Distorted Life

Electric guitars and amplifiers built the foundation of rock music.  The need for amplification grew out the growing number of attendees at concerts.  Early amplifiers were low fidelity and would often produce unwanted distortion when the volume was increased beyond their low thresholds.  Distortion sounds much like speakers that are damaged or speakers that have slightly torn cones.  Artists such as Chuck Berry, Ike Turner, and Guitar Slim purposefully used distortion for the overtones and warm qualities that distortion produced.  They saw value in distortion.  However, no other person in rock history popularized the distorted guitar as much as Jimi Hendrix.  Jimi Hendrix was known for his impeccable sense for tone and arrangement of sound.  Jimi purposefully manipulated his guitar amplifiers so that he could produce a stronger tone of distortion and feedback.  Jimi was an artist that saw a purpose for noise.  Rock star Lita Ford stated, “Nobody was doing that before him, because noise wasn’t appropriate. But Hendrix came along and made it appropriate” (Guitar Player, 5/16/2012).  There is a popular story, although not validated, of a time when Jimi used a damaged speaker that had gotten kicked over at a concert because he liked the distortion that it produced.  The artist, the great Jimi Hendrix found a purpose for something that most people didn’t value.  Jimi took noise and made it into art. 

So, why am I talking about rock music, distorted guitars, and Jimi Hendrix?  This story is basically a metaphor for my life.  I, much like a speaker, had been kicked over and became broken.  I was of no use to anyone.  I was discarded and despised.  I was damaged and the output of my life was distortion.  My mother raised me from birth until about 8 years of age.  Being a single mother while raising two children was difficult, but what made our lives most difficult was my mother’s addiction to heroin.  Child Protective Services never came and knocked on our door.  I had never been asked if my mother hit me or used drugs in front of me.  There were very few people who knew what was going on in our lives.  My mom eventually asked my grandparents to raise us, so that she could get her life together. 

My grandparents did the best they could to raise us, but the damage had been done.  I had become broken and distorted.  When I turned 15 years old I had an identity crisis.  While other children were discovering who they were and how they were different from their parents, I was trying to figure out where my life began.  Being a child in my mother’s home was about survival, it wasn’t about enjoying childhood.  Now, I was gaining a sense of independence, but didn’t know what to do with it.  I was searching for myself, but I didn’t know where to start.  So, I started doing what I understood most­–I started doing drugs.  I gravitated towards friends who were similar to me.  We were also broken and distorted.  This is probably why I listened to a lot of metal music.  I loved the distortion and feedback that was produced in metal music.  I loved the lyrics because they spoke to me.  That was my life.  I learned broken values from a broken mother.  I inherited my life.  I was broken.

I used to question God.  Why me?  If you are loving, kind, and merciful where was your mercy when my mother was hitting me?  Where was your mercy when my mother would weep out of her brokenness?  Where are you now?  Where are you as I spin my life out of control and repeat my mother’s brokenness?  I used to say I was atheist because I was angry with God.  I did believe there was a god, but I didn’t believe he was good or loving.  So, I continued to listen to metal and then I moved on to death metal.  All of the death metal that I listened to was satanic, lyrically.  The distortion was greater; the screaming in the music was distorted to the point of incomprehension.  The lyrics talked about God heretically.  The lyrics were profane, disgusting, and offensive, but not to me because I was broken and my life was only getting worse.

When I was 19 years old I was at the peek of my brokenness.  My grandmother had become ill.  Initially, the doctors thought she was having heart problems, but we found out she was in the late stages of lung cancer.  I was losing the woman who raised me.  She was my mother and my rock.  I burrowed further into drugs and depression.  I had become numb and developed leprosy of the heart. 

At my grandmother’s funeral I listened to her testimony of coming to faith in Jesus Christ.  It was the first time I heard her story.  She talked about coming to faith in Jesus just before she found out she had cancer.  She said that had she known she had cancer, she would have never come to him, because she would have felt that she was doing it out of pity for herself.  She said, that God knew her heart and he orders the steps in our lives.  She said that nothing happens to anyone unless God has a greater purpose and joy for their suffering and pain.  She said that God takes the broken things and gives them purpose. 

God was speaking to me.  I knew it was God.  I was obsessed with the thought that God may have a purpose for my life and that my pain was for a greater purpose.  One year after she had died I began going to church.  I started reading the Bible and God started to speak to me.  I remember reading Ezekiel 16:4-5.  In this verse, God was speaking to Israel.

“And as for your birth, on the day you were born your cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water to cleanse you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling cloths.  No eye pitied you, to do any of these things to you out of compassion for you, but you were cast out on the open field, for you were abhorred, on the day that you were born.  I passed by you and saw you kicking around helplessly in your blood.  I said to you as you lay there in your blood, LIVE”! 

God was pointing out my brokenness and the fact that no one saw purpose for me, but that he had a purpose and a destiny for my life.  I started asking God what my purpose was.

I started working with teenagers.  As much trouble as I had caused my grandparents, my city, and my God, the least I could do was connect with teenagers and help walk them through their hurt and pain.  I found it easy to connect with teenagers.  I wasn’t that much older than them and I understood their brokenness.  God was using my brokenness to connect with teenagers.  I thought I had found my purpose, but God continued to work in my life and used my brokenness to bring him glory.  One of our youth’s brothers was a drummer and was friends with a guitar player.  He wanted to get his brother to start going to church, so he asked me to meet with him.  He and I hit it off and we quickly became close friends.  I met his friend who was a follower of Jesus Christ and we started a Christian metal band.  One day at band practice my guitar player said that I should work with teenagers.  I told him I already did.  He said that he meant really broken teenagers. I got my first job with the state of Texas at Waco Center for Youth, an adolescent psychiatric facility. 

During this time I had met my future wife, Jodi.  She and I started dating and I knew very quickly this was the woman God wanted me to marry.  Jodi had a normal childhood; according to my standard of childhood.  I saw purity in her.  She had never done drugs and was very naïve about drugs and drug culture.  I am going to be perfectly honest and admit that Jodi was broken also, but in different ways.  When I met her though, I knew she would never leave me and that my children would have both their mother and father in their lives, working together.  I knew that she would never hit our children and that she would never spend all of our money on drugs.  Jodi loved God and was submitted to him.  Her faith and love for God never waned.  She was the vision God had given me.  I was starting a family and it would be nothing like what I had experienced as a child.  I was very grateful to God.

I was working full-time, being a husband to my wife, and a father to my son, Joseph.  I was doing this all while attending college.  Jodi and I decided to move to Fort Worth.  The decision was mostly because we wanted to be closer to her family.  For other reasons that I did not yet know, God wanted us to move to Fort Worth.  I was looking for employment in Fort Worth.  I wanted to continue working with teenagers, so I applied at All Church Home for Children.  I had also applied for Child Protective Services.  Both agencies interviewed me and both agencies offered me the job.  I was conflicted.  I did not know what God wanted me to do.  I remember telling my brother, Eric about my situation.  He told me to take the job with Child Protective Services.  He said it seems like the most logical choice, because of our history of child abuse and the fact that I had been working with abused children.  It made sense.  After talking with him and praying, I felt God call me to work for Child Protective Services.

I didn’t know at the time, but God was grooming me and preparing me for an even greater purpose.  I had learned so much working with parents and families.  I was able to connect with parents and share with them that as a child, I grew up in an abusive home and the affect that child abuse had on me.  I was also able to connect with parents who had serious drug problems.  I was able to tell them about my mother and how she was addicted to heroin.  I explained to them that my mother stopped using drugs and asked my grandparents to raise us.  I told them my mother loved us and she overcame her addiction because she made a decision to put the safety and well-being of her children above her craving and desire for drugs.  I was working with broken people.  God had placed these families in my life because I could relate with them. My brokenness and distorted childhood was saving families and reconciling them to God.  God was using my child abuse to save children and families.  In the Bible Joseph told his brothers in Genisis 50:20, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives”.  I relate with this verse.  The bad that was done in my life was turned to greater good.

The wonderful thing about the father is that he doesn’t plan small.  He didn’t stop with me becoming a social worker and using my history, skills, and knowledge just to save families here in Texas.  He intended for me to work on the other side of the world in Vietnam so that I could help strengthen families there.  God uses my story in many different areas of my life.  All the hurt and pain that I experienced, God uses it for his glory.  If I had to relive my past and go through the abuse, the hurt, and the pain again, I would.  If Jesus had to go to the cross again to redeem us, he would.  Jesus knew my abuse, abandonment, and anguish.  He not only knew it, he experienced it on the cross.  If you have become broken and distorted, God the artists, can use the noise in your life to bring music and harmony.  He can restore what was damaged and give purpose to despised things.  The Lord our God is good and he loves us.  He sees the beauty through our pain.