Might As Well Face It! - ebook

Chapter 1:

1998 - 2001

THINK DIFFERENT THAN THE WORLD

Just as it is written, Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him. 1 Corinthians 2:9 NASB

This story is about my life, but it's God's story. It's the true story of how God called me back to Himself. Before I found God, I was an abusive, drug-addicted sexual predator determined to destroy my life. I was addicted to the worst kinds of pornography, prostitution, and drugs. No one wanted to be near me or get to know who I was. This is how God changed me from the inside out and brought me back to life.

Life is full of blessings if you know where to look for them. My pastor calls them "God Winks." In all the years I have lived on this earth, there have been no real coincidences, but many instances of God intervening in things I thought were out of His control.

Time and experience play a huge part in shaping our beliefs. God has shown me great grace throughout my life, and I want to share my story of how He took me out of the pit of hell and led me back to His kingdom.

This is a story about overcoming my sins. It wasn't my own doing, but the power of Jesus Christ was interwoven into my life throughout the years. In my story, you will see the pain and suffering I endured while running out of the pit of hell and just how deadly sin can be.

This is a story of how God brought me out of my addiction to pornography, drugs, alcohol, and prostitution. If you read it to the end, I assure you that you will see a different person than the one you initially read about. God makes all things new. Here is the rest of God's story about my life and how I returned to Jesus' protection.

After high school, I thought I had freedom. I thought I would be able to make my own decisions, get out of my parent's basement, out of their shadow of protection, and live on my own without enduring further abuse from my relatives. Little did I know that the world was just as broken outside as inside my home; Only I didn’t know who the players were or who I could trust.

On the surface, I projected an intimidating persona about myself. I was successful in scaring acquaintances, who, in reality, were much sicker than I was, into thinking I was crazy and beyond repair. I learned this defense as a child to protect me most of my life. If people thought I was crazy, then they would leave me alone. My actions were driven by a need to protect myself, much like King David pretended to be insane to safeguard himself from his enemies.

I was always afraid of the world because of the abuse I endured in the home from people who weren’t my parents. I saw that the world wasn’t much different outside my family home, so I retreated into the places and spaces I could control and keep myself as safe as I knew how to be. I became aggressive with pornography and sex as my weapons of choice, but I never let my guard down, and I wasn’t about to bring myself to normalcy.

In my mind, being kind was a sign of weakness, and I learned I couldn’t be vulnerable toward anyone. Anyone kind toward me was questionable, and I felt they had a deeper motive to hurt me and turn on me when I wasn’t looking. So, I tried to keep my distance from those people. For me, a church was just a place to pick up women as vulnerable as I was.

I viewed the world as a mere toy, something I could manipulate and control to suit my desires without regard for a higher power. After all, how could a benevolent God allow me to endure such prolonged suffering? I was determined to seek retribution upon the world for how it had treated me.

Despite struggling to focus, I was determined to pursue a career similar to my successful brother's. He had excelled as a computer programmer with a business degree, and following in his footsteps might have brought me the same success. At the time, making my parents proud was important to me, so I became a computer programmer with a business degree.

As a young student, I dreamed of becoming a successful musician. Sadly, those dreams were shattered when I witnessed my older brother struggling in college. I couldn't help but doubt my abilities - if he couldn't make it, how could I? Despite my brother's natural musical talent, my parents often reminded me of his academic struggles, urging me to be more realistic about my future. They warned me that the music industry was highly competitive and that only exceptional talents could succeed. As a result, I began to question whether I had what it takes to make it in such a cutthroat business.

After my senior year in high school, my music teacher received an invitation for her students to perform at a world-famous music hall in New York City. I was lucky enough to be selected as one of the performers. I and seven other classmates were invited to go and sing in New York City. We had to practice day and night after school for six months straight. Finally, we were ready to fly to the Big Apple and perform for thousands of people. All of this was to have a life-changing experience in the music industry.

I remember seeing an elderly lady outside the back door of the theatre, dressed in clothes made of garbage bags, begging for help. Being from a smaller city, I had never seen homelessness on that scale before. We were warned not to look at anyone directly and to avoid speaking to strangers as it would surely lead to being kidnapped or killed. It was all an experience that made me feel mature beyond my years. However, once I stepped onto the stage to perform, I was fully immersed in the moment and didn't think about anything else.

Watching the three thousand men and women cheer for me while the choir sang classical music was an incredibly moving experience. It made me feel like music was my calling. It was like God was calling me to break out of the shadow I had fallen under in chasing my parents' dream for my life. I was called to move to New York City and start a music career. However, it was also the last time I could recall feeling God’s presence.

At the concert, I was also introduced to a highly inappropriate game. The singers would dare each other to sing loud to the wrong word and see if anyone could hear it and not get caught. It just so happened that I was the loudest, and the last note of a song drew silence. My words echoed throughout the theatre hall, only to be overlooked by the crowd's applause.

After that experience, I lived at home with my parents while I attended a community college in my hometown. It wasn't much of a college at the time, but it was gaining a reputation for hiring local talents straight into the workforce of insurance companies and banks in our city. My brother had already attended there after failing out of two other schools and drinking and partying his way out the school’s doors.

He went into the military for about four years of active duty and then went into the Guard. There, he traveled the world and met many women. All the while, he was struggling with a girlfriend at home who was very twisted in her mind and trying to cause him trouble. This was while I was still in high school. But after he got out of the military, he found himself returning to school and getting hired on by one of the biggest companies in the area, so it became a massive goal for my parents to push the same successes onto me.

After graduating from high school, I began to view life from a different perspective. I missed my friends and the strong bonds we had created. There were several friends I wanted to keep in touch with, but for various reasons, it wasn't easy. I even dreamed about returning to high school for another year because I had failed some courses and wanted to help my favorite teacher teach music.

I visited some of my classmates several times, but eventually, I had to move on from that phase of my life after two years. My former choir director decided to retire from the school system in our city and transition to a new career as a student counselor. I admired her decision and believed she could make an even greater impact on students by helping them in ways that music could not always achieve.

In the fall of that year, I enrolled in my first computer class in college and immediately developed a passion for learning about technology. Growing up, I had played all of the original home entertainment consoles and knew how much fun they were, which ultimately drew me towards the computer industry. Although I was already well-versed in computers during high school, I secured my first real job in the technology field with the help of a college professor. I found a position at a local big box store, which began my career in the technology industry.

In my young and impressionable mind, I thought I had landed the most incredible job in the world. And indeed, it was an exciting time for me. I learned a great deal about technology and interacting with people. Being naive, I listened carefully to my trainers and absorbed everything like a sponge. I started to let my guard down and let others into my life.

I learned about hardware, software, and printers and even acquired the skills to sell things to people who didn't need them. All of this was thanks to some of the best retail sales teams in the country at the time. However, little did I know that this career would lead me down a path that would challenge my morality even further than it was broken before.

The job itself wasn't the problem, but it put me in some of the most unpleasant living situations I had ever experienced. During my time there, I was exposed to illegal activities such as piracy, immoral behavior, people scamming each other, and cut-throat tactics like those used during Black Friday sales. I learned about things on the Internet that shouldn’t even exist in the natural world, and I was caught in the world of extreme pornography. If it was on the Internet somewhere, I wanted to find it.

As a salesperson, I was trained to use various techniques to convince customers to purchase equipment they didn't need or couldn't afford. Initially, it seemed like a fun challenge, but soon, I realized I would have to compromise my moral values to excel at this job. The pressure to sell at any cost took me to a dark place where I had to abandon my morals. Unfortunately, such unethical practices were becoming increasingly common in those days. It was like I was living a double life. I sold to people daily, duping them out of money, and then went home at night to look at the worst things I could find online. I was digging a huge, limitless hole of despair and destruction.

I had the privilege of having many great teachers in retail, one of whom was my manager in the computer sales department at the time. He took me under his wing and showed me how the sales team could function like a family and how success could be achieved when everyone worked together. Although it was a great learning experience,

A huge part of me didn’t want to be a part of that particular 'family.' They drank and partied all the time and played video games until the next morning. They showed me how to get to the worst parts of the Internet behind closed doors. They were just like my abusive family, except without the additional sexual abuse. I often wondered if I would see an old picture of myself as a child in one of the pictures.

Fortunately, the upper management teams realized the chaos family-style leadership brought was counterproductive and decided to separate us. This diluted the closeness we had previously shared, and we returned to the old tactics of cutthroat sales, which they called the 'care method' of sales.

I decided to gain more experience in the company by becoming a team lead and moving to the car audio department. I had no prior knowledge about this area except for the daily bass blasts from the subwoofer section of the car audio area and the teenagers who wanted to have the loudest music possible, making them the coolest kids in tow and the target of the next street gang’s theft list. Their experiences of wanting the loudest car in town changed when someone stole their equipment, and they had to return to replace it within a week.

After working in the car audio department, the management team thought that it would be a good idea for me to try my talents in the car audio installation bay for approximately three months. The experience there was quite shocking. The work culture was such that if you were unwell, you could not call in sick because you were expected to vomit outside and continue working once you were finished.

During that time, I also started smoking and drinking, but I didn't enjoy it very much. Working in that position made me feel extremely angry and bitter towards the world, as did the other installers. I bought my tools and lost most of them over time. I had to buy my own mechanics box and spend thousands of dollars I didn’t have to spend. It was like I was on an island of misfit toys. So I decided to go back onto the sales floor.

As I moved up in the store's roles, I purchased a new truck to impress my colleagues after my last two cars had died. It was all white, with steel rims, a premium sound system, and a black bed topper. But I was in an accident before I installed the topper and a security system.

I was coming home from work when a traffic jam occurred. Several cars were involved in an accident ahead of me, and behind me were speeding people trying to get home from a busy work day. As I slowed down, a car came up behind me and slammed into my rear bumper, shattering my tailgate and pushing the bed of my truck into the back of the cab ever so slightly.

The car and driver running into me backed up and tried to escape the traffic quickly. He was quickly caught by people trying to flag him down, and they received a partial license plate number and gave it to me as I was taken away by ambulance due to a headache from the tensing up of my body during the impact.

The police put a broadcast to find the vehicle that hit my truck and couldn’t find him after he fled the scene. The next day, however, I drove my parent's van to work and saw a vehicle being ditched on the side of the road heading into my store. The man was ditching the car that hit me with his father in front of a miniature golf course.

It turned out he was running from the accident because he had 300 pounds of cocaine in the back of his trunk and didn’t want to get caught. I pulled off to the other side of the road and watched as the police came and quickly surrounded the man’s vehicle, and the place became a crime scene.

A few months later, after getting my truck back from being repaired, I left it parked in the street only for the night, and someone stole my new tailgate. A few days later, that same tailgate was found on the back of a dark blue truck that didn’t quite fit its model, and my girlfriend and parents followed the truck to a soccer field and called the police. The young man quickly told me that he had bought it from some random guy and hadn’t known it had been stolen. The police then asked for their names, or he was going to jail, and I was given back my tailgate.

The truck stood as a monument to what God does to those who mess with His children. Only I didn’t want to believe in God at the time. Even though I had a girlfriend, I went to church to impress girls. My experiences with women up to that point were that you needed as many as possible. My experience in the big-box store echoed that same value system.

My final position in that store was in the appliance area. I liked working there. It was the most effortless roll in the store. Most people knew what they wanted and came in, and I helped them put in the order for it and carried it to their vehicles. It was a place of being laid back and having fun. I didn't feel as pressured to sell to others here, but something was missing.

One day, I attended an appliance conference at a hotel with my coworkers. There, we had a lot of drinks, and one of the coworkers brought up the idea that we should go to a strip club. I was trapped with them for the ride and agreed. We left and went to the club, to the tune of $200.00 out of my pocket and a girl's phone number, only to discover it was fake. I returned the next day to realize she had taken my money and run away, leaving me chasing my tail. After that experience, I returned to the computer sales team.

Upon returning to the computer sales floor with a new team, I realized that the atmosphere didn’t have the family and team spirit I had experienced the times before. The new manager solely focused on merchandise sales and limited our ability to help each other. The Internet had taken over how we sold machines, and most customers only wanted a free computer when they signed up for a three-year contract with dial-up Internet services. I noticed that the industry was changing rapidly during my six months away.

I didn’t know how the team turned out, but I wondered where my next step would be if I were to leave the big box store. I left college to work full-time for a company I didn't think had my best interests at heart, and I wanted to do something great with my life! Little did I know that I was up for a wild ride that would lead me back to the cross of Jesus Christ. But I had to go through a lot of pain first. One morning, I prayed that God would use me to change the world and help me become as popular as a rock star.

After the Y2K scare had passed, I found myself in a position where I needed to reassess my skills and determine what direction to take next. Programmers were being laid off because their expertise was no longer in high demand. Their primary value was fixing the clock glitch that occurred in the year 2000. This was due to a lazy programming habit where computers used only double-digits for the year field inside dates. Although the glitch only affected one operating system, businesses used it more frequently, so it required a prompt fix. I vividly remember this period because some religious fanatics were predicting that it was the end of the world and that Jesus was returning. Fortunately, this did not happen.

I had become cold and hard-hearted towards God due to my past experiences and a lack of faith. Everything from being subjected to child abuse to viewing different types of pornography has left me feeling numb. Moreover, the doomsday rumors turned out to be false, which left a bad taste in my mouth for the church. I was so deep in the darkness of sin that it seemed almost no light was left. I was living with my girlfriend in my parent's basement and engaging in online relationships with women in chat rooms. This was something I had learned to do from my previous job at the big box store.

One night, I applied for a new job with a company I had never heard of before. Later, I received a call from a woman who claimed to be from a California-based company with the motto “Don’t think like the rest of the world." At first, I was confused and wondered why they would call me. Then, I realized I had applied to a recruiting company that worked with the larger corporation.

During the interview, I expressed my misunderstanding, thinking the call was a joke and that the company was going out of business. However, they assured me they were not going out of business and that I was a good fit for the position. Even though their approach was unconventional, just like any of their marketing ploys, after learning all the details about the job, I felt like I had won the lottery.

I was sent to California to work with the CEO and the product development teams to learn how to sell their products. However, I had no idea this experience would become the darkest point of my life. I didn’t want anything to do with God or the church; I had become indifferent towards people. Nevertheless, God answered my prayer about changing the world and becoming as popular as a rock star.