Testimony

[Kol]

This might interest a number of you living here in the unorthodox wing of the world.

I know that there are a lot of strange things out there, people who believe different things, and those who cling to all of it as if it's their saving grace. It would sound self-righteous to remind everyone we're saved by faith and not structure or even knowledge, but maybe it's still a point to be taken. The Bible seems more like a crash-course than a treatise to me, a field guide like they have in the military, something designed to serve you out in the warfront when you don't have time to read, you just need to know the basics. So maybe if we all have a minute at night, we can gather around the campfire and talk about things we can't really be sure about.

That's my attitude on what follows. I don't swear any of this is the way I think it is. I don't understand all of what happened to me, though at this point I think I have a pretty good idea (and I will get to that).

So anyway, if you like stories about ghosts and evil spirits and reincarnation and all that, and bending the rules of what we think we know and accept on faith, stick along and give this thread some hits. I'll warn you it's an incredibly long story and I can't promise I can post everyday. But I should either be here or in the young adult's forum, joking around there.

Peace, guys. Be back soon. :)

[Kol]

This is about as raw as you can get. I'm not typing this to be an interesting story (though surely it's that), but I want to share these things, and I don't want to falter or not be clear on something. I just want to tell about things the way they happened to me. Glory to God, right? This is what he saved me from. So just a warning. Some of this is pretty intense.

I have been a Christian for about 5 years now.

My mother is an alcoholic; she's been drinking since she was 16. When I was 2, she shot my father in the back. He survived, but I never got to know him. Instead, I was raised by my grandparents, except the interspersed periods when my mother was sober - then, I lived with her at her insistence.

Growing up, I learned to depend on only myself. No adults, no friends, no God. I was my own savior, and if that meant failing or dying then so be it. Looking back, I guess I've always pretty much been a loner.

I suppose a great deal of the people here went to church as kids with their parents. Seems like this is the easiest way into Christianity. I remember as a kid, watching the other people at school gathering around the flagpole to pray sometimes. I didn't have the love or sunshine-happiness to stand outside like a fool for God though, certainly not enough admiration or simple-mindedness to pray outside on the lawn.

When I was 13, I got into New Age. (The religion, not the crappy music.) I began to study Wicca, Tarot cards, astral projection, hypnosis, alien abductions, "magick", spiritism, and karma/reincarnation. This was my religion and my escape. I absolutely bonded myself with it. I got very good at what I wanted to do.

When I was 17, I joined the Air Force. I was sent to a base called Keesler, in Mississippi. This base was known for it's parties and drinking. I broke curfew doing some very promiscuous things with a girl on a gazebo (of all places). I was expelled from the school, reclassed as a mechanic, and sent to the Mojave desert in California. I felt I might as well die. Although I'd spent several years hoping for a good career in the military, I had ruined any chance I'd ever have for early promotion, and wasn't even allowed to work in the job I'd wanted. Stuck in California, I became one of the coldest and most miserable people possible. There was very little left for me to believe in.

During all this time, I had been practicing spiritualism. After 3 years of being one of the most miserable wretches there ever were, I began to listen to a friend of mine, who was always telling me about Jesus and the Kingdom of God. So I gave up to the Lord, and was saved. I was baptised in 99.

So I got out of the AF, came back home, and started working on getting closer to God.

But there were some very bad things I'd become involved with, and none of those forces wanted to let me go. And I think it's best if I started with those things, with my time trying to break away from them because that's where this story really starts.

Let me know when I get your attention.

[Kol]

So, when I was 23 I quit active duty and came back home to serve in the Reserves.

I split rent with an old high school buddy of mine, living at first near his family in North Carolina and shortly later near mine in Villa Rica. In those days I was spoiled, since the service paid fairly well, and from my time in active duty I'd a bit of money saved up. This being the case, I never went to work, but stayed at home with my buddies Jason and Andy, living off cheap kool-aid and tombstone pizzas, and staying up until 3am playing video games and talking to underage girls on the internet.

Most of the time though, I was in my room alone.

All my time and experiences in California had really messed me up. The things I'd done and decided there hadn't really helped me, and converting to being a Christian didn't magically make things okay. I really didn't know where to go. There were so many issues to deal with, not just as in right/wrong but as in internal, emotional things, and no one around could help me. I was a monster. I wasn't functioning like most people, and whereas at one time I saw that as a good thing, now I realized that I'd cut too much out of myself. Not only had I removed the "weak" things within, but I'd cut away a lot of good as well. Worse, there was no way I could open up to somebody, and no way somebody could help me in this, because I was so far out of the norm that the norm would never understand me.

I wanted to change who I'd become, but there was no clear way or path to do this.

I had begun to read my Bible again, but going to church was still a long way away from my mind. I was not ready to sing along with the born-agains *quite* yet. With the few exceptions of spending time with my roommates in the living room downstairs though, I was in my room, reading my Bible or studying on the internet.

[Kol]

That September, I decided to take a trip to a small church in Gravette, Arkansas called the Shepherd's Chapel. The preacher broadcasted on television and satellite, and I'd watched him since I was 15. It was he and his two sons who'd baptized me a year earlier. I tried to get enough nerve and coherency to explain my situation to him, and to ask for not only advice but help, and told myself that God would provide a way to do what needed to be done.

So sometime in the middle of that month, I loaded up my small pickup truck, and took off from Georgia to Arkansas.

That very first night, I drove from Carrollton, Georgia all the way to Biloxi, Mississipi...an easy trip of about 400 miles or so. My old military tech school was in Biloxi, and I went back there, now three years later, to revisit the places I'd been. Keesler had been my dream school, and in my mind, the perfect heaven which had been ripped away from me.

I was on an emotional high-Keesler had been paradise-and I tried to go back to all the old places I remembered: my dorms at the tech school, the mall in town and the pier at the beach where my old girlfriend and I had hid out.

I was no longer in active duty, but since I was in the Reserves, I was able to get on base. It was useless though, because there was nothing left for me. My dorms had been torn down and construction tape stopped me half a block away. I found the new 335th and stopped to visit, but of course any students I would have known had graduated and moved on a year past. I thought to myself that I might find and talk to some of the old sergeants, but they had all retired, been promoted, or moved on. (I believe Sgt. Toncrey was there and possibly TSgt Hall, but now, so long later, I can't remember. I believe I did talk to TSgt Hall.) I went to the student church (the Fishbowl) to chat with the new students. They were polite enough, but completely uninterested in anything I had to say. Finally then, I remember sitting at a bus stop with a new student wearing a student leader rope on her shoulder. I tried again to make conversation, but failed.

So it seemed my time at Keesler was over.. I had-just a real hard time dealing with this. It was tough for me.

I went into town and tried to find all the old places my old girlfriend and I had hung out at, but couldn't remember where half of the places were. Time had erased my memory more than I had guessed. There were kids all over the beach, and even though I had thought to stop at our old sandwich shop, the idea seemed less a good idea, as I began to get more than a little lonely, thinking back on these old times and missing them.

I went to the mall and walked around for a bit, but the memories of walking with my girlfriend came back to my mind-I could almost smell the pretzels and chocolate we used to get-and they hurt so much that I decided I had to leave. My last time with her had been the last time my life had seemed so perfect, and so not only did I have to deal with losing her, but with losing everything else as well...it was shortly after my time with her I had killed my self off and emerged myself in the occult.

I decided to..just go. I went to Dalton's and bought two books: poetry by Emily Dickinson, and an encyclopedia of angels. I took these, checked into a motel, and decided I'd make Ft. Smith (my next stop) the next day.

That night I stayed in a sleazy, run-down motel called the Motel 6 in Gulfport. I was not doing well. I'd thought coming back to Keesler would be great, but nothing there remained for me, and what did remain obviously cared much less for me than I ever had for it. That little illusion on my part had been broken. In my mind, I'd built this little school up to be some kind of long-lost paradise, but coming back to it, I saw that it didn't care to be that for me. There is a difference between paradise in the mind and paradise in truth. And so, I have to say that I was not doing well at all. Bitter and hurt at how things had gone, not only in town but three years past, I smoked a clove cigarette, ordered a pizza from Domino's, and watched a bit of porn stolen from Kazaa. I flipped channels on the television endlessly, and fell asleep sometime near midnight.

...

[Kol]

...

I sat in a cheap motel room, alone and thinking about how much the world had changed for me. Not good, not bad, just changed. I was out of the service, living on my own, and didn't really have anyone alongside me. I could never really relate to anyone else, and I remember thinking about this just a little that night.

I remember watching television and peeking out the peephole in the door to watch the people outside once in a while. I saw a boy dressed in thug clothes and a girl dressed like she was selling herself. I wondered if I should get a gun, because I had learned to shoot one in the Reserves, and I remember thinking as well about whether or not I should just break down and get a prostitute. I was 23 and a virgin, and at this thought bitterness crept in, because I blamed God specifically for what I thought was His interference when I had once tried to change my status. All of this made me depressed, and spiteful, and way too thoughtful, and so after a while I just lay down on the bed and began to space out to myself, lost in my own world as I had been before on so many other occasions.

So I lay on the bed and closed my eyes to just let my brain go on its own. And as soon as I did so, I realized I'd had an image in my head for quite some time.

It was mostly like a daydream, almost as if I were trying to imagine a picture in my mind while I was still awake. I wasn't conciously trying to do so though, and no matter whether I concentrated or not, I couldn't affect what I was seeing. The daydream was very strong-I couldn't make it go away even if I tried, but all the same it didn't seem to affect me in any real way. It was there, and although I could still see the television and the room and everything about me was fully awake, the picture in my mind would not go away.

In my mind, I saw what I thought of as an alien. It seemed tall (although it was hard to really judge), a little thin, but muscular in a way...when I normally thought of "aliens" I thought of bony, skeletal things, but this being was different than that. He was not muscular like an athlete or a wrestler, but not skinny or bony at all. Strong but not brawny. He seemed discernably masculine, though why I couldn't say. He had a very commanding and regal presence. Royal and intimidating by his own force, his own spirit or essence. If I'd had to give a height, I would have guessed a little over 6 feet tall.

The image was very detailed. This was not a stereotype, but an individual. His eyes, his nose, his cheekbones, they were all different, all his own, and I would have been able to tell him apart from other individuals. His eyes turned a little too suddenly at their upper curves...his nose was thinner than normal and up a little high...his cheeks were fuller than normal but still subtle...he was his own person. He had a kind of tan or light brown, golden skin. His face was clear, smooth, with no facial hair, no eyebrows or eyelashes at all.

He seemed almost angelic, spiritual in a way. He was beautiful.

His eyes were black, and in this vision, this daydream, he was staring at me with a kind of dull intent. He was concentrating very hard in order to make me see him.

And somehow, he knew me.

This filled me with an intense uneasiness, and a kind of dull, throbbing dread which would not go away. The man was evil and not on my side, and I knew this, although how I knew this, I could not have said.

Nothing seemed to follow this constant "vision," even though it stayed with me until I fell asleep. The "alien" never did anything...he was just there, staring at me. He seemed unaware that I was able to see him, and he never said or did anything. He just sat there, concentrating on making me see him.

I got the distinct impression that I knew this man, but from where, I had absolutely no idea. I'd never *met* a man that looked like that before, as far as I knew. No one had! But to some hidden part of my mind, it didn't seem such a strange thing.

And this was what happened to me, the first night on my trip to Arkansas...

...

[Kol]

I know this is strange, and garbled, and that none of it fits together to make any sense. But it will all come together eventually.

The fact of the matter is that I would have given anything I ever had to hear a story like my own, before it all actually happened to me. It's easy to say things might have been different or that I might have made better choices, but that ease doesn't make it untrue. If I had known better, I might have done things differently. So even though I'm not here to persuade, maybe I can dissuade. Dissuade from someone making the same mistakes that I did...I never know who will wander in to this forum.

...hope that makes sense and isn't just a bunch of rambling.

[Kol]

...

When I woke up that next morning, everything seemed to be alright. The image in my mind of this regal alien was gone. I didn't know what to make of it; it hadn't seemed to *do* anything, and it had now gone away, so...just a weird thing that had happened, I guessed. A bit freaky, but...whatever.

I threw my dirty clothes into my backpack, tossed the cardkey on the bed, and left Mississippi.

I drove the interstate all day, stopping only for gas and once more to grab a bite to eat. I pulled over a couple of times for no other reason that to take a few pictures. I'd always wanted to be a photographer-I'd taken a class once in the 5th grade-but I felt alone as I thought about this, because I'd always imagined a girl beside me, taking pictures with me. Just another thought back then. It was autumn, and very beautiful that year. In one town I passed through, I decided to take pictures of a church, a peaceful little building hugging the edge of a hill. Down the hill, I could see into a wide valley where fields stretched into a thin line of trees and a single roadway ran from south to north. I took a few pictures of a lake as well, just off the side of the on-ramp, after stopping at the rest stop nearby. This was in southern Arkansas, near the place where there are signs saying "welcome to the Ozarks".

Once, I even stopped across from a private house to take pictures of the yard. There were toys near the front stairs, a pile of autumn leaves in the yard, and decorations, either Halloween or Thanksgiving, I can't remember which. I thought about the family inside the house and felt numb. A year or so prior I'd likely have let myself daydream about murdering them all, or raping the girls, or something else as sick and depraved. I was still having to force these thoughts from my head back then, and I did so then, though the lull was great. My God, Christ Jesus has saved me....

That day I forced all the bad thoughts away from my mind and clung to what I had which was good. I enjoyed the season and I enjoyed the scenery, and I let myself be a witness of God's glory. Thus wrapped up in how peaceful everything was, I took my time and eventually got myself lost on the back roads. By the time I finally made it to Fort Smith then, it was very late.

[Kol]

At about 3am, I pulled into town and checked into the Best Western. It was very cold (I think there might have been snow that year). There was a younger guy working at the counter, and I asked him if he would charge me extra if I went ahead and checked in (some places build their schedules around checkout time and charge you for checking in early); he said he wouldn't.

I forked over the $60, grabbed a few essentials out of my truck, and went past the conference room and soda machines, up the stairs, and around the corner, dragging my things to my room. I was dead tired.

I was sweaty and slimy from my time in Mississippi, and so I remember taking a shower and wrapping myself in the white hotel towels. I read a bit out of the poetry book I'd bought, and turned on the television. There was an old Billy Graham crusade running. Ebb from Green Acres was talking, saying that he was a Christian and that he would be, even if he didn't have any money. As I watched, I took out the room's ironing board and pressed out the wrinkles on the one suit I owned, hoping to wear it when I went to Pastor Murray for my questions.

As I watched the show, I began to remember how I had watched Mr. Graham when I was living at my grandparents as a teenager. Back then I had considered myself a born-again Christian. I would watch John Hagee and Arnold Murray-since they came on when I was at school, I'd tape them and watch them at night, staying up late by myself studying Daniel or Revelation. I'd write horrible fanfics of the X-Files or Star Trek TNG, or just sit on my aluminum fold-up bed rolling character stats for AD&D characters I'd never use. There was a single white candle I owned. It smelled like lilac, and I would spray cologne into the flame to watch the alcohol in it burn. I was a nerdy kid. Messy one too. I'd get to school right on time and make all my teachers mad because I could pass all my classes without ever paying attention, and take the easy classes just to not have to work.

Remembering all these things, it made me a little sad that I'd lost it all. My granddad had been killed in an accident, and my grandmother had moved out to Arizona to live. All my cousins were growing up, not little kids anymore. No one needed me. No one called me. What was worse, I'd thrown away my purity and faith in God when I'd failed out of Keesler. The one thing I had always believed in had at that time failed me.

Even so, I felt that Christ had forgiven me. It felt good to be in Arkansas, so close to the Shepherd's Chapel. Coming to Gravette was like a pilgrimage to me. I'd been baptized in this church, and it was the reason I'd left my faith (if not my practices) in Wiccan and New Age as a teenager, to return to Christianity. I tried to think of the questions I'd ask Dr. Murray, but there was so much in my mind because of both studying and experiences, I couldn't settle on what I really wanted.

I felt complete euphoria, thinking about these things. I'd been out in the world and failed myself in the process, but I thought to myself that my experience in this was the exact reason men needed Christ. He is our atonement. God has paid for all our sins, and thus I was back with Him, back on the right track. All my mistakes had happened just so that I could see I wasn't above anyone else. The lesson had been learned, and God Almighty was calling me back to Him again.

I went to bed, tired beyond belief, but certain that I was on the right path, once again.

[Kol]

I woke up and realized I'd slept *way* past the time I'd needed to. Murray would have finished preaching 2 hours ago. I called my mom back home though, and realized this had actually been a good thing-I'd forgotten it was Saturday. The next day being Sunday, I would have the chance to attend the worship service as opposed to the regular teaching program. I thought to myself that this was even better than what I had planned to begin with. I got off the phone with my mother at about 6 or 7pm that night.

I stayed up late then, having just slept 12 or 13 hours. By about 3 that morning, I realized I would have to get *some* sleep if I wanted to stay in Gravette, at the Shepherd's Chapel all the next day. This being the case, I decided to lay down and see if I could get some rest. I remember thinking that I'd want to leave where I was in Ft Smith about 9am, 9:30 or so...Gravette was about a 2 hour drive, and church began at 12 noon.

And so, after staying up to myself all that night, I lay back down on the bed and closed my eyes. I lay still for more than a few minutes, trying to just relax and fall asleep. I thought I had mastered the fine art of falling asleep on command and grabbing whatever rest was available while in the Air Force, but evidently this wasn't the case. I couldn't fall asleep.

I needed to be rested, but wasn't tired enough for sleep. I had places I wanted to go, but not enough money to stretch my trip out much longer than it already was.

The thought came to me then to try self-hypnosis, and something in the back of my mind made me want to go a step further than this. I was going to try something I'd learned when studying New Age, trying to leave my body.

And at the time I had no idea why it crossed my mind to do this. I had not tried anything of the sort in about 2 years...

[Kol]

This is where things became very strange.

...

I lay down on the bed and began to let myself relax.

I began to block out the noise and interference of the outside world, and try more and more to become aware of only my own body. It became my focus, and I tried to become more conscious of all that it was experiencing. I told my muscles and joints that they were letting go, relaxing all their holds on tension, all their holds on stress. I imagined a wave washing over me, like an ocean wave, washing in peace and comfort, and washing away all the stress, all the worry. This wave I thought of as warm, as gentle and comforting. I imagined a bright blue light fading into existence at my chest, spreading through me slowly and peacefully, and melting away all of my unease.

I felt my muscles relaxing, one by one, falling asleep to the waves, and floating in the soft blue light. This was all working perfectly.

I began to let my body feel that it was sinking into the bed, as I imagined the heaviness of my own flesh, countered by the lightness of my own spirit. I felt my physical body sinking, soaking down into the soft, comfortable bed.

I gave up awareness of my body, letting my consciousness rest, float, solely on my breath.

I began to build a wall around my mind, sectioning off larger and larger pieces to not be aware of, keeping only my consciousness, my self-realization, awake...just as I had learned years before, in studying my New Age beliefs.

...

I became consiously aware of, and very much awake inside of, my spiritual body. Its arms and legs were beginning to float upward, as if I were dead weight, facedown in a pool of water. I was "pinned" to my flesh body somewhere near my head; and my flesh was only a dim thought now in my mind.

I then had the thought, 'this is like what you did last night.'

I was shocked by my own thought. 'What I did last night?!'

Stuck between these two places then, a memory came to me:

...

After finally pulling into Ft Smith and getting the motel room, I had come upstairs and taken a shower. I remembered getting out of the shower and laying down on the bed. I pulled a pair of sweatpants on, threw the shirt on a chair near me, and quickly fell sound asleep. I very soon after, and with a great deal of ease, came out of my body, and for a second floated above my sleeping form. My eyes went to the blankets, and I saw the back of my head as I turned unconsciously from one side to the other, saw my body rising and falling as my flesh breathed in and out. For a moment or two, I watched myself sleep. I then "stood up" (I had been floating facedown), and disappeared into what I thought of as "the canopy". Strips of my being seemed to disappear as I went upward, until I was all gone.

The next thing I remembered was floating upward, flying through a black tunnel.

...

I'd had a few of these experiences (out-of-body experiences, or "OBEs") when I'd been practicing my pagan religions before, though not many: I could remember only a few occurances at most. I remembered my spiritual body as being distinctly different from my physical body. The two looked somewhat the same, my physical form a sort of goofy version of my true, spiritual self. My spiritual body's movements were always much quicker, much more fluid. I could think much more easily while spiritual...my awareness was always unbelievable. When in the spiritual, earthly life and consiousness seemed like a dim dream. They were barely real. To be spiritual then, was to be more lucid, more awake.

I'd not had an OBE in at least a year if not two, certainly not since I'd left California and my old life outside of Christ...

Since that time, my spiritual body had changed drastically.

I was on fire. Flames came like threads, out of my heart, out of my skin and being, and wrapped themselves around me in a covering of some type of fire. I felt Christ Jesus in my heart-he was a person, he was a personality, he was truly, truly real-and he was my heart; and the flames surrounding me were my Christian virtues-his life pouring out through me. Honesty, loyalty, honor, compassion, all these things, though interestingly not love-love seemed somehow different-were what clothed me. The flames seemed somehow either what I'd done, or what I currently felt, or somehow a mix of the two, as if the two were paradoxically the same thing. At the time I did not fully understand this, though I fully experienced it.

I felt young. There was a definite difference of sensation which I could only attribute to that youth, as if my hormones hadn't yet kicked in (though I know that's a poor explanation for a spiritual body). I felt as if I were 15 years old or so, not a definite age of time, but a maturity or level of growth.

I turned back to where I'd come from, as if back to my sleeping form (though it was in the world, where I was no longer at-but where I was, I don't know), and thought, with a completely clear mind, 'life would be so much easier if I could go through it fully aware.' I thought that I would have no trouble loving others, giving them my time, and so on, if I could be fully awake while in life. It felt as if, when in a flesh body, my spiritual desires were somehow "dampened." And I was extremely sad that it was so hard to show others how much I loved them.

I eventually came to some sort of floating "city," in a separate place than the black tunnel, a place which made me think of a black void. I floated outside of its "front" wall, towards the right side. Some kind of "thing" scanned me. I started to get angry for the delay...even in a spiritual body, my temper, my impatience, came through. (I guess it's a sad testament to these faults in me that they were so evident, even in this spiritual state.)

Eventually, I was let inside.

Once there, I seemed to change appearances. Not on fire anymore, I seem "human," but still different. I felt a lot stronger, and somehow in my mind more "normal" than my flesh form. When I fully wake up later, I was struck by how thin my arms and wrists were, by my own thin frame, and by things like these.

Very soon after coming inside, I made contact with two men. These two men were Christians. They had been on earth and died. I knew them, and had been fellowshipping with them for some time, although I didn't call to mind any particulars. These two men wanted to help me in my path to knowing the Lord. As soon as we met we greeted each other, and very soon after prayed together in the Name of our lord, Jesus Christ. I can still see, in my mind, one of the two men closing his eyes, bowing his head slightly over his folded hands, and praying to Jesus. He began to dance and praise the Name of God.

Together, the three of us talk and fellowship, as we wait for our "leader". As we are doing so, I have (yes, in a spiritual body) a psychic experience. I see our leader, my spiritual 'guide,' walking towards us. In this psychic moment though, he hasn't put on his false appearance yet, the appearance he had been deceiving us with. All I literally saw was a white man with black hair and a black beard, walking towards us for our appointment. To my spiritual mind though, more than this is evident. I can't explain it. I knew that he was supposed to have been born, and that he had refused. In doing so, he had crossed some line, broken some law, and that this action had not initiated, but finalized, some nature which had in turn confirmed his...wickedness (is that the best word?) This man was evil, and he was deceiving us all by lying to us about what he was.

At this point, I alone had seen this. The two men who were with me had no idea of what I'd just seen. Evidently, neither had the "Christian" guide.

The man finally arrived, and began to talk with me. I had not yet been able to incorporate what I had just seen, and so I defensively ignored it, pretending I hadn't seen it. Instead, the Christian guide showed me scenes of the past few days, of what I had done while coming to Arkansas and the Shepherd's Chapel.

I was shocked to realize, as I watched these various scenes (as I lay in bed, awake but able to remember this all), why I had acted the way I had in the last few days. The thoughts about missing home, the trip to my old school in Keesler, the pictures of the family house in Arkansas...they were all done because I was lonely. I told the guide that things were getting tough for me and that I wanted to marry. At the time, this was news to me. The guide responded by saying that I should wait until I'd proven to God that He was first in my life, preferably some time after college. I then asked other questions. I asked about the blond-haired man I sometimes saw in my dreams, which I believed was an angel. The guide told me that no one ever really knew who I was talking about, that the man wasn't as important as I had made him out to be, and that no one had seen him anyway. I then asked about the spiritual entity I thought of as my "familiar," the spirit I always sought to contact when I had been in California through dreams and other things. The guide replied that this one was off in a corner of my family.

There was a book we looked at, which sat on a pedestal. After some type of conversation about what I would do next in life, I remember "saying" the words, 'that would be an acceptable alternative'. Our speech was much more refined than here, but still informal and friendly. Lastly, the Christian guide told me that I was doing well and would be suggested for "promotion" of some sort. When he said this, it connotated a long, low building, and the beings inside, who judged the celestials.

Finally, I leave our meeting and tour the city alone. No one else was with me, and I remember my mindset being decidedly different...as if I was more open or relaxed. I remember feeling sad that "everything had changed." I went through the streets, fearfully certain that everyone (including any Christians) were being secretly deceived...but in what way, I never brought to mind. For some reason, I was very happy that my dead granddad wasn't in the city.

...

Awake while I remembered all of this, I snapped back into this world, shocked out of my mind. Reality had been *shattered* for me.

I could then feel the "alien" spirit from my daydream in Keesler, near me, smirking. I felt that he had a definite hand in making me remember this experience. I came to the conclusion that he was showing me how I was being used and deceived. I felt he had iniated the OBE for the sole purpose of showing me what had happened the night before.

I could not decide if he had been the one to give me the "psychic vision" where I had seen my guide as "evil."

In my spiritual body, I had also remembered where I knew this man from, because thoughts about him had come to me. He had been the spirit I knew as my "familiar." He was the one I'd read cards and had dreams through as an occultist. I felt he was angry that I had left him, and that I had stopped what I had done with him. Not that I had become Christian, but that these other things had changed as well. I had been his property, and he wanted me back.

The awareness that I had while in my spiritual body was indescribeable. What I am here is only a cheap, plastic copy of what I truly am. I can't be myself, because my flesh body has its own desires, and those desires put my own to sleep.

...

I took my things, left the motel doorcard on the bed, and drove all the way back to Georgia in one drive. My eyes were shocked open the entire drive. I never tried to initiate another OBE again. I prayed and prayed to God for these spirits to go away. All I wanted was a simple Christian life, and at that point I saw a divide between this life and what I had just experienced. It no longer pained me to be a Christian or leave anything behind; in fact, leaving it all behind was exactly what I now wanted.

I felt very strongly that this Christian spirit guide was somehow harming me and the two men I met in my OBE. But we were all somehow being taught or guided by him.

I was never meant to have seen this guide or remembered him in my flesh body. I was never supposed to have known he even existed.

Needless to say, at the time this completely *freaked* me out. I had no idea what to do about any of this.

[Kol]

Does no one have anything to say?

[Kol]

Very well.

...

A few pictures.

These are a couple of scenic views of the lake I mentioned. I believe a few of them are from the rest stop, the others from the interstate:

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00088.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00088.jpg)
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00138.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00138.jpg)
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00126.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00126.jpg)
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00150.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00150.jpg)
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00152.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00152.jpg)

A picture of the church I stopped at.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00118.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00118.jpg)

The motel room in Biloxi. I was really freaked out and took this picture so I'd always remember the room. It was room number 222.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00667.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00667.jpg)

The room at the Best Western in Ft. Smith. Ebb was explaining that Green Acres had been cancelled. Even though this happened before I was born, it made me sad still-I love that show!
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00675.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...e/DSC00675.jpg)

I believe there is a problem with the dating of the pictures. When I first posted these pictures on photobucket, I had my dates mixed up...it doesn't really matter I suppose, but I must realize that some of these may not be the pictures I think they are. I have over 200 pics of Arkansas. They might have been mixed up with those from a later date. But they are still valid. This is Arkansas.

This is where I was that year, when all these things happened to me.

And tho nobody has responded, on with the story...

[Kol]

My brother and I are both the sons of alcoholic parents.

Neither of us ever knew our dads. Our mother was...is...an alcoholic, and when she drank, we were pretty much left on our own. Life was not really bad, but it had its moments, between the drinking, cursing, crying, and so on.

My granddad worked at the old Ford plant in Hapeville. Whenever our mother would start drinking, I'd call him, and he'd show up in whatever junk car he was currently working on. My brother and I would live at our grandparents' house for a few weeks, and before long our granddad would have our mother sobered up, so that she could take care of us again.

My grandparents always meant a lot to me...and my granddad in particular was my childhood hero. He would take his grandchildren camping, the dozen or so of us he was continually raising, and set aside our own places for us to play in. He made me wooden swords and cardboard armor, and with these I would attack the pine trees, because they were evil sorcerers or crazy warlords in South America. I was allowed to stay up a whole hour later than the others because I was the oldest boy, and while we roasted marshmallows on the campfire, he told me all he knew about how to be a good man.

My granddad had been killed in an auto accident, my last year in the Air Force.

Racing back from Arkansas, I pulled into the old driveway-the house had gone to my younger brother-and knocked on the door.

My brother Michael answered the door.

...

I had driven from Ft. Smith to Villa Rica in one day.

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/Fort+Sm...Villa+Rica+GA/ (http://www.mapquest.com/maps/Fort+Smith+AR/Villa+Rica+GA/)

640.79 miles, evidently. A little over 1000km for any non-Americans here.

At that point in time, I was probably very close to being crazy. :(

[Kol]

As i've said, reality had pretty much been shattered for me. Even when I had been into all my pagan religions, something about it just didn't seem real. I didn't take it at anything more than face value...looking back, there was a dimension to it I never saw. But I had now seen the way things really were, had stepped "outside" the game, so to speak, and...understandably, it *bothered* me. I didn't know what to do. It was nearly impossible for me to deal with. My mind was having a very hard time processing it, assimilating what I had experienced.

My brother answered the door, and my voice was shaking. I remember asking him if I could see him at our mother's house. He asked if everything was okay. Was mom hurt? Was I hurt? Was everything okay? No, I said, but just...just meet me down there.

I made it down to my mom's house and sent my two little sisters away. In the living room, I asked my mother and brother to sit down and listen.

I told them the entire story from beginning to end. I told them all about the alien image in my mind, about missing my old tech school, about the drive to Arkansas, about how sad and miserable I'd been that day, about the self-hypnosis, and the..."people" I'd met above. I was at a loss to explain it all-my ability to handle it was wearing very thin. At the time, it was really all I could do, to not lose it.

I hoped that by sharing these things, one of the two could offer me advice, or at the very least be in awe alongside of me.

I finished the story. My mom turned to my brother.

"So Michael, did you race last night?"

...

My mother had completely ignored me. The two started a normal conversation. My story had lasted at least 15, 20 minutes. Neither one of them even acknowledged I had spoken.

My mother later told me that stories like this were "beyond" my brother. Into New Age herself, she suggested that I was "an older spirit" and that I probably had a lot to teach people.

I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to.

[Kol]

I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. My mother let me stay at her house for a few days, because I could not bring myself to go back home just yet. I slept very little-I kept feeling as if I were being pulled out of my body again, and I'd jump awake every time in a panic. I slept in my clothes on my momma's couch with what had once been my baby sister's blanket.

I was out of it. This was something I had to deal with, on my own. Nobody else would even believe me, let alone try or be able to help me.

The days passed as my supposed trip to Arkansas expired.

Eventually, because there was nothing else to do, I went back to my apartment.

[Kol]

My roommates had eaten all my food. My buddy Jason told me he'd drank the last of my Dr Pepper the moment I'd walked out the door. There was a mass of people in my apartment when I walked in. I sent all but my roommate Jason and my buddy Andy back home.

I then went to my own room and sat on my floor. For the first two or three days back I just kind of spaced out, switching between laying down and sitting up every once in a while. I'd go downstairs for food and say hi to my friends without really paying attention, or stay in my room and let some music play. Everything was quiet and peaceful, and I just sat there, to myself...

Eventually my mind settled down enough for me to think again.

I reasoned to myself that all this nonsense with angels and spirits had begun with Wicca and New Age when I was 13, and so I decided that I'd have to cut myself off from any kind of influence with those things. This was my decision.

The first thing I did was to go through all my things and throw away anything that was even remotely occult-related. This included candles-they were colored, red, blue, green, yellow, and white. I then and there vowed to myself to never try to leave my body again. I trashed all my saved internet pages on witchcraft and magick. I threw my Tarot deck in the dumpster, bypassing the trashcan in my kitchen. I didn't want the things in my house. Anything, material or otherwise, that presented a question, was thrown away.

The thought continually came to me that there was no "scriptural evidence" that any of these things-cards, candles, so on-was contraband or sinful. But I took it on faith that they were. I didn't need to be convinced by text. I was already convinced by experience, that these things led to problems and separation from God.

The next thing I did was to open my Bible. I began with Genesis and Romans and decided to read both at the same time. I began to sneak into a nearby church on Sundays, sitting near the back and not saying anything to anybody.

Despite what had happened, I felt a continuous desire to use my tarot cards to understand the meaning of everything happening around me. I went to Borders at the mall one week and bought another set of cards, only to throw away the set without opening them a few days later.

I locked up my clove cigarettes, and hid away about half my CDs: Rob Zombie, Corrosion of Conformity, Static-X, and Emperor.

I eventually finished Romans and began to read 1 John.

One night, I dreamed that I'd found a passage in the Bible which made it okay to study Tarot and leave your body. In the dream, I had to argue with someone that this was not okay. It was a definite struggle to hold onto this change I was trying to initiate in my life.

...

It was at this time that I was really leaving my old beliefs and putting them behind me forever. It wasn't easy or pretty. I didn't fit in, no one understood me, and I was uncomfortable everywhere I went.

Since I'd been a kid, I'd read up on stories of magic and spiritualism, on out-of-body experiences, aliens, spirits, and so on. I had decided that Christianity was wrong-it was everyone else's idea of God, and their idea was wrong. I wanted God and spiritual things, not baptists and...just everything that went with them. In California I had become miserable, and realized that these things could not give me anything. I had tried to politely ignore them, but now since Arkansas, I saw that this would not work. I was going to have to actively fight them off in order to leave them.

And it was hard, and things were like this for quite some time.

[Kol]

Soon afterwards though, life became very easy for me.

When 9/11 happened, my reserve unit was mobilized, called to active duty. This meant that I now worked as military police at Dobbins in Marrietta. I had to wake up at 3:30am and I got home around 7pm. I didn't have time to think or worry. At this piont it was still difficult for me to relate to others or to make simple "let's be a happy person" choices, but not it didn't matter; I didn't have time to do anything but work.

A good portion of the reserves are staffed mostly by older men who have served on active duty for a long time. In my case, most of the men I worked with were Vietnam Vets. A good many of them had killed other men in close combat, although they never talked about it. The war was a long time ago for them, but having to deal with things like this tended to make them quiet and very self-assured. They had made their peace long ago. So it was easy for me to make friends with them, because they were more reserved in their natures than others. So as I began to become a person again, I became a lot like them, keeping to myself and making sure I knew what I thought about myself beforehand.

A lot of what we did was training and busy work. Physically active stuff. Night-firing, relay courses, combat training. And a lot of cleaning our weapons. Thus engaged, all these other things, angels and spirits, began to pass from my mind.

My spiritual life in Christ had really began to grow. I finished the first five books of the Old Testament and began to read them again. I chose my favorite characters and tried to get a feel for what they had to go through and the commitments they made to God. I read the books of the New Testament over and over again. I couldn't make it to church anymore-I worked all week-but I still felt myself getting closer to God.

When the US decided to invade Iraq, I had to go.

We were stationed in Saudi, in an "undisclosed location" later revealed to be Tabuk. I worked nightshift, usually alone. The smallest guy in the fireteam, the other airmen had given me the machine gun. 25lbs, not including ammo. The first day at there, I was taken to "work" and surprised to find that my foxhole was 25ft in the air-it was a lookout tower near the front gate. The other guards at the gate would check IDs. If someone ran the gate, if the gate exploded, if shots were fired, or if it started raining and the base commander hadn't authorized it, I was to stop the next car coming through the gate.

I set my weapon, threw my rucksack on the floor, and peered out the plexiglass window to the gate.

"How do I open this window if I need to fire," I asked.

"Just start shooting," the other guard said, getting his things together to leave. "It'll come out."

So, from dusk to dawn, this was my job. I wasn't allowed a normal flashlight, for fear someone would see me. I *was* allowed to put a red lens over my normal light. Doing this, I lay over my machine gun and read CS Lewis and EW Bullinger. Every once in a while, my Sgt would come by to check on me, and we'd talk about our relationship with Christ.

There's something about living in a tent city that just makes things easy. It's not that you always have someone else telling you what to do. You don't. They don't tell you, they teach you. I knew exactly what my responsibilities were, and I knew exactly what I had to do to perform them.

So I decided my spiritual life with God would be just the same. I knew what I had to do, I knew how I could do this. No more, "I'm too tired/I'm too sick to go to church." My responsibility was to make it, and so I would make it. I was not allowed anything contrary to the Word of God. So I wouldn't accept those things.

So as I grew closer to the Lord, things in my mind seemed to became clearer.

[Kol]

This next post will tie in later on. Trust me!

I'm going to change a few names and things, but let me see how simple I can keep this for now:

When I was 9 years old, my mom had met a man at the AA named Terry. About a month after they met, they married. Thinking this was finally her "perfect life", my mother called me and my brother to live with her.

My grandparents had been awarded custody of me since I was 2. My brother though, was legally hers and always had been. Because of this, because of him, I always lived wherever he did. This was a choice offered to me. My granddad advised me that "a real man" would not only think about himself, that I should live with my brother Michael so he would not be alone. And so, believing this to be the right choice, I always did. When I was 9 then, we moved back to live with our mom; and since she was with this man Terry, we were forced to live with him.

Terry lived in an apartment with his two children, a boy and a girl. Sara was 2 years older than me. Glenn was...I think a year or two younger. Glenn and my real brother played together-war and baseball, tag and so on. Sly and quiet, I would stay at a distance and watch. I could throw a baseball, but couldn't hit. I couldn't catch a football to save my life. So I wasn't usually welcome to play, certainly not if other kids were around. This being the case, I turned instead to talk with Sara.

There was a tiny park in the apartment complex, just a couple of picnic tables, a swingset and slide, and a little sandbox. Sara and I would go to this place and just sit and talk. She hated my mother every bit as much as I hated her father. We became friends, but the goal between us was clear-we both wanted our parents to split up, even though it would mean we would lose contact with each other. So we both worked towards the same purpose.

Sometimes our talks would turn to God. (Guess this was pretty deep discussion for pre-teens!) This is the first time I really developed an interest in God at all. So for most of my life, whenever I thought about God, I'd think about Sara.

About three or four months into the marriage, Terry and my mom started drinking together.

I think Terry beat Glenn. I'm not sure. When he was drinking, he was a pretty different person than when he was sober. My mom would just lay down and sleep. But Terry (I *never* did call him dad, lol) would get mean and strict. And the meaner Terry got to Glenn, the meaner Glenn would get to me.

I put all my effort to breaking our parents up. One day, my mother turned to me, mad at all the problems I was causing.

"Don't make me choose between you and him," she told me, "because you'll lose."

...and I was a nine-year old kid when she told me this.

I hardly got to talk to my grandparents, never got to see them. Glenn broke the "staff" my granddad had made for me. Sara was just about my only friend at that time, and the park was my only escape. I wondered if she was trying at things as hard as I was. But I could tell even then that things were tough on Glenn and Sara as well. At one point, they started going to their mom's every other weekend. My brother Michael would try to play with me then, but this didn't help-as soon as someone else would show up, I'd be forgotten. So I felt pretty miserable, and pretty lonely. Kids need to be held! They need to be hugged! They need a safe home, breakfast and supper, a clean environment. I never had any of this while my mom was married to Terry.

My brother Michael became submissive to make friends. He'd give other kids his lunch money so they'd let him play with them.

I myself became really quiet and uncaring.

Between Glenn and Sara, things got weird, and they seemed to depend more on each other than normal siblings would. They were together, and they hated their lives, and all they ever wanted I think, was a way out.

And so the point is, there was a man my mom married named Terry. He had two kids, Glenn and Sara. For a little less than a year, we had to live with them. Eventually, the two kids went to live with their mother (who I never met), and my brother and I returned to our grandparents.

What is important though, is how this year of my life screwed me up inside. All our parents cared about was sex, and we were all quickly pushed to the side because of it. My only friend during this time was my new sister Sara. We discussed God and life, and I began to think that death was the only escape to life. Sara thought the same; we both became a little dark because of it. Because of the fact that I was disgusted with my mother, I could not look at any kind of adult relationship in a good light. We all knew that sex was more important to our parents than we were. We all coped in different ways, though. Michael was too young to be affected really, at least to anything so specific. Glenn and Sara seemed to try to make up for the lack of parental affection with each other.

I though, began to kill off my emotions.

[Kol]

My mother shot my father in the back when I was two. My granddad rescued me, and after several bouts with DFACS won temporary custody. My dad lived, but I never got to know him.

I lived with my mother whenever she was sober. The rest of the time, I was cared for by my grandparents.

When I was 9, my mother began to live with a man named Terry, and things became very bad as the two drank together and ignored their children. As time went on, the situation affected us all. Terry's own kids had severe problems. My brother became shy and submissive. I became cold and quiet.

One of the only escapes I had came from Terry's daughter Sara. That escape was religion, trying to depend on God for strength and comfort...knowing that my life was wronged, and believing there was a God who was keeping score.

When I was 13, I began to practice Wicca. There was a power in the world, and I was not going to wait while the adults rationed it out to me in Sunday-school packets. I was going to find it for myself. This interest, this devotion, eventually evolved into reading tarot cards, praying to spirit guides, trying spells, and astral projection, or leaving my body. I became emotionally and spiritually dependant on all these things.

Trying to get away from my family back home and grow up on my own, I enlisted in the Air Force and was sent to boot camp. At my tech school though, I didn't study and chased after a girl instead. I failed my course tests. Because of this, I lost the job I'd chosen and was made a mechanic.

Sent into the Mojave desert in California, I absolutely emerged myself into the occult and spiritualism. Two people in particular tried to get me to open up: Dario and Dan were their names. I shunned them off and tried to get them to hate me. I ended up working the night shift by myself in the tool room-the midnight shift, no less-while the other mechanics laughed and joked on the work floor. Everyone pretty much saw me as cold and uncaring, and they left me alone.

I was miserable and bitter. I lived, ate, and slept alone, and spent a great deal of my time remembering what had happened to me. My escape was anything dark and quiet, and most of what I did was try to be alone.

...

...

...

......

But all of this had passed away.

By the time I got back from Saudi, I had about 10 grand saved in my bank account. I bought some new clothes, took my pickup in for a tune-up, and ordered a work-out bench to keep myself in shape. I received an Honorable Discharge from the Reserves-my time in the military was over-and a medal for my time overseas. Out of the Air Force, I started letting my hair grow out for the first time since high school. I felt liberated.

When I got back, my mother was once again drinking, and my buddies hadn't paid rent in 2 months.

I helped Jason and Andy move back to their parents' houses, cleaned and rearranged the apartment (Godbless Spic & Span), and picked up my little sisters from my mom's house.

At the time, Amanda was in the 6th grade and Ashley was in the 3rd.

Kids are expen$ive.

I took a job at the nearby Sony plant, working security on the 2nd shift. It barely paid enough, but the girls' dad wrote checks for whatever we needed. My schedule was packed:

4pm: Work.
12am: Go home.
1am: Sleep.
5am: Take the girls to school.
8am: Sleep.
1pm: Get ready for work.
3pm: Pick the girls up from school.
4pm: Leave for work.

Being a single parent is tough.

Despite all the stress, we all had fun. Amanda was my baby doll, and Ashley was my hero. The first night I tried to cook, I didn't know I had to simmer the steaks. Amanda made chocolate-chip pancakes instead. I love spinach, but Ashley was afraid of it. I chased her around the house with a bowl of it one night. We'd go to the park and sit together to talk, get fast food and eat it at the lake, or drive out to the pond and run from the ducks together.

Amanda turned to me one night and smiled.

"I love you more than bark on a tree," she said.

She loved to spout nonsense like that.

Soon enough, our mother sobered up and the girls went back to live with her. I moved into a tiny, 2-bedroom duplex across the street, and continued to work at Sony.

...and as I did so, I continued to grow in my relationship with Jesus Christ.

[Kol]

"So. So you had a strange vision on a hiking trip to church and thought you saw some sort of malevolent spirit in the sky. Pretty weird, Kol. But how does all this about your family life play into it all?"

In answer to that, let me just say: hang with me. This story might seem to take a turn out in left field. Sorry. This is the way things happened, and...just trudge along with me, please.

...

Originally, there were two jobs in Carrollton: Southwire and Sony. Sony shut down production in 2001, just a few months before I had come home from California and enlisted in the Reserves. Most of Sony's building became an unused, empty warehouse. 70 workers filled a single dayshift, and security was a total of 12 guards. This was perfect for me. It gave me plenty of time to sort myself out and get things ready for college.

For a long time, everything was quiet. After a while business began to pick up, and Sony started working in a new incarnation, this time as a distribution center. I took the job of shift supervisor in the afternoons. Overtime was unreal; our boss was not the most well-educated person, and her managerial skills were severely lacking. I averaged most times 120 hours in a 2 week period. One of the younger guards joked that our boss didn't 'plan' schedules...instead, she wrote them by casting lots with the bones of unborn babies.

All kidding aside, Sony was a creepy place.

From the very first, everyone was convinced there was a "ghost" in the unused part of the plant. I remember laughing at the thought. I had spent years in dark rooms trying to contact other spirits...and I had felt no such thing at Sony. I think I was kind of arrogant back then. But soon enough I was convinced. There was a very strong presence in the empty warehouse in both Tape Coating and the end of isles 42/43. Seemingly random places...not the darkest or the quietest. At the time, I felt a little tug to try to go "ghosthunting"...I took a few pictures and made a few "white noise" tapes, but then decided not to go any further. I no longer wanted anything to do with dead people or spirits or the spirit world. So, as strong as I wanted to do anything, I resisted the urge.

Nobody swears like a mechanic, and from my time in California I'd picked up some pretty foul language. One wouldn't suppose the f* word to be so easily combined with various parts of the english language. One of the things I was working on then, was my language. Once when I had to put a seal on a truck, I tugged too hard and broke the little plastic ring. Before I could think, I spitted out a single bit of obsenity. My hand involuntarily went to cover my mouth. The truck driver (an older man) looked at me as if I were a little kid and said, "don't feel bad for saying that word. I say that word every day." I knew I looked like an 18-year old fresh out of high school, but considering the dark life I'd come out of, the twisted things I'd seen and done in California, and the fact that I could have kept swearing for another couple minutes on end, all I could do was look at the driver and laugh.

Unfortunately, one of the things I'd grown to love in California was death metal. My favorite band called themselves Emperor:

The heavens are lit by the stars
where years of secret universal secrets lay hid
they shine so bright,
yet they have seen more evil than time itself
Reflected in the depthless lakes,
they are drowning in black elements
They are the planetary keys
to unlimited wisdom and power
for the Emperor to obtain...

I packed all these away and began to listen to gospel music instead. I found I liked bluegrass gospel the most. I bought a 3-disc Johnny Cash set named "Love, God, and Murder." On this, he even sang a few Kris Kristofferson songs, which I liked:

Why me Lord what have I ever done
to deserve even one of the pleasures I've known
Tell me, Lord, what did I ever do
that was worth lovin' you or the kindness you've shown

Lord help me, Jesus, I've wasted it so
help me Jesus I know what I am
but now that I know that I've needed you so
help me, Jesus, my soul's in your hand...

Work consisted of patrolling the afternoon warehouse for an hour, then sitting on my backside and stuffing my face from the vending machine while the other guard patrolled for an hour. I used my free time to read several books: the Apocrypha, Enoch, Jasher, books by Dr. Raymond E. Capt, books by Rutherford and Ginsburg, CS Lewis, and so on. Of course, my Bible was at the top of all of this.

I began to make notes of how I was growing as a Christian.

You have to understand, at this point I thought I was the only "real" Christian there was left in the world. I had become convinced of my beliefs because of what I had experienced working in occult techniques. It was beyond me to suggest that anybody else would understand that what Christ had claimed was true. I knew there were other Christians, but I couldn't comprehend that they might actually believe what they said they believed. How could they? They didn't know what I knew. They hadn't walked my path. A little childish to think this way, but...at the time, it was how I thought.

I wrote a paper entitles "Opiates of the Fallen Nature" alongside a summary of the Bible I intended to read to my kid sisters. I began to make notes as well on my thoughts of how similar alcoholism and sin were, as well as how to fight each. I remember a tiny coin my mother had from AA:

THE TIME TO CALL YOUR SPONSER
IS BEFORE, NOT AFTER;
THINK BEFORE YOU DRINK.


I continued to grow stronger in my choice, and stronger in my self. I knew how to focus my will and I knew how to direct my thoughts towards action...and so I did so, only now I directed them towards the God which Christ preached.

...
__________________

[Kol]

For a short time as a preteen I had read all I could on Anton Levay and although I liked a few of his ideas, the entire premise of materialism was disgusting to me. I hated what I saw, because what I could see had failed me. But it was while reading these things that I realized I was in absolute rejection of them, and that in turn led me to spiritualism.

When I was 13 then, I began to read books on the New Age movement. I began to believe in spirit guides, in fate and destiny, in karma and reincarnation. I taught myself hypnosis and began to look into my own subconscious to see what I could find there. What I found was that God was not the Baptist demon who was ready to send me to Hell. There was no hell, because it was such an absolute paradox for a loving god to be known by such pain and suffering. So I accepted my own understanding of God, and rejected what I had seen Him presented as.

I moved on from New Age to Wicca. I chose still to believe in a masculine God, but recognized that creation was indeed a mother to me. I saved for months to buy a well-made dagger, and I remember making a list of which gods I would pray to. I tried my ability at magic and ceremonies, and found that, because of my practice with hypnosis and dreaming, all my concentration, and all those other things, came very easily for me. I invented my own method of doing things, because I understood enough to know that the physical aspects of magic were only a way of reaching my subconsious. So I began to write my own spells and ceremonies, and began to make blessings and services for all the different gods (or "subgods" as I believed them to be), for all the different days I thought were important.

I absolutely bonded myself with my spirituality, and became very good at doing whatever I wanted to do.

At 15 I recommited myself to God and Jesus, but didn't really ever stop the New Age or Wicca, because I believed at the time that they were not in conflict.

...

When I was a little teenage Wiccan then, I would sometimes go out into the woods behind my house so that I could be alone with nature. No cars, no parents, no others. Sitting against a tree trunk, I could smell the pine needles, hear the sound of the cows lowing in the distance, hear the sound of the creek which ran nearby. I was separated from the confusion of "society", and felt that I was in touch with the very spirit of God. It was bliss, euphoria.

Now, as a Christian, I continued along the same lines. I had been afraid that I would lose something when I "converted." Looking back, I'd feared a lost relationship-which is a silly thing to think now-and that I would not be able to commune with God any longer. All I'd ever wanted in life was God...

I realized I was in absolute rejection of (materialism), and that in turn led me to spiritualism.
...and I'd thought that as a Christian that spiritual nature would be limited to prayer. But I was dead wrong.

At times I began to feel something like a wisp in my heart. When people at work talked about immorality or drinking, it felt like it wanted to flee. Some part of my heart was not comfortable being there. When I prayed or listened to Christian music-that is, when I spent time looking for God with my heart-it seemed to become...stronger...more "present." This was a spiritual phenomenon - I recognized it as such - and it was not something of my own, but something which had been placed in me. I remember thinking to myself, "you are now bio-tech." I felt as if part of me had been implanted.

I felt obliged to tell my Lord all the faults I imagined him as having, all the problems I had with him. I told him what I hated him for and what sickened me to think of him as doing. Alongside this were moments when I would think of sins I had or particularly liked. Each and every time, I saw (though never on my time) that these were caused by lies I'd told myself, things I'd done to protect myself from pain. Life had wronged me-it does all of us. I had blamed God for the faults of others, when he was the one trying to tell us how wrong we all were. I'd blamed God for the faults of humanity and for not fixing things, when fixing things was the one thing he'd always claimed to want.

So many times I remember thinking back to my childhood and the time since and asking why. Why had he allowed it? Why had he not equipped me to survive? Why had I been born?

And there were no answers. The thought came, read your Bible. But there were no answers there!@! Scripture was like a salve. I needed an operation. I told God that I didn't want to be sedated. I wanted him to answer me.

...

First and foremost, I wondered about my destiny. In California I had reached the zenith of my will and beliefs: I wanted to become a god (since I'd believed we were all meant to be gods). I was intimately aware of angelology and demonology and all things in between heaven and hell. It seemed to me that God gave power and beauty to all of creation, then tried to appease mankind with "love". I was afraid he would do the same to me. My worst nightmare was to be married and have kids. I considered this as good as death, becoming a civilian. I wanted an escape...the same as I always had. An escape from this empty world I found myself in. And I begged him to provide it to me.

I hated God for making me so material. I wanted to lose myself in spirituality. I wanted to fast, to meditate, to close my eyes here so that I could glimpse what was beyond. I didn't want to shake hands like a "good ol' boy" and commune with other Christians at a church supper. If you are spirit, then why won't you share that, I prayed. I wanted a spiritual nature, and the utter lack of regard for my physical nature.

..In the end, I decided that God was what I truly wanted. There was one God, and I could either accept him or not. But he was what I truly, really wanted, what I'd always wanted, and so because of this, I couldn't let anything he'd done or that I myself had done separate me from him. I couldn't allow actions to separate nature, couldn't allow his actions or my own to separate the two of us, because we shared the same nature-spirit. And so I crawled to his side. I developed a very real love for God Almighty, and became engulfed in the presence of his son, Jesus.

...

I tried to go Sunday school. Being single (and looking young), they put me in with the teenagers. I was 23 and a veteran. Still, I stay attentive and asked questions. Sometimes the class consisted of me, the married couple that ran the single's group (???), and one other guy, usually the deacon's son. He always looked extremely bored. My thoughts were on truth and the nature of Christ's spirit as the class ran on about some trite detail. Still, I went.

I finished the Old Testament up to Chronicles, and all of the New Testament save Acts. I developed my understanding of the Nature of God, my rejection of the Trinity, and my understanding of eternal salvation. I began to talk to others at work about this.

One of the friends I'd made was with two of the cleaning ladies, Odie and Nellie.

"When you first got here, I thought you was mean," Nellie once told me. "You looked too serious."

Which of course meant that I didn't look that way any longer. :)

I once asked Nellie where the Kingdom of Heaven is. "No, not 'up there", I smiled (I had started smiling). "The Kingdom of Heaven is in your heart," I explained.

"Oh, you're going to make me cry," Nellie said, almost tearfully.

I learned to depend on God for my strength, my emotional and spiritual well-being, and my guidance in life. I closed my eyes, sought out that tiny bit of his spirit I could now feel within myself, and drew on it. Jesus had become my lord...he was my king, and a king's laws govern how you live. Since Jesus's law was love, my love for my king began to govern my life.

All of this spiritual growth made me think. There was a verse I'd come across where I'd read, "Draw close to Me, and I will draw close to you." I wondered if this were true of all spiritual things, and my mind wandered back to my old days in the occult. I then wondered if the things I'd tried in the occult would work with God. Instead of candles or water, or anything like that, I took a pillow from my couch to kneel on, locked myself in my room, put on a Christian instrumental CD, and knelt down to pray. For every step I would have used to contact the spiritual world, I substituted a step to draw close to God.

I isolated myself from the world. I gave up awareness of my self and my own world to look for that other world with all my heart. I let go of my life to kneel before him in his.

I prayed and gave thanks to the "power" which let me do so: Christ Jesus, the gateway to God.

This being done, I opened myself completely to God Almighty. I could feel God's presence. I imagined my spirit, imagined myself in front of him, bowing down and worshipping him. For a second, something seemed to hold me back. It was like...a paper wall, or a small, token resistance. I forced myself to push through this. It was...indescribeable. I had never felt as much a commune as this. Never. I had never even imagined it. Anything I had ever wanted or experienced on my own using the occult had just been outperformed. Put out to pasture, as they say. ^_^

...

So in all these things...I came closer and closer to the Lord...and my time at Sony went by...and that night in Arkansas seemed farther and farther away.

.....

[Kol]

Again, bear with me. This will all tie in later, trust me.

...

By the beginning of 2004, business at Sony had picked up, and things became fairly normal once again. There were now about 6 or 7 guards on the shift, and I'd have to go by and check on all of them each hour. Schedules changed and people came and went, but there were three other guards that I would normally talk to: Hopkins, Boatwright, and Campbell.

Anthony Hopkins was the stereotypical nerd. He was one of those guys who can make you laugh just by being there. He shaved his head, was always adjusting his glasses when he talked to you, and he'd always complain that security-guarding was making him gain weight. He had a girlfriend, the same one since highschool, but he didn't seem to like her; he was always talking about how much she looked like a man, and how it was always such a chore to have sex with her.

Boatwright was finishing his work on computer programming. He eventually got a job at one of the Staples stores near Atlanta. He was a bit hefty, quiet and sarcastic, and always seemed to have everything figured out long before anyone else. Half of what he thought, he would never tell you. I'm sure he had the rest of us mapped out perfectly. I remember that Boatwright was fun to mess with.

Campbell was...well, Campbell. The first day I met her, my boss told me I had a new girl to train, and so I went to the plant's west entrance to meet her. I saw this very athletic-looking girl with a skullcap on, gazing out the window.

"Hi," I said, "are you Campbell..? The major sent me to train you." I smiled and bowed my head a bit.

The girl didn't even turn around to face me. "I guess that's me," she mumbled.

I was a little perplexed for a minute at what was so darn interesting outside, but as Campbell turned around, she took her cap off and scratched her head. She'd shaved her head bald. She looked at me uneasy and...as if afraid...I guessed she was afraid I'd laugh at her.

Campbell was from Utah. She was a Mormon, although I don't believe her family was very strict in their faith. Her father worked at Southwire while her mother stayed at home and her younger brother (who she talked about endlessly), stay at home causing problems in small ways. She was saving money for college, and had taken the security job because she was tired of bagging groceries for her pay.

I remember once trying to teach her about fire extinguishers and about when their inspections were due. I turned around to find her playing an imaginary piano and singing Tainted Love. An odd person.

The other guards began to wonder if Campbell was a lesbian because of the way she acted at times. I'm ashamed to admit that I often wondered aloud as well. I couldn't figure her out, and so I talked to her on my own quite a bit, trying to crack her shell and find out what was really going on.

Campbell's oddities aside though, the four of us had fun. We'd routinely send Boatwright on break, tape his phone to the desk and his chair to the wall while he was gone, then call him incessantly until he answered. The two cleaning ladies (Odie and Nellie) would often play along. We decided Hopkins looked like a penguin, and teased him about seeing March of the Penguins when it came out. So all together, life went okay.

[Kol]

Eventually, Boatwright quit and Hopkins got fired, but Campbell and I kept working together. We ended up as the only two "kids" on the shift-mostly everyone else were retirees. There actually came a point when over half my shift had diabetes.

Time passed. Campbell's hair finally began to grow out. She wanted to dye it purple but had to settle on red because of work regulations. As the months went by, we both got stuck working an enormous amount of overtime together.

I ended up telling Campbell all my stories about my mom, my granddad, about going off to boot camp, and about all things spiritual. She seemed interested and was always happy to hear more. She'd tell me about life in Utah (ugh, she loved the "grid system" of roads), and about her friend Stephanie, but most of her stories were about herself and her brother.

"What about when you were really little?" I once asked her.

"Meh, I don't know. I don't remember."

My buddy Jason is the same way about his childhood. He doesn't remember *anything* before the first Nintendo came out.

"How can you not remember being a kid?" I asked. "That's the best things about memories, the childhood ones."

She looked extremely blank.

Because of this, I became convinced she was a pod person.

One spring afternoon, I stood holding the outside door open, in front of the west entrance desk where Campbell sat, waiting for one of Sony's truckdrivers to come in. It was an absolutely beautiful day; there was the scent of flowers and new leaves, and it was just turning evening. The driver was taking his time, walking in slowly from the parking lot. Campbell sat at the desk, drawing.

As the driver walked towards us, Campbell and I were talking about something, though I can't remember what. She finished the conversation with some idle comment, and I said something sarcastic in return, at which we both smiled. I looked to her and made casual eye contact. I held this for a second longer to make my point, then began to turn towards the driver.

My eyes rebelled against me. They stay right where they were...in hers.

I remember she looked at me as if wondering if I had something else to say. Evidently I didn't. The smile I'd had at my last comment melted away. She gave a weak attempt to look away, but she was caught-we both were-and she didn't have the strength to look away. My eyes stay in hers for an ungodly amount of time in a kind of soft, casual hold, until finally I blinked the slowest I've ever blinked, broke away, and called out to the truckdriver, joking with him. I had no idea what I had said to him.

This was, and is to this day, one of the biggest shocks of my life. I was madly in love with this girl, and until that exact moment, had had no idea.

...and to think I'd prided myself once on being in charge of my emotions.

I'd come a long way from being emotionally dead in California. Emotions are tough, and they have to be controlled. Back then I'd simply killed them off so as to not be bothered by them, but now I was going to have to take charge of them. Life is tough, and it's easier to just give up and die, and to let things die. But the time for giving up was over.

[Kol]

So now this has turned into a love story. I guess so...just for a little bit.

It all seems like an eternity ago for me. Two years ago. No, three or four. Not very long in the grand scheme of things, but so much has happened since then, I suppose it just feels like a long time ago because of that.

...

[Kol]

This is an important thread. This is an important story. I really think I've misnamed it, maybe even misplaced it. Maybe Spiritual Warfare would have been a better title. Testimony or My Testimony sounds too boring. Nobody wants to read yet another testimony. And none of this is too far out of the ordinary to really be "unorthodox". The out-of-bodies are, no doubt.

Idk guys, I don't think it'll be too much longer before I just turn this into a book and see if someone will be fool enough to publish it. Maybe I could reach more people that way, help pay for school...idk.

Read on.

[Kol]

On with the show.

Everybody at work joked with each other and wondered if Campbell was a lesbian, because she never showed an interest in guys. Coupled with the fact that she was more than a bit of a tomboy, she gave off the aura that her relationships were the way she wanted them, and that they weren't open to changing.

This was true, but only because she was going out with me.

It was not easy. Excuses ranged from that she only liked buff guys, not scrawny ones like me, to that she had too much stress in her life already, to that she never wanted to get married.

I fought really hard, attacked her where I thought she was weak, circled around and hit from her blind side, and eventually spent *way* too much money on flowers, but I got her to agree to a date ($70 to 1-800-Flowers, just so they can have some loser down the street bring her flowers in a box?! They didn't even write the poem out in stanzas, they just scrawled it all across some tiny card like it was something I thought of in the back of the bus on the way home from high school. Arrgh!)

At her request, our first date was at the park...Tanner:

<http://www.gastateparks.org/info/jtanner/ (http://www.gastateparks.org/info/jtanner/)>

Much smaller than it seems. Campbell brought a very fluffy bunny I'd bought her from Toys-R-Us, and together the three of us walked around the lake. As we talked that day, her resistance finally crumbled. I think this girl was just as interested in me as I was in her.

At that point, our relationship was sickeningly sweet, and although we talked about everything, I don't remember a word of it. There were some times when I'd completely forget where I was going or what I was saying because I'd lose myself in her eyes. 30 minutes worth of story or drama, and all for naught. I wouldn't remember a bit of it.

....

The problem in all this was, I was her supervisor. Since we didn't want our boss to split us up at work, we had to pretend we were just friends, even though we were spending just about every waking hour together. This was incredibly fun, and if you ever have the chance, I very much suggest it. We became masters at starting random conversations out of nowhere, an important talent if anyone else walked into the room. As far as I know, nobody ever suspected a thing.

As I've said, security jobs are mostly staffed by old retirees. Campbell's relief was an old man named Max. At the end of the night after everything was accomplished, we'd normally have half an hour or so to just sit and talk. Problem was, Max liked to show up an hour early to work. It ticked the daylights out of both of us. But of course, we had to hide this. It was actually funny to see the expression in Campbell's eyes go from sheer, burning hatred (from being interrupted) to polite interest (feigned) as Max turned to her to ask if she'd seen the special on Nazi Germany the last night.

...

So during the summer of 2005, we had our little romance.

As time passed, the fourth of July was coming up, and we decided to do something together...

[Kol]

On the fourth of July, 2005, I dressed up as a knight and Campbell as a noble lady, and we toured modern day Carrollton.

There was a parade in town which started at 10. The square was crowded; there was no parking anywhere. I knew a secret place though-my mom's AA hall was not far away. I hid my pickup in the back parking lot, made sure we had our cameras, slid on my shades beneath my chain mail, and headed up the street.

The fact that this brave knight took his noble lady to the event in a 4-cylinder Toyota Tacoma detracted from the situation none at all. Or so I hoped.

We made our way up the hill to the city square. Campbell's cloak was only tied loosely-it was beautiful, a soft colored blue, but too warm for her to really wrap around her-and blew in the wind behind us. My sword had to be held at my side-the costumers never added a strap to go around my leg, and the sheath kept slapping in rhythm to my steps.

"Mom, look!" a little kid whispered.

We both had a twisted fetish for being the odd one, and we were both eating this right up. :)

The parade had already started by the time we reached the square, but most of the floats had not gone by. Southwire's float passed us, then one from Save-Rite and one from Ingles.

Sony's float passed by; I pulled Campbell close and hid the two of us behind my shield. Hopkins was on the float, dressed as a Stormtrooper. I tried not to laugh, but just smiled beneath my shades. Hopkins was a big Star Wars fan. His outfit looked home-made. He was completely in la-la land, and never looked our way.

...

Later that day, we took a walk through the mall in Douglasville. One of the sales merchants stopped us and pointed to the hose I was wearing (Really guys, they're so supportive!). Originally from France, he said he thought it was great that young people here were wearing hose, because back home, everyone did.

No, I thought.

That night we went home, lay on the couch together, and watched the Muppets Treasure Island. (Awesome movie.)

I must point out, that at no point did either one of us ever have a problem with immorality. Even if we had kissed or made out a bit (we didn't), I never would have wanted to move any further. This girl went to the LDS church every Sunday, while I went to the Baptist one by myself. When it came to God, our relationship bowed down-there were more important things. We both knew this. But there seemed to be no problem. Since we were both so close to our Father, it was as if our spiritual resolve were only strengthened in each other's presence. Let me speak in no uncertain terms: I wanted her. But the Lord was in my heart, and my sex drive knew who was in charge.

[Kol]

Meanwhile, my mom had started drinking again.

When I was about 9 years old, when things had finally begun to settle down in my life, my mother remarried, this time to a man named Bob. The marriage was bad from the beginning: the two later remarried because, by their own admission, they had both been too drunk to remember the first ceremony.

Together, my mother and Bob had two little girls-my half sisters, Amanda and Ashley.

Amanda:
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...BabyMindy2.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...BabyMindy2.jpg)

Ashley:
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...ey-Corrola.jpg (http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...ey-Corrola.jpg)

When Amanda was a toddler, she was my little baby. I never really had many friends growing up, and because I could never (nor did I care to) relate to the other kids at school, home was my release, and Amanda was my joy. She was the only other person I ever spent any time with. I loved her like my own daughter. We'd eat baby food together, watch Barney and Lambchop, sing and dance together, and otherwise just have fun. I even played pattycake with her. I remember reading all the books my mother bought on how to be a good parent, and I made sure my mother bought Amanda all the best food and clothes.

I always thought to myself that I would somehow "train" my sister Amanda, bring her up to see things the way I did, to understand life and not just be a part of it. I always worried about her, and not just her but my little sister Ashley as well.

Bob was out of town and seldom came home. My granddad was dead and nobody else cared, nor had the emotional ability to, take care of themselves let alone others. And so, when my mother started drinking again, I went alone to check on things.

...

[Kol]

The mailbox in the driveway had been hit and was leaning at an angle. The car was parked below me, and I could see a visible scratch on the rear bumper. The door to this 2003 Corolla was open; the keys were inside and the light was dinging. I took the keys from the ignition and put them in my pocket.

I stepped through the front door. My drunk mother was on the couch. There were flies in the house. The kitchen windows were open and the air conditioner was on. Blankets, unfolded clothes, and random papers and books, lay scattered across the living room floor. A jar of cheesedip sat opened on the table, with a fly walking the outer rim. The entire place seemed abandoned.

The house was ordinarily nice. It was in a new subdivision, in a quiet neighborhood, and there had never really been any problems to deal with. I had lived in this place, with my mother and sisters, just before I had left for Saudi with the Reserves.

I called out to my mother. She was able to sit up, but barely so. She had only a t-shirt on. She was evidently on her period; she'd bled all over the new couch. I asked her if she'd had anything to eat that day.

At the sound of my voice, my sister Ashley came out of her room quietly.

My mom pointed to the cheese dip and told me this is what she'd eaten. I didn't see any chips nearby. I asked her what she'd eaten it with.

"My fingers," she said as if that explained it all.

Ashley told me hi, and asked what I was doing at the house. I told her I'd come by to check on her.

Ashley was 12 then. She'd started wearing all black. She had dyed her hair black. She wore *way* too much eye makeup. A cell phone was stuck to her ear, and she was evidently telling the guy on the other side-her boyfriend John-why he shouldn't kill himself. John was 18.

I asked my sister how she was.

"Meh...alright, I guess."

I asked if she had clean clothes and food, and if she had everything ready for school in the morning. She told me she did.

I asked where her sister Amanda was. Ashley told me Mandy was out with a guy.

I would later find out that Amanda was out with this guy, Joel Dockery, a registered sex offender:

http://services.georgia.gov/gbi/gbis...erId=628678AC7 (http://services.georgia.gov/gbi/gbis...erId=628678AC7)

Who had gone to school with me. I remember him sitting beside me in computer lab. I felt sorry for the guy because he'd shot out his eye with a firecracker and had acne all over his face.

"Is he going go take her to school tomorrow?" I asked.

"His girlfriend is," Ashley said.

"And who's taking you?"

She said her friends' mom was going to pick her up.

----------

I stay down at the house for a few days, talking to Ashley and trying to sober my mother up. I rationed her beer, trying to let her come off the stuff-this is what my granddad had always done, and I tried to copy him-but she wasn't really willing to do this for me.

Ashley ended up riding with her dad, on a cross-country trip. I took the rest of my mom's beer and vodka and trashed it, telling her she couldn't have any more. She begged and begged me to change my mind.

The last night I was there, my mom had moved to her room and lay there, drunk. I'd cleaned the house, washed the couch cushions, vacuumed and mopped, straightened the kitchen and washed the dishes. I bought groceries so my sisters would have food in the house, even though Amanda was never there anymore. The house looked nice. But it was pointless, because my mom was still drunk.

I remember telling my mother that I was finally leaving. She cried for another drink. I told her 'no'. She had tears, makeup, and slober running all down her face. She cried and cried again, but only for another drink.

To see the woman who gave me birth in this sorry shape *hurt*...so much. I went out to my truck, opened the door to get in, but I couldn't move, because the pain of it all was just too much for me. Instead I kneel outside the door. I grit my teeth, lay my head on my seat, and let myself cry on the cement and my truck seat. My eyes closed, I sought out God and drew on His strength. I could feel his presence with me and within me, and though it didn't hurt any less, feeling as one with God, I was able to survive it. It felt as if I had junctioned with God, as if...as if I didn't have to survive the pain, didn't have to take the whole blow. I did, but I now had a bigger heart to do it with, because there was no distinction between my heart and God's own. There was a..."conduit" in my own heart, which allowed me to not only syphon from God, but to place this pain with him.

...

[Kol]

Onward.
I stay down at the house...trying to sober my mother up...but she wasn't really willing...

...my mom had moved to her room and lay there, drunk.

...Amanda was never there anymore...
And so it was.

My life, though, was going great.

I took my girlfriend up to Tennessee, to a nature park and tourist site I remembered from being a kid. My grandparents had brought my brother and me, and although I could only somewhat remember the place, I knew where it was and was able to ask Bob for directions.

It was a horrible place for a young man to take a date, and time had only made things worse. It was covered in old people. There were little gnome figurines everywhere, the paint faded and chipped on their faces, cheaply colored and illuminated waterfalls, and an enormous, animatronic Mother Goose who read from her big book of stories and moved her head to and fro in time to a gently purring motor.

And yet, she loved it.

That weekend at church, the preacher gave an unbelievable sermon on Genesis. He took the book of Revelation and the restorative acts of Christ and tied all three together, illustrating how God's actions have been the same all throughout history. I was surprised at how good the message was, and began to wonder who the preacher was studying under, or what book he'd been reading. At the end of the service, he told the congregation that to get out the door, we would have to give him a hug. I did, and tried to tell him I liked his message. I don't think he listened. I figured it was because I looked like a teenager and shrugged it off. Oh well.

As the weeks passed, the church began to plan a trip to go to Israel. I walked up to the pulpit and picked up a brochure, but the cost was way beyond me.

I learned how to cook steaks, grill fish, and generally start making things that didn't come in a box. Once, I was talking to Campbell on the phone and accidently put sugar in my potatoes instead of salt. That soft voice of hers was distracting.

My girlfriend could sing like an angel. Once I took her sight-seeing in the mountains just north of Georgia. Coming back, we sang Tainted Love by Soft Cell together. Her voice was amazing, and I told her so-she said she'd sang as a kid, but every once in a while, there'd come a note she'd miss.

As our relationship got closer though, we began to see each other's problems. I talked to my buddy Jason about some of this, asking for advice. I told him I'd like to get closer to this girl physically, but that she seemed unwilling. He laughed at me: "It takes a while for some people to get interested in someone. Just give it time," he said.

But it seemed to me that something was just...wrong. It wasn't that I was wanting to give this girl a little peck on the cheek and she wasn't willing. There was no resistance-there was no acknowledgement. There was no sexual tension. It was as if she had no concept that having a boyfriend was a romantic relationship. Somehow we were just really good friends who liked to do romantic things together. Compliments rolled right off her back, and she didn't even seem to understand them for what they were.

...

[Kol]

After what seemed an eternity to me, I began to get irritated.

As we were sitting around talking one day though, my girlfriend made a comment that took me very much by surprise and made me realize she didn't know very much about a guy's body, or even her own. She said it in jest and as soon as the words came out of her mouth, both her naivity and innocence were painfully evident.

I immediately felt low. This girl had lived her entire, sheltered life in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was just getting out in the world for the first time. I was her first romantic interest, and for the most part one of the only friends she'd ever made. I, on the other hand, was getting anxious because things weren't going according to *my* schedule.

I felt really low. Kind of like...that stuff on the bottom of water, that looks like mushed seaweed...you know, pondscum? I felt like something that deserved to be below that, and my former anger helped drive my guilt even further. I was an idiot, and I felt sorry, and I felt a lot of both of those at the same time.

This girl was, without a doubt, one of the most innocent people I'd ever met and/or heard of. She was pretty much completely ignorant of so much...and I really didn't know what to do about it.

It wasn't that I was in some kind of hormone-induced rage and wanted to have sex with this girl as soon as I could. Not at all. But I had really started liking her, and as a natural part of that, I felt a desire to express this physically-to brush the hair out of her eyes, or hold her body against me, or something along those lines. Something tame, but still physical. But I never got any kind of reaction out of her, and now I began to understand why. All I wanted was to contact her on some physical level, but she was simply not ready, and I couldn't change that.

Later we talked about this, but she didn't seem to have anything to say. I think now that she didn't understand it all herself. I don't know.

I waited about a week, then decided to try something. I sat her on the couch beside me, facing me. I tried to tell her to relax, and took her hand, which was about the limit of physical touch she was comfortable with. I talked to her for a few minutes, as I brushed her hand and tried to get her used to another human touching her. It was a cheesy thing to do, but it worked. She actually seemed to like this, and her face flushed from even this small amount of touch. This was one of the first reactions I ever got out of her.

I moved my fingers up her arm just a little bit, up to her wrist, and very lightly moved her sleeve up.

...and I found that she had scars across her wrists under her sleeves.

My baby sister Amanda used to cut herself. She had thin red and white marks all along the insides of her upper arms, and this continued for years. One of my friends in California did the same thing. To me, it seemed a way to try to cope with something that couldn't really be coped with. An illusionary outlet. Grasping the intangible.

Seeing the scars on my girlfriend's wrists, I asked her why she would do this to herself.

I could see the fight-or-flight response tottering back and forth in her eyes. She had snatched her hand back and held it.

So I told her that I cared about her, which I did very much. I told her that I would never want to hurt her, and that I would never want to see her get hurt. And so on.

I guess that she felt safe with me. I felt very honored by that. So she told me that they were very old marks, that she had done them a long, long time ago when she was first in high school. And she began to explain. Hearing her tell me these things, it did feel as if she were talking about something that happened a very long time ago.

...

[Kol]

When I was 9 years old, my step-dad Terry took my mom and all us kids to Callaway Gardens:

http://www.callawaygardens.com/ (http://www.callawaygardens.com/)

Beautiful garden. While there, everyone darted off on their own. My mom and Terry took their little walk, and Glenn and Michael ran off as well. My step-sister and I walked around, pretty much seething in our hatred of the world together. We found the restrooms, which was a good place to get out of the heat. There was a water fountain there, and for some reason there was a button for this fountain on the wall some distance away. So we decided to play a trick. A while later, an older lady walked up to the fountain. My step-sister Sara asked this lady if she would like a drink of water, at which point she magically waved her hand, and I leaned on the button.

At our suggestion, that poor old lady thought she'd seen angels. :)

...

My girlfriend reminded me about the water fountain and the old lady.

"You don't remember me, do you?" Sara asked me, sad.

Noooo.......

.........

My eyes bugged open a mile wide and my mouth hit the floor. I looked like a fish out of water gaping at another chance for life when I realized what this girl was saying. I felt like my eyes were burning from the pupils outward.

I had not in my wildest dreams picked up even a *hint* that this was the Sara I knew. Everything with Terry and Glenn and *that* Sara was so far gone to me, I never even remembered any of it. It never even crossed my mind.

My mom had married her next husband, Bob, when I was 11. I had moved 6, 7 times, changed schools 4 or 5, made new friends, lost the old, changed my appearance, changed who I was, joined the Air Force, went to war, fought demons and devils, gave my soul to God Almighty, and became an entirely different person since that time. Since Terry Ashworth. Since I was a 9-year-old kid.

I could not believe it...I couldn't get my mouth to close. I just kept looking at her with these bugged-out eyes and shaking my head.

I really can't describe to you how I felt. I'm sorry. It wasn't really "shock"...that's too sudden of a word. It was like...complete and utter disarmament. Kind of like if you took an electric rod and zapped somebody with it enough to completely paralyze them. I felt like I was hollow, like my core had been emptied out, and the wind was blowing through my entire body. I guess I was kind of paralyzed with shock.

...


"Hi," I said, "are you Campbell...? The major sent me to train you." I smiled and bowed my head a bit.

"I guess that's me," she mumbled.

She looked at me uneasy and...as if afraid...I guessed she was afraid I'd laugh at her.


No, she was afraid I'd recognize her. She was afraid of a confrontation.


"What about when you were really little?" I once asked her.

"Meh, I don't know. I don't remember."


She did have a secret she was keeping, but in her defense, she *didn't* want to go out with me at first.


Somehow, the cynical, sarcastic part of my brain was still working. I thought to myself that I should never have moved so close to Alabama.

...

Sara seemed like she was about to cry.

"David, why did you leave me?" she faltered.

I pulled her against me as tight as I could and hugged her and hugged her and hugged her. I felt like I wanted to absorb her and hold her in the very center of my heart. It was absolute misery. I have never begun to cry so quickly in all my life. Or so much.

Really, I was surprised...it always seemed to me that *I* had depended on Sara more than she had on me. But it seemed I had guessed wrong.

But still...that was when we were kids. That was so long ago.

...

I don't know what else to say. I've never cried so much in my life, lol.

There was a lot more to this girl than I wanted to admit or even that I have the time to tell now. She'd had a rough life, and because all these things were in the past, she felt that she couldn't go back to fix them. Never. There was a barrier she now could not cross. Thus the scars. And thus many other things about her, including the problems I'd had about touching her.

I felt bad for her, and the situation seemed to come down on me all at once. I decided that with God as my strength, I would be able to deal with all of it. But all the same, the thinking, analytical part of my mind felt like I was on a chess board, and that there were pieces outside my view being moved to get to me, and that this girl was a definite part of that.

[Kol]

Life throws some strange things at you sometimes. :(

...

The story I got from Sara was this: when she and her brother were kids, their mom and dad had started to break up. I guess things got pretty violent in front of them. So their mother moved out, and eventually got a divorce.

Their mom was originally LDS-that is, Mormon. (I don't know if her entire family was originally from Utah, but that's where they lived.) So their mother wanted to go *back* to Utah, but didn't want to leave her children behind. She pretty much had to prove that her ex (Terry) was an unfit parent. Interestingly enough, because of my mother, she was able to do this. I don't think their dad ever really wanted them. He just wanted to spite his ex. But eventually Sara's mom was able to take her kids and move back to her own family. The time that I knew the two was evidently right before this.

So Sara's mom moved to Utah, remarried, and started a new life. This is when she tried to pave things over and pretend they never happened. She had the kids names legally changed. The new father legally adopted Sara and Glenn, so they were in effect, his kids.

So, a new life, a new start, everything's happy. Problem was, everything was *not* happy. I don't know, and she never told me, but I very strongly suspect that Sara's dad Terry molested her. There are reasons that I say this, some of which (sadly enough) I'll get to later. Basically just the way she acted. Either way, there were problems she had that her mom never responded to or even knew about.

Back when Terry and my mom had divorced, I went to my granddad's, and Sara went to her mom's. I guess in a way, we'd won our victory. We had each promised to do our best to split our parents up, though we knew we'd lose contact with each other. (Even as a kid, I schemed.) Each of our parents eventually remarried. (Mine twice.)

Sara's mother took her to church, read the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and all that, and with her new husband made a household which was clean and polished, with set times for supper, showers, and brushing your teeth.

My mother took me to church as well. We read the Bible, but also books on past lives, aliens and karma, and so on. My mother cheated horribly on her husband. Bedtime was regulated when she was sober. I was sent to my grandparents about every 2 or 3 years because my mother was too drunk to take care of me.

Because of our childhood, we each had some pretty heavy problems. I began to see myself as...alone. I thought that life was this chaotic darkness, and that I had to kind of marry myself to this evil to overcome it. I had to become the devil to fight the devil. That's BS, but I thought it. Sara though, was worse off than I was. She made a shell for herself, and she hid inside of it. She made a false personality, became very good at manufacturing emotions, and very good at *being* good. But inside, she was pretty much withering away.

At work, for example, she seemed a happy, spunky, healthy person. But when we were together, she didn't...she didn't have the emotions a normal person would have. I joked about her being a pod person. That's just what she seemed like. Outwardly, she was warm and happy. But getting to know her while dating...the actions were there, but there was nothing behind them.

But while we were together, she seemed happy.

...

[Kol]

So at this time, school was in August and it was the 2nd week of July.

I went over to her house a few times, had dinner, played cards, and watched a few movies. Sara soon quit work, and I ended up calling in a few days to have more time to be with her.

Our relationship was unbelievable. Usually we would go to the park and talk, but sometimes we just sat around her house or my apartment. I have no idea what we talked about. I don't know what was left *to* talk about.

A lot of times we'd lay on the couch together and just watch an old movie. She liked Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. I do remember we watched all the Star Trek movies. And we watched the old Transformers cartoons, because we'd watched those as kids.

A lot of times I had to tell this girl to get up, because I wanted her so badly, I couldn't stand being that close to her body. Immorality never even crossed my mind. I had become such a miserable wretch in California, that for Christ to save me from such a thing...there was no way I was going to disobey him. I loved and owed him too, too much.

Every waking hour, we spent together, and I know that a lot of times, the poor girl was dead tired, but we'd both still insist on another movie, another movie.

Once, I remember, the movie we'd been watching went off, and being a DVD, skipped back to the menu. Campbell was wearing this outfit-it was kind of a really tight shirt with a half-shirt, zipper/sweater over it for modesty. Without looking, I unzipped the thing-she didn't move so I took that as approval-(that's fair, right, lol?) and sat up a bit. I put my hands underneath her, kissed her light as a snowflake between her breasts and sat up, intending the next one for her lips. She was sound asleep. I looked at her for a minute, figuring she was shamming to let me get away with more than I should have, but she was truly, soundly asleep. I was then in the very delicate position of zipping her sweater up without getting caught. But for a moment I just watched her. Looking at her, it felt like my love for her had somehow transcended itself, as if it had in that moment become a living thing. ... No amount of time spent, or life shared, or sex allowed would ever have let me be so close to this girl as this bizzarre situation had. I was absolutely in love with this girl.

Beyond all the cheesy romantic subplot though, it was amazing to me that I was able to feel so strongly about another human being. I *never* imagined I would ever again be a living, emotional human being. And yet, here I was. Something about it did not seem right. It seemed to me that I was a different person entirely.

And I thought to myself that my life had finally become normal. :)

[Kol]

So.

My first real girlfriend in years went off to school. As I promised, I called. I'd wanted to try the long-distance relationship thing, but of course it failed horribly. :(

This girl was really just getting out in the world, old as she was. So she became wrapped up in her friends, and it just didn't work out. I was new in finding the ability to have emotions and actually care a whit about things, but looking back now, I don't think Campbell ever did the same. She was still stuck in the survival mode which had led me down the path to California. There is very little to hope for when all you can think about is survival. And that is all she had, all she could manage: the need to protect herself and survive.

I never heard any kind of serious emotion from her. She hung out with her friends, and although she'd laugh with me, there was no romantic relationship ever perceived. Like I've said, it was like she was a pod person. We talked about marriage and kids, and all those things, but it was as if we were just friends in doing so. Completely amelodical.

I had a new, fresh, beating heart, which I'd joined to hers, and because she had more interesting things to do now, Campbell was ripping it all away from me.

As you can probably guess, this was incredibly painful.

When I was in California, I'd really succeeded in killing off my emotions. But the good that came of it was that when they came back, I was in charge of them. When I first came back to Georgia, I made myself into a bit of a stoic. Stoicism teaches an apparent indifference to pleasure and pain-in my belief you should accept both but let neither weaken you. So overall, I just sort of stood back and watched this pain i was feeling in a kind of dry interest. Other than that, I emerged myself in God and really took my refuge in Him.

All that emotion I felt for this girl...it was like it was wilting, very slowly. Withering. I had this unbelievable amount of emotion and love for her, and each day for several months, I had to go to bed at night with it drying and dying more and more. Like a plant you never water, I guess. And I knew all I needed was a tiny bit of encouragement from her...but I never got it. For so simple a thing, I never got it.

So...

[Kol]

Way back when Sony had first starting getting in secret shipments of the new PSPs, they decided to set apart a small part of the western warehouse to store them in. Contractors were hired, vast amounts of money were spent, and a lot of overtime was earned by all of us guards working at this new post.

Sony built a cage to contain the new product, and true to form, (and despite the contractor's befuddlement), they decided to build the cage up to the top of the warehouse. Security cameras were installed, cameras whose A/V cords could be seen double-knotted to the sprinkler system...and no where else.

The patrols we had to do basically consisted of us walking around the plant in a circle, designed to take us about an hour. The last stop was to check on the guard who worked this PSP cage.

The guard on most nights was a tiny girl named Kaitlin. Since this was the last stop for me before going back to talk with Sara, I hardly spent more than a few seconds to see if Kae was alright. She complained that it was boring working at the post. I gave her that same darn book of poetry (curse Emily Dickinson's influence on my life) and pretty much left her alone. She asked me why I was mean to her-it was boring and she wanted to get some coffee or walk around for a bit but I wouldn't let her.

I smiled at her mention of coffee and made an off-handed comment of my own: "You know Kae, how you like your coffee tells how you like sex."

"I wish my boyfriend would give me some coffee once in a while," she said, perturbed.

When Campbell went off to college and I started to have problems with her, I asked Kaitlin for advice.

"I don't know," she said. "I have a boyfriend but I never talk to him. I think I hate him." She eyed me suspiciously.

"Help me kill him," she said.

...

"Maybe she just liked you as a friend," Kaitlin suggested. "Were you guys close?"

I told her about all the places I'd taken my girlfriend, and as I thought, I hesitated, and Kae laughed at me, taking my hesitation for discomfort. "Did you sleep with her," she laughed.

"I didn't," I said, almost proudly. Campbell was a mormon, very religious, and we would never have fooled around before we were married."

...

"Maybe you just didn't do it for her," she said once.

I patiently explained that I didn't think anything would "do it" for her.

Out of answers, she said nothing.

...

Later on, Kaitlin took a post working in the Admin breakroom. Sony had picked up a lot of business, and the execs wanted a guard in their area so they could use the front door.

On my patrols, I would stop and chat with the cleaning lady Nellie, and Kae would often be there with her.

"He's having a lot of problems with girls," Kae once told Nellie.

"Hmph," Nellie said, "I can't imagine you doing anything with a girl."

"What are you talking about," I asked her, "if I wasn't in uniform right now, I'd be coming after you..."

I had the pleasure of seeing a 45-year old woman blush.

One Sunday when no one else was in the plant, Kaitlin and I met on separate patrols in an old part of the warehouse. We stopped and talked for a few minutes. Part way during the conversation, I made some stupid joke; her guard slipped...and I saw lust in her eyes.

She quickly took off and left on her patrol.

Kaitlin was a very cute girl. She had a small body, but it was really sort of bursting at the seams. Very...accentuated. She had beautiful brown eyes and long wavy hair. She made me