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 My journey and how i hope my writings will change the lifes of others.

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Joseph
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Joseph

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Join date : 2017-09-07

My journey and how i hope my writings will change the lifes of others.  Empty
PostSubject: My journey and how i hope my writings will change the lifes of others.    My journey and how i hope my writings will change the lifes of others.  EmptyThu Sep 07, 2017 7:54 pm

I am hoping that what you are about to read, will offer hope, peace and a shared love for humanity. We all as humans  share a common bond in some shape or form. We all have our skeletons, our demons and a life history of  ups and downs. In sharing this history of life I would hope it would inspire others to think about the people around us. This is simply a story to bring closure to events in my life and my faith in something greater than me.  This is about character and how we as children growing up are formed and shaped. It is how by sharing just maybe we can change the world and how we treat others around us. How my own personal faith and belief has given strength to endure and except that there is a greater power then He who is in all of us. It is about looking closely at family and want it's significance means and how important it is. It is how we treat those around us.
    I wish to take you the reader on a journey, a journey my journey a story I feel needs to be told. A journey of hardship, struggles, a emotional coaster ride that might leave you  confounded, and aghast at such horror. You may shed tears. This is my struggle with a imperfect life, filled with  harsh cruelties, abusive powers of destruction of self and the battle to win a place in life at all cost. Life is not fair, life is not simple, life is a constant battle of wills to obtain a place in society. We all want to belong, we all want to be accept by our peers, and those we encounter. We all want our niche in life where we can feel whole and at peace with ourselves and the world that revolves around us. I am sure we all crave for ourselves a little peace of heaven, where we can feel emotionally sound. We are born and  created by the seed of love. A love of nurturing that forms who we are and who we are to become. Along the way I personally  found faith. Faith in  myself and faith in a higher and greater power. My faith is interwoven in this narrative and it becomes very much a fabric of my own personal identity.  This odyssey I am going to take you on is a sharing of my life, so lets begin.
    My life has no beginning, for it is more memories brought to life by years of therapy and later conjoined by fact, as is most of my earlier life.  It has never been clear to me where I, was born or who are my real parents. In my adult life my birth certificate had no identifying factors, for in place of birth where only numbers.  A common comment I had always told others in my earlier years where that I was born under a rock. When we are born we are raised by parents, yet I had no recollection of them. I have  no early memories of warm, loving or caring as a infant from those who conceived me. All I had is not so memorable images, of abandonment. My memories brought to life through therapy is of two wasted infants, laying in a soiled, smelly decaying rot. My brother, myself and another sibling had been  left in a home for a period of time. One sibling died and my brother and I  where barely clinging to life when found. In therapy I recall how I was pulled back to that time and how it effected me so. How I could vividly see the scene, smell the air around it and how it envelope me drawing me  in. How the doctor thought he had lost me, for my breathing had become shallow and I was non-responsive. How the doctor had said I had crawled into a fetal position.  How later I recalled wanting to just remain there and die. This is the beginning of life for me, yet another long journey of pain, suffering and abuse is ahead. This person was dropped into a orphanage and in the care of its system. A system at the time was heavily flawed and ripe for abuse, shovelled under the rug. Out of site, out of mind. The opposing opinions and views of the system was one that he was a trouble child and the prove of guilt was always placed on the child. It was the child's fault that he couldn't change to be excepted into the role he was asked to adapt to. I endure forty foster homes before being excepted into a family. Once more facts are elusive, but the memories are not. The nightmares, the haunting dreams, the emotional toil of self and the permanent scars etched forever deep within the core of my  very being. To this day the effects of my earlier life still arise effecting me both in mind and in body, a hell on earth that I have never really been able to escape from totally.
  Personally I  endured hardships and abuse that no person should, but somewhere along the way I fell through the cracks. I endure periods of neglect, starvation, sexual abuse, physical punishment that has left eruptible  damage to the body. My mind, the soul  was tortured beyond belief. The only thing that continues to thread this all together is the years of therapy and the constant painful memories that cannot be erased. Memories, haunting dreams that awoken me  screaming in a cold sweat. The fear of closeness with others, the barriers of self preservation and the ability to drawn away from the world I exist in. Remembrances of punishments. Easter time because I was bad was given rabbit feces in a basket. Being threaten to being dumped into a deep hole  that was dug if I didn't behave. Being put in a dark damp back veranda and sadists individuals coming up from the cellar with bed sheets over there heads. Sexual mistreatment at the hands of both men and women. Locked in dark closets Meals taken away or not given.  Constant verbal abuse, words spoken that I was a bad child, a child deserving of what I got. In time pain and suffering became the norm, love and expectance where non-existent. So entrenched in this abuse I began to except the lies, pain and suffering it became expectable and tolerated. In time suffering and pain became my friends for I could understand and live with it. My fears to this day are still the notion of  love a confusing ideology that I don`t get. I still struggles with friendship. Friends, acquaintances, people have entered and left my life have been impacted by my  past. Even today there is distance between those I know. Even thou I desperately try to cement friendships and bonds with people, in the recesses of the mind there is a constant struggle to except and be excepted. A fear like a dark cloud always hangs there, that if I gets to close I will be hurt. For once I have gained their trust, friendship,or respect they  will one day just disappear for he is not worthy of their love and acceptance. Toys given are just as quickly taken away or destroyed, as punishment for I  was a bad child and don`t deserve them.
    This has effected my life to this day. I suffer and I  still embrace the body pains and scares of those earlier days. The body has never fully mended from the broken bones and the scares have never disappeared. The mind at times still draws back to a blank state where no one can enter to hurt me. In these times I have no recollection of events that pass in his life, has no recognition  of people or places. A comfortable, knowing place that like a blanket gives me a sense of safety and warmth. At times in my life this state has cause major hurt and pain to some. In this state my actions can become physical with people and my own body has been bodily injured by my actions, Today it is not so prevalent that I have to retreat to this place, but it still can happen in a flash. I have been treated and diagnosed with Post Trauma Stress Disorder. The actions of the past can place me when in stress through no fault of others in a place in his past that I may act in a  inappropriate  manner and lash out physically or verbally. This is both scary and unsettling to me. It is a part of the person I don`t  like and I  make every effort to control it. In times of stress it becomes a challenge, I need to control the situation around me  to keep the beast locked within. Other aspects or fall outs from the past where stuttering where it was almost impossible to form sentences. Also the events of the past years had slow his growth and he was very small in size for a boy of that age.
    At the age of ten I became a part of permanent family. A family that I feel weren't given all the facts and weren't totally prepare to take in two very trouble children. As a state of fact it should be mention that my brother and I shared the  same hardship, always paired together. A lot of effort and time was put in by the foster parents  to make a loving and caring home for them. But after years of abuse and hardship the parents where in for a long rocky road, we didn't make it easy. Almost from the get go my I was acting out, getting into trouble at school. Fighting constantly with the school kids, and mouthing off to the authority. A day didn't go by that the parents didn't receive letters of complains. The bed wetting started at age nine and continue well into the late teens. Many nights of nightmares, vivid and real, awaking to screams of terror and cold sweats. At school many days where spent standing in a corner, or getting strapped on the hands. There wasn't much learning happening. Soon I became my best company shying away from others avoiding all contact. I started running away from home disappearing for days, not telling people where I was going, and I was only ten. So of course the authorities where sent out looking for me.I was bend on going somewhere, any where to escape that which was inescapable. Started stealing food and other things to supplement my  journeys needs. I would run and eventually I was returned  home, only to repeat the process. Finally in frustrated the foster parents first sent me to a psychiatrist, which landed me for a year in Psychiatric hospital. I was in the hospital for several months and eventually allowed to go home for visits. I  was taking several pills three times a day. I was subdue, placid, just barely able to function. Sure the fits of anger where controlled, the dreams disappeared and all was well. Schooling was continued but it was like walking through mud for the mind couldn't grasp what was being taught. Eventually the hospital stay ended.
At home although withdraw and for the most part and the only people that truly existed in my life was me. Avoiding contact included no physical contact which on my part, refusing and avoiding all physical contact. I retreated at home either in good weather in the bush near by or hunker down in my room. Verbally I almost became a mute, speaking little. Schooling continue to be a struggle and there where a lot of repeated classes. At some point the dreams, the nightmares returned and his world once more was turned upside down. Renewed fighting with others, and acting out followed. Started running away again and past patterns became common once more. Renew visits to the psychiatrist, more pills and eventually another long visit to the hospital. School was continue at the hospital and I continue to fail miserably in my studies. Crafts where taken up and for once I  excel at something, that something being leathercrafts and eventually I was making wallets, purses, handbags and other quality items. Once more I returned to my adopted family and again things where going smoothly, but below the surface nothing had changed. I had learned to adapt to the wants and needs of those who where in control of my life, giving in to their demands on me. Yet I was still this small hurt child who could not, or did want to except that the loving parents who adopted him really did care and did want him in their lives.  Footnote in my years with the adopted family I encounter two near drowning's, which one almost took my life. Finally just before his fourteenth birthday I  made the great escape, After days away from home and returning home I was greeted by his foster parents and the perish priest. The first words out of the priests mouth was you are going straight to hell if you don't change your ways. Lets pray for forgiveness for your soul.  Your parents love you and care for you. I made a beeline for my room.
    Finally I  snapped  this broken child and I once more  was determine to make a life for myself, although what that life was going to be I had no idea. The next weeks where spent hitchhiking the highways, finding shelter in culvers, sleeping in roadside sandboxes, stealing food, and begging for money. Finally the journey ended in Fort Frances, Ontario, where I stayed with my mom's sister. Indiscreet planning was going on between sisters, unknown to me. A few weeks stay and I was packed off on a bus to another sister in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Once there I was turn over to Children's Aid. I was put into a home and circumstances of my stay where less than favourable. My room consisted of a small room by the furnace, bare walls and bare cement, with just a bed. I wasn't allow to go upstairs, except for meals. Meals where a lot of perogies, coolaid and jam sandwiches. During the day I was sent to a work place for The Mentally Disabled. It was pure hell, the whole situation. I started withdrawing into myself, and few words where exchanged with anyone. Mostly because the stuttering was so bad. Quietly I made plans to move on, but that was dwarfed by the powers to be who where controlling my life. For a few  months I spent time in another  Psychiatric hospital, more pills, more nightmares and total withdrawal from the world around me. Eventually I was put on a farm, just past my fourteenth birthday. My marching orders where simple, you stay put on the farm or the other choice was a Reform School. The choice was simple , I choice the farm. The next year and half was uneventful for the me for I stuck to the agreement. It was easy for I withdrew into myself and few words where pasted day to those I shared life with. It was hard work for me, but the labour I welcomed and I grew strong in body and mind. I enjoy labouring in the barn and the fields. At some point a routine of the Old Coot a affection term for the elderly gent who took  me the broken child under his wing. At no time was there harsh words, or punishments from him. He empowered me and challenged me with caring love. He reward me with kindness when I the child did well. He was patience in his instructions, taking time for me to understand. At some point and time depending on the weather the Old Coot took time with the me reading the bible to me either on a hay bale or in  the field or in the barn. He spent hours reading  passages to me the silent boy day after day. Not once did I acknowledge the man sitting beside me or that I was taking in the words the Old Coot spoke. Then one day the dam broke and  the words of bible open the gates of hell and I was released. I start crying unrelentingly and the Old Coot took me in his arms and I  didn't resist. Slowly day by day things change subtle changes each day and the darkness of life past started to lift.
    The days where still routine and I spoke more and the time with Old Coot became special. Each day we discussed the passages of the bible exchanging views and thoughts. The old man was the only one I felt comfortable around while accepting his affection embraces and his love. Up till the age of around seventeen now a teen I spent enjoying his days on the farm and especially under the wing of the Old Coot. In that time the old man taught me  a lot about farming, caring for the animals and the management of farming and crops. Also the best task for me was working with the farm horses used to do a lot of the farming work.  I also took up running on the back roads eventually running ten miles a day.  Then one eventful day everything changed. While bringing in a wagon load of hay, one of the wagon wheels hit a deep hole made by a gopher and the wagon, the hay and myself tipped over. In a split second the wagon and a lot of fifty pound hay bales land and pinned me. There where helpers around who frantically started to unpin me. The results of the accident left me with a puncture lung, broken ribs, broken and fractures of the legs and arms, a  dislocated shoulder and multiple bruises and scrapes. For almost six months or more I lay in a hospital bed and at least twice a week the Old Coot spent hours with me and we continue to read and study the bible. Just when it was about time to leave the hospital arrangements where made to return back to the adoptive parents to recover and go through extensive therapy. It was a wrenching and emotional time knowing I was going to be leaving the Old Coot.
    At home with his adoptive parents at first things seem to come together, there was harmony and a growing of acceptance of each other.I still continue to read the bible and kept  in contact with the Old Coot. Below the surface thou things slowly started to unravel. There was no physical or loving attachment with the adoptive parents. Having not completed schooling prior to leaving the adoptive parents, a effort was made to continue my education. It was a total failure. The teachers continue to make comments that the student was slow, the stuttering was not helping. Words to the effect that I was stupid where continually ringing in my ears. Yet left on my own I excel in many subjects. Much later in life I was diagnosed with Dyslexia. When tested I was found to have a IQ far above most. One of my problems was I had Figurative Language Disorder.
    So over time the healing process was completed and having failed grade nine three times I gave up on schooling. Tried various Trades schools but also failed miserly. Throughout this time feelings of failure and discontent prevailed. I left the adoptive parents home setting out on my own into a world I had no desire to commune with. The dreams returned the stuttering was no worst but no better.  I  also started to run again painfully and slowly I was able to run ten miles a day. Although not winning anything I competed in small marathons till I blew out my knee.  I  picked up jobs that brought no satisfaction to my life. I still read the bible and try to understand this God who cared and love me. I was functioning in a space and time that had little or no meaning. I tried social actives and church, but felt uncomfortable amongst people. Over time I started retreating into the world I love and it  brought me a lot of  peace. Every opportunity I had I would hike or camp in isolated places far from civilization. I was with nature and nature was one with me. The summer months where spent a captive to nature, alone and at peace with myself.  There was more communication with the Old Coot, then with my adoptive parents.
Today I realized that my adoptive parents loved me  deeply and wanted only the best for me. They never gave up on me, and always provide support when I most needed it.
It was so unfair to them and for me  it was only in the later years did I realize how much they cared.
    All things in life have purpose, there is a beginning and a end. Such was the case with the Old Coot his time and contribution to life had finally come to the last chapter. The sad news came as a punch in the chest to me  now a man. My mentor, his saviour and only true friend had pasted on, leaving me alone once more. Once more life had dealt me a loosing hand. I collapsed in on himself for the pain of loosing the Old Coot was overwhelming. The emotional toil of his lost took its total and functioning day to day was almost impossible. It was time to leave this world and join the Old Coot with God in Heaven where all would once more be right. Three consecutive suicide  attempts where to follow. Each attempt drew me closer to my goal, but each attempt failed. Two attempts left me in comas for weeks. To follow this was years of in and out of Psychiatric hospitals. In treatment for months at a time, more pills, more therapy. Times spent out in society was spent mostly by oneself functioning but not functioning. Jumping from one job to another never finding the niche that would make me happy. The one constant was my bible he kept at all times with him and the other was nature which continually called him to her bosom.
The hospital stays, the one on one with the Doctors all helped, but never cured the me. It gave insight, it gave some comfort. Yet if things where to change the man knew that through God and his own determination he would have to take the bull by the horns and make changes that would be right for him. In the years ahead things did change and in that change he was able to direct, help and comfort others through his actions. In doing so it also gave him direction and a sense of well being. 
    Change came slowly and the transformation evolved over time. Times understanding God communicating with Him in thought, pray and writings. Six years searching for answers to my past to obtain, to get to know who I truly  was. To give myself a identity that I was a person who had not  just crawled out from some rock I was under. A person that was not just a number in a governmental system.   I learned about my past, and the family I never meant. The information I was able to obtain was guarded, yet what I was able to receive gave part of myself back.I started seeking out God, going to church which gave me a footing in the real world. For in God I found hope, a friend who loved me unconditionally. In the rollercoaster of my life, the ups and downs it was God who I  turned to for God never failed me. My  trust in man is still guarded and friendship do not come easy. In the real world I am  happiest still when I commune with nature. Nature is to me is  God's greatest accomplishment for it provides a blanket of comfort, peace, a resting place removed from the perils and destruction of man. Man never achieved perfection, he sinned, he failed and he hurt others but in God I drew strength. In God I knew I was forgiven and in His arms my failures would become less. There where times of remembrance of the Old Coot and his efforts to draw out and love a broken child. Those memories also gave substance to my life and healing.
    So in the following years there where many happy times, many failures and many discoveries. In those years my faith in God multiplied, I got married. I developed friendships. I was able to take the past and help out trouble teens, take young boys and change there lives. I  got involved in in Big Brothers, the YMCA, I worked and volunteered time with the Mental Health. I took courses in Grief Recovery, Anger Management which in turn enabled me to spent three years on the help crisis's phone lines. I  was asked by many to intervene in the life's of many trouble teens. I became involved with a good friend in developing Christian programs for youth. Many years in this program taking kids and teaching them the Word of God. This was achieve by taking young boys out into nature teaching them to survive, to live off the land. They where taught reliance on each other, survival skills in the wild and canoeing. Yet the most important thing achieved was teaching them about God. For every trip into nature the kids where required to have a bible, no bible no trip. We would ask the kids to memorize bible verses and for each bible verse learned there was a reward at the end of the trip. The reward given through exchange of verses was food at a fast food chain. I also was asked if I would speak to other teens about my  past. Eventually I ended up doing speaking engagements in schools to hundreds of kids about the pitfalls of life and how I was able to turn that around.
    My first wife died due to complications from diabetic coma. In the years that followed I took on line courses and achievement a certificate in Farm Management and Animal Husbandry. It was time to leave this chapter in my life and fine a new one. I spent several years in and out of jobs, lots of ups and downs. Once more pulling back from main stream society and time of searching. Finally I found peace once more for I purchase a small dairy farm. Fifty milking cows, a sizeable chunk of land which I leased out in exchange for money and feed for my cows. Everyday seven days a week was spent working around the farm. I got myself a working dog who  became my closest friend. I milked twenty five cows in the morning and twenty five cows in the afternoon all by hand. My days where consumed by the farm. In the late evenings I  took up drawing and became quite accomplished at it. I  won a few contests. I also won dairy certificates for the quality of my milk from the dairy board. I ventured out into society but never really got connected with anyone.I did thou continue going to church and still maintained my relationship with God. I did go out and get involved in some sport activities. I became good at volleyball, and slow pitch baseball. At this time I also took on security jobs and with that I took courses that specialized in different aspects of security.  Left to my own devises and with time I was able to excel at many things. Although having limited education and things that prevented or caused me to learn only slowed  me down but never stopped me from accomplishing what I set out to do. One of the things I was never able to achieve was learning to measure, but by hook or crook I  was able to construct and build almost anything I sent my mind to. If I could vision it  I could do it. In time the farming was becoming to much. There was more and more government inference and being told I can no longer farm in the way I was doing it. I had to conform to government health regulations. Because of health problems and the meddling of government I sold the farm.
    The next years where spent in and out of different jobs. Moving around but never settling down. Another relationship and another marriage. A marriage more of convenience than substance. A couple polar opposites in values, morals and what the future held for them. It was a disaster, a marathon of life with no meaning. Eventually enough was enough and we separated each to their own destiny.
      Life from here on forward has been of faith, faith to endure life and most importantly faith in God to except that all is well. Life is like a book. It has many chapters. It has a beginning and a end. Such is life, it too has a beginning and a end. God in His infinite wisdom has given us a free will. It is up to each individual to decide, to choose the path for their lives. We have a choice to live in faith, or put it aside thinking we know what is best for us. Faith is something you have or you don't have. There should never be a middle ground when it comes to believing in God.  We are sinners a enviable fact we cannot ignore. We can only choose to change and hopefully gain some ground for our place with the Father. We are not perfect and we don't live in a perfect world.  Our acts, our decisions effect not only us but those we encounter.  We cannot judge a book by its cover, for the evidence of the truth is in the reading. The same holds true for how we perceive  life and the people in it. We should never become judge and jury when it comes to other peoples lives. The ultimate judging rests squarely in the hands of God. Instead we should reach out to others with the  love of God. Take the blinders away, open our hearts and minds to accepting others for who they are, not what they are. How we see others, how we interact with others has meaning, has cause and effect. I have  endured hardships, yet there has be victories, successes and failures. I have been through hell and back, yet through faith I have impacted many lives. By reading this it is hoped that you can look at your own lives and see how your journey has effected those you have encounter. The book that is you is it completed or is there more chapters to add? Does your book need revision? Does your book included God and His purpose for mankind?
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