“’Hey daddy, tell me why the clown is crying?’
‘Well, son, he’s got the task of cheering up the ill and dying.
On top of that, everybody thinks he’s insane,
Can’t fathom why he’d wanna ease their pain.’”
--Sad Clown Bad Dub
Disclaimer: This will most likely be the lengthiest post I ever make, so please feel free to skim.
I decided the “about me” section on here, or on social networking sites and so forth are always too brief to really tell about myself. This may just be because I’m a long-winded person, and always have been. But nevertheless, I’ve decided to turn my “about me” into an entire blog post. Those of you who know me may find some things you already know, as well as some you don’t; and those of you who don’t know me, well now’s your chance. This is my life up to this point, at least everything that comes to mind as I write, so I may be forgetting a few details. But here it is – the good, the bad, and the ugly, so settle in and fasten your seatbelt, my friend, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
I was born on August 22, 1984 in Boulder, CO. I was the 4th child of Bradley Wayne Schultz and Susan Katherine Elizabeth O’Neill. 5 years later they had another baby, my little sister Emily. The oldest is my brother Neill, and I also have 2 older sisters, Ashley and Caitlin. Just so you don’t get confused, here’s my siblings and I listed in birth order: Neill
Ashley
Caitlin
Colin (ME)
Emily
My parents attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, and my earliest memory is when they lived in student housing. I don’t recall how old I was, but I was outside playing in the mud (my favorite thing to do as a toddler), when a squirrel came very close to me and quickly devoured a nut he was holding. My poor simple mind thought he was going to consume me next, so I ran into the house to my mother crying and screaming “Quirrel eat me! Quirrel eat me!” I also remember when we moved into our first house on Berea Drive, my dad thrust the key into the doorknob, and we stepped in. I was 4, and some of my best memories ended up being at that house. I remember sitting in the living room when we got a phone call that my mom had gone into labor with my little sister. I remember “parachuting” out my sister’s bedroom window onto the ground with a plastic grocery bag on my back. I remember playing basketball, Mario Brothers, house, and Robin Hood with the neighbor kids. I remember we used to walk up the street to the rec. center to go swimming (I also remember my older sisters tricking me by saying “sure you can come swimming with us, just go get our purses first,” and when I came back they were gone. I remember playing football and baseball in the back yard with my brother. I remember catching grasshoppers and leaving them in spider webs on the side of the house, then waiting and watching as the spiders came and ate them! I remember once I came out of the bath one day, only to find no one else home, so I walked outside naked, where a neighbor told me they had gone to the store quickly, but I stood there naked and crying until my mom came back. I learned to ride a bike on that street, I learned how to fight in that front yard, I learned how to lift weights in that garage, and I learned to read in that bedroom. I’m sure there’s a lot of other great things, but that’s all that comes to mind at this time.
But, it’s not all happy memories from that house. When I was growing up, my dad had a drinking problem. I’m not sure you could say he was an alcoholic, but he sure liked to drink. He drank a lot, and when he got drunk he got mean. He would scream, and yell, and he would call my mother awful names. I remember my parents fighting a lot. In fact most, if not all, of my memories of my mom and dad together were memories of them fighting. It made me angry, and I tried to get rid of that anger in unhealthy ways. I got into a lot of fights at school, and became known for having a very short temper. But really, I was just trying to cover up the fact that I was living in a home with parents who were always screaming at each other. It was a really strange thing to grow up with, because these two people were supposed to love each other, and it almost seemed like they didn’t even like each other. Part of it, I think, had to do with their faiths.
I do not come from what anyone would call a “Christian home”, per se, but my mother was a Christian. She brought us to a local Catholic church in Boulder, where she was fairly actively involved, but she would often teach me from her Bible and tell me to unlearn some of the teachings I received in Catholic Sunday School which were non-Biblical. The tradition in Catholic church is to baptize babies, but my mom wouldn’t let me be baptized until I had somewhat of an understanding of what was going on, so I wasn’t baptized until I was 8 years old. Now, that was embarrassing, standing there with my mom, and there’s all these babies being baptized and I’m standing there thinking I’m not a baby, this sucks! But anyways, my dad, on the other hand is…more or less an atheist, maybe an agnostic I guess. If he attended church with us at all, it was at Christmas or Easter, and only as a form of show. But anyways,
I never experienced a happy family situation. I don’t delude myself to think that any family will ever be perfect, but I do hope some day to experience a happy family, because I never have felt that. My parents fought all the time, and about everything under the sun. When my dad was drinking, their fighting was scary; when he was sober, they mostly just ignored each other. My dad’s drinking put a strain, not only on his marriage to my mom, but also on us as a family. We moved around a lot because we could never afford to stay in one house for more than a couple of years. From 1992 to 1995, we lived in 4 different houses.
The last place we moved to as a family was two towns away from Boulder, to a mobile home in Lafayette. 2 parents, 5 kids, and a dog, living in a double-wide mobile home with 3 bedrooms, and 1 bathroom. It was a cramped recipe for disaster. I hated living there, the kids at school started calling me trailer trash. That didn’t bother me as much as the logistics of the situation. I mean, do the math – 1 bathroom to share with 3 sisters! Things just don’t add up if you’re a guy – I had to pee in the yard from time to time. But, as I always do, I tried to make the best of the situation. I made a few friends around the mobile home park, went swimming at the park’s pool, and just generally enjoyed my childhood. Until one night in the middle of May 1995, after which I feel like I was never really allowed to be a child any more.
I was in 5th grade at the time, it was late in the year, and I was pretty excited about being close to finishing elementary school and moving on to 6th grade. I was 10 years old, and that was old enough for my parents to assign me certain chores I was responsible for. My chore each day was to be done after I came home from school – I was to finish my homework, then walk the dog, let her poop, bring her back and tie her up outside. Well, one day, for whatever reason, I had a large amount of homework, and once I finished it, I just plum forgot to walk the dog and take her out. I had started watching TV with my mom, and it got dark. We were sitting there watching TV when my dad came home – my mom in a rocking chair, me on the couch with my little sister folding up clothes at the end of the couch (at least she was trying to fold up clothes, but I remember at one point seeing her asleep on the pile of clothes). My dad walked in, and I could immediately sense that he was in a bad mood. He hadn’t been drinking (yet), but when I greeted him with my usual “high, dad!” he didn’t say a word. He walked through the living room, and into the dining area where he was blocked by a partition wall and we couldn’t see him. But very quickly, I could hear him:
“WHAT THE F***! WHAT IS THIS? GODDAMMIT, I GO TO WORK ALL DAY, AND I HAVE TO F***ING COME HOME TO THIS!?”
Then, without speaking a word to anyone, he walked back through the living room, walked out the front door, got into his car, and drove off.
OK, that was weird, I thought. I looked at my mom, who looked at me and rolled her eyes, seeming to dismiss what had just happened as just another of my dad’s typical bad-mood temper tantrums. But I wondered What was that all about? I’LL GO INVESTIGATE! So, I got up and walked into the dining area where my dad had been standing, and what did I find – WHOOPS, forgot to walk the dog, and what happened? She crapped on the floor. Oh, OK, I can fix this, I thought. I cleaned up the mess, sprayed deodorizing stain remover on the spot, then took Simba (our dog), and tied her up outside, then I came back in and resumed watching TV – problem solved. Or so I thought.
No more than about 10 minutes late, my dad returned – this time gripping an open bottle inside a brown paper bag with one hand. My little sister was sleeping on the couch, and I had now moved to sitting on the floor. When he walked in the door, the first thing he said was
“Colin, go to your room.” I was old enough by now to know what that meant in this situation, it mean “Clear the room, because I’m going to yell at your mom.” So, without a word about how I was sorry for not walking the dog or how I’d already cleaned up the mess – I got up and went to my room, which I shared with my brother at this time. I was also old enough to know by now that even from the other room, we could hear every word they were saying via the magic of listening through the heating vents. My brother and I sat listening to them fight through the steel grate that sat low on our wall. It almost seemed like a contest to see which of them could out-cuss the other one. Then after a while, there was silence.
Have you ever experienced a silence that was so eerie and chilling, you just knew something was wrong because it was too quiet? That’s what this silence was. It couldn’t have lasted longer than 20-30 seconds, but in that half-minute I could sense, even at 10 years old, that my life was not going to be the same from that moment forward. The silence was finally broken by the sound of my dad’s footsteps, then the front door opening and closing, then the sound of his car’s engine as he got in and drove away yet again.
I looked at my brother. He was 15 at this time, and seemed a lot more equipped to deal with something like this, yet when he looked back at me I saw the same puzzled expression on his face that I wore on my own.
OK, that was weird, we thought. What was that all about? LET’S GO INVESTIGATE! (We’re a very investigatory family I guess). He and I came out of our room and walked out to the living room. I had watched WAY too much of America’s Most Wanted, and was half-expecting to come out and see a dead body on the floor. But, when we came down the hallway, my mom was in the kitchen talking on the phone. My little sister had been jolted awake by my parents’ fighting, and was sitting there with tears in her eyes. My brother and I looked at that poor 5 year old girl, and asked her: “Emily, what happened?” No answer. She sat there staring blankly at us as she silently let the tears roll down her face.
“HELLO? Emily? What happened?” my brother pressed. My little sister finally brought herself to say what she had seen – something no 5 year old should ever have to see,
“Dad choked mom.”
Her words hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t know how to feel, and I didn’t know what to think. The seeds of self-hatred began being planted in myself as I thought “Could this have all been avoided if I’d just walked the stupid dog? Is this my fault? I don’t know.” I knew my parents fought all the time, and even though my dad had violently broken objects before (wooden chairs, plates, etc) this was the first time there had actually been an incident of domestic abuse – what was going to happen now? And why did my dad leave? Was he going to come back with a hammer and beat us all to death? (Again – WAY too much America’s Most Wanted).
I just stood there trying to grasp the situation inside my little mind until my mom hung up the phone. She had been talking to the police, and after an officer came and took down a report of the situation, he recommended that she go to the station and file a restraining order, and we not stay in the house that night. My mom told us kids to pack up some clothes, and off we went. We sat in the lobby of the Lafayette, CO police station, as my mom had pictures taken of her bruises, and filled out the paperwork for a restraining order. That was where we spent the night. From watching TV on the couch to sleeping in a police station lobby within a matter of hours – my life was not going to be the same from that mid-May night forward.
At this point, I’d like to make it clear, I’m not writing any of this for sympathy. I surely do know that I’m not the only one in life who was dealt a poor hand. I’m just trying to be as honest and straightforward as I can – these are the cards I was dealt, and this is how I played them.
Anyways, I remember the next day at school, my teacher took notice that I was more tired than usual, and had become withdrawn from the other kids. As you might guess, I had a lot of things on my mind. And, when I wouldn’t give any answer to her asking me what was going on, I was sent to see the school counselor. His questions didn’t get much further:
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Your teacher tells me you didn’t seem like yourself today, is everything ok?”
“Yep. I said I’m fine. Can I go now?”
“No, not yet. Is everything ok at home?”
LONG PAUSE….”Yep.”
“Do you live with both your parents?”
“Yea.”
“Your biological parents?”
ANOTHER LONG PAUSE…..”Yes, but….” I didn’t know how to finish my own sentence. I was 10 years old, for crying out loud – what did he expect? I certainly wasn’t ready to tell a perfect stranger what had happened just the night before. And, quite frankly, I didn’t even know what would happen next. Up until this point, I hadn’t experienced a happy family, and my parents always fought. But at least they were together – I got to see both of them when I went home from school. But now there was a restraining order, and my dad by legal order was not allowed to be in the same house with my mom – he wasn’t allowed to come within 500 feet of her. So, now what? This was all very new and strange to me, so I stopped mid-sentence, and just looked down at the floor.
“But what?” the counselor probed.
“Nothing. It’s nothing. Can I go now?”
I think he realized that I wasn’t gonna tell him anything, so he let me go. And so began the painful path of keeping everything inside. It was a habit that just made things worse, while it felt like it was making things better. I really needed to talk to some one about what was going on and how I felt about it, but I didn’t I kept everything inside. I didn’t know who I could talk to. I felt that none of my friends would understand, and secretly I still blamed myself to some degree. So I kept things bottled up, I swallowed my emotions – when that started to hurt, I took that pain and swallowed it too. I just kept burying things deeper and deeper until I felt numb, and when you feel numb, you feel no pain.
Anyways, my dad moved into his own apartment, and my mom stayed in the mobile home. For about the next 2 years, I would split time living with my mom for a week or so, then with my dad then so on back and forth. I always preferred the weeks when I stayed with my mom – I always felt more comfortable. I felt like I couldn’t fully trust my dad anymore, even though he never drank again after that night. My mom had to drop out of college when she had my older brother, and she never finished and was only able to get odd jobs, so she couldn’t provide as well for us as my dad could, but I always had more fun with her. She began reading to and teaching me from her Bible more regularly. She coached my soccer teams, and cheered more than anyone at my basketball games. Over time, her lack of earning power started to catch up with her. The lights were shut off at her house, and we read and did our homework by candlelight at night when I stayed with her. But even so, I loved my mom, and I loved staying with her. I really got to know her over those couple of years, and I felt like she became my best friend.
One day, she came to pick me up from school. I was 12 years old now, and had just started the 7th grade. It was a time when I was supposed to be staying with my dad, so I was surprised when I came out of school that day and saw her in her van waiting to pick me up. My little sister was in the front seat.
“Are we going to the mobile home today?” I asked with excitement as I climbed inside.
“No,” she replied, “But what would you say to some pizza?”
“Awesome!”
She took me and my little sister to Abo’s pizza, and we ate pepperoni slices and drank soda. Then she brought us to my dad’s apartment. My dad was still at work, he usually didn’t get home until around 7 o’clock or so. My brother was at wrestling practice, and my other 2 sisters were at soccer, so my little sister and I would be the only ones home.
“Do you guys mind if I come inside for a bit?” my mom asked.
We posed no objection, and the three of us went inside. I had to be at baseball practice myself in about an hour and a half or so, but spending a little more time with my mom seemed like a great prospect.
She came in and looked around. This was the first time she had been inside my dad’s apartment. She sat on the couch and asked us questions about where we slept, whether we liked it there, whether we were brushing our teeth every night, you know – mom questions. Then she realized it was getting late.
“What time is your baseball practice?”
“Like 5,” I said.
“Do you need a ride?”
“Nah, it’s just up the street, I’m gonna walk there.”
“OK. I should be going then. Gimme a hug.”
I hugged my mom, and she hugged me tight and planted a kiss on my cheek – something she hadn’t done for a long time.
“Aww, mom!” I protested.
“What? Does this bother you?” she jested, as she planted another kiss on my other cheek.
I frowned and wiped my cheeks with my hands, saying “You’re gross!” which made her laugh.
“Have fun at practice. I love you, ok?”
“OK. You too, mom.”
With that, my mom walked out the door and drove away. Within 30 minutes, I was at baseball practice, squatting behind home plate in my catcher’s gear and making wise cracks to my teammates, as was my custom. I presumed I would see my mom again that weekend when I went to stay with her. But I was wrong.
My brother had a wrestling meet that Saturday, and he had left the shoes he wore for matches at my mom’s house. He was 17 now, so he drove himself out to Lafayette to pick them up, then went to his meet. We were planning on having my dad drop us off to stay with my mom starting that evening. When my brother came home from his meet he told us that our mom wasn’t there, which was strange seeing as he went there at around 6am. Maybe she was just out at the store or something, we reasoned.
That evening, my dad drove us out there, and her car was still not parked in front of the house.
“Why don’t you guys see if there’s a note or something, and if not you should just stay back at the apartment until we hear from her.”
She’s there, her car’s probably just at the shop or something, I thought to myself. The van she drove had been having brake problems, so I figured she had dropped it off to be fixed early in the morning, and taken the bus home. But I was wrong.
We walked in the house, and immediately could tell something was not right. There were paintings and furniture missing from the living room and dining room. As one of my sisters ran outside to tell my dad that our mom was not there, I walked down the hallway, and peaked inside my mom’s room. It was cleared out – no bed, no dresser. Our stuff was still in our rooms, but she, and her stuff, was gone. No note, no message, just gone. At 12 years old, this was a time in my life that I knew nothing would be the same from that day forward.
We had no other choice but to go and stay with my dad, who was still a man I didn’t fully trust nor feel comfortable with. My heart began hardening, and a volcano of anger began building up inside me. It was a different anger than what I felt before, I didn’t get in fights at school anymore – I had seen the harm that violence could do. I now felt anger towards my dad – I felt like I hated him more than anyone else in the world, and I was waiting for my chance to get back at him. Over the next couple days, we made several trips back and forth from my dad’s apartment in Boulder to the mobile home in Lafayette to retrieve the rest of our things, and move it all into my dad’s place.
On the last trip, I had a bag with the last of my stuff in my hand, and I walked past my mom’s room one last time. I pushed the door open and walked inside, standing in that empty room, looking for anything she may have left behind. My little sister had already taken a couple things from in there, and there was just little odds and ends sitting around. I picked up a gold necklace that my mom used to wear when she would get dolled up. Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw something laying on the ground. I turned and looked and there sat my mother’s Bible – a paperback copy of the NIV 1984 translation. I walked over and picked it up, and brought it with me. Looking back, I wish I’d read it sooner, but I didn’t want to read it or even look at it. That’s what my mom believed in, and it apparently didn’t work out for her so well. So once I got back to my dad’s apartment, I placed it on a shelf, and there it sat, collecting dust. The hope and strength the Scripture provides were something I really could have used, but I didn’t even consider it. I still believed in God, and spiritual forces of good and evil – I just didn’t believe the Bible really had anything to do with that.
I remember wanting to stay strong for my little sister, because if anything went wrong and my dad lost it again – I was gonna take care of her. I remember tucking her into bed one night, she was only about 7 at the time.
“Colin, where’s mommy?” she asked me.
“I don’t know. She went somewhere and didn’t tell anyone.”
“When’s she coming back?”
I didn’t understand the situation that we were facing myself at this time, let alone did I know how to communicate it to a 7 year old. So, I just told her to close her eyes and go to sleep, and that everything was gonna turn out ok. I remember walking away and thinking “I wish that some one was here to tell me the same thing.”
The next 5 years were really strange for me. I was starting to go through puberty, and those awkward teen years where you start noticing girls, but you don’t know what to do about it. My mom wasn’t around to talk me through things, and I damn sure wasn’t gonna talk to my dad about anything. So, I never had a girlfriend going through those years in school, and never even dated until years later. I still blamed myself for a lot of the things that had gone awry in my life, and I still didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone about it. None of my friends knew about any of it. I developed a “class clown” syndrome, trying to cope with my pain through humor – I figured if I laughed enough and made enough other people laugh, then no one would ever realize how bad I hurt inside. I went through the motions this way, drifting through the rest of 7th grade, 8th, 9th, and 10th grades like this. I never was diagnosed, but I had all the symptoms of clinical depression, though none of my friends or family recognized it, because keeping things inside had now become a science that I had nearly perfected.
The summer before 11th grade, right about the time I turned 16, I had picked up the habit of smoking both cigarettes and pot. The cigarettes I started smoking in full knowledge of the risks associated with it. I didn’t care, my life hadn’t been anything I valued too highly up to that point, so cancer or some other deadly disease didn’t really scare me too much. And, the pot I started smoking because it made me temporarily feel better and forget the pain inside. Once my junior year started, both had become a crooked crutch for me to lean on. Life at home was not good (don’t remember when it ever was), and if it were possible, things seemed to have gotten worse. My brother had gone off to college, and then joined the army in the years following my mother’s departure. My oldest sister had moved out, then moved back in – this time with her then fiancé. My other older sister had gone off to college in North Dakota. My grandma had moved in with us, and the house was now cramped and crowded again, leaving me feeling like I never had any privacy. Then, as the autumn and winter months rolled in, I started having problems sleeping, which got me smoking more cigarettes as I sat up nights with insomnia. Eventually I started taking sleeping pills or Tylenol PM or NyQuil, even when I wasn’t sick, just to put myself to sleep at night. I also had friends who were old enough to buy alcohol, and I had started drinking. Things were starting to spin out of control, but no one around me knew it or even suspected anything was wrong. On the plus side, I discovered a love for theater, and that one of my talents is acting (probably because I already had years of practice just trying to act “normal”). I auditioned for a school play and won one of the more lead parts, however I lost the part because I was suspended from school after getting into my first fight in over 6 years. The fight wasn’t anything too serious – some of my friends and I were big WWF fans, and we acted out our favorite moves by our favorite wrestlers. One day, things got a little too serious with my friend Jon, and he and I actually got really angry at each other, and went at it in the middle of our English class. I don’t remember why, but our teacher had left us unsupervised in the class room, and the two of us took the chance to brawl. I remember being surprised at how much anger I had built up inside of me, I had to be pulled off him before I seriously injured him. Afterwards, I thought to myself that I really had to find better ways to let out my anger, or I may eventually end up seriously hurting some one – and it may tragically be some one I love. The thought scared me (and still sometimes scares me today), that I may erupt one day like my dad did all those years ago, and destroy something I hold dear – like a marriage or a family.
Anyways, because of the fight, I was suspended from school, and was not allowed to be in the school play (well, I was offered a much much smaller role, but I declined). I was angry at myself for losing my temper, and by now there had been years of loneliness, sadness, and self-hatred that had built up inside of me. None of my friends knew anything was wrong – I had developed a reputation as a guy who was always laughing and cracking jokes, I couldn’t show them the pain I had inside. None of my family knew anything was wrong, I hid from them, not wanting to talk to my dad, and not wanting any of my siblings to see me hurting. I was an island unto myself – a sad clown, with a smile painted on my face, while suffering from agonizing pain on the inside. All I wanted was for the pain to go away, but how would that be possible?
My whole life is pain and sadness, I thought. And, I reasoned the only way to take away the pain was to take away my own life. Suicide lingered in my thoughts for a week or 2, as I weighed the pros and cons. It seemed like such a good solution – so simple, so easy, just take more than a safe amount of my “sleep aids”, and then no more pain. I decided in favor of it, and I was determined to make the evening of December 18, 2000 my last night on earth.
Some people think that only crazy people commit suicide. Others think that only weak people commit suicide. Maybe you think I’m crazy or weak for wanting to attempt it. But may I say – I don’t agree. I don’t think the thought or even the attempt of it makes a person crazy or weak. I think in my case, I had just grown weary of being strong and staying sane for so long. It didn’t really seem like anybody would care too much if I weren’t around. So, I went through with my plan. I swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills, chased it with a couple shots of vodka, and went to sleep, expecting to wake up in the next life.
I was given mercy, I didn’t die. But, at the time, I was not happy about it. My body had rejected the pills overnight, and I awoke lying next to a pool of my own vomit. I was upset that my attempt hadn’t worked. I cleaned myself and the mess up, and went off to school. The whole day I spent waiting to get home, so I could try it again. But, when I got back home, something stopped me. It wasn’t the fear of dying – it was the fear of staying alive again. I didn’t want to wake up in vomit again. And, for a long time, that was the only thing that kept me from attempting suicide again. The reality is God had His hand on me, and was protecting me, trying to get my attention, to get a hold of me. But I didn’t realize that until years later.
So, I kept going through the motions, I finished my junior year of high school, I worked my first job over the summer, and I sleepwalked my way through my senior year. I stayed active in sports through high school, but I started getting high more and more frequently. I decided not to walk at my graduation ceremony because my mom (to my knowledge anyway) wouldn’t be there to see it, so I just took the diploma and skipped it.
I also found something that gave me a little bit of hope. My grandma Cindy (mom’s mom), informed me that she’d hired a private investigator to locate my mom. And he found her, she was alive. But, she had told the PI that she wasn’t ready to see her family again yet. It’s not the news I had been hoping for, but it was at least something. I now had a better hope that I will one day see her again before I die, and while I’ve still dealt with feelings of depression from time to time, I’ve never again considered taking my own life. But I started getting some other feelings to come up because of this a little later on, which I’ll talk about in a moment. I didn’t know exactly what to do with this new information. I had been accepted to the University of Colorado, Wyoming, and also Medaille University in Buffalo, NY. But I didn’t want to continue on in school right away, I wanted to take some time and figure out what to do with this new information.
Now, I had been shy and awkward, not knowing how to talk to girls, never dating all through school. And, I don’t know if I was the ugly duckling who bloomed late or what, but after I graduated, it seemed like girls started paying more attention to me – they started coming to talk to me, and interacting with the opposite sex seemed to become a more natural thing for me.
But all the while, I still had this anger inside of me. It wasn’t directed inward towards myself as much anymore as it was directed now toward my dad. I had forgiven myself, but I couldn’t forgive him. In addition, I had been developing this hole in my heart from my mom not wanting to see us again – I felt like it was a rejection of me personally. That she didn’t want to see me because she didn’t love me, and was ashamed to have me as a son. The 2 of these mindsets combined to drive me to make some of the biggest and most regrettable mistakes of my life.
First off, I wanted to find a way to get back at my dad, but I didn’t know how to. After a while, I started thinking “Well, he stole something from me, so I’m gonna steal from him.” And I did. I had started dating a girl for the first time, and to pay for the dates, I began stealing money from my dad’s wallet, and eventually stealing his credit cards to pay for the dates. For about 3 months after high school, I wasn’t going to school, I wasn’t working – I was just hanging out, getting high, spending stolen money on dates and whatever else a 17 year old boy wants to do.
Obviously you don’t go on like that for very long without getting caught, and my dad soon figured out what was going on. He was ready to have me put in jail for credit card fraud, but I told him I would get a job and pay back all the money I’d stolen. He went and totaled it all up, and the grand total was a number that slapped me in the face and made me realize a few things. In 3 months, I had spent:
$1,666.
Now, at this point, I had not been to church in about 7 years, and I don’t think I’d prayed a true prayer ever. But I remembered the number six-hundred and sixty-six, and I knew what it meant, I knew whose name it was the number of. When I saw that number, it really got a hold of me, and made me recognize that what I was doing was evil. I went into my room, closed the door and knelt down. And for the first time that I can remember, I actually prayed to God. I said I was sorry, I poured out all the feelings I had inside, and I asked for Him to help me and show me what to do. Now, I was expecting that God would be so angry, yelling and screaming like my earthly father used to do when I made him mad. Imagine my astonishment when I heard a small, quiet voice whisper my name and say
“Colin, I love you.”
WHAT?! There must be some mistake, maybe you have the wrong Colin, because You couldn’t possibly love me, not right now anyways.
“I do love you. I’m not mad at you, just disappointed, like when a puppy you’ve been training poops on the carpet. But I’m teaching you. You know what’s right, so do it.” I was overwhelmed. To this day, I still have a hard time understanding why God would possibly love me, but I knew I had to stop, I had to change. So, I went and found a job, and started working, within a few months I had paid my dad back all the money I’d stolen, plus a little bit extra. I kept working and saving up money to move out on my own, but I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.
Now, around the time I found about the PI my grandma had struggled, as I mentioned I started struggling with thoughts that my mom was ashamed of me. I sometimes felt that she left because she didn’t love me as a son. And, I started to think “hey, if my own mother doesn’t love me enough to stay around and watch me grow up, and she doesn’t wanna see me anymore – then how is any woman ever gonna love me?” I started feeling like I had to find ways to prove to myself that I was loveable, that a woman would love me. And, just after I had turned 18, I started seeking that fulfillment sexually with an older woman. Because of the age difference, there never really was a chance for any type of serious relationship between us, but I felt if I could make a woman happy in that way, then it meant I was a loveable guy. Of course, there was never any solid foundation of friendship, trust and love underneath it though, and after a while (actually years later), I started to learn something about sex – it can have that “fun” element to it, but if it’s totally devoid of any real connection, then it’s really so empty and meaningless. So nothing ever lasted or became a meaningful relationship that way.
Now, I had figured what I was gonna do with my life – I was gonna become an actor. At least I thought I was, because it was one of the things I really enjoyed in high school. So, I was now working and saving up money to move to California. But, at this time – even though I had already paid back my dad all the money I’d stolen, I still carried a feeling of guilt in the back of my mind about what I’d done. So, with a Catholic background, when you feel guilt, where do you go? That’s right – confession!
By this point, I was 19, and hadn’t been to church in around 9 years. I had skimmed a few verses in my mom’s old Bible, but hadn’t really started reading it at all, and I was still far from being a Christian. I went to the same church my mom had taken us as a kid, and almost immediately upon walking in I noticed how much had changed. The first big difference I noticed was in the people. The priest was no longer the old white man I remembered, it was now an Indian man (dots, not feathers). That was something that stuck out in my mind, because as an ignorant Colorado white boy, I just thought “Hey that’s interesting, I thought they were all Hindu.” Anyways, I had to wait until after the service to go and talk to him, and I’ll never forget the sermon he preached that day.
He talked about the way God speaks to people. He said that God talks to everybody through the inner workings of our own minds. He puts thoughts in our minds, and inclinations into our hearts as a way of trying to speak to and guide us. But, there’s a danger, because God isn’t the only one who tries to speak to us. The devil tries to speak to us through the inner workings of our own minds as well, but the devil puts thoughts into our minds as a way to try and poison us. And, the challenge for us is to discern which thoughts are from God – the good, self-sacrificing, God honoring inclinations, and separate those from the ones from Satan – the bad, selfish, poisonous thoughts that sound good and reasonable but are really deadly poison. It really resonated with me, and as I said I don’t think I’ll ever forget that message.
Now, after the service, I went and talked to the priest. Another change in the church was they’d gotten rid of the confessionals, so this was a face to face deal in his office where we could read each other’s expressions – very different from what I had expected. I told him about how I’d stolen from my father, used it for drugs and all sorts of bad things, and just been slothful and deceptive in general. For my own convenience, I left out the parts about being sexually active, but God dealt with me about that in His own time. I explained everything that happened, and how I’d paid back my dad and was now working, but was still feeling guilty. And, here’s the part that made me want to learn more about Jesus:
I was expecting him to do what the priests would do when I was little, that is – assign me a penance. I’m sitting there thinking “OK, what do I gotta say? 10 Hail Marys? 20 Our Fathers? I’m ready.” But instead, he said
“Wait, so you’ve already paid back your dad?”
“Yes.”
“And, you’re working now?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it sounds like you’ve really turned around and gone in the opposite direction from where you were going.”
“I suppose I have, yes.”
“Well, maybe you’re not aware of this – but that’s pretty much the textbook definition of repentance.”
“OK,” I said, still expecting my take-home prayer assignment.
“Jesus came calling people to repent, to turn from their sins, and it sounds like that’s what you’ve done. Your sins are forgiven because of what Jesus did on the cross. Rejoice, and go in peace.”
I sat there, stunned. I had learned a little bit about Jesus growing up, but I had no understanding about the completeness of what He had done. I still didn’t understand it in that moment, and I probably still don’t understand it today. But in that moment, I was taken aback at the incredible power of the Biblical truth this man had just laid out before me. He reached out his hand, I shook it, mumbled out a “thank you,” and walked outside. I had a lot to think about, and the one thought that was prevalent on my mind was “I want to know Jesus.” When I got home, I began a practice of skimming my mom’s old Bible more than the occasional glance.
Within a few months after that, I had saved up about $6000, I had made a deal with my dad for a newer car, and I had a few prospects of places to live in Los Angeles. I was 19, headstrong, and ready to move out on my own. I packed (mostly) everything I owned into a 2002 Kia Spectra, and on March 3, 2004 I set out on the road, thinking I was going to go to California and become the next big Hollywood actor.
It took me about a day and a half of driving, listening to a wide range of music along the way – Garth Brooks, Eminem, CCR, Jimmy Buffett, Pharcyde, like I said – a range. I had never driven on the highway before, so I stayed in the slower lanes and was very cautious. I stopped by the side of the road after a few hours and ate some sandwiches and snacks I had brought for my lunch. I got out and stretched my legs a little bit. Then I drove across the Utah border and I wondered where the civilized world had gone. Since there was practically no one on the road through the barren Utah desert, I started going a bit faster. A few hours later, and I was approaching the Arizona border. I came up on a 4-lane highway (2-lanes in either direction), behind a 4-door sedan who was driving behind a very slow 18-wheeler. I decided to pass both of them, so I moved into the fast lane, hit the accelerator, and made my way past both of them. As soon as I got in front of the big rig, I looked in my rear view and what did I see, but flashing blue and red lights. The sedan that was driving behind the 18-wheeler just so happened to be an undercover highway patrolman. I got my first (and hopefully last) ever ticket for speeding – 103 MPH. But, a tip for anyone who’s going to be driving through Utah – he told my if I had been in double-digits he wouldn’t have stopped me, so keep your max speed at 99MPH through Utah and you’ll be OK.
Anyways, I-15 winds for a brief period through the northern portion of Arizona before going up and through Nevada. Just after I crossed the Nevada border, the sun settled down beyond the horizon, and I started to get very tired. I pulled off the highway in a small town called Mesquite, near the south-eastern border of Nevada, and began looking for a motel to spend the night. I was only 19, and you apparently have to be 21 to check into a motel room, so I had a little trouble at the clerks desk. But once she found out that I was by myself, that it would just be for one night (and that I would be paying cash), she agreed and gave me a key. After a shower I sat on the bed and watched America’s Next Top Model (don’t judge me). About half way through the show, I got on my cell and called home. My little sister was there alone, our dad had started teaching nights at American Career College. So, we talked and I let her know I was safe and doing well. Then, after a good night’s sleep, I was back on the road by 7am the next morning.
I pulled into downtown Los Angeles on the 101 freeway a little bit after 12pm. I didn’t know anyone, and I really didn’t have a place to stay, but I had a few prospects of possible places to rent. But first, I was hungry, I wanted to get lunch. I got off the freeway, and followed some signs to a mall near
East 1st St. (more of a giant food court with a few shops). I bought some cheap Chinese food, and called my first prospect – a USC student who was subletting a room in a house at 24th and Normandie. I arranged to meet him there. Now, I had no lease signed, so my plan was to look at the place, and if I didn’t like it, I had enough money to where I would just stay in a hotel for a little while until I found a place. The only thing was, I didn’t know how to get there from where I was. I found a bookstore among the few shops, and went in and looked at a map of LA – to mindboggling dismay. I’m from Boulder, Colorado, where you can generally get anywhere in town within 20 minutes max. The road map of LA looked like a giant plate of spaghetti to me – roads and highways and byways going in every direction, and I couldn’t even figure out where I was, let alone how to get where I needed to go. Finally I gave up and just asked some one – she said there were 2 ways: the 10 West, exit Normandie and go south, then turn left on 24th. Or, the slower way, head down 1st street to Vermont, then take Vermont all the way down to 24th. I decided to try the quicker route, I set out to get back on the 10, and I had my first adventure of driving in traffic on a California freeway. Trying to merge, I got cut off by someone with a Mexican flag waving from the side of their car, and the passenger stuck his head out the window, looked back at me and gave me the double middle finger.Oh how friendly Californians are, I quipped to myself. After finally merging, and experiencing a bit of a slow crawl, I decided to switch to the slower option. So, I got off at the next available exit, found my way to Vermont and headed south. After a few slight detours, and one more cell phone call to the guy who was subletting, I found my way to the right location. It was a room to rent in a house with 5 other people. It seemed like it was a fairly nice place (although the area wasn’t too great), but I decided to rent it. I moved my stuff in, and was pleased as Christmas punch – I was now independent! I didn’t have a bed to sleep on, and I still had to find a job, but sleeping on the floor of my own place, I felt very happy that I had taken this step. But, at the same time, I started to feel very lonely. Homesickness began to set in. But, anyways,
Over the next couple of months, I went through all the motions of trying to become an actor – hiring an agent, taking headshots, creating a resume, going to auditions, and so forth. I got a regular job in Torrance, which I soon quit in favor of another job in Long Beach. After about 5 or 6 months of trying to make it as an actor, I had done 3 jobs, but only earned myself about a couple grand. It may have been leading somewhere if I kept at it, but I decided that the people you have to deal with in Hollywood are too plastic for my taste. If I were to become an actor, I would much rather do stage acting than film or TV. But I’ve not pursued either since.
So, now I was kind of stuck. Here I was 1,000 miles from home, no family or friends around. I was commuting from LA to Long Beach 5 times a week for work, and the rest of the time I spent at home. I was homesick, and I was very lonely and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I remembered what that priest had told me, and about how I wanted to learn about Jesus. I began reading my mom’s old Bible, and I began to be very moved by some of the things Jesus spoke, promising to be with His own always. I continued reading daily.
After a little more than a year living in LA, I moved to Long Beach in May 2005 to be closer to work. I had moved in with some one I had met at work, which turned out to be a very bad situation. But, I had started dating a girl (although in retrospect it wasn’t a very healthy relationship), but things seemed to be going pretty well. I continued reading, and the more I read I began to be amazed by something that could only be God’s planning. As I read, I started to notice explanatory notes and cross references written in the margins in my mother’s handwriting. It helped me to understand certain things better, and I felt that in some ways she was still teaching me. In August, I finished reading the whole New Testament, and on August 11, 2005 I experienced what Jesus referred to as a new birth.
That is the day that I was given Grace to receive Jesus into my heart and to confess Him as Lord and Savior, and from that day forward I can truly say that I have never been the same. The unhealthy relationship I was in ended, which was painful at the time, but in the end was for the best. I was promoted at work, I was able to get out of bad roommate situations, and I started making some good friends. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but things were slowly starting to look brighter. In 2008, I started dating a girl who I really liked, but there were some very obvious roadblocks to that going anywhere. I’ve already blogged about that in a previous post, so please feel free to read more here: http://loveforugly.blogspot.com/2012/01/finding-truth-in-midst-of-deceit.html. What you won’t find in there is that she and I did sexual things together, which only married people should do. I feel like I had been placed in relationship to her for a reason, and I failed to do what I should have because I was still a baby in Christ. I still felt like I could do whatever I wanted, and turn God’s grace into a license to sin. I may have done more damage than good in that relationship, but God still worked it for good. After visiting with her “church”, I found myself longing for the sense of family and community that they did have, but I wanted to find it in a good Bible-based church. I started asking around with some of my friends, and I was referred to my present church, Long Beach Friends, where I’ve been attending regularly for a little over 2 and a half years and am becoming more actively involved.
The experience with LLDM came together with a few other things in order to make me finally realize that my calling from God is to go into ministry. The first one has to do with my family. My brother is a Christian, but aside from him and myself, no one in my family were believers. I remember being concerned that my dad and my 3 sisters were going to hell and were going to be separated from me in eternity. One day I was literally crying tears of worry in prayer to God asking for Him to send some one to my family to share the Gospel with them, when I heard that quiet, small voice again saying:
I am sending YOU.
Now, after that I have begun looking for opportunities to witness to my family through my words and my life, but I wasn’t sure right away that it was something God wanted me to do with my life, or if it was more of just my own desire. Anyways, I had started going back to school, taking classes for radio/tv broadcasting at Long Beach City College. I had completed a few courses at community college in Colorado, and a couple more during my first year in California. I had stopped going because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, or what I should be majoring in. I thought I wanted to go into this field now to become a sportscaster. As I was going through the process of getting re-registered, I had just come out of a meeting with an academic counselor, and stopped in the courtyard to put some things in my backpack. From across the way, I heard 2 people arguing about God. One was trying to convince the other that God exists and is omniscient, the other way raising philosophical objections like “well, if God can see everything then how many eyes does he have?” I don’t know why, but for some reason I felt inclined to walk over and join their conversation. I said “I don’t mean to interrupt, I just couldn’t help but overhear you.”
“Well, can you answer that?” the philosopher asked me, “How many eyes does God have.” I don’t know where it came from or how it came to me at that moment, but I started trying to explain to him out of what I had been learning through prayer and study over the past few years:
“Jesus said in John 4 that God is spirit – a spirit doesn’t actually have eyes. But when we read in other Scriptures things like “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth,” what’s happening is that the infinite God is trying to communicate to finite man what He wants man to know. It’s not talking about eyeballs like you or I have, but it’s a literary device. He’s putting it in language that we can understand, so that we can know and understand that God sees everything – He’s watching us right now, but He’s also watching those people over there, the people down the street, and all the way around in China.”
“Well, if Jesus is the only way, then how come there are so many other religions?”
“That’s a fair question. Have you ever read the book of Romans?”
“No.”
“I’d recommend it to you highly. Paul deals with that a lot, he starts by talking about how man becomes vain in his imagine and starts to worship and serve other things rather than the Creator. The fact is all have fallen away, there’s no one who’s perfect, and indeed no one has the capacity to be perfect, because we all inherited a sinful nature from Adam. And, as he develops that point, he summarizes what God did in the last Adam, Christ to make a way for man to come to Him and become His children, and how He gives the Holy Spirit to testify in us that that’s taken place. Anyways, he develops several things, but what comes to my mind when you ask that question is a statement he makes, I believe in chapter 10 – he says that man seeks to establish his own righteousness, instead of humbling himself before the righteousness of God.”
Again, where it all came from, I couldn’t tell you. But together, the other gentleman and I were able to challenge his thinking a little bit and get him sort of turned around. He said he had to go to class, and he was off, which left me and this other fella to talk a little bit.
His name was Terrence. He asked me where I was from and I said Colorado. He asked what I was doing in California, and since I still wasn’t entirely sure, I said I don’t know. Then I asked where he was from, he said Missouri. And, I asked what he was doing out here, and he said he was here to preach the Word. Then he said it seemed to him like I was there for that too. We talked for a while, but I took that as a confirmation that God really was calling me to go into ministry, I just didn’t know where or how to begin. In my 2nd semester at city college, I started taking a radio class where they give you a free-format radio show to do whatever you want with it. I was thinking about doing a Bible study program, but wasn’t sure I was up for the challenge of it. Then, one Sunday a guest preacher at Long Beach Friends gave a message from Ezekiel 47, and admonished the congregation to help with carrying the pure water of the Gospel of God out into the world to people who were drinking the tainted and poisoned water of Satan. It really challenged me, and so I decided to take on the task of doing a Bible study program, going through a whole book per semester with verse by verse commentary and expository preaching. During the first semester in the spring of 2010, I went through the Epistle of James, and I was astonished how God actually used it – one of my sisters became a believer from listening to the program! After that first semester, I felt God was tugging on my heart to continue what I was doing, but also get involved internationally, and through the use of media such as radio, to help with bringing the Word of God to all the people around the world in their native languages. Yet, it took me a while to find the motivation to get out of my comfort zone and begin to pursue that.
WHERE I AM NOW
The radio program progressed over the next few semesters, and I really learned a lot from challenging myself to do complete studies of James, Job, Galatians, and Genesis. This coming friday, I'll be starting my 5th semester of broadcasting, and will be doing the book of Exodus. It has definitely not been easy, but it has been a tremendous tool for God to grow and change me. I also started trying to use it to really reach the youth in the city, I started playing a lot of church music which you would not hear in churches, Gospel hip-hop and rap that appeals to more of an urban crowd. I’ve also started interviewing various guests of interest who would be able to give encouragement to listeners through sharing their own experiences. I am currently 2 semesters away from completing my A.A. in radio/tv broadcasting, and when I complete it I’ll figure out what God is leading me to do next. Because of some inspiration I’ve had from seeing a very close friend of mine being willing to submit to God’s will and follow him on multiple missions trips to 5 continents, I am currently pursuing internships with various organizations to go overseas and learn more about how media can be used for ministry in other cultures. I am looking to do something over this coming summer. I’m also becoming more involved within my church, and am looking for more ways to develop my spiritual gifts.
PRAYER REQUESTS
I am still single, and have never been in any kind of real relationship. I’m now 27, and as I get older I still worry sometimes that God won’t ever let me experience that happy family situation that I longed for so much as a kid. I still have to fight the devil’s poisonous lies that he puts in my thoughts saying that my own mother never loved me, so how could any woman? I really do hope that there will be a woman who loves me as more than a friend, and that I do get to experience being a husband and father. You could pray for me about that if you want, but what I really want to focus on right now is surrendering those worries and fears and desires to God, being content in His love for me, and trusting that His will for my life (whether that involves a future marriage or not) is the best thing for me, and that He does have my best interest in mind. I struggle with that a lot. Also, as I mentioned, I am currently looking into various internships overseas for this summer, so I ask for your prayer concerning that, that God will open up the right doors, and that I’ll be able to go somewhere, learn what God wants to teach me and allow God to work through me in that. Also, please pray for my family – God has healed a lot of things in my relationship to my dad, and with my family in general, but I feel like there’s still more healing needed. I want to see my whole family come to Christ, and to be closer than we are.
Lastly, I want to see my mother again before I die. The last declarative statement I made to her was that she was gross. The day I last saw her, I never actually said that I love her - I implied it, but never said the words, and I want to make sure she knows that. I feel like it’s going to take me pursuing her and trying to locate and make contact with her, but somewhere inside I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that because I still have that worry and fear that she either won’t want to see me, or that she’ll be disappointed when she does, or that I was a reason she left. I ask for your prayers regarding my mental state over that situation, and that I will one day get to see her and talk with her again.
If you’ve come this far, and read everything, then you now know more about me than the majority of people I know, including most of my friends. Congratulations! Although, I know I left some things out, so if there’s anything else you want to know, then please ask. I’m usually very nice and I do enjoy good conversations.
Thanks for reading, my friend, and until next time – don’t drink and drive, don’t text and drive, and God bless America, it’s a beautiful country.
PS - sorry if the all italics was rough on your eyes, it's not what I intended, but I'm currently having some trouble with formatting the text. Forgiveness please.
"I stop and I stare, I see the pictures of days we shared,
Well aware that you cared, makin' sure I was prepared for life.
The hardships, the struggles, the garbage, and the troubles that come with it,
Always kept my head lifted."
