I think we all have them.  I think everyone has that dark part of their mind, where they bury their deepest most painful memories, thoughts, and places.  As I write this, my heart is pounding.  The memories are running through my head, my veins, and I am almost nervous to dig these up.  I have told my Fiance stories of this house.  We have even driven by there.  Every time I see it, my eyes water up.  It’s the house I lived in on and off from the age of 9 or 10, all the way to 22.

The fights, the screaming, the drinking, everything rushes through me like a flooding river of emotions.  Don’t get me wrong, I do have some great memories there.  Playing in the woods with Matthew and Omar.  Parusing the neighborhood like we owned it.  But the pain greatly outweighs the good.

You see, this was the house where everything went wrong.  If you look on the top of the garage, that is our patio.  That is where my Mom told me she had Hepatitis C, and she wasn’t expected to live long. The patio is where my mom would sit before she got sick, drinking and smoking dope.    To the right of the front door, That was the master bedroom, that is where my father tackled me to the ground, and then had a heart attack directly on top of me.  That is where I was when I realized I could get punched by my mother and not flinch.

The first window from the left.  That was our kitchen.  That is where everything crazy happened.  I was actually thrown through that window by my mom’s friend. (On accident)  The kitchen, with the little 12 inch TV, is where the late night drinkings happened.  Where my older sister passed out of near alcohol poisoning on New Years, 1999.  It’s where my dad has had one heart attack, and where my mom held a knife to her wrist, threatening to kill herself.

The next window over, that was our dining room.  That is where my mom and my sister had a good amount of their fights.  Where I would have to get in between them.  taking punches, crying for them to stop.    That is where my dad had a fit of dementia and tried to comb his hair with a switchblade, and I had to wrestle him to the ground and pull the knife out of his hand. (My dad is a large large man) That is where we only had dinners on Thanksgiving, and that turned into a fight every year.  That is the room the first (and only) time I punched my dad.  That room is a room filled with emotion, tears, and brotherly love.  A lot of my anger was unleashed in that room, a lot of my (what I thought was) growing up took place.

Downstairs, is where everything else took place.  More fighting, more mistakes.  Downstairs is where I saw my best friend laying dead on our couch in our living room.  Downstairs is where I drank myself to a near coma when I found out my sister had died.  Downstairs is where I was drinking when I found out my mother was in the ICU from her car accident.  Downstairs.  Downstairs.

I can’t even begin to get into the drug use that took place.  I can’t even begin to say how ashamed I am for my actions just as much as my families actions.

I am almost embarrassed to say how much I am shaking from piling this all together.  How much it all still hurts.  How much I hate that house.  The stories don’t end there, but my nerves do.  I can’t begin to talk about everything else that happened in that house.

I truly believe God reached down and pulled me out of that mess.  Being evicted from that house, (Not the first time we were evicted, and not the last) was a great thing that happened to me.  Getting out of that house was God’s Saving, amazing beautiful love.  Even before I loved Him.  Right now, I am sad.  Right now, I am overwhelmed with emotion from just looking at that picture.  Right now, I know God has me, and that is what makes this OK.  That is what gives me the strength to publish this post.  Jesus Christ is lifting my heart, and allowing me to love.  Allowing me to let go.  Finally.

I pray that God can reach down and take this anxiety away.  I pray that God can touch someone else with this post.  I hope you know that God can remove you from the most sticky situations and make them great.  I pray you know that God doesn’t want you to hurt.  He’s waiting, arms open for you.  He loves you already, regardless of where you are in your life!

What have I gotten myself into?  God has really laid it on my heart lately to start writing a little about racism.  Our next president could very possible be black, and with everything else going on in the world, I suppose now is as good a time as ever. Before I get started let me go ahead and say, when I say “Black” I mean anyone with dark skin.  When (if) I say hispanic, again, it is strictly skin color.  In no way do I mean anything rude, nor am I implying what part of our world someone is from.  I don’t know what the “politically correct” way of saying things are these days, nor do I know that they are necessarily “correct”.

When I was in elementary school, our “community” was dominantly white.  In third grade, my neighborhood actually had a meeting because the “foreigners” moved into our neighborhood.  These “foreigners” had moved in a week prior and had already started a close friendship with me, which is why me, Omar and my other best friend Matt became the outcasts of the neighborhood.  To this day, that entire family cares for me, calls me, and loves me.  And Vice-Versa.

That was probably when I realized there was a problem.  Problem is, a lot of my mother’s friends had taught me some, ok, just about EVERY racist joke in the book, and I viewed them as that.  Jokes, but I have now realized, that is not all they are.  I don’t feel any hate towards black people, but I can say, I know all of the stereotypes, and learning those at an early age, scared the crap out of me.  When my friend, Omar, first wanted to be my friend, I was skeptical.  I was nervous.  And at the age of ten, I had no clue what we would have in common, I mean. I’M WHITE!  (Sadly, that is really how i viewed the situation)

The “N” word wasn’t common in my house, but I’m not going to say it was uncommon either.  I remember I never liked it, because there wasn’t something right about it, but, nonetheless, it was a word that was tossed around quite a bit in my household.

I have been susceptible to racism, and I am not proud of it.  There was a short time, I will confess, while I was around 12 years old., that I was deathly afraid of black people. (Except for Omar, because I knew him.)  I would like to say, that is around when my mom had her friends over, and they were teaching me about, whites, blacks, the rapture, and drugs.  (In one really drawn out conversation)

In high school the black population grew more and more each year, and I became close friends with all of them.  Throughout the years, God had a way of kicking me in the butt, to show me that we are all equal.  I would say that from my first day of middle school, all the way to my last day of high school, completely changed me and my views of racism.  I went from being a misled kid, to an experience young man, who saw the struggles and the hate directed at our black community.  It hurts me to this day to think about.

Looking back, I almost want to hang my head in shame.  There are times when I don’t even want to explain it, because I feel like talking about it only digs a deep hole.   God has always had a way of throwing me in the mix to teach me, because I never learn from people saying.  Do I believe that we are actually different races?  NO! As a matter of fact I can say that there is only one race I see.  That is the human race.  We have ALL been created in the image of God.  We ALL have the love of God in us, and it is ALL of our jobs to spread that love to EVERYONE.  Even our enemies.  Just as He Loved us.

I have heard arguments from a boat load of people. “Well, I got robbed at gunpoint, and the guy was black” or, “My cousin got raped, and that guy was hispanic, that is why I don’t like _________”  That doesn’t matter.  Let me explain why.

I have been held at gun point four different times.  I have been stabbed, my sisters both raped or molested, I have been jumped, and I was beat up by cops.  I have been hospitalized by people who didn’t like me.  And I have been falsely accused of a crime I DID NOT commit.  And the majority of people who did that stuff to me?  You guessed it.  White.

Of coarse, racism can go both ways, and I have seen it.  But, people.  It has to stop.   To make this world livable for our children, grandchildren and so on.  The buck stops here.  It has to end.  I want our children to not be raised seeing color, or ethnicity, but The Human Race.  People of God.  Servants of one cause.  To see the light of Love shine through each and everyone of us.

We are all children of the same wonderful, beautiful, amazing God.  It hurts him to see us hate each other. It should hurt us to be doing the hating.  What makes it right?  What is important enough to not follow God’s one commandment to us.  Love eachother as he loved us. 

I don’t know if I have gotten my point across, but let me just spell it out.  I am in no way a racist.  But Racism has affected me.  Racism has greatly made me the person I am today.  And racism is still a major issue.  I think I will write more on this, because it can go A LOT deeper than this, but for now,  I want to know.

Any comments? What have you had to do to overcome struggles with racism?  Has your community risen against a certain race?  How did that make you feel, or shape the way you thought?  Were you raised learning that a certain race was inferior?  How did you over come it?  Did you?  Can we pray for you to?

Question and comment below.  Criticize me too.  I want some good Conversation.

Well, here it is.  Crucial Encounter.  What is a crucial encounter?  I believe everyone has one.  Whether you are a christian, muslim, atheist, or what.  It’s an encounter that changes you.  Forever.  I will go further into this later.  Right now, my new wonderful beautiful fiance wants to go get food.   I do too.

Feel free to subscribe and/or share a crucial encounter you had.