Shattered Certainties

The universe had always been a place of cold, hard truths. Being an engineer and a committed agnostic, I had always rejected the idea of a higher power, considering it merely wishful thinking. It wasn’t until I faced an unplanned physics experiment regarding inelastic collisions that changed my mind. 

Like many people, I imagined death as a permanent, dreamless sleep. I was self-sufficient and content with my life.

Where my beliefs started is simple. I grew up hearing about how poor my father’s family was and how his mother would give money to a preacher on the radio despite their struggles for food. Forced to raise and then slaughter rabbits for food, my father brought his animus towards God, home to his new wife and my soon-to-be mother.

Drafted to fight a war that, to date, is still listed as unresolved, Korea further drove his belief in God to the backside of any possibility. From the atrocities of war, the bloodshed drove him to be a vengeful human being.

While he was in Korea, his mother had his brother take his dog out and shoot it, as they couldn’t afford to feed it. His mother got rid of his personal belongings as she didn’t expect to ever see him again. Misleading Korean reports, coupled with limited communication, fueled her beliefs.

How the church fits into this scenario is anyone’s guess.

The church his wife's family attended asked him to leave because he couldn't afford a whole tithe after he married and began producing what we call today ‘baby boomers.’ 

This was a Vet who served his country and made .80 cents an hour fueling airplanes.

When a box of cereal cost more than what he made an hour before taxes, it was easy to see his disdain for the church.

Fast-forward 10 years. Church in our family was a subject you just didn’t broach unless you wanted to feel the ire of a man grounded in hate.

He thought those who donated money and time to people who seemed to exploit their followers were incredibly naive.

That is a nice way of putting it. Pop was no saint, and his language was less than stellar.

When the church elders told him and his wife not to return if they couldn’t afford a complete tithe, they doomed children from knowing God. They set me up for failure with God because of money.

The multitude of preachers, bishops, and shady figures, some even hawking "Purple Kool Aid,” only intensified my father’s frustration with his beliefs. From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate, the ugliness of narcissism and greed was most certainly a demonstration of the Devil at play.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. In my fifth-grade class, we were expected to draw what Easter meant to us. I fancied myself somewhat of an artist, so the large Bunny Rabbit carrying the brightly colored eggs became a target for my peers' laughter.

A girl I admired who sat closest to me began snickering. Catching my attention, I glanced up to see that she was laughing at my rabbit and then at me.

Others in the class had drawn dark clouds with a man on a cross. One picture even showed lightning striking the man on the cross.

Clearly, there was a void in my upbringing.

Had they truly known what Easter was about, they would have drawn him rising from the dead after three days, not being struck by lightning, but I digress.

The end of my fifth grade surprised me because my teacher prevented me from leaving with the rest of the class on the last day.

After they had all gone, She handed me a package, a present of sorts. Within the box was a leather-bound bible she had signed and given to me by her.

Dad wasn't thrilled about the gift. With the last day of school behind us, the subject was dropped. I remember the scent of the leather and the love of the person who gave it to me.

That summer, I attempted to make sense of the King James version of the bible.

On the first day of sixth grade, I went looking for her to ask her questions about what I had read, only to learn that she had passed away that summer.

While the bible occupied my nightstand, school, Ham Radio, girls, and cars occupied my youth.

One young lady that I aspired to date invited me to her church. I was thinking about a movie or dinner, but if Church was the only way I could spend time with her, so be it.

I had a knot in my stomach as I wasn’t sure about how I felt about the whole God Church thing, and I certainly remembered the preachers extracting money by using the fear of hell as a motivator.

I will call her Melissa, as this is a true story.

Melissa said she would pick me up next Sunday. Dressed in school clothes I waited. 7:30 came and went. 7:45 came and went. You get the idea, I thought I had been stood up when all hell broke loose in front of the house.

This ugly white bus with red and blue stripes pulled up in front, full of kids with snow cones, sticky fingers, and no Melissa. The horn sounded like a moose in heat, waking the dead and the neighbors.

“She said she would meet you there; C’mon, get it.” The bus driver said.

The commotion had attracted the attention of the neighbors, who were now looking out their windows.

Inhaling deeply, I started a new chapter in my life, but it didn't go as planned.

When I got to the church, Melissa was nowhere to be seen. I sat in the back of the sanctuary, ready to quickly escape if necessary. This was my first time being in a place like that.

Lightning did not strike the building, but I must tell you I was nervous as a nun at a penguin shoot.

I finally saw her after being walked to the front of the congregation, being saved (from what I didn’t know) and being embarrassed beyond belief.

After the service, I headed back to the bus when I saw her. “Where the heck have you been, do you know what has happened to me?”

She was smiling ear to ear. “I heard, you were saved, that’s great!”

I shook my head while trying to make sense of her reply. “Can we go to lunch and talk about this?”

“Oh, no, you need to go to Sunday school next.”

“Sunday what…?” Yeah, it wasn’t over, and worse, she was teaching another version of Sunday school, so we didn’t go together.

An eidetic memory isn't always a blessing; it can be a burden at times. Fifty years after the fact, I still remember how uncomfortable I was and the teaching of that class.

“Explaining what the afterlife in human terms would be like you, attempting to teach algebra to a catfish.” That is a direct quote from over 50 years ago.

I always wonder why preachers focus on the afterlife. Seriously, they haven't been there. There are no postcards from heaven telling you how great it is, and, come to think of it, there are no postcards from the other place either.

The best was yet to come. I lost track of Melissa; I was rather upset by the subterfuge.

Rounding the corner toward the bus, I ran into a gang of youths. The lead guy has removed his Sunday go-to-meeting white ruffly shirt. He is standing there in his wife-beater T-shirt, ready to take me to task about something.

He has a posse around him in case he overestimates his abilities.

His necklace had his name, Sergio. I guess he wore it in case he forgot who he was.

“You better leave my girl alone or I will bloody your nose.”

Perfect, I thought.

I was so pissed; I would have welcomed the fight just to take out my frustration on an idiot. Maybe, just maybe, God provided him for that purpose. No, probably not.

Instead of retreating, I walked toward him, causing him and his gang to retreat. I don’t think they were expecting that response.

"I had no idea she was seeing someone! Of course, I wouldn't do anything to jeopardize that, goodness gracious. What would Jesus do in this situation?"

Sergio was expecting something quite different. My feelings at that time were, you two were made for each other, good luck.

The white bus that sounded like a bull moose came to my home several Sundays in a row before the mating call of the Mechanical monstrosity ceased.

Melissa broke my heart, but I learned a valuable lesson. Mixing faith and romance is a recipe for disaster.

Neither my father nor I were on good terms with God when he passed. Unlike him, I had an intuitive sense that there's something bigger than our earthly senses can perceive.

Years later, a head-on collision at highway speeds with a drunk was the club god used to get my attention.

I topped a hill, and there was this large black Cadillac speeding toward me in my lane. The timing was ‘Oh Shit…Bang’ and I never heard the bang.

Like a tree falling in the forest, we can assume that there was a hell of a crash, but I never heard it.

The windows exploded like a shotgun blast, the steering wheel crushed my chest, face, and so on, and…a stainless-steel thermos I had just filled with coffee leaped off the bench seat and wedged itself between the frame of my seat and the firewall.

Part of this story that I have not shared is that I found myself on the outside of the car, watching the goings on from a bystander's perspective. I watched them pull the old drunk from his car. Beer cans fell on the ground from the open door as they pulled him out from under his dash. He wasn't wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash.

I saw the bloody mess behind the wheel when they cut my car door off. I remember the blood dripping from the outstretched fingers. I watched them pick up coke cans from the busted-up cooler and toss them in the bed of what was left of my brand-new pickup truck. One guy laughed each time he threw a can as it exploded in the bed. The fizzy liquid leaked through the hole in the metal, blending with the blood pooling beneath the dripping fingers.

When they put the bloody body of the driver on that yellow board, I was no longer a spectator but the person who had driven the truck. The pain was incredible.

The story defies the laws of physics and our understanding of what's normal. Remember what I said about an eidetic memory? There's no way I could have seen what I saw if I'd been trapped behind that crumpled-up hood. There is no way I would have seen the ambulance having to drive on the grass as the gawkers were taking pictures while blocking the road. I would not have been able to see that the engine that used to be in the front of the truck was now under my seat. I could not have heard the cop asking the first responder if I was alive. I could not have listened to his response when he told them he had a pulse, but it was thread.

That day marked a turning point in my life. Each trial followed by another, each step a struggle, another test, another doctor's appointment, and that voice from the unknown, heard in the hazy space between sleep and wakefulness. Echoes from the past reverberated in the voices. Ghosts and spirits appear to move freely between the realms of the living and the dead. The idea of "it wasn't my time" kept recurring.

You don’t survive something like that and think things will one day be normal again. They won't, they can't. And they never will be.

The lingering pain goes beyond physical scars—pinched nerves, fused bones, and scar tissue that feels like a dull knife constantly gnawing at me, especially during movement.

The sleepless nights and the inability to do the things I should have been able to do all pale compared to the emotional scars. Then, there is the PTSD that we spoke about earlier in this story.

While Dad’s PTSD was of war, mine is about a black Cadillac headed straight for me at 65 mph on a rural road with no way to avoid the crash.

An 80-year-old drunk robbed me of my life, career, and joy. I was at the zenith of my earning potential, and I loved it. I have not enjoyed a good night's sleep in over 30 years. The nightmares are real, and I never know when they will show up.

What changed, how have I changed? How do I deal with this new life?

Well, through my reading of that leather-bound book from my fifth-grade teacher, I learned of a man name Job.

Is this a test of my faith? Did God allow this? The answer is yes; he allowed it, but why?

What did I do to deserve this hell, this torment that never ceases?

Youth brings boundless energy and the ability to tackle almost any challenge. Though I'm not wheelchair-bound like Stephen Hawking, I still have to hire help for things I should be able to do myself. There's a higher wisdom that I'm still trying to understand.

The vocation I enjoyed, which required me to be more agile than I am today, I lost. Through that job, I met some of the most influential people in the world. That’s all gone.

As the bones fuse, the scar tissue causes major discomfort, and the aging process adds to my difficulties, forcing me to leave the corporate world earlier than planned. I am one of those people who loved what I did. I miss the water cooler chats, the strategic initiative meetings, and working with vendors. I was the go-to guy for anything technical, and that was an earned position.

I loved being there for my staff and helping them to grow into their positions. All Gone.

Today, my father would be shocked to see me leading bible studies or small groups. My mother would be totally surprised to know that I had written over 65 million words and sold books to people who enjoyed what I wrote.

Who would have ever guessed that the person who never once got a 100 on a spelling test would be the one catching typos in other writers’ drafts?

Was there a divine plan?

God is most probably the only being who is not surprised by what I do on a daily basis.

When people ask me why I write? Well, there is a purpose in it. The more people who read this story, this true rendition of my life might think twice about driving under the influence.

Then there is my fifth-grade teacher.  I wonder what she would think if she was still around and could see how her gift set the stage for what would surely be the rock upon which I stand?