Death, Friends, and Life

I had 3 friends die recently.  One was a classmate of mine.  We graduated high school in the same class.  The other man was a dear friend who I had known for many years.  I Pastored his church while their Pastor was deployed in the military.  The 3rd man was a man that I met while painting my sister-in-laws house.  He would come down and watch me paint, repair windows and door thresholds . He was a fine man and a lot of fun to know.

My mom told me something that I have never forgot.  She said "one of the worst things about getting older is that you see so many of your friends die."  How true that is.

I have made a few friends here.  Some have left this site and some seldom message me any more.  Many of these I have counseled with, prayed with, shared with and 2 have told me I saved their lives.  I don't say this to compliment me.  I just state what I have done.  It's kind of amazing to me how soon friends forget what you have done for them or helped them through.

  My life as a biker years ago was a terrible, brutal and dangerous lifestyle.  Many of those I rode with are dead now.  A friend told me the other day, "I sure am glad you got you life straighted out because if you hadn't the alcohol or the motorcycle gang life would have killed you.  There were many times when I could have been killed but, I was spared for a reason.

I have endured much in my life. Married at 19, lost my home in a fire, my hand crushed 2 weeks after my house burnt,  in an oilfield accident and spent 5-1/2 months with steel pins in my hand, my car burnt 4 months after my hand accident.  My wife had affairs and she tried to stab me 3 different times and got me once, she knocked me down in the street with her car and tried to run over me and the last vicious thing she did was try to shoot me.  I moved out shortly thereafter. 10 yrs. of marriage down the drain.  There are a lot of mental scars from these 10 yrs. Because of a lot of this, I became a drug user and an alcoholic.

I have numerous physical scars: My left hand crushed and an  index finger crooked from oilfield accident and scars on my hand.  A finger cut off and re-attached on my right hand. a bullet hole and a stab wound in my right leg, a scar behind my left knee where they had to clamp an artery to keep me from bleeding to death. Every finger broken on both hands except my right thumb. A scar on my left hand where a screwdriver was ran completely through my hand. My tongue was almost severed twice. A scar under my chin where I hit a clothesline on my motorcycle at night.  A scar on my bottom lip where my teeth came through my lip from a fight. knife wounds on my hands and arms, toes broken on both feet, scars on my head from being hit with different objects, just to name a few.

My youngest son was killed in a car wreck in 2005.  He was 37.  That shook me to the core of my being. No-one knows what that does to a person until they have experienced something like that. I wish that on no-one.

Yet, I am still here, trying to help others.