Broken to Breakthrough, Part 1

in sharing my life story I hope to encourage you I know the trials that you've gone through and our facing are especially difficult you can overcome them I'm living proof and so was my family revelation 12:10 declares and they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and they loved not their lives unto the death this experience can be ours if we choose to follow and allow Jesus Christ to bring us from broken to break through [Music] both of my parents were raised in homes where the love that they both so desperately needed especially from their fathers it wasn't conveyed or expressed in healthy or tangible ways which led to struggles early on in their lives I had a pretty good relationship with my mother my father was a very quiet man he didn't express his love he didn't okay I'm sorry so he didn't express his love he didn't um when my sister was young they were young when my mother had me she was 38 was that okay yeah so they were older and they had their careers and businesses and didn't have as much time okay for me yeah like they did my sister okay so I grew up basically in a house in my younger years and into my teenage years totally alone you know it's just mom mom and dad the alumnus was just unbearable and it was just unbearable and all I wanted to do was have a conversation with my father and he was short and cut it dry I so dearly wanted to know that I was loved okay I never heard my father say I love you and I went ahead and you know started running with the wrong groups and one of the boys in the neighborhood first started being with cigarettes and I liked the feeling of the height of rush I've done from the cigarettes and this was 12 13 but about 12 yeah 12 years old and then he turned me on to some beer you know and I like that even more I thought that was pretty cool mm-hmm with all the parties of Nana and Papa my mom and dad had I offered to clean up you just go to bed don't worry about it and I'll be glad to clean up interesting and and Bazzi we're putting everything down the drain oh yes my dream your dream my physical dream yes yes absolutely in your junior year of high school year now full-on in your addiction what is it what does that mean I'm a daily drinker and the pill started at what point what age well right around 1617 I guess okay yeah and within a very short time your mother became pregnant my mom and my sister took me to the doctor okay and we found we had to do a pregnancy test and then we had we went to lunch and went shopping and it had to come back for the results and my mother lost it your mom lost it yeah she got very angry and yelling and screaming then you're in the doctor's office and waiting in the waiting room okay and what happened after that um we drove home we were in Stockton and we drove home to Manteca and I had to call David your dad and tell him and then him and his parents came over and we went through the whole what are we gonna do now thing yeah and then a week later we got married and I finished high school weekly a week later I wanted to be the man to the white stallion okay you know I wanted to be able to have a relationship be a husband I think it was an awful big ego kind of thing going on with me look at me now I'm a I'm a husband okay soon to be a father mm-hmm you know I wanted to be noticed I really wanted to be noticed more than anything else one of the prettiest girls in school one of the smartest I was just infatuated at that time with everything mm-hmm you know and I thought life was really gonna be good when we're young we usually live largely in the moment not taking into consideration how dramatically our choices today can impact our future at 16 and 18 my parents were the same they'd open to the deep end of life by their choice to get intimately involved with each other the problem was since they were so young they didn't even know themselves yet and most definitely didn't know each other my mother didn't even know that my father had already developed a serious drug and alcohol problem so making huge decisions that can impact the rest of your life while so young is not wise what was it do you think that led to making that decision so early to get intimately involved as a young lady he was very persuasive okay he was very domineering of my time and who I could see and what I could do and I see that now I didn't see that venture and so as young as I was listening to what this 19 year old had to say I thought he knew it all gotcha yeah and so you know you can be talked into a lot of things when you're so young mm-hmm which I see now right and I would not wish that upon anybody I was just a full-blown drunk mmm I really was it got to the point where every day was just getting worse and worse and worse you know I mean I'm not talking big steps but little steps just little steps and then all of a sudden you know I'm just completely out of it mm-hmm you know and the only thing that mattered was David mm-hmm and only David mattered his whole life mm-hmm I was making things unbearable mm-hmm I was never a father mm-hmm I was never a father there's a long time I thought I was you know but I really wasn't my brothers aaron and brandon over the next few years were born so in a six year period six and a half year period they had three boys now my mother was a whopping 22 years old with three boys with the husband not bringing home the money that needs to be brought home not supporting the family and she finally after a a drunken fit where my dad was driving home from a party with all of us in the car and he was drunk driving this home swerving all over the place and she's begging him please pull over the car and he won't pull over they get home she says let's go I'm taking the boys to my surgeons wait a minute it's late you need to be putting him to bed no I'm leaving what do you mean it's late where would you go up I'm leaving you I'm divorcing you it was the straw that broke the camel's back finally and so she divorced him no I'm I'm swacked out of my head yeah yep but for people that I'm supposed to be totally in love with right it care for right you know and I said you know I'm gonna put in a bed you can she says no no you don't understand I'm leaving it I'm getting a divorce and that's one thing I'll never forget mm-hmm never for two reasons one it shocked the heck out of me and two it was the best thing that could have happened for you guys agreed you know but it took me a couple days later to really come to that conclusion as far as the children I was ashamed mm-hmm and so I did the best thing and I knew what to do and that was just get messed up not to think about it as much as I possibly could the dad had me it didn't drive you to change no I just needed to not think this I don't want to feel this you just were self-medicating absolutely and I remember you guys explaining that mommy and daddy weren't gonna live together anymore and I I didn't understand the next memory I have is I remember being in the 4-year Oh zips and you were leaving and I had you by your ankles and had to peel me from your ankles hmm and you literally walked out of my life unfortunately the earliest memory I have with my father was when he was walking out of my life divorce is extraordinarily traumatic for the whole family especially the children it disrupts and unsettles everything not that things were stable in our lives before by the time I was seven years old we had moved from place to place thirteen times but now dad was gone and the family was broken the divorce was the first real devastating experience for my brother Aaron and myself Brandon was just an infant but from my mother's perspective it was relief it was the right step indeed it was when a spouse refuses to change and the children or the spouse is in danger then it is time to get out the most important thing is to protect the children my dad would be in and out of our lives as he dove deeper and deeper into his addiction he'd promised to pick us up to take us to our grandparents where he had supervised visitations and we'd be ready packed sitting on the porch and Annie wouldn't show again and this only deepened the sense of loss my mother thankfully was always careful to guard our hearts just telling us she didn't know why I didn't show up she didn't justify or excuse his behaviors nor did she call in names or talk bad about him and this is very important in a divorce parents must guard their children's heart regarding the other parent I'm I'm thankful that we boys didn't have to bear the burden of her anger and her her towards him the loss of him and the pain and confusion of our lives changing was enough for our little hearts and we children should never be emotionally overwhelmed by our Aaron's adult problems and possible venom toward each other parents need to keep their negative feelings personal and they need to keep him away from their children as much as possible to make this new heartbreaking reality and transition as easy as possible so dad's gone mom's trying to put our life back together she had to put us in daycare while she worked to provide for us and what she didn't know was that the babysitter's oldest son was molesting me and several other little boys each day when it was naptime I remember being so scared I didn't tell anyone and and this was the first real big secret that I remember keeping I knew what was going on was wrong but I didn't even tell my mother until I was an adult I wish I would have told her we're told somebody then those terrible things wouldn't have ever have to kept on happening day-in and day-out i-i'll it with the thought now as an adult that he might have continued to molest children for years and if I just told my mom or somebody else I know they would have done something and that perpetrator could have been stopped parents educate and inform your children because this hidden epidemic of abuse it crosses all social economic religious and ethnic boundaries it is an equal opportunity destroyer of children I need to talk to my younger brothers and sisters for just a moment just in case no one has ever told you about these things it is never okay for anyone to touch you or have you touched them in their private parts if somebody does then it is the right thing to tell somebody that you trust right away don't keep it inside because it just starts to hurt your heart and you'll stop trusting people tell your parents if you can't tell a teacher the pastor or tell somebody that you know who will help you and protect you unfortunately sometimes these terrible things will happen with somebody that you already know now you won't get in trouble though if you tell somebody and it is not your fault and it's not some special little secret thing that only you and that person can know about no never God loves you and he wants to help you but you need to ask for help so he can help you in fact if someone does do something to you then no matter where it happens and who it's with I want you to yell and scream and run for help run to safety tell somebody right away what happened and the person that you tell doesn't believe you then go tell somebody else that you trust if you're an adult and you were traumatized molested or abused in your childhood talk to somebody it's really the key don't hold it in whether you realize it or not it may be impacting your life right now reach out it's time to start the healing process and there are resources to help you parents it is time to warn and educate our children about these terrible things don't be afraid that you'll you'll taint their innocence no it's better to teach them now rather than for them to be in a position where their innocence might be stolen we want our children to be equipped just in case they're ever found in a compromising situation like this if a child ever comes to you and shares something terrible like this be very careful help them to know that they are safe and that you love them and that you believe them because it took tremendous courage for them to come to you they need to know that you're gonna help them don't don't freak out quietly perhaps call the authorities and look into the matter with professionals no matter who the accused may be because far too often the matter is sometimes is swept under the carpet because people don't want to embarrass the family or the church or an institution no a possible crime was committed and the perpetrator must be held accountable because we don't want it to happen again trust me I know I was never told about these things as a child I kept my secrets inside for a lot of years and I know it's uncomfortable to talk about these things but it's necessary in this Sinfield world we can help so many children if we're vigilant and we educate them little did I know that keeping secrets would become a way of life for me and my family my mother remarried to my new stepdad and he turned out to be our worst nightmare it started pretty normal he was heavy-handed took over the discipline right away but over the years it grew into out-of-control abuse so now we're living in another broken home the physical abuse it was criminal but even worse were the mental games that he would play we were we were just being broken down physically mentally and emotionally and and I'll give you an example but I I don't want to dwell too much on all the negative stuff I was about 12 years old and it was one of my chores to feed the dogs and clean their bowls one day my stepdad came home to inspect our chores as was his custom and he was convinced that I hadn't cleaned the bowls with hot soapy water and so my punishment was to stack seven cords of firewood by myself I don't know if you know how much wood that is but that's a lot of wood it was a little infraction big out of balance consequence I got home from school the next day started stacking this up the firewood I got overwhelmed as I looked at this mountain of wood especially for a young kid that lie before me so I was sick and tired this I decided to run away and I ran all the way down to my neighbor's house two doors down unbeknownst to me my stepdad came home early to supervise my work he came looking for me but as he drove around on his motorcycle I hid underneath my neighbor's a little trailer their little cargo trailer and unfortunately I knew I was getting myself in deeper and I knew I was in serious trouble now after my mom got home from work she finally found me brought me home didn't want to go home but I had to go home he went off and proclaimed that I was in big trouble and that he would need to think about my punishment so for three days he outwardly would go through all the possible consequences just messing with my head and and twisting my emotions and then he came home early from work as was his custom before mom got home and he put me in the car and he told me pick a road that led out of town then pick an orchard then pick a row than a tree and then a branch now understand by this time I had already been beaten I had been whipped I had been tied up I had been hit so hard in the head that I had a grand mal seizure that same night so I was terrified not knowing what was he gonna do I was shaking I was crying the fear was overwhelming I finally figured out I say finally figured out that I was just gonna choose and cut down the branch that he would whip me with but as we walked back to the car he messed with my head he starts praising me for picking out the perfect one you see praise only came in our lives when it was a mockery we got home he sat me down on the back porch and had me whittled the switch down with a pocketknife fashioning it into this little perfect instrument of torture that we would use on me and then he didn't wit me for three days he taunted me he'd pick it up and he whipped the back of the couch just to the rope and he got nah I just don't think I'm quite ready right now and set it back in the corner of the room and he'd say not a word go to your room and I would just put my head in my pillow and I would be screaming and crying and just punching my bed I was going a little crazy at time finally on the because I say finally finally on the third day he came home early had me take off all my clothing humiliating me and had me stand hugging the post of my brother's bunk bed and he proceeded to whip me and whip me and I had criss crossed raised welts from the top of my neck to my ankles when he was done he sent me to my room and I I crawled onto my bed I was crying my back was killing my whole backside was killing me I remember I couldn't lay down and I just was crying out why why why is this happening to me and it never stopped my mother came home from work she saw my backside and she went to him and she tried to stick up for me and unfortunately she wound up having a very bad night too we were trapped we were tormented I went to school the next day acting like everything was okay I remember leaning over to get a book out of a case and my shirt pulled up a little bit and the teacher's assistant saw my back and said what's that and I I made up a lie right on the spot oh my brother and I we were we were fighting and we were whipping each other with with switches and well we got in a lot of trouble you see keeping secrets was our way of life keeping secrets from our neighbors from our extended family even our own mother was the norm for us little infraction big out-of-balance consequence and with each destructive criticism from him with each demeaning hateful common with each sadistic consequence my spirit was being broken and and this began to develop a broken picture in my mind of God because I had heard things like if you stole a piece of gum that you'll burn in hell forever little infraction huge out of balance eternal consequence no I don't need an angry God that sounds just like my stepdad of course this is not the right picture of our loving God but I didn't know that at the time I was hardened in my thinking toward God with each and every beating with each and every consequence and the abuse continued and he began to get more and more physical with my mother and she would have to hide her black and blue bruising that would last for months at a time with her clothing no I I don't remember him ever hitting my body punching my body but he did love to hit us in the head with his fists or with a metal soup ladle Hiyori grabbed us by our hair and he would just shake us violently like these little Raggedy Ann dolls if he didn't use his leather belt he would use this little sadistic instrument he created it was this solid very dense heavy fiberglass board in fact he engraved each of our three names on it and engraved the title of the board the Board of Education it was just it was so sick and it even took the time to wrap the handle in leather and drilled a bunch of holes at the end of it so you know whenever he would hit our bearskin it made this perfect little arrangement of raised welts he thought it was just hysterical I mean I can't even imagine the amount of time he put into making it it reminds me of a scripture I found in the Bible in Isaiah 1:3 it declares that there are some people that the whole head is sick I agree working at his business in the evenings and on the weekends it was worse and we could never tell anyone especially mom if we did then the next time we were at the shop by ourselves with him he would teach us a lesson in zipping our lips it was hopeless it and I saw no way out it got so bad that one day I begged my brother Aaron to break my arm so I didn't have to go to the shop and be alone with him so I put my arm between two wooden chairs and had him get on top of the table and jump down with one leg to try to break my arm I remember being mad at him because he couldn't break my arm maecenas my mom she was scared she had grown numb and and frankly she didn't know the depth of all the abuse it was like I was bleeding to death emotionally and this led to thoughts of suicide I I don't want to admit that but I welcome death and I I wanted death on top of being free from all the pain and all the suffering I thought maybe it would wake somebody up to what was going on in our family but I would think about my mom and how much it would just would have broken her heart and I I knew it would send her over the edge so I never did it them thank God I wish though I would have told somebody but we just kept it all inside acting like everything was okay on the outside and there are far too many people living this way today we did a good job because nobody knew it it was hopeless and it was taking its toll on us to this day my brother Aaron big strong guy can barely talk about it all the hurt all the negative emotions all that pain is still just largely bottled up inside once mom remarried and we were living with what kind of memories do you have of that a lot of fear a lot of being ruled with an iron fist always always on edge you know always had to worry about what was gonna happen when he got home from work what you know just every day was a very fearful time mm-hmm I remember living through a lot of a pain and hurt mm I remember our stepdad on a daily basis having a lot of anger towards us and stuff like that yeah you know what I mean and and I remember their abuse physically and mentally and on a daily basis that's all I remember I don't remember any fun times in my child in that part of my life we had some but they're hard to pick out yeah I don't remember I mean I can remember going camping but I can remember why we were camping it was turmoil and there was you know I didn't I did I didn't feel comfortable in my childhood I really didn't you know what I mean it was a lot of pain and that pain filtered over into my adulthood yeah I was molded back in that time without even knowing it a lot of my behave and stuff later on in life came from that area of my of my childhood I remember specifically one night when Aaron came in and woke me up and he goes I think he's gonna kill her I think he's gonna kill her and I was like what what and and all I had was this little souvenir baseball bat thing it was like that big and I'm like let's go man and we were going down the hallway and as we came around the corner into the from the kitchen into the family room he had you by your hair and he was shaking so violently he threw you and you you've landed on Grandma and Grandpa's rocking rocking chair and you broke it somehow someway I went to Child Protective Services when I was a sophomore but I didn't talk to him right away about oh you know here's what's happening to me I wonder what if I had a friend and that friend was going to going through this how would it go and what would happen because the last thing I wanted was this thing to go wrong and then I get in major trouble with this guy you follow we were all terrified and so we came up with this plan and I sat my mom and my stepdad down and I said I've been talking to people at school and if you touch one more hair on our heads there will be investigations there will be jail time and it's all over I didn't say it like that though you know I mean I wasn't like do you understand I mean I was just like my knees smote one to the other right because I'm I'm actually saying this to the man that controlled our lives and every facet of our life and so my mom gets up he needs like a missile he gets up he storms to the back of the house just ranting and raving every kind of profanity and she I'm thinking I did it you know she looks at me and she goes after him she goes after him crazy craziness what I didn't know was that my mother shortly thereafter would go to a class that her work was sponsoring and one of the questions was what's important in your life bottom line the class was what's important in your life okay number one where's your kids yeah and your safety and Here I am again and you're not safe mm-hmm what's going through your head um I didn't think I had any way out okay what do you mean by that so you've got this man that's abusing all of us right and I don't think I'm worthy you don't think you're worthy what do you mean what do you mean by that Who am I to you know be somebody that stands up against him I couldn't I couldn't well I was too scared you were you were and you were too scared I was afraid I was gonna die it amazes me just how powerful fear is it held us in that house for nine years of misery sometimes victims cannot actually see a way out they become so trapped so helpless in their minds and by the real threats that they get stuck so outside help is needed if you suspect that someone is abusing or being abused it is better to intervene and be wrong than to do nothing and find out later you were right don't be like most people and do nothing I just don't want to get involved that's a coward's response doing something is always the right choice John 16:33 says in the world you shall have tribulation well we understood tribulation we understood fear and hopelessness and we were just looking for someone to love us to protect us and teach us how to be men but the character that was being modeled to us by our stepdad was that you beat or manipulate people into submission to get what you want and this is what we three boys did to each other it was about self-preservation looking out for number one we were we were violent with each other I was terrible to my brother's since I was the oldest and I should know better I took a lot of the abuse but to save our own skins and especially me Aaron and I would try to convince our youngest brother you know since you're the youngest you won't have such a bad consequence we would convince him to take the fall for something that we did we weren't close to each other as children we weren't protecting each other or encouraging each other I was not being a protective big brother and on the other side another character that was being modeled to us by our biological dad was that you run away from life's responsibilities turning your back on your family drink all your problems away or or take drugs to numb the pain we were never given on both sides a healthy picture of rut a real man should be and and I I thought this would never end but one morning a morning I will never forget we were getting ready for school and my mother confided in me that we were leaving she had put a plan a secret plan together and we were going to escape she talked to an attorney she had made a plan with the local authorities and with the police there at the house we escaped I remember you saying to me I'm leaving your stepdad and I went what we're leaving we're getting out of here this weekend you can't say anything and you can't say that's what you said you can't say anything I was like we're leaving it was such a relief yeah what you're gonna be free never saw it coming I was gonna kill myself a runaway you know took all the guns and we hid the ammunition under the bed that you had been sleeping in and yeah so there was no guns there was no loaded guns that could be something catastrophic happy yeah cuz the guy had flipped a switch he was right he was gone right that's why I had the police standby yeah so we left we did yeah good decision okay we're leaving what emotions are you going through relief hmm because that scary scary person that we came home to every day yeah was not gonna be there no what was it like for you when when you found out we were leaving mom was divorcing him I was terrified you were terrified yeah really well sure I mean he always said if she left him that he would kill us yeah so that's what terrified me yeah on one side on the other side I was elated that we're finally gonna get out of the situation and things are gonna get better when you think back why do you think it took so long because he was so controlling yeah yeah yeah me and jamya had me he had my mind and if I hadn't taken that class at the bank mm you know I I'm not sure I would have gotten out as soon or we would have gotten out as soon as we did but it just opened my eyes took hope come on you're doing this again yeah and it's not at all what I wanted good choice we were free so we moved 30 miles from Manteca up to Lodi and I was ready to embrace a new life I was ready to just leave it all behind in fact I didn't even tell anybody about my childhood I didn't even know they knew is that weed my mom got a divorce and we left and so I had an opportunity to reinvent myself basically and we had lived a facade my whole life anyway I used to tell lies about my step my biological father that he was some rich multi-millionaire and he he was off doing all this amazing stuff because I didn't want to tell people I have a loser dad that's an alcoholic and a druggie and and I would lie about how my life was fine when I look back at the different photos of my childhood and were smiling there I'm thinking what a charade what a lie but you see on on the outside we had to we had to act like everything was all right when on the inside it's an absolute travesty it's a horrible existence and finally my mom comes to me and says we're leaving friends when you've been so pushed down when you've been so manipulated and and taught that you're just you're nothing one of my names from this man was a curse word my brothers had different ones and when you're that oppressed and all of a sudden you're free you don't even know how good freedom is until you are set free the problem comes in when you don't know what to do with the freedom when you're so beaten down emotionally physically mentally and your life your time in your thinking is so controlled it's actually weird to be free it's not our normal victims can actually get so used to the abuse and control that they become more comfortable in it rather than seeking out a healthy alternative many times they will seek out other controlling people they'll get involved in unhealthy even dangerous relationships because that's what's familiar this is why taking personal inventory is absolutely vital we must take a long and usually hard look at ourselves and ask the question am i making choices today that are driven by the unhealthy programming of my childhood or am i making decisions based on my fear of the unknown if you're in trouble you can do this you can get out you must and you can make a decision to save yourself and your children the time to take action is now we had developed different ways to deal with the pain of the past we would escape as many do through TV movies video games music sports and so on the problem was that the relief was only temporary when the distraction was over we were right back where we had left off in our wrong thinking in actions nothing ever got fixed we were just we were just coping and frankly not even that well however I got to my new high school and in the spirit of totally reinventing myself I began looking for a new outlet I dropped sports and I decided on theater the class was full so I had to go ask the theatre arts teacher if he'd let me into the class and so we talked for a little bit and he said you know I like you Chris because I used to go by Chris I wasn't real excited about my full name Christian he says I'll let you in my class on one condition you must audition for my upcoming musical okay right then I made a decision that would healthfully impact my life inside though I was hearing yeah right you're a loser you can't be in a show nobody wants to see you or hear you yet I put my hand out and I said deal and then he says by the way auditions start today and yet a little smile on his face you know I said okay so I go to the auditions and I'm standing up there on stage and I'm ready to sing a song that I had never heard before and it didn't go very well I'm standing up there and it's my turn to start singing and I start to sing and they're like that's not right so the the choir director she starts okay Cassie please sing with Christian and so she's like I'm like no in your own voice son I don't know I just copy what I hear I when you mean my own voice and then they okay mr. Teves the band director get up there and you sing Oh Peter you suit up and I'm like they had it up it up but uh you know it's like no in your own voice son and I'm like I don't know what my own voice is and then I did my little reading for my audition and they cast me in one of the lead roles in a musical they said well if he can sing soprano and bass with it we were probably okay and so I wind up finding some escape man I've been so beaten down so downtrodden that I actually found a new way to escape the the the the broken record that was going through my brain and I started escaping in different characters the problem was it never fixed anything because when you're not that character you're back to your own program right so it was like we interrupt this program for just a little bit of time while I was being those characters and I don't do this new theater arts teacher in fact he didn't know it neither did I but he would basically start to become like a surrogate father for me he was the first man in my life that actually did me no harm but he took an interest in me and he challenged me you I don't I don't know there was an electricity about you that kind of permeated the entire group and there were there were kids that I think that were a bit intimidated by you and it wasn't because you were intimidating it was because you were talented and that was obvious you became a surrogate father to me you a very special person in my life and eventually I even started calling you dad you did and you eventually started calling me a son when you knew it wasn't just this little kitschy phrase the dad thing was a wonderful term of endearment and of course having no children of my own it WA it was great and who could ask for a better son no thanks I did call you son it was my reaching back Christian yes and I loved your mom you know it was there was a I think there was a Sympatico kind of thing that was that was happening between us and you were so hungry for knowledge that it was a pleasure you know we didn't always talk about theater I know that but we didn't talk about politics either I know that either you know I do know we talked a lot about accomplishments I know we talked about how well you're doing in your classes are you keeping up your grades and then as you started to succeed and made your mom proud that's when the dad and son thing started I was in Australia last year and I had a for city tour that we were doing and I was speaking and singing and doing some lecturing not on the itinerary was this impromptu after I went to this one church they said oh could you speak tomorrow morning at our at our morning mana that we have and I said sure no problem and as I sat there and I realized I started talking to these people and a lot of them were educators and so I was giving them my testimony and as I was giving them my testimony I realized that it was an educator that really took me under his wing that took special interest in me and I can tell you that it changed my life it is profoundly important especially for young people to have someone in their lives that they can trust and look up to even more so for those who have been victimized by this time in my story I had made a concrete decision to move forward with my life of course I hadn't figured everything out but in doing this something very powerful happened it opened my eyes to new possibilities of course it was scary but I wanted it I didn't want my past to equal or mess up my future you know it breaks my heart when adults come up to me and say what happened in my childhood has changed me forever in other words the past has made me the failure I am today that's why I'll never succeed or the past has made me the angry person I am today and you can't blame me for my bad behavior or I'll never have a close relationship because I can't trust anybody no no only if we let it it is very important friends that you hear what I'm about to say it can actually change your life we are not a composite or a product of all the experiences that we've had rather we are a composite of what we make of and do with those experiences that's quite profound for example some people say after being abused by a parent I'll never abuse my child I will be an amazing spouse I will protect my family this is a healthy Victor's response a new outlook a new future it's not what happened but how we respond to it sadly some people will continue to be victimized today by the abuse in the past they'll deny themselves the joys of marriage or even having children this is an unhealthy victim's response and a future of loneliness so what really happens here is that we continue to keep the past alive and ruin our present lives and future life by our poor choice to remain victim now this might be hard for you to hear but I say this to you in all love for you continuing to be a victim is voluntary I can't overcome this wait be careful God's Word says something else I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me well we can't change what happened to us we can change how we react to it that's the truth and that's good news to me you see God will give us power to become more than conquerors John 10:10 promises the thief cometh not but to steal and to kill and to destroy I'm come that they might have life and they might have it more abundantly I'm learning how to start to carry a tune and therewith with the the dance teachers and they're teaching me how to dance and eventually I decided man I'm gonna take different dance classes so I started studying jazz tap and ballet and I I was just enjoying it I was my creativity was just bubbling out of me I was a natural as an actor you know why I had been an actor my whole life don't miss that point in fact a lot of the best actors on this planet whether on film or in theatre has some pretty tragic backgrounds we have a lot of emotional content we can pull on people started doing this they started patting me on the back we started getting standing ovations we started getting written up in the newspapers my picture taken on the news I would go in2 to a Civic Theatre and on into professional theatre and and everything was going great but the problem was that was feeding my ego in a way that wasn't healthy and it didn't solve anything so I swung from having really zero self image if you will to having one that's not equally healthier either to where my ego arrived in this room far before I did hello you're you are so privileged that I am here I was good at what I was doing and I was gonna let everybody know it maybe not with my words but by my presence and my actions that's not healthy that didn't fix anything it just pushed the pause button on this broken emotionally bound up guy my mother was working on letting the pass go to she met a new man obviously I was concerned she hadn't chosen wisely twice before but he was different he was actually the junior racquetball coach for my two brothers and my mom became the team mom they eventually became an item they had no idea of the problems that they would face together as a couple my brothers were broken they chose to follow in our father's footsteps they didn't know what to do after we escaped they didn't know what to do with their freedom just a whole new experience for us went from the iron fist to all the freedom in the world yeah and I had mom working until five or six o'clock at night you know trying to pay all the bills and do her part and here I'm at home alone I go to a campus where I can just walk away I don't have to be there yeah I mean I should have been there I don't have to be there and from there I got mixed up with the wrong group of guys a group of friends that introduced me to drugs and at what age is this now 14 14 years old and and how did it start and where did it go well it started just casually doing some cocaine on the weekends with these guys partying they were older than I was they were juniors and seniors I was a freshman it took me from casually doing it on the weekends like I said to doing it a couple times a week during the week I was skipping school i I for my freshman year to my sophomore year I went to class probably half of the time serious yeah I knew you're cutting class I didn't know was that much yeah it's pretty bad and from there I got introduced semester and feta means and and and you started the meth at what point when I was 16 so you had been sophomore junior Jun well supposed to be a junior but I wasn't going to school at all at that time okay at all I pretty much went through the motions leaving the house like I was going to school but actually all I did was meet up at school with with a couple of the friends and we'd go off from party one of the people's houses was that their parents were at work and that's what it was every day being in a day out what are you thinking are you are you not are you why are you doing drugs what's going on I never asked myself that because when I was doing them I ignored anything and everything that meant something to me and why was that what do you think I don't know today I know it's because I think dope is one of the devil's tools you think dope is one of the devil's tools yeah I would definitely create it yeah but at the time it put me in a place where I would ignore and forget anything that has happened in on my in my past and make me not care I didn't care at all well that was on it I smoked my first joint in my sixth grade year serious yes so you would have been how old twelve twelve and even at that time in my life I was still getting I started getting in trouble in school and stuff like that I had difficulty with authority mm-hmm you know well we all did right yeah you know that's all we had was authority over us and yeah right and I can remember from my sixth grade on nobody was gonna tell me what to do yeah in my seventh grade year I was smoking pot on a regular basis when I became a freshman that's when I started hanging out with seeing juniors and seniors I would take off with them knowing that goal now go to school oh yeah yeah and started snorting coke all the ladies in the truancy officer knew me my first name you know and everybody knew who I was because they were always looking for me you know and so I got kicked out of Tokay and I got sent to Liberty High School mm-hmm so instead of going to school for seven or eight hours a day I was going to Liberty starting school at 10:30 in the afternoon and getting out at 2:30 you know so I was only in school for a couple hours a lot of free time and right and Liberty High School is a continuation school it's where all the kids that are having issues correct correct Rick you know it's a it's a mishmash of problems you know it's it's a it's a melting pot you know and that's why I started doing meth when I was in Liberty high school things didn't go as beaver cleaver as we had hoped after you got married well you know it's kind of usual when you know you're dating a woman and one of the outings that you go to is see the youngest in juvenile hall oh yeah and because that's where Brandon was and and I couldn't go in and see him even though I think he wanted me to because I wasn't any you know relationship right boyfriend right ya know so you know I wasn't here or there was always some sign signs me at a time yeah my mother remarries and indeed she finds a good man praise God we say the third time was a charm he is a good man raised in a Christian home a Christian young man he was 32 years old I think when my mother married him he became an instant father of three teenage boys that is quite a man I was sure he was crazy but he fell in love with my mother little did he know that two of my brother my two brothers would test them and their marriage to depths that they had never anticipated we saw it with Brandon early on we did because right not too long after we got married I had to put Brandon in rehab so a different cycle started a different cycle started and I was safe they could have been safe they didn't choose to be yeah no they they didn't have the tools none of us know all of us are trying to figure out life now his life was told and I'm going what what do you mean why are you doing this we we have a home we're safe we have a good man that's taken us under his wing yeah and you know I have a good job he has a good job you can have pretty much what you want and a roof over your head and food on the table but the demons of the past were screaming in their heads in mine as well so it went from high school doing drugs and stealing a little bit here and there you know breaking into places or whatever to get something that I can either sell or trade for drugs yeah and then into my adult life it went into robbing people which means someone says this person owes me money for drugs so we'd kick in their door somewhere to hold him at gunpoint we'd ransack their house take their stuff and totally high on drugs the whole time methamphetamine yeah you don't do that in the right mind right I mean come on that's crazy the drugs had ahold of me I I got to the point to where you're you're how old now at this point 19 20 Oh as a mother you don't you want the best for your kids you know as a father coming or a stepdad coming in you have to have compassion and you you you married and saw something that woman and you got a look at that person and you that kids are extension of them mm you know you may not like what they do and the pic what they didn't do in their lives but their extension of the person that you love and in time that person in them will come around hmm that you saw in your the one you love hmm why do you have tears in your eyes I've never heard you say that before you know I love you I love you hey guys you know all three of the boys are part of you and I can't love you without loving them Dawson were running from their emotions and from all their pain in an unhealthy way by this time in their life I'm already in junior college and I'm studying communications in fact I got interested in TV video production and I started working for a cable company and I wanted to learn how to make TV and so I got involved I started as a as a tape operator and worked my way up became a cameraman and then I became a director and I started to grow into what I thought I would do for the rest of my life and that would be in media production little did I know God would start a ministry for me years later in media production praise the Lord [Music] you

Channel: ShepherdsCallMedia

Views: 4,639

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: testimony, christian, berdahl, abuse, addiction, forgiveness, molestation, overcoming, child abuse, spousal abuse, bad childhood, God, beaten, help

Id: RYMznQ0CzBg

Length: 58min 4sec (3484 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 22 2020