I, Witness E-Book

Joseph A. McGee

• Herausgeber: Proisle Publishing Services
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 163

Beschreibung

A Story of Personal Redemption

Leseprobe

I, WITNESS

A STORY OF PERSONAL REDEMPTION

JOSEPHA.MCGEE

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.Zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc. (TM). Printed in the United States of America.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2022 by Joseph A. McGee

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher disclaims any responsibility for them. Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Contents

Dedication

Foreword

1. Life Before Cancer

2. My Strange Childhood

3. Mean and Evil

4. Camp

5. Growing Up

6. My Time on the Road

7. “Grown Up” Life

8. Pride Goes before a Fall

9. A Brush with Death

10. The First Day of the Rest of My Life

11. Cancer

12. Problems with My Soul?

13. My Faith Journey

14. Jesus

15. The Priest

16. Aftermath

17. Love Thy Neighbor

18. Other Blessings

19. Angels

20. Thorns

21. Lukewarm

22. A Cause to Die For

23. Sacrifice

24. Angry People

25. His Way

Postscript

About the Author

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the outsiders, the throwaways, the outcasts, the prisoners and all the other people society disowns.

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor. 1:27–28)

Also, all royalties from this book will go to the shelter where I volunteer.

Thanks to my beautiful wife for putting up with me, and to my church for all their help and inspiration.

And thanks to God, from whom all blessing flow.

Foreword

This writing is autobiographical, but it is not an autobiography. I have included enough details about myself and my life for the reader to get a picture of who I am, for perspective, and to better understand what it is that happened that I felt compelled to write about. All of these things in my life are true and none are made up or embellished, but I have intentionally shortened the story, so as to get to the point as expeditiously as possible. A lot is left out, intentionally.

I want to be clear that none of these things happened because I am a good person. I have been tormented for years over some of my doings, and but for Christ’s blood, I would be so bedeviled now.

But Christ did not die on a cross for saints, but for sinners. It is for our sins, that Yeshua (Jesus’s name in Hebrew) died.

I can tell you honestly and truly, some of the most Christian people I ever met were saved IN PRISON. In a cold cell, behind iron bars with a cot, toilet and sink of stainless steel, alone to contemplate their lives. Thusly, Jesus Christ found them, and redeemed them. Some had been very serious criminals, gangsters, even murderers. Yet Jesus thought they were worth dying for. And they are not worse people than you or I.

Christ saves all and no one can boast before God. (1 Cor. 1:29)

It was as a lone sinner, dying of cancer, and carrying the burden of guilt, that Christ found me. It was by His grace, and His grace alone, that He showed me mercy, and because I believed, He saved me from my sin.

1. Life Before Cancer

It is hard sometimes to remember how I felt then, so much has happened since. For thirty years I was a lawyer. First with a private firm and later with an insurance company, I defended and tried cases, mostly civil, in all kinds of courts, state and federal. I celebrated victories and suffered defeats. I made brilliant arguments and abysmal mistakes. I rode a roller coaster of emotions with every case.

I did love trials, but honestly, most of my time was in the office. The way cases are won, in my experience, is by spending countless hours poring over documents, evidence, interrogatories and deposition transcripts looking for the minute details that help to counter the arguments of the other side, and build up one’s own theory of the case. From these one gradually constructs a theme, something catchy, and uses it in opening and closing argument and in the examination of every witness. One carefully plots cross examinations to force hostile witnesses to admit the details that support one’s case or refute theirs. Show me a brilliant lawyer in the courtroom and I’ll show you a drudge, huddled over his files in the office, burning the midnight oil. This may be part of the reason depression, addiction and suicide rates for lawyers are well above the national average.

2. My Strange Childhood

Everyone’s formative years have much to do with the adult that they become, so in order for you to understand my vision and my message, I am telling you first about myself. Whatever led me on such a tortuous journey had to have begun then. There were things that happened that should never have happened. Honestly, some of them were abusive; I suffered from a form of childhood PTSD for years. When I state that, I mean I had flashbacks in response to triggering events, abnormal fears, nightmares and parts of memories that were blacked out. In other words, certain classic symptoms. But they were things I was able to work around as I got older, and as I grew to adulthood, these symptoms were compensated for. I was able to just avoid certain things, and overcome others. For example, I politely declined when my friends suggested I try skydiving.

Also, I had no normal early childhood socialization with other kids my age. Most children learn by the age of four how to socialize and get along with other children. Today, we know that this early socialization is important for “normal” development. I knew there were other children, but I never really met any until I was in school. And even then, I saw them in school. I had no other interaction, no visiting one another’s homes for play, no sleepovers.

When I was very little we lived in a dingy gray apartment on the third floor of a building with no elevators. I didn’t like it very much, because it was big and cold and dusty. I was alone there with my mother a lot. She always seemed sad. I had no idea why, nor did I think it strange at the time. When you are little, you accept life as normal. I now know for example, that I had a half-sister, born to her out-of-wedlock and given up for adoption. Why, I don’t know, perhaps my father insisted. He was an insecure person. Perhaps, the sadness was over the biological father. Did my mother love him?

She once stated that she “should have married” a different man than my father. I was perhaps four. She was reading to me from a book by Dr. Seuss. I don’t recall what brought up the subject. I have, on occasion, wondered whether my father was my biological father. We were so different; we don’t look at all alike. He died at fifty-two.

Before I started school, I had no friends. I wasn’t allowed outside without my mother. I remember sitting up at night with her watching TV. We watched “The Count of Monte Cristo” many times on the black and white TV.

Once, after we had moved to a house in a quiet neighborhood, I disobeyed and went out the back gate. There were some boys in the alley and they talked me into coming out. I guess I was five, they were perhaps a year or two older. They got me to the end of the alley, but I didn’t want to go farther. One, who may have been the “leader,” said “show him the persuader.” The persuader was a piece of two by two with a nail in the end and a coiled spring around that. It looked pretty scary. My mother then emerged and ran them off.

My parents did once send me to a Boys Club day camp for a week. Most of the time I was there, I sat by myself and didn’t talk to people. I did not understand what was going on or the purpose of it. Once we did go to the beach. I was sitting alone on the sand. I had no direct experience of the ocean. One of the men must have felt sorry for me. He picked me up and took me into the water. This did not enlighten me, because I was scared of the waves. I did kind of like the camp, however. The last day, they all sang “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” to the leader. I liked that, actually. Everyone seemed happy. But I never got much out of it.

I went to kindergarten while we lived in the same place, the first and only house my parents ever owned together. It was in a quiet neighborhood. We had modern furniture and a car. I had new clothes and toys. My first school was a short walk. My mom would pack a lunch. All my sandwiches contained mayonnaise. She put it on cheese, bologna, and peanut butter. I do not think these are great combinations, but as a five-year-old, you don’t have much to compare to.

School was strange for me. I was always odd man out, since the other kids had cliques or groups that knew each other, and I was the only one who knew no one, or that is how it seemed. Also, activities like music and dancing were hard for me because I was shy, never having been around kids much. I did really like the smell of the crayons. No other crayons ever smelled quite the same. This is the most positive memory I have of kindergarten.

When I was six, my family left the big city and moved to a small town in the Midwest. I remember a few days when my mother and I were in a hotel during the move. I remember sitting at the window with my mother. Everything was gray. I got a toy “space gun.” It made loud bleeping noises and lit up when I pulled the trigger. It looked like something in a Buck Rodgers movie.

We rode in an airplane to our new home. It was a prop plane, since this was in the early fifties. I got motion sickness, threw up in a paper bag. I felt miserable, but it was something to fly in an airplane in those days. This was before I developed my fear of heights, which I will explain later.

The move came shortly after I had started first grade. We were forced to move in with my paternal grandparents, into a large second floor apartment. I had to go to a new school. Everything was strange.

The reason for the changes was my father’s radical political views. Left wing advocates and political radicals were always tolerated in the city before, but in the early fifties, they were suddenly persona non grata. Not only did my father lose his job, he was blacklisted so he could not work anywhere. So now in a small town in the middle of the country, he had to start a business where nobody knew us. I am sure that was hard for him. He had been on a very good career path as an electrical engineer. I know my mother had a very hard time accepting that we were going to be relatively poor. They fought a lot. She got very emotional sometimes, and I am sure it was partly caused by the decline in economic circumstances. He would become very angry.

I was not an immediate success in the new school. I came in the middle of the school year. In fact I had a struggle adjusting. I did like the two-block walk to the school. Sometimes my grandfather walked with me. He didn’t talk a lot, but he was nice. I liked him. I had a harder time with the kids. They were not very accepting at first.

My favorite book at that time was All About Dinosaurs by Roy Chapman Andrews. I knew all the names of all the dinosaurs, how they lived, what they ate, where the bones were found. I made clay models of them and talked about them a lot. My mom thought I should take them to school and show the class. I happily told all about them, as I had the book largely memorized. The teacher was impressed. They asked me to show them to the older class.

I was proud and began lecturing about them and passing them around. The older boys in the class, however, destroyed them. They were modeling clay, so I could make them again, but I could not understand the reason for their action. Were they not also interested in these things? Why was I rejected? My mom said it was because the boys were mean. But why would they be mean? She said that’s just the way boys were, but it made no sense to me. If boys are just mean, why wasn’t I mean?

The truth is that no one is naturally mean. We learn to be mean from other people. Sometimes my father was mean. I held that against him for years, but I now forgive it. He didn’t set out one day to become a mean person, but life dealt him hard blows and he responded the way he did. When life deals us hardship, we have to respond by growing or contracting. In brainpower, he grew; in spirit, he contracted. He had been sick and missed a year of school at age thirteen, and was left with a physical disability. He became interested in science. What else went through his brain during that year and as he matured, we have no idea. He never shared much.

I can say he was very insecure. He especially did not like to be challenged in any way. Once, when I was three or four, and he was teasing me, I started to become angry, as children do if you tease them too long and will not relent. You can tease a kid for a while and it is great fun, but past a certain point, they become angry. Of course, he was having fun and would not stop. I had this little cowboy hat such as a kid that age might have, a toy. At one point, I was so frustrated I threw it at him. It hit a lamp. Later, I showed my mother the bruises from the belt whipping he’d given me. I blacked out the memory of the whipping, but I remember the welts on my arms and legs.

I certainly was not the only boy who ever got a whipping. But I was too young and had no experience to relate to it. The main thing was that I had never had anyone be angry that way at me before. I was terrified, and felt like he was going to kill me. I screamed as he came towering over me taking off his belt. He said, “Your mother’s not around to protect you now!” Then, whatever occurred was blacked out, so I have never remembered it. I associate the incident with fear, not pain. I cannot recall any pain, just terror. I have since seen this scene play over and over again many times.

I don’t tell this story to make you feel sorry for me, but just so you can understand what my life and my relationship with my father was like. Another time, I lost my two front teeth. I had insisted on trying the “big” swings at the park, the ones older kids swing on, rather than the “safe” kid swings. This was when I was with my father. Because I argued with him, he “taught me a lesson” by pushing me higher and higher, no matter my screams of terror. I was screaming “STOP!” He said “you wanted to try the big swings. Now you’re trying them.” He kept pushing me higher and higher. He said “hold on. Don’t let go,” as he pushed me harder. Finally, terrified, I let go and woke up at home on the couch without those teeth. After that I always had a fear of heights, and of falling. The weird part is, I was afraid if I got too close, I would jump or let go. Then I would feel like I did that time on the swing.

I never knew when that side of him would come out. I expected punishment when I disobeyed, but sometimes I had not disobeyed.

He wasn’t always like that. Sometimes he would be nice. Sometimes I really liked him. But over the years of my childhood, there was an accumulation of resentment that was from his angry temper, his outbursts and his kind of belittling humor. Whatever devils inhabited him, he did not talk about. I felt that his belittling was always directed at me. I never heard him belittle anyone else. It made me feel ashamed, like there was something wrong with me.

So when people were mean at school, my young mind took meanness to be the way of the world. Since we had no religion, what else would I have thought? I felt that people were mean, and if one wanted to be on any kind of even footing, one would have to be mean as well.

There was another strange part of my childhood that I need to explain. When I started school, and even by the first grade, I had never thrown a baseball or a football; I had never ridden a bicycle or run a footrace. I was a weak, soft, timid boy. Also, I had no real socialization with other kids, as I stated, until I started school. So I was not only weak, I was also asocial. There was no reason for anyone to like me. I didn’t know how to play.

I hated school. My first grade teacher wanted me to learn to write using my right hand. I was terrible at it. It never felt right. The pencil would not go the way I wanted, my letters were poor. She seemed to feel left-handedness was a hallmark of sin.

My worst subject was arithmetic, my father’s favorite. He was Phi Beta Kappa with a triple major in math, chemistry and physics. He once sat me down because I was failing arithmetic. He said, “Now, you are going to learn this.” He hit my hand with a ruler. He asked problems. He hit for wrong answers. I refused to give right answers; we were yelling at each other. When my mother tried to intervene, he said “I will not have a mathematical jackass for a son.” Things at school were not much better. I was bullied because I was weak and weird, and the teachers yelled at me a lot. I was a mess.

I saw no problem with stealing, lying. We were poor at this time, I had little. I learned to self-justify. I hoarded and hid money. Not having any Christian ideas, I didn’t care about sin or idolatry. What would a boy of six or seven know about these things, unless he had been taught? My parents said stealing and lying were “wrong,” but they never said why.

I was also mean to my sister when I felt especially bad because of the treatment I got at school. I felt guilty about it later, but as I said, my life was a mess. I had a lot of anxiety, but I didn’t know what anxiety was. To me it was just the way I felt. I am sorry for all the things I did, but cannot change the fact they happened.