed the bad. My questions now Is.

Oh! Where has the night gone?



Back in 1988, a beautiful young woman agreed to be my wife. So we married August 14 1988 in my home town of Pratt Kansas and about three months later we knew that the Lord had his hand in our liver’s and was directing us to go to McPherson Kansas and attend college. We both knew that for this to happen it would have to be a God thing because it was near the end of Christmas break and classes was about to start in a couple of weeks in the second half of the year.

Talk about a miracle in about one week we had all the funding we needed, class schedules, a place to live and jobs to help with the living. In short, we blinked and were sitting in our first class in college! Starting college at a rather late time in life, about twenty five for me, had some interesting aspects. Cheryl and I were referred to as everybody’s grandparents. That was OK I was just happy to be there.

My first job that I had in McPherson was with one of their retail stores. Going to school full-time and working full-time was not an easy thing to do so I tip my hat to all the other people all over the world that are doing the same thing. Part of the problem was my employer they were not that willing to work with my school schedule. Special note here for people who hire students. Work with them, in the world today we should do anything we can to help them if they are willing to try to improve their life and who knows one of them might cure cancer, eliminate world hunger.

Any way after about a year and a half my grade started to suffer and we were getting in to more debt than we ever dreamed was possible. So we left school and I got another job to help get us out of debt. At that point, I was working two part-time jobs and one full-time. That was not working we were still getting behind on stuff that you should not get behind on. So we left school, another failure in my life or so I thought.

When we left college, we also left the church that was a part of the school and we spent the next few months the Holy Ghost hop. For those of you who do not know what that means we went from church to church trying to find the one we wanted to be apart of instead of the one Father God wanted us to be a part of.

One day we were driving through town and past a Pentecostal church it was the new life foursquare church of McPherson. My wife said we that maybe we should check out that church. She suggested this four or five times, but each time my response was the same. No! Not that one I hear those people is strange. And for you guys out there count your self lucky, fortunate and to be envied if your wife is like mine and does not give up when she knows she just may be right and you may not be. The fifth time I said fine the next Sunday we went and twenty some years later we were still going there and from the first day our lives got really interesting.

As far, as jobs in town I had done everything from cooking in a rest home to custodian at the high school to drive and ride a trash truck. Most jobs were just that jobs but the custodian at the high school were when things really started to change we had a temp that would come in from time to time and fill in when somebody was sick. This was the pastor from the four square church I mentioned earlier.

One night we were working and I told him about a dream I had, had. He stood up instantly looked me in the eye and said that I would not be sweeping floors all my life. Well I did not think much of it at the time, but that was when my ministry was born I just didn't know it at the time. Nevertheless, time went on as it has a habit of doing. And one night I released it was time to find another job when I crawled under a teacher’s desk to get some paper on the floor and I woke up thirty minutes later. I do not believe my supervisors ever knew about that, but if he reads this book he will.

I had a lot of jobs while we were in McPherson, meet a lot of folks, some became really good friends and a few were more like family than my friends, and some yea, well not so much.

One of the jobs I had been a cook in a rest home I loved that job cooking for the people was exciting the other cooks complained all the time about everything including the kitchen.

No, it wasn’t a 5 star kitchens, but it was only the third professional kitchen I had worked in.

Let’s see some extra jobs I had in town let me think oh yes of course. How could I forget about that one? The wonderful world of retail will not mention the name of this store you would undoubtedly know it. I worked with these people for twelve years, wonderful, long, very long years. It was not all-bad for you see I had always had a dream. A dream you say what was it? To stop a robbery single handed, to help and give CPR to a fallen fellow of the human race. Well, no it was not anything like, I am sorry to tell you. Not what it was, I had always wanted to be Santa Claus. Yes, that’s right the big guy in the red suit.

Precisely one year a friend of mine got together and we talked the manager into letting us be Santa and his wife. I wore a Santa suit that had been in her family for three generations. An absolute honor to be the first to where that suit for many years. That was my second best Christmas of my life the best Christmas was the first one I spent with my wife as a family.

Well time moves on I have other jobs but my wife and I end up owning our own thrift store. In between all of this, I was doing some preaching wherever I could. We never seemed to have more than ten to twelve shows up. Kind of depressing you know.

We would be once a year gets together and has what we called party in the park. We had some friends that would lead and sing praise and worship for us; we had a different speaker each night and I would speak for the last night. The whole thing would last four nights. This is like some many other things had its problems for example the first time we held a party in the park we had flyers made up and we went all over town placing them in the windows of the business.

We found out the next day that another couple went behind and told the business owners that we were a cult and they shouldn’t support what we were doing. The services were to start at seven each night. But the praise leader would not start at that time. Folks would show up and get tired of waiting and leave.

Until one night, we were ministering in the church we attended. That the night, everything changed right in the middle of the service a gentleman came walking down the center aisle. I considered great he has decided to turn his life over to Christ his life will never be the same. How wrong I was, you see, it was not his life that would never be the same it was mine!

When he reached the front of the church in front of God and everybody, he told me in a very loud and clear voice. “ You are in Gods way, he cannot do anything with you here, get out-of-the-way. ” That statement floored me I did not know what to say I stepped back and let another pastor take over. Here is the sad part I have never stood behind a pulpit sincee.

Some of you who may not really know what I am talking about think of the one thing you have done or want to do in your lifetime. This thing is more important to them the breath you breathe. Got it ok now thinks what it would be like to never be able to do it. Why I don’t know but that comment the man made threw up a wall between me and what I truly believe was my purpose for being on this planet. I know an up to be a man faces your fears and just does it. People I know all that stuff. Shoot I used to tell people all that stuff my self. I could understand why any grown man would or could let the words of another stand in the way of what he knows needs to be done.

But there are words when spoke in a certain way they cut you to the heart no! That’s not what I mean those words cut to your very spirit.



OK you are probably thinking that there is nothing but bad in this guy’s life. Well, that would not be right. I mean if that is what you're thinking. Back when we had the services in the park