Empty and Below
There was literally not a soul around. Not anywhere. It was a black night in the proverbial middle of nowhere. Two-lane mountain road, towering cliffs on all sides, moon and stars out, but no other headlights but the two forlorn beams from my own ready-to-conk-out car. My now-officially-stolen car.
But after miles of holding my breath and marveling at how the needle just hovered over the E, yeah, now I was definitely out of gas. The tank was empty, my wallet was empty, my bank account was empty, my heart and soul were both empty and below. Was God out here in this bleak slab of nowhere? ‘Cause for sure, no one else was.
Any rational man who plans to drive, drive, drive till his tank runs dry and then hike into the void with just a backpack … well, that man actually doesn’t have a plan. I had left behind a stack of bills, three divorces, my kids and stepkids, my apartment lease and car loans. My shredded career. My reputation.
I’d come at last to this well-rehearsed moment of surrender. My mind was numb, but since I’d played out these grim details over and over until they wore out a mental groove, the rest of me dully got on with last rites. Remove the car registration and insurance papers. Unscrew the license plates and heave them into a rocky pit or some swamp water.
The End of the Road
It wasn’t just a cliche any longer. Sure, the physical road continued, but my car’s road had come to an end. So had my personal journey.
I couldn’t go. I wouldn’t stop. So, I would walk. Trudge and scramble through the heat and the scrub and the goat droppings until I either fell over dead or somebody from the great beyond stepped into the path before me and said: “Hey, stop right there. I’m still here.”
Karma. Destiny. Consequences
Every man has a destiny–and a resumé to go with it. Mine is nothing spectacular; in fact, you’ll find much of it rather mundane. This is the story of a road trip, and trust me, most of the potholes are ones I dug all by myself.
I write these words from a nondescript home in Dalton, Georgia. This is where my 86-year-old mother who is nearly blind, almost deaf, and barely ambulatory, lives. I cook and drive for Mom, hoping I can ease her fears and worries during this sweet sunset period of her life journey.
But I grew up clear across the country in Napa, California. At twenty, I moved to Tacoma Park, Maryland, where I met and married my first wife. After two years, I zig-zagged yet again to California where I became a Shipfitter Apprentice at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo. I repaired submarines and worked hard to master the newly emerging computer sciences associated with the arrival of personal computers into the workplace. But then the shipyard was closed under a Presidential Order issued by Bill Clinton during the military downsizing. Base closures were wiping out communities all over the map following in the wake of détente and the tumble of the Iron Curtain in the late 80s and early 90s.
So, I transferred from working for the Navy to an Army assignment in order to continue my federal employment as the senior computer manager of the Army’s Recruiting Battalion in Denver. That was a fortunate post for me, because the work held steady until I began eyeing military retirement in 2007. Following retirement, I entered the private sector working as a computer specialist contractor. I felt blessed to still be physically fit and alert and ready for a few more years of employment and paychecks.
Then, disaster. I had six uneventful years under my belt, and then blew it all away, destroying my future and my own work history in 2013 in an angry confrontation with upper management. My supervisor and I had a disagreement about how to handle a tech problem. I flew into a rage and shot my mouth off in a rant that involved, among other things, a threat to commit murder.
Although I committed no violence and the police were never involved, the door of gainful employment slammed shut behind me with a clang that left me with no doubts about my own future. Things were grim indeed.
Ever since that foolish and explosive moment, I have been living on the outskirts of society, drifting along, surviving on the undeserved goodwill of friends and the mercies of strangers. These last few years are when the most remarkable part of my story unfolded.
Habitual Christian
Before I open up my heart about the tumult of these recent years, however, I should tell you how I abandoned my identity as a churchgoing believer.
I started my life’s journey as a Christian, richly educated in both Scriptural doctrines and biblical history. But, as all sinners are, I was also rather passionately in love with my own self and therefore not in control of my nature. My flaws led to cracks in my marriage and in 1988, just as the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) crisis was building (following détente with Russia and subsequent military downsizing by President Clinton), my wife packed things up, announced she was leaving me, and took our two girls to Idaho where she filed for divorce.
Talk about a jolt of reality! Here I was, at the peak of my career, feeling exhilaration at how high I had climbed up the career ladder. I had the ear and respect of the third-in-command at Mare Island about every conceivable aspect of Information Management. But what do perks like that matter to an ego-driven man who has his wife slam the front door and squeal the tires of the family car as she escapes from a failure of a husband? In the proverbial blink of an eye, I had suddenly lost my wife, my beautiful daughters, and it seemed like I was facing the end of my career as well. I begged, I cajoled, I blurted out a litany of hopeful reforms; I pleaded with God for divine intervention, but none came.
Slippery Slope
Unfortunately, unlike Job, when comfort didn’t come from above, I cursed God . . . and roundly so! Still, I remained a Christian (of sorts) for nearly another decade. The start of a slippery slope never looks slippery.
I remarried just before the Mare Island Naval Shipyard shut down for good. Literally weeks before that final closure of the gates, with no job prospects at all, discouraged, afraid, and angry, I did get some unexpected, good news. An Army Battalion located in Denver, Colorado notified me that they were required by Department of Defense rules to select from the D.O.D.’s priority placement list of displaced employees and that I was highest guy on the call sheet of candidates with computer skills! If I was willing to relocate, I still had a spot!
Well, calling a Mayflower moving van looked like a brighter prospect than clumping with my new family over to the welfare office. So, I took my new bride and step kids and moved us all to Denver.
Anger Turns to Doubt
Blended families are never easy and I had abruptly uprooted this one, removing both my wife and her children from their support systems of family and friends. I loved her children but she and I had very different views on the tools and techniques of parenthood.
My new bride gave a herculean effort, and I was trying in my own haphazard way, but things began to slowly spiral down yet again. I suppose the Lord was still around, marking time on the periphery of my marriage, but I didn’t allow Him to come into our home and really be the ruling force. No, I was still determined to do that myself.
It took ten years for the friction to become a wound we simply could not heal. When I left her, by mutual agreement, my heart broke, and with it, my soul. Even then I didn’t turn my back on God in the sense of de-friending Him or becoming His enemy. Actually, I simply lost faith in the concept that He exists. Believe me, that can be a bleak place for a twice-divorced man to find himself in the midlife-crisis years of his life.
So, is it true that the Third Time can be the charm? I earnestly hoped so! I drifted into yet another relationship and in 2000 I married my third wife, this time for money, not for love. Frankly, by this time not only did I no longer believe in God, I also no longer believed in love itself. I brought a thick cynicism into this new partnership and my wrongful mindset quickly curdled into something toxic. We separated in 2009 but didn’t get a divorce until 2016. Despite still being technically married, she didn’t offer to help me out of the homelessness that drove me out of Denver in 2013. How I got from homeless in Denver to being my mother’s caretaker in Dalton, Georgia in 2017 is what this testimonial is about.
Full-on Agnostic
As for my spiritual journey, although I lost faith in the existence of a personal, loving God, I still found myself tethered to some unshakable convictions. Even in my bleakest moments, I still found the universe a place of beauty. I saw design everywhere. Even if the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn’t exist, some wise Deity had placed evidence of creative power all around me. What was that all about?
During those darkest moments of confusion–and even now, today, as I scratch out these words–I’m just not able to reconcile myself to the impossible nature of the natural universe. I’d worked in military industry; I knew all about computing power and the logistics of really big plans and grand designs. I’d climbed around vast submarines and aircraft carriers and taken in the intricacy of what a creative team could put together. With that kind of knowledge and privileged perspective, I found the atheistic viewpoint to be utterly incompatible with the concepts of intelligence, awareness, consciousness, life, and the incredible coincidences necessary to sustain it. It was with this confused frame of mind that I left Denver in the summer of 2013, homeless and one slim day away from losing my car to repossession.
And that is where my story really begins.