A perspective of life
My wife Sally was away visiting family last week and I was having dinner with my son John and during the meal he asked me what my life was like before I became a Christian. And all of a sudden it struck me that even though I had been a pastor when he and Caitlin were young and I’ve often shared my testimony in church and other places; they only remember me as someone who’s been sick ever since they were small.
So, I thought I’d write a few things down to help them understand both where I’ve been and what I’ve been through and hopefully this will also explain not only what I believe but why I still believe it in spite of all that’s happened.
I
So, let me start at the beginning. I was born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia on August 17, 1950. I was the third of four children born to two parents who were as different as night and day. My mother had come from a very well to do family on Prince Edward Island where her father had been a military man and a successful business owner and my father was the son of a coal miner. As far as I know they met while my dad was over there picking potatoes and although someone said it was on her father’s farm I never heard he actually owned one.
Anyway, they got married and moved back to Cape Breton where her father bought them a coal company house which they were supposed to either pay rent on or buy from him and I have my suspicions that neither one happened.
The coal company house was a sort of smaller version of a duplex and it was only about two miles from the mine where my dad worked but since he didn’t like taking the bus like everyone else did they also borrowed money to buy a car as well. My dad’s parent’s home was only about three miles or so up the road.
So, they met, married and had four children. I don’t remember much about life back then since I was only about four with the exception of the fighting, drinking and a puppy I got but my parents decided it would be best if they had it put to sleep.
Well, for some reason we all picked up and moved to Toronto and not too long after that they split up and we four kids and our mother were on our own.
We seemed to move about every year or so to find cheaper rent and I remember Della and I coming home from school when I was about six and she was seven or eight. As we got near our house there was a man parked out front and he started talking and said, “Oh, I know who you guys are; I know your mother” and somehow he got us to tell him what her name was and then he continued to talk like they were old friends.
After a few minutes he said, “How would you guys like to go for a drive and I’ll buy you something to eat?” Well, we were living on welfare and there was often too much month left at the end of the money, so, we thought, this is great. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
So, Della jumped in the front and I climbed in the back and we headed way out to the west end where he took us to a very remote area of High Park. As he stopped the car I said, “I have to go to the bathroom and when I went down a hill he came down behind me and started rubbing my back. Well, I got scared and started calling for Della and we both started crying and making all kinds of noise. He backed off and ended up taking us to the Dairy Queen where he bought us a treat to keep us quiet.
He drove us home and as soon as he stopped in front of the house we jumped out and ran as fast as we could to tell our mother what had happened. The odd thing was; she didn’t seem to be all that upset. She just shrugged her shoulders and said, “You guys had better be more careful.” And since she didn’t make a big deal about it, we just forgot about it and got busy. As I look back I think she must have had a lot of other things on her mind as well.
We were often on our own when school let out for the summer and Della and I would go to the CNE when it opened in August and then we’d go to the Home Show in the spring and the Car Show in the fall. Most of the time we didn’t even have bus fare let alone money for admission but we’d pick up transfers people threw on the sidewalk and hand them to the driver and then we’d figure out how to sneak in the EX once we got there.
I remember one day, we found a bag of money that was buried beside a creek and even though it was only around $14.00; we thought we died and were on our way to heaven. So, off we went to the CNE and spent everything on junk food.
It seems like we were always looking for money and sometimes we found it in newspaper boxes where people would drop their coins in the slot and miss and other times we found money in milk bottles people had left to pay the milkman. We never thought we were stealing. We were simply trying to survive.
Our mother used to send us to church on Sunday morning and she’d give us two nickels to put in the offering but we always spent one on candy and put the other in the plate. I was telling this to a friend and he asked, “Why didn’t you spend both?” And I said, “That would be stealing from God.” I guess we figured it was alright to take one because God didn’t need them both.
And then another time we were coming home from school and as we walked along we would turn the knob on every gum machine we passed; just in case something came out and one day we found one that had something stuck in the coin receptacle and as long as we kept turning the handle, gum and prizes kept coming out. So, we found a paper bag and filled it with gum and took it home. Not wanting our mother to know what we did; we stashed it in the top dresser drawer but somehow she found it. Of course we said we didn’t know anything about it and she assumed it was her live-ins brother who she considered to be a kleptomaniac who had probably stolen it and dumped it there.
At Christmas time the various charities both secular and religious seemed to come out of the woodwork and send us food and presents. I never knew if our mother had put our name on a list or we just got them because we were on welfare. I know none of us felt bad about getting anything for free because we were glad to have what we needed and then some. II
So, my mother and us four kids lived together for a couple of years and then one of her friends introduced her to a friend of hers and before we knew it he moved in and everything changed. I mean, it almost looked like we were a family but we all knew we weren’t. There was a constant feeling of tension.
And according to my dad’s sister who saw the letter my mother wrote to my grandmother; she said this man told her she had to get rid of two of the kids because he had no intention of feeding all four. So, she had to pick two and send the other two to down east to live with their grandmother and it certainly wasn’t the one on P.E.I.
So, she chose to keep the two girls and my brother and I went down east where we lived with nine strangers in a tiny house that had no indoor bathroom, no insulation, not too much to live on and it seemed for the most part that none of the people who lived there really wanted to be there.
We arrived a day or two before Christmas and I remember my mother sending me a birthday card the following summer and a little car for a gift the next Christmas. The car was a little black and white one that had a friction engine. I never let anyone touch it but I kept it for four or five years in the original box in an old dresser by my bed and only took it out and played with it when no one else was around. As I look back, I think it was the only connection to a family I never really had.
In spite of living with a lack of everything and a hundred year old house falling down around us my grandmother was a very good person and she did her best in what must have been an extremely difficult situation.
Bridgeport had a few interesting people and one of them was my Uncle Duffy who was my dad’s sister’s husband. He was someone who made Sergeant Fury of the comic book fame look like a wimp. Duff had been shot four different times during World War two and kept going back. I asked him, “Why didn’t you go home the first time they shot you?” And he said, “He wasn’t leaving until he found the guy who shot him the first time.”
On Sundays my grandmother sent me to the only protestant church in the area which was an old United Church about two miles up the road and their message seemed to be, “You had to be good and prove you were good by doing good.” My grandmother always said, “There ought to be someone from every family in church on Sunday who could represent the rest” and she also said she would have gone herself but she didn’t have a hat. So, even though I didn’t have one either, I was the one who had to go.
We had a neighbour back then who only lived a couple of doors up the road and his name was Danny. Danny went to the same United Church and he’d often pick me up on the way and then drive me home again and he and I would have some great conversations along the way.
Danny was an older retired man who had never married but had spent his life with his sister Lizzie and she was also very old and single but they both seemed to be very happy. They were an unusual brother and sister because whenever they went anywhere Lizzie always sat in the back seat on the passenger side and the reason she did this was; so no one would think they were doing anything improper. And this actually became a kind of proverb around the neighbourhood because if someone said something you didn’t believe you’d respond by saying, “Next thing you’re going to say is; “you saw Lizzie riding in the front seat.”
Anyway, one Sunday on the way home from church Danny told me, there were three things in life he wanted to do before he died. First, he said, he wanted to learn how to lay brick because he was always fascinated how one person could build a wall that would remain standing long after he was dead and gone. And essentially, he said, everything the bricklayer built would become a memorial to who he was.
And then second, he said, he always wanted to learn how to type. He was amazed to watch someone sit down and type a letter that could not only be sent anywhere in the world; but; if they used a piece of carbon paper he said, you could still have a copy of the original letter. Typing was something that absolutely fascinated him. (Imagine; if he had lived to see the computer.)
And then third, he said, he always wanted to get up and preach a sermon; because he was in awe of anyone who could preach. It didn’t matter if he was any good or if he even had anything to say, the key was, he was preaching and everyone there was listening. I asked him, “What would you say if you had the opportunity to preach?” And he said, “I have no idea. I guess there must be books somewhere that tell you what to say but I never actually thought of it.” He would just like to try it.
So, there were three things he said he like to do and yet, he never actually did any of them. He was someone who had long-term goals but no short-term plans. He had great ideas but no way of ever seeing them through. But, he was nice man and very interesting.
Well, I continued to attend church faithfully until I was sixteen and then I came to the conclusion that this particular church and all churches for that matter were something that had simply outlived their usefulness.
III
While I was living in Glace Bay my dad would come and go. He always worked long enough to get unemployment insurance and when he got his last cheque he’d say he had to go out to the outhouse and we wouldn’t hear from him for three or four weeks. It got to the point when he had been gone for a day or so someone would say, “Where’s your father?” And I’d just say, “He must have fallen in” and we’d all have a great laugh.
I remember when he came home and said he and two of his friends had bought a gas station downtown and I assumed either his friends put up the money or they all got a government loan. In any case, they had my dad run the station while they ran their own businesses. I’d go down after school every once in a while and watch him work on cars and while he was busy someone would come in for gas and yell, “Wally, I’m going to take a couple of dollars worth and I’ll be back on Friday.” And he’d yell back, “Make sure you do then” but he never saw what they took or wrote anything down. I think Friday was the slowest day of the week because none of those people ever showed up to pay and I also doubt that he ever collected money for the repairs he did either.
It was kind of unusual but all the time he had the garage he had a car of his own but it sat in the yard and he never got around to fixing it but took the bus back and forth to work every day.
So eventually, the gas station went under and since he couldn’t get unemployment he began looking for something else and found a job on a six man fishing boat. And he thought it was great because as soon as they passed either the two or the twelve mile limit they were allowed to could buy cigarettes and alcohol; tax free. Sometimes they’d be out for a week and make good money and there were other times when they’d end up with nothing. It all had to do with what they caught.
I remember one time he called home and said they just docked in Glace Bay harbour and had one of the biggest catches they ever caught and each of them were getting around fifteen hundred dollars. And this was back when the average guy was making sixty or seventy a week! We thought we were rich! I remember we celebrated by eating everything in the fridge which wasn’t an awful lot; but he never came home. He stayed in a tavern for two weeks straight and he and his friends drank every penny.
One day, he got his last cheque and said he was going to the bank and then getting a haircut and about three weeks later we got a letter from Montreal. He was living with a woman who he said was very wealthy but it only lasted for a couple of months and he came home again with no explanation of what happened.
The next time he left he landed in Vancouver and sent pictures of he and his girlfriend. He said he was working on big machinery and wrote about the tractors that were so big he had to have a special tractor just to put the tires on. But, he was back before we knew it and there was never any more said about his girlfriend.
The day I graduated from high school was a big thing for me because I never thought I’d get that far and I was the first one in the family to actually finish school. So, as I was getting ready for the graduation dad told me I could charge a new suit on his account at the store and then later when I asked if he was coming to the graduation he just shook his head and said, “What, are you crazy.” And as I went and watched everyone else’s family applauding their kid’s accomplishments and I wondered why my mine weren’t there?
The next time dad went way up north and got work in a gold mine and six or eight months later he came home and brought me a few samples of the various stones they found and after his unemployment benefits ran out he went back up and this time he went to a copper mine and this was to be his last trip.
He was only there a short while when he was working with a crew on a new shaft and they were blowing excess debris out of the side of the hole. Somehow they overloaded the charge and when the rock blew out, it hit the rock his safety line was tied to and he fell down the shaft about thirty feet.
He was in a coma for over three weeks and he had to have surgery to remove several bones from his back. After they did all they could for him, they transferred him to the rehab centre in Toronto where they did their best to make him mobile and then several months later they sent home with a very awkward back brace and two canes.
He got a pension for the accident but when his cheques came he’d go out and get so drunk that he’d end up coming home in a taxi and the driver would drop him on the front steps, knock on the door and drive away. I usually had to go get him, bring him in and put him to bed.
He lived with my grandmother until she died and then he moved out into an apartment that rats wouldn’t live in but later, he got another place and bought himself a car.
I remember flying down for my grandmother’s funeral and the night of her service he and I were sleeping in adjoining rooms with the doors opened and I said, “Dad, why didn’t you ever get a divorce?” And all he said was, “I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.” And that was the first and only time I ever heard either one of them ever mention the other.
Eventually, he stopped drinking and joined AA and became the president of one Legion and the vice-president of another which was very odd because the only military action he ever saw was when he was a cadet at summer camp on PEI. And yet, somehow he managed to spin that into a tale of overseas service and he wore a medal on his Legion jacket to prove what he had done for his country.
IV
My older brother quit school and got a job at a grocery store and then later he went to the mines for a while and eventually left for Ontario. For some reason I had to stay in school and I’m sure that decision had anything to do with my grades. I spent three years in grade nine and in the third year they sent me to the Catholic School where the nuns were either as pleasant as you’d expect or as mean as anyone could imagine and there was an even mix of both. Anyway, they must have done their job right because I finally made it to grade ten. (My dad said, “If you stay in grade nine another year, they just might let you teach.”)
Well, in order to attend grade ten I had to take the bus down town to the high school and I can’t remember why but I hated the place and everyone there. It was large, intimidating and filled with people I didn’t know or care to know. I think it had something to do with the fact that most of them seemed to have come from normal families and everyone was dressed in nice clothes.
After about a month of being there; I was called to the office on Friday and they asked if I was interested in attending the new all boys Vocational School in Sydney. It didn’t take long for me to say yes but I also said; you’ll have to talk to my grandmother but apparently they already did and I began the next week.
The first day at the Vocational school they asked me what kind of trade I was interested in and they had several openings in sheet metal, plumbing, electrical, drafting and carpentry and I said carpentry. I thought, “Who can’t hammer a nail?” And I soon found out – me! Two years later I graduated with a grade twelve certificate and my papers in carpentry. I bought a bunch of tools and I think I may still have a few of them ‘in brand new condition.’
V
So, now, I was nineteen years old, with papers for a trade I’d never work at and an education that was just as useless because there were no jobs available in the town of Glace Bay. So, during the summer break I scraped together enough money to buy a train ticket and headed for Toronto. I can’t remember if I phoned my mother or someone else did but I when I arrived two days later and she gave me a place to stay and I got a job the next day at a manufacturing company across the street and worked there for a couple of months. Then I went down the road and got a job working the midnight shift at a gas station and I stayed there for another few months.
While I was at the gas station I met a few of the local kids and they invited me to a party where I met a guy who asked me if I wanted to buy some grass. I thought he was talking like I was some kind of an idiot, so I said, “If I want some grass; I’ll go out and pick my own. Thank you.” At first, he seemed confused and then he realised that I didn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. So, he explained that he was selling marijuana. Not wanting to look any dumber than I already did I asked, “How much is it?” And he sold me three joints for five dollars. I smoked them and thought to myself, this stuff is better than booze and I started using it all the time.
A few months after that I got a job with the railroad but it was two and a quarter hours on public transportation which meant I had to get up at five in the morning to get there by eight and that made for a really long day. Then one of the guys I worked with told me he was sharing an apartment in a very classy area with another guy but he said the rent was too high for the two of them and if I moved in we could split it three ways and I could get a drive to work with him for a few dollars a week and that would be a lot cheaper and a lot less time than public transit. So, it sounded great and I moved in.
Later I found out they also had some experience with drugs and they were talking about how much fun it was doing acid. They said one night about four or five of them just sat around chewing gum and laughing for six or seven hours straight. It sounded great; so, the next night as they were going out I asked one of them for a tab of acid and took it while they gone.
I didn’t feel anything for a while but then all of a sudden the room started changing colour and I started to see little rabbits hopping all over the place. I didn’t know what to do so I called my mother and told her what was happening with the colours and the rabbits and all she said was, “What kind of dump are you living in?”
After about a year I was taking too much dope to bother to going to work and I left the railroad and the apartment and moved down to Yorkville where everyone was either stoned or looking to get stoned and I thought life was great. If you needed a place to sleep you could always find a crash pad which were places set up to accommodate the hippy types who were living on the streets and there was also drop-in centres set up by groups like Teen Challenge that gave you soup and day old doughnuts.
VI
I first went to Rochdale College with a friend who knew a friend and he said we could buy some grass cheap and it was only about three or four blocks from Yorkville but when we got there; I had such a good time that I forgot to leave. It was such a free atmosphere; you could sleep wherever you found a bed or a piece of floor and no one seemed to care. The place was a twenty-four hour party.
After I was around for a while I met a guy named Mike and we had a lot of fun together and eventually Mike and I became partners in the drug trade and I spent the next year or so with Mike buying, selling, using and doing whatever we wanted and as much as we wanted.
It’s a strange thing to say but Rochdale can’t really be described today because there’s no place like it anywhere. It was fun, strange, entertaining, enlightening, educational, scary and sometimes extremely violent. A lot of people went over the edge of the eighteenth floor roof and it’s also been said that a few of them didn’t want to go; but who really knows.
Rochdale had such a bad reputation that people I knew from the past would meet me on the street and I’d invite them over they’d refuse to go near the building for fear they’d either be drugged or murdered. And yet; those of us who lived there just thought of Rochdale as home.
As you entered the front door there were biker types who served as a twenty-four hour security force and those of us who dealt drugs had to pay these guys twenty-five dollars a week for their services. If the fire alarm went off you were instructed to leave all your dope in your room; lock the door and walk out in the hallway and if it was a police raid you couldn’t be arrested. After a while you believed you were safe from everything.
VII
One night I was going down to the bootleggers on the third floor to buy a bottle of wine and he said he was all out but gave me a beer and told me to go home and get some sleep. I guess he thought I looked a little burnt out. So, I took the beer and started heading up the hallway but as I passed the second last door I noticed something written on it and as I stopped I saw the words of John Lennon who said, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” But as I looked more carefully, it actually said, “All we are saying is give Christ a chance.” And I just stood there shaking my head and asking out loud, “What kind of an idiot would write something like that?” And little did I know but the door was open about a half an inch and there was a guy sitting at the table who could hear every word I said. And he shouted, “Hey, hey, come on in and have a cup of tea.”
Well, I not only felt stupid for saying anything but especially for being so ignorant. So, I went in but as I was going I said, “I’ll have a cup of tea but I don’t want any of your religious garbage.” And he said, “Alright.” He introduced himself as Alex and as he was pouring my tea he said, “Did you know that Jesus Christ is the answer to your problems?” Now, maybe it was the drugs I had taken earlier or even the beer that was clouding my mind but I asked myself, “Didn’t I just say I didn’t want to have a religious argument? “But, rather than objecting I just said, “I guess if I had faith enough, Peter Pan could do the job.” After all, I’d been to church for years and I knew what it was like to sit there reading the bulletin, hymn book or playing with anything you could find just so you didn’t die of boredom. And he said, “I’m not talking about religion but I’m talking about the power of God to change your life.” And then he explained that if I was to surrender my life to Jesus Christ and ask His forgiveness that He would come into my heart, cleanse my sin, transform my life and make me to be what He created me to be in the first place.
Well, I sat there and thought, “That’s about the greatest thing I’ve ever heard of; if it’s real.” So, I said, “What do I have to do?” And what I meant was what do I have to give or where do I have to go? And he said, “We’ll pray and you’ll give your heart to Jesus.” And I said, “Pray? What a waste of time. I prayed when my parents split up and asked God to bring them back together and nothing happened. I prayed for a ride on the highway when I was down the states and ended up walking all night. I prayed for all kinds of things and God never answered; so why would He listen now?”
And then he explained that prayer isn’t just asking God for things; but it’s an act of communicating to the very heart of God. I thought, “Well, I’ll try it and if God responds then maybe my life will be changed and if God doesn’t then there’s nobody here but this Christian and nobody believes them anyways.”
So, we knelt on the floor and he told me what to say and I said, “Jesus, I know I’m a sinner and I believe what the Bible says; that You died on the cross to pay for my sins. And now, to the best of my ability I ask you to come into my heart and save me now. Amen.”
It’s hard to explain but right there and I could sense the presence of God in that room and somehow He let me know that I was loved and forgiven.
VIII
The next day I told Mike I was quitting the whole drug thing and a few days later I moved down to the third floor where I shared a room with a guy named Phil. Phil was as patient anyone could be with someone like myself who seemed to have arrived from another planet.
I think one of the biggest problems I had at first was that I couldn’t sleep and I spent most of the night reading my Bible and every once in a while I’d wake Phil and ask him what I was reading meant. He would be groggy at first but then he’d explain it to me and go back to sleep.
One day I was talking to Alex about a problem I was having with my mind and the problem was; it was always blank. I mean; I could just sit there and stare at a wall for an hour. And Alex said, “I think all the drugs you’ve taken have affected you from the standpoint; they were motivating your thinking and causing your mind to race and without them nothing is happening. So, you have to put something in their place and he said, “I want you to start memorizing scripture.” And I said, “What part?” And he said, “Start with Romans chapter six.” And I spent weeks working on it until I could recite it word perfect. And then he said, “Good, now go on to chapters seven and eight.” And in the next year or two I had memorized ten or eleven chapters that I could quote word perfect and my mind was beginning to retain everything else as well.
Now, I know there are some who might question someone like me getting saved while they were on drugs but you have to keep in mind that Jesus saved men who were possessed by over five hundred demons and I’m sure these guys had their problems as well.
Not long after that I was baptized by immersion in Lake Ontario by a charismatic group that met in an old United Church.
Then Alex, Phil and myself were joined by others and soon twelve or fourteen of us began a commune called, “The Jesus Forever Family.” I eventually taught a weekly Bible Study and started playing guitar and singing in Christian coffee shops which were very common at the time.
When the government announced Rochdale was closing our commune rented a house out in the west end and a year later we all moved to another one around St. Clair and Bathurst.
I cut a record in 76 called “The Devil drove a Chevy” and travelled out to the west coast with a band called Sweet Spirit and I’ve got to say this was one of the greatest things experiences in my life. They’d do a set, then I’d do one and share my testimony and then they’d do another to close. We played churches, coffee houses, prisons, parks, malls and anywhere else they’d invite us. At the end of six weeks travelling all the way from Toronto to Vancouver we split up the money and we all got thirty dollars each.
VIII
When I first got saved I used to read a lot of Christian literature and that meant I had to go downtown every week or so to the Christian bookstore and there I ran into Sally who was someone I had met at the charismatic church but she was going out with a friend of mine. She said her father was running a coffee shop in the basement of their church and asked if I’d like to sing there some time. I said, sure and gave her my number.
She called a week or two later and I’d said I’d meet her at work and we’d take the bus to the church together. She thought I was interested in her but the fact was I just didn’t understand the bus route and I figured I’d probably get lost if I went alone. So, she’d call me to play every once in a while and we’d ride the bus together but I always gave her something to read because I thought she talked too much. A couple of months later the church was having a retreat and they asked me to go and do a few songs between their teaching sessions.
So, I went and had a great time and for some reason I noticed Sally for the first time. I mean, I had seen her dozens of times but this was the first time I really noticed her. At the end of the retreat I asked her if I could take her out to lunch the next week and she said yes.
I borrowed a few dollars from one of my friends and took her to Harvey Wallbanger’s Steak House and this was where we began dating. During the next three years I got a job and a haircut and began selling processed chicken and turkey meat for a living. And at Christmas on the third year I asked her father for permission to marry her. I remember I was so nervous that I watched an entire football game trying to work up the nerve and then I finally spit it out. He said, “Sure, I was wondering when you were going to ask?” And we were married the following May.
VIX
First, we lived in Toronto but the high rise we had was filled with cockroaches, so, we bought a townhouse in Oshawa. Around this time I met Alf and he played bass guitar. Alf should have gone places with his music but he decided he’d rather play with me. He and I travelled almost every week-end and went from Ottawa down to Detroit and everywhere else in between. We had a great time and only eternity will reveal what we accomplished.
After Sally and I were married for a couple of years, we were making very good money and doing whatever we wanted to but somehow something seemed to be missing. We prayed and waited and one day a brochure came from Word of Life Bible Institute and it had a little ad in it that said they were looking for someone to program their brand new IBM 5100 and this was the very machine Sally had just been trained on at IBM.
We told her dad and he said, “Let’s go down and see if that’s where the Lord wants you.” So, the next week-end we were in New York and everyone there saw Sally as an answer to their prayers. So, they paid my tuition and our rent and at the end of the year they also gave us a trip to the Middle East.
Word of Life was excellent but I had a very strange experience there. When I first went to the school someone had heard somewhere that I played guitar and sang and they put my name on the list to sing for chapel. In a few weeks they published the list and it said I was singing the following week. The morning I got up to sing Jack Wyrtzen who was the head of Word of Life was speaking in the service. I sang one of my songs which was funny but had a serious message and all the kids applauded and I thought nothing more of it.
One of the staff members told me later that he was in a meeting with the other staff following the chapel and he said one of them raised the issue that I could end up being a real problem. First, because he thought the song I sang was heretical because one of the lines said, “I’ll be living like a fool and acting like a son of the king.” And he said, “The only time a fool is mentioned in scripture, he’s described as an unbeliever and since there won’t be any unbelievers in heaven then there won’t be any fools there either.” And the fact that all the kids thought I was great allowed me to have undue influence over them.
So, while they were trying to decide how to deal with me Jack Wyrtzen called the office and asked them who I was. They gave him my name and he told them to find out if I’d travel with him the following week-end and provide the music before he spoke. And my friend said, “That really killed the meeting!”
I sang with Jack not only the following week-end but two or three times every week during the summer months.
Sally and I finished at Word of Life and then we went back to Toronto where she got a job at IBM and I worked for a friend in the food business. Six months later I enrolled at London Baptist Bible College and Sally began working at London Life.
I thought London Baptist was a great school that had really prepared me for ministry. During the second week there; one of the teachers asked if I was interested in Youth work and I said no, not a bit. Well, he said a pastor who had been down east had a church in Guelph which was about eighty-five miles to the east of London and he needed somebody to teach a Sunday school class for teens for a couple of weeks. Would you be willing? I said sure and after a couple of weeks of teaching the church offered me a part-time job which meant we’d be living in London from Monday to Friday and then drive to Guelph Friday night and stay there until late Sunday. We did this for the next two and a half years and when I was about to graduate the church offered me a full-time position. And my responsibilities were youth work, hospital visitation and some preaching.
Sally and I bought our first house here and as is common had a mix of highs and lows because a few of the young people went into fun time ministry and a few dropped away. After about five years we felt the Lord was nudging us to leave and the Fellowship office sent my profile out to several churches but no one seemed interested. So, we decided to stay where we were and a few days later we got a call from the chairman of the board of Main Street Baptist in Sackville and they asked me if I was interested in going there. I preached in Sackville a few weeks later and they called me to be their pastor.
I was at Main Street for about nine years and I thought we really had a great ministry. During our time there my son was born and then a year or so later we also had a daughter.
When I first came to the church I thought I was ready to handle anything but I soon realized I had very little experience. For instance, when I got there I thought I had plenty of preaching to draw from but since I only preached once a week I really didn’t have that much. Especially when you consider that a pastor preaches morning, evening and prayer meeting as well as funerals and other special events. There were times when I’d preach two or three funerals a week and being in a small town you couldn’t use the same message over and over again. But, I had to learn to trust God and eventually it all came together.
Main Street had an excellent music staff and they were very supportive of everything I tried; even when I was wrong. I tried changing the structure of the morning service just to be different and I completely forgot the offering. It was then I realized, the reason they did things the way they did for the last two hundred years was because they worked.
After being there for about eight years I felt God was leading me to make some changes and I assumed I was to start looking for a new church. I contacted the Fellowship Office and they sent my name across the country. Sally and I candidated at several churches in Ontario as well as four in British Columbia but everywhere we went, it seemed like the Lord was closing the doors.
We came back home and wondered what we were supposed to do and then I experienced kidney failure, several bouts of major surgery and then nine and a half years of dialysis.
As I look back it all seemed to begin back when we were at Word of Life. At the time I first went there I weighed two hundred and seven and I knew I had to lose some weight. So, I began jogging and started eating a sensible diet. In about four months I was down to one hundred and fifty seven and I felt great.
One afternoon after running six miles I began to feel a dull pain in my left lower back. I thought maybe I was getting a cold because I had been running in sub zero weather but the next day I started passing blood and the pain got worse. I went to see a local doctor and he said it could be one of two things. He said either I had a kidney infection or cancer. He took the appropriate samples and told me to call him in the morning. (I didn't sleep very well that night.) The following day he said he wasn't sure if it was an infection or not but gave me some antibiotics and told me to check with my doctor when I got back to Canada at Christmas break which was two weeks later. I went to a doctor in Toronto but he said it was probably just the cold weather.
About three years later we were living in London and the back pain and blood returned and my local doctor referred me to a urologist. He also ran several tests and he arrived at the conclusion the problem was a weakness in the urethra. He said not to worry about it, so I didn't.
During the next ten years my blood pressure continued to climb. I took several kinds of medication but nothing seemed to work for more than a month or two. Then my family doctor in Sackville said I should see a cardiologist and I began another series of tests that eventually led nowhere. Following his report my doctor wasn't content and she sent me to a second cardiologist.
The second doctor looked at my medical history, checked my blood pressure and then looked in my eyes. After a few seconds he said, "You have a kidney problem." I said, "Doctor I'm not questioning your medical knowledge but I always thought the kidneys were a little lower than the eyes." He laughed and then he explained how the only place in the body the blood corpuscles are visible is in the back of the eyes. He said there was a problem in the kidneys and the evidence was a dilation of the blood corpuscles. He then recommended me to a nephrologist. (Kidney specialist)
It took nine months to get in but I finally saw the kidney specialist and he admitted me for an open biopsy. They put a large needle in my back and took out a piece of the kidney for analysis. A few weeks later the results came back and the doctor informed me I had a degenerative kidney disease called IGA Nephropathy. He also said I might have had it all my life and the various episodes I described earlier might have been times when the disease was active.
The doctor also told me my kidney function was around 60 percent. His advice for controlling the disease was to maintain normal blood pressure through medication and go on a low protein diet.
So, for the next year I weighed all my food and did everything I could to keep my blood pressure down. I had an annual check-up scheduled in the fall and was looking forward to a positive report. After the usual tests I met with the nephrologist and he said he was concerned because my kidney function had dropped to 36 per cent. He gave me some new blood pressure medication and scheduled another appointment for three months later. About two weeks after that I started getting sick and made an appointment to see him right away. The tests showed that in just two weeks my kidney function had dropped to 20 percent.
He suggested I have another biopsy. He was hoping to try an intensive drug therapy with the goal of stopping the disease at 20 percent. He said he was also trying to keep me off dialysis for another six months to a year. The biopsy was done three days later and immediately following the procedure both my haemoglobin and blood pressure began to drop. Apparently, during the biopsy the radiologist inadvertently punctured the kidney. The kidney filled with blood and was unable to function. They took me for a CAT scan and then moved me to the ICU where I spent the better part of the next week.
On Christmas Eve around three in the morning they called in the kidney specialist because they didn’t think I was going to live the night. He walked back and forth in front of my bed and said, “I don’t know what to do.” And then he mentioned five things he could try but he wasn’t sure what would work or what I could handle at this point. Since the kidney was bleeding; anything they added would simply leak out and fill my abdomen with blood.
So, rather than doing nothing, he installed a catheter in my shoulder and connected me to a dialysis machine and rather than running it for a full course he turned it off and on every hour for eight hours straight. Sally said, “After the first or second hour she noticed that the rattle stooped in my throat.” I didn’t notice it but I’ve heard they call this the death rattle.
I was let out of the hospital about a week or so later and for the next six weeks, three times a week, either Sally, her dad or one of my friends would drive me back and forth to the hospital where I was hooked up to a dialysis machine where I spent three and a half to four hours at a time. I didn't tolerate this form of dialysis very well and I couldn't eat. In thirty days I lost thirty pounds.
The next step was abdominal surgery to install a stomach catheter so I could change over to home dialysis. I had the surgery, went home and two weeks later I was back in the hospital to begin the procedure. Within an hour of the first fluids going in I began to feel better and then two hours later I could actually enjoy some solid food. I felt so well on this form of dialysis that two weeks later I began to preach again but it was only temporary because I didn’t have the energy or the mental stamina to preach more than once a week. So, I retired at the ripe old age of forty-two.
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I once worked for a company where my boss had a clipping on his desk. It said, "When you start to feel like your important put your hand in a bucket of water. Splash it around a while and then take it out. The hole that remains is how much you will be missed when you're gone." I know that’s a harsh way of looking at things but I think God has used this disease in several ways.
For instance, it taught me that who I am is much more important than what I do. I remember at one point while on the dialysis machine I was having a problem with ulcers in my oesophagus and I could barely talk. A friend asked, "What are you going to do if you can't preach?" And he seemed to imply that my life was over if I couldn't be a pastor and yet I have arrived at the conclusion that I am more than my calling. If I can't do what God has called me to do in the past than obviously He has something better for my future. I mean, if we really believe that God is in control of everything then we have to accept the fact that the unexpected turn of events in life are not unexpected to Him but everything is part of His will.
And then I've also been learning how wise I need to be in using the time I have left. After all, having a near death experience has a sobering affect on anybody and I’ve come to realize now as never before the truth of those words, "Only one life, will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last."
None of us know when our life is going to end. I remember one time finishing a sermon with a question. I asked, "What will you do when you find yourself laying on a bed in the Intensive Care Unit and you have to ask yourself if you’re ready to go?” And as I lay there thinking I was dying I remember saying to the Lord, "I've had a great life. I've been married to a loving and understanding woman and we've had two great kids. I’ve seen everything I've wanted and I've done everything I've wanted and if now’s my time; then I'm ready to go."
Well, after nine and a half years of dialysis I got a call for a transplant and Sally and I headed for Halifax. They did the operation and when I woke up there were four doctors and a nurse standing by my bed. They asked how I felt and then helped me stand and one of them handed me a urinal and said, “Go ahead.” I know it seems funny now but in that situation with a crowd watching it just seemed like the right thing to do. So, I started urinating and all of a sudden there was a roar of hooray from the watching crowd. Later on I thought, “Never before have so many cheered so much for someone who has done so little.”
During the nine and a half years on dialysis I experienced two strokes. The CAT scans indicated that one went around the outside of the brain and the other right down through the middle and these have affected my memory to the point that I can no longer preach without notes and it also takes me a long time to prepare anything. I still do summer fill-ins and the odd funeral service but for the most part I’m retired and enjoying myself.
Well, I’m almost 60 and I look like 70 but there are a few benefits. For instance, I get the seniors discount at the grocery store and on coffee at MacDonald’s and I’ve been getting them since I was forty-five. So, I don’t complain about how I look.
Well, as I look back I think it was awkward living without either of your parents because people would always ask me what happened to them; like did they die in an accident or something. I guess I could have said: “My dad died in the service” but there weren’t too many cadets killed on PEI. Or, my mother couldn’t handle raising four kids but she had three more after I left. So, sometimes the less said, the better.
I’d like to say that everything worked out the way I thought it should but things seldom do. While we were still living in Ontario Sally and I used to drive down and pick up my mother and take her to church and then out to Swiss Chalet for lunch. She always said she enjoyed it but she also said once a month was enough and besides she said, “She was missing her favourite TV show.”
When she went to the hospital with a severe stroke one of the pastors from our church went to see her and he said she was quite open to spiritual things and he led her in a prayer of commitment. Well, what does all this mean? It means; we’ll know when we get to heaven.
And then before my dad died, Sally and I used to go see him every year or two and I’d call him on his birthday, Christmas and Father’s Day but whenever I tried to talk to him about the Lord or spiritual things he told me not to waste my time and yet he was always proud to introduce me to his friends as the reverend.
In the last few months he was alive he suffered a severe stroke and had to be hospitalized. I arranged to have one of his nieces visit every day and we’d drive down to see him at least once a month which was difficult because I was still on dialysis and had to make arrangements with the hospital in Sydney.
By then I think his mind was pretty well gone but I’d still talk to him about the Lord, read scripture and pray both with him and for him but he’d just stare at me and say nothing. When he died my father-in-law and I went down and did his funeral. He preached a message of salvation and I shared a little about our relationship which I found difficult because I never felt we had that much.
I heard someone say, “When we get to heaven, there’s going to be three surprises. One, there’s going to be people we expect to see who won’t be there. Two, there’s going to be people who are there we didn’t expect to be there. And third, when we see Jesus in all His glory we’re going to be surprised that we’re there.
I was thinking the other night how all of us are part of our parents and everyone knows this is true. We are a product of their genetic make-up because that’s what we all begin with but what we eventually become is a matter of choice. I look back and wonder why God didn’t put me in a normal family but then I think about the value of the things I went through and the fact that I am what I’ve become and not just what I started with.
I was watching TV one night and they had an interview with a young man and woman from England and their parents had been arrested for mass murder. The interviewer asked them, “How do you feel about your parents now?” And the man said, “I hate what they’ve done but I’ll always love them because of who they are. I mean; they are my parents.” And I guess I’ve come to the same conclusion.
I’m sorry if my story sounds depressing to those who come from normal backgrounds and have enjoyed good health all their lives but my life is more than where and who I’ve come from. I’ve got a God who has a purpose and reason for everything that happens and a family now who loves me in spite of my health situation. Who can ask for anything more than that?
