How Greg got Saved, Part One. BC

I’m not going to give my life story here, but a brief synopsis will lay the groundwork for what ultimately led to my receiving Christ in August of 1984. I enjoy other people’s salvation testimonies and thought somebody might be interested in mine.

My mother was pregnant with me when President Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963. I was born to a hippified bass player father and a Roman Catholic mother. (yes, really) In Dearborn Michigan. The famous suburb of Detroit.

My Dad, (died in 2000) who was an objectively brilliant man and toward whom I hold no animosity whatsoever, was also a disastrous husband and father. They were divorced when I was four and my mother married a very decent and devout Roman Catholic man. Her marriage to my father was annulled by the church. (long story)

My stepfather genuinely loved my mother and me. He did everything that could be expected, at least from a common grace perspective, for a stepfather to responsibly and honorably raise me to stable and productive adulthood. He provided structure (bed times, chores, allowance etc.), emphasized school, made me do my homework, taught me sports, coached Little League baseball and Cub Scouts, appropriately answered my childhood questions about sex, and tried to teach me right from wrong. Unfortunately, we also attended mass every Sunday. Which I hated almost as much as school.

He did everything he knew to do for me, He also had a 33-year career at Ford Motor Company, working his way up from the Rouge Plant railroad to the office, providing a decent middle-class life. I can't and don't hold anything against him, but None of it made any difference.

Fast forward to my teens. I got involved in alcohol and drugs, ran away from home, got arrested several times, and got thrown out of school. My natural father stepped in and offered to let me come live with him. By this time he had left the horrible music business (another long story) and gotten himself hired at a Westinghouse plant though he was the only applicant without a degree in electronics or electronic engineering. He was self taught and breezed through their testing. They sent him to Texas to go through their school down there.

He had remarried to a woman who had a son from a previous marriage and had a daughter with his second wife.

That year and a half I lived with him was horrific for everybody. I brought my attitude and problems and he brought his still highly lacking parenting skills. Especially for somebody like myself at that time. That combination could not possibly have lasted. He handled just about everything wrong and I turned his new household upside down. He did the best he knew how with what he had to work with. I understood that once I got saved and understood sin. Mine as well as his. There was nothing ANY human power could have done for me at that point

I was selling mescaline at high school for a mid-level operation ran by two brothers out of Dearborn Heights. That also meant some money and where there's drugs and money, there's girls. I made the brilliant decision to rip these guys off, which needless to say did not enhance my peace and potential well-being. I managed to avoid them for a while, but they eventually threatened my parents at both residences. (more long stories)

My mother told her Vietnam combat vet brother in Phoenix, who I grew up fairly close to, what was going on. That situation and some others had made it a good idea if I left town, which in my immature foolishness, did not want to do. In spite of that, my uncle wisely recognized that I really should get out of the Detroit area and offered to have me move down there to Phoenix to live with him and his family. I was given no choice. This was 1980. A major chapter change ahead.

Tune in next time for the exciting continuation lol.