Our environment helps shape us. Bob was no different in this respect and life in an orphanage, physical and verbal abuse, and time spent in Vietnam led to bitterness, frustration, and loneliness. Bob's heart was left broken and dejected. However, Jesus broke through all this and, with the help of family and friends, Bob now no longer feels he is 'dragging around the past' and he experiences his Heavenly Father's love.
Losing my father & into an orphanage
My name is Bob and this is my story. I was born in February 1945. I was the middle of three children with my sister one year older and a brother who was one year younger. My dad died when I was 18 months old. I was put in an orphanage with my brother and sister when I was two years old as there was no help for my mum from either family. In those days there was no government assistance.
Craving affection
My memory begins a few months before we were driven to the orphanage. 0rphanages are not the place where young kids get the nurture and affection that they need for a balanced self-image. I can hardly remember spending time with my brother or sister at all. I think that we may have been segregated. This was a time of great loneliness and isolation. At the age of about three, I remember being taken out for some photographs with some ladies from a beauty contest. They showed me lots of affection and caring which touched me so much that I cried because I had not known this type of attention before. So they thought they should give me back but that caused me to cry even more - a bad move.
My heart was broken and dejected
Our mother came to see us on weekends. When my mother left we would remain in this heartless place once again. One day I had a feeling that I should go over to a fence, which was missing a paling. Through the space I saw my mother and my sister leaving the orphanage together. I must have been about seven at the time and felt that I was going to be abandoned forever. My heart felt completely broken and rejected.
Bitterness and frustration
Shortly after this event, my mother and her new husband came to the orphanage to collect us. However, I had already come to the conclusion that I was not wanted. My mother told me many years later that she had married to get us a father and to get us out of the orphanage. Unfortunately, my mother didn't get married for the close relationship but for convenience. In the end, this resulted in bitterness and frustration on both sides. Because of this her new husband tried to skip away (so mum says) only to have mum and us three kids in pursuit.
Continual beatings
There were many fights and anger seemed to pervade every aspect of our existence. My main recollections of my childhood away from the orphanage are of continual beatings with anything that was handy and this was often an electric jug lead or stick. I felt that I had become my mother's whipping post and the place for venting her anger and frustration. Her husband was never in the picture. He allowed anything to happen and never got involved with us kids at all.
Hurtful put-downs
The only thing that was more constant than the beatings was the verbal abuse and put-downs. I have heard many times that I should have been killed at birth and that I couldn't do even the simplest things right. I was good for nothing. Every attempt to do anything resulted in abuse and a beating. At one Christmas dinner, I rested my elbows on the table and my mother punched me over the table for doing so.
My task was to survive
When I was nine years old I remember thinking that I was never going to be loved. Maybe this love was for others but not me. My only task was to survive. There would be no affection, no words of comfort, no cuddles, no encouragement, just rejection and beatings. So I better get used to it.
Familiar with abuse
I really didn't blame my mother. I thought that there was something wrong with me and that something had happened to my mother that made her the way she was. I learnt later in life that she had been abused too. She often says that we didn't know what she had been through so we couldn't understand. That may be so but I carry on my body and my heart the scars of her very own abuse. I think I know quite a lot about abuse.
Shutting down
In the seven years following the orphanage we moved house six times. This only added to my problems. It was impossible to make friends of any sort or feel that I belonged or to feel that I was accepted. I never had a friend before I left home apart from meeting the girl who was to become my future wife. Learning was a non-event and to learn effectively was impossible for me, as I had shut down my feelings and involvement in the world around me. I had even shut down my own personality. Being myself at home was too dangerous. I feel I had to act this way to survive.
God was calling
I went to a Christian evangelist crusade in 1959. The evangelist asked people to respond and go forward if they had felt God calling them. I was compelled to go forward but I got lost in the crowd and I went home none the wiser. I didn't know it then but it would take another 24 years for me to come to that same place again.
Escaping home and making a new life
I left school after failing second year at high school and got an apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker. As soon as I was able I joined the CMF and as soon as I was old enough I left my apprenticeship and joined the Army. This was my way of escaping home and making a new life.
Vietnam can change a man
I joined the Army for six years. In 1966, I was to go to Vietnam and I married my wife wo weeks before leaving. This was just a little insurance and my way of ensuring that she would be waiting for me when I returned. Vietnam had a way of changing people. The nice, quiet, accommodating person of the past was gone. In his place was a violent, manipulative, abusive, drunk, gambling dictator. My poor wife didn't know what hit her. I was not the man she married. She was afraid of me and that caused her to pull back which stirred me up even more. So I would resort to bouncing her off the walls to get her to do what I wanted. I left the Army in 1969 and joined the Fire Brigade. Things didn't improve at home though. Sometimes I would gamble all the rent and my wife would have to make things work somehow.
Modifying my behaviour
I don't know if it was a dream or a vision, but one day I saw myself on a river bank under a bridge; drowning in my own vomit and with an empty flagon of wine in my hand. This gave me a real shake up so I decided to start to do something with my life. I passed the examination for officer level in the Brigade and started to modify my behaviour. I gave up drinking and gambling. I stopped smoking and sold my motorbike so I could better provide the home and things we would need to bring up children.
Searching for God and truth
We had two children, a son and three years later a daughter arrived on the scene. When my son was three months old we did a four-day intensive seminar called "The Greatness in you". This cost a $1000 each. I didn't find greatness but it had started me searching for a greater truth and reality and a real relationship with God.
All the paths I had taken had offered nothing
I searched down every pathway known to man except Christianity. This included buddhism, hinduism, astrology, or any other path I could find. Each path seemed to offer something but in the end they offered nothing and were only substitutions for a real relationship with God. This went on until 1981 when I finally gave up in frustration. On my lounge room floor I cried out to God that I could not find Him so He would have to find me. I stopped trying and concentrated my efforts on my kids.
Afraid to make a decision
My son and I began going to a BMX track where I met a guy with whom I became friends. Over a period of time, we talked about world problems and current issues and he started putting forward a Christian point of view. My response was that everything he said about the church, the people, everything was garbage. On occasions, he would agree with me with things I said. That was a surprise. After months of me unloading, he said to me; "Bob, you seem to be looking for truth, you seem eager to want more for your life. But you keep kicking up the dust every time you get close. I think you are afraid of making a decision for yourself. You could be like the hypocrites or you could be all that God wants you to be. But you won't make a decision because you're scared." Well, didn't that hit me like a ton of bricks? He was right. I didn't sleep for the next two nights.
Both giving our lives to God
A week or so later I was at it again with my wife when I stopped and said to her that this was pointless. If this was all there was to life then I would rather be dead. But I didn't think that would be necessary because I had decided that a relationship with Jesus was the answer. I had tried everything else and this must be it. I got a real surprise when my wife said that she had been thinking about things too and she felt that becoming a Christian was the only way. On the 29 March 1983 we both gave our lives to God.
Home at last!
I was completely persuaded that Jesus was the answer I had been looking for but, in that moment of decision, I was really scared. To me it was like I had to jump out of an aeroplane without a parachute. Would the Father catch me? In that moment I knew for the first time in my life that I was really loved. In that moment I knew for the first time what security was. In that moment I knew for the first time that I belonged to something and someone much bigger than myself. A few days later I went to a local Christian bookshop and bought a Bible. When I got it home I wrote on the inside cover the words "home at last".
Starting to learn for the first time
In January of 1985 I resigned from the Fire Brigade and commenced five years of Bible study. This was a scary undertaking for me considering my background. When I arrived at the college my knees were shaking. Over the next year or so I devoted myself to my studies. However, I would have a hay fever attack during each exam, which made my situation very difficult.
Hay fever, exams and unbelief
One day a professor came to me and invited me to meet with him at his rooms for a discussion on how I was going. When I met with him he asked what was happening and I poured out my sorry tale of woe concerning my upbringing. When I had finished he asked me; "Has God called you to this college to carry out your studies for ministry?" I said "yes" and he then said; "Was it not true that if God has called you to this, that God would equip you for every good work"? Again I said "yes". He then asked me; "Did I believe that"? I said "yes" and he said, "No you don't." The shock of his words left me speechless. He went on to explain that I was continually living in and believing in the history of my past as the reality for today and therefore I being dragged now by my past. This amounted to unbelief as God had made me new and had lifted me up into a new life in His family for today and forevermore.
God encourages me when I face the hard times
Well, I can only say that I never suffered a hay fever attack during an exam again. I finished my course of studies without failing even one subject. My heavenly Father has continued to build me up and encourage me in my life regardless of the situations I have had to face. It's good to be home! It's good to be accountable to someone greater than ourselves.
Support from people in a Motorcycle club
In 1997, I joined the Vietnam Veteran's Motorcycle Club. On joining I was called Padre, which I took as an indication I was in the right place. I have been able to offer some assistance along these lines from time to time but more importantly; the club has been a tremendous support to my family and myself over the last six years. In the club I have found real brotherhood. I see this as part of God's provision for me and my family.
Don't let the past drag you down
You are a NEW CREATION!
Today I see people living in the past as though they are "dragging behind themselves a piece of road kill". This is the same mistake I made and I know how important it is live in the victory that in Jesus and NOT to live in the past. God says, "if anyone one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" We are NOT the same people we were before Jesus changed our hearts. We can't love others or ourselves if we stink from "dragging road kill behind us".
Laying down your life
Life should be primarily about relationships and relationships built on love. It's about committing ourselves to others to do the highest good. This applies regardless of whether we are talking to our neighbour, a club member, or our family. Firstly, it's based on the aspect of brotherly love and acceptance that can be shown to everyone, through trust, respect, honour, dependability and loyalty. Secondly, it's supported through love that encompasses such things as affection and gentleness, and the things of the passions. Thirdly, it's protected by unconditional sacrificial love that will always pay the ultimate price for the beloved's good and well being. We must follow Jesus' example and He says; "No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for a friend." Love will always look for a response that is life giving and shun responses that are life destroying.
Perfect love drives out fear
The problem is that we seem to fall into the trap of measuring people by some level of performance. We think, "If you measure up to this mark then I will accept you." We treat relationships the same way as working for an employer, or living under some strict legal system. Rules and laws are necessary for societies to work in harmony but they should be secondary to love. If we are "dragging around our road kill", we will inevitably see things from the perspective of living under rules and we will not love one another, as we should.
Remember Eternity
Jesus came to oppose just such situations by offering a relationship with Himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit, along with all who become part of the Father's Family. We are all broken in some way. We all need the Father's love to come to us through the lives of others. We all need to come home to love the Father and others as ourselves. Remember, our spirit lives for eternity.
A relationship with God makes everything possible
All of us know the consequences of relationships based on standing with our backs to one another. All relationships of this sort are negative and destructive and lead to horrible consequences.
Finding true love - our life depends on!
The Father wants us to face Him humbly and honestly so we can truly be part of His family, knowing His love and sharing His love with everyone else in our life. Jesus has made this possible for everyone. Trust in God and in His Son, Jesus Christ. You will not be disappointed. Our life depends on it!
