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When I was a young boy, my mother would take me to church every time the doors were open.
I went, I had to. I knew better than to say no.
She loved Jesus with all her heart and wanted her children to love him to.
She tried so hard to instill in us, how much we needed him in our lives.
I was the youngest of four boys and one girl.
When I reached my late teens I started to devise ways of getting out of going to church.
And at the same time, I started to live my life the way I thought would be more fun. I'm sure a lot of you know what I mean.
I was tired of going to church all of the time and listening to a Preacher telling us that if we didn't live our lives according to what the Bible said we were going to hell.
Do you have any idea how hard that is? I mean, wait a minute, we're not allowed to make any mistakes?
Not me, I'm full of them, even to this day.
I started to really get loose, first smoking then drinking and of course girls. You know that had to be in there somewhere.
Yeah, Every time I went out with a girl, I had to try to get as far with her as I could get. I don't know why, I just did.
Well as I got older things just steadily got worse. I tried the armed forces and was rejected.
Well, that didn't help my ego much. So I drank and started to hang around with some pretty rounchy people.
That just got me in deeper. Finally I met this girl, she was a car hop.
I fell in love and after about a year I asked her to marry me. She said yes, very ( bad move on her part. )
I'm telling you, she would have been better off saying no and moving on.
It wasn't long after we got married that I started to cheat on her. She didn't know it at first, at least until she got pregnant for our son.
After she had our son, it became very apparent what I was doing behind her back. I got another girl pregnant, one that I worked with.
One day she got a phone call, it was the other girls mother. She told me about it when I got home from work.
I fully expecked her to leave me. She didn't, at that time she loved me enough to forgive me.
For a while I tried to be what a husband should be. That went on for about a year, your right, it didn't last.
We moved from the apartment we were living in. I thought every thing would be all right.
Boy was I wrong again. I started teaching adult drivers ed. It wasn't long before I found out how loose some women could be.
It didn't matter to some of them if they were married or not.
Well, I guess you've all ready figured out that I wasn't about to say no.
If she was going to offer I accepted. So here I was again,
trying to prove I was a man
(If you read that sentence again you may
read a diferant meaning.)
There were so many women, I lost count.
Something was still missing in my life, I didn't know what, but I was going to find it, I thought at least.
Well you can bet, I lost my wife. And yes, I agree totally with you, I deserved to lose her.
All the time I was married to her, she was wonderful to me.
Our broken marriage was my fault alone. Well now I didn't just drink anymore, ( You guest it, I started taking drugs too.)
Well, time went on, I started working at a hospital. Now I had to hide my drinking and drugs from my boss. That worked, but there was women there too.
And the women I worked with was probably as bad as I was.
So here I was, drinking and doing drugs with as many as I could. And very often I spent the night with them.
I didn't care who they were, or what they looked like. Then after a few years, I met another woman.
You know how people say,
( what goes around comes around ) Well it did.
My mother got both of us going to church. We gave our hearts to Jesus, everything seemed to really be on the right track.
I had quit drinking and taking drugs. Everything seemed so good for a change.
But after a couple of years, things started to change. My wife seemed always to not feel good when it came time to go to church.
After a while some of my family tried to tell me what was going on.
I just couldn't believe it. Well it wasn't long and I found out she was doing the same thing to me that I had done to my first wife.
Wow, I couldn't figure it out, I mean I was going to church and trying to live my life the way I should. So why?
Well needless to say, I started blaming God.
And that led back to drinking and taking drugs. Only this time, it was a lot worse. I just didn't care any more.
I slept with every one I could, drank everything I could drink and took so many drugs that most of the time I didn't know which way was up, or even if there was an up!
I was quite sure I was completely gone. I didn't want to live anymore.
Most of the time I was thinking about suicide. I just didn't have what it takes to do it.
For some reason, it just seemed to me that no matter what I did, I would fail!
All I wanted to do was die. I couldn't think of anything to live for, so in my desperation, I would cry out as loud as I could, God let me die, please let me die.
He didn't, instead I met another woman. This woman was nothing like I had ever met before, she just wouldn't let me alone.
Oh, I still drank and took drugs, but only at home.
Women, huh, there was none to compare with my new wife.
Yeah wife number three. Well it wasn't long and she had me off drugs, off the booze and staying home when ever I wasn't working.
Don't get me wrong, we weren't going to church yet ! But things were changing, I didn't want to be around other women.
And the ones I worked with seemed to know I didn't want to be with them anymore.
See there is one thing I never realized, all during these times in my life, my mother never stopped praying for me. Oh it wasn't just her, there was a lot of people praying for me and wife #3.
Well in 1989, she and I got into a fight, not physical, verbal.
But I jumped in the truck and went for a ride to cool down. Well for some reason I ended up at my brothers house, I didn't even know why.
Well he and I sat in his back yard at the picnic table. I run the whole thing down to him about the fight and somehow he got the conversation turned around and was talking about Jesus to me.
I was stunned, I thought I had gone over to his house to try to get over being mad at my wife, and he was talking about Jesus!
Well the farther he went the more I wanted to listen. I didn't know that inside the house my wife was talking to my mother on the phone at the same time about Jesus.
That night, we both gave our hearts to Jesus almost at the same time. Neither of us knew what the other one was doing, she thought I had left her.
From that night on everything changed for both of us.
We wanted to go to church and we wanted our lives to change, and they did.
Don't get me wrong, there are still times when things get hard, more times than I'd like. And there are times when I just want to run as fast as I can from Jesus.
But He always seems to bring me back. When I fall down He seems always to be right there to pick up the pieces!
I don't know where I would be today if he hadn't taken me to my brothers house that night in 1989.
Maybe by now I would have been dead and in hell, which is really what I deserve. But I thank God that I'm not, Jesus carried all my sins on his shoulders when they crucified him so long ago.
If your reading this, and have had some of these things happen in your life, and want to find a way out, try Jesus, he loves you more than you'll ever know in this life time.
And he's standing right there with you right now wanting to take you in his arms.
Please say yes to him, you'll never regret it.
Don't get me wrong, you will still have problems, but they will be different, you will have him right beside you to help you through them. He promised, He will never leave you nor forsake you, he will always be with you.
I thank you for reading this and I pray that Jesus will fill your life and heart so full of peace, joy and happiness that even the biggest problems just seem to melt away.
God bless;
Your friend
David Kanavel
