I miraculously made it through Vietnam and its aftermath in pretty good shape, at least mentally anyway. I'd been looking forward to getting home and finding someone to start a family with. Thinking about the things I was gonna do when I got home supplied the majority of my motivation for trying to stay alive through it all. After believing that finding a wife couldn't be all that hard to accomplish compared to dodging bullets and bombs, I was a little unprepared to accept that I couldn't seem to make it happen. Finding someone I thought I could live with for the rest of my life had become more unlikely as time went on. I wasn't gonna marry someone just because "it's the proper thing to do," and end up getting a divorce, leaving brokenhearted kids without one of their parents. I've known since the age of sixteen, what having divorced parents was about...
The failed attempts at finding someone compatible to marry had slowly taken away the hope that had been my strength. I'd given it my best in Vietnam and gave what I could give to my younger brothers and mother after making it back. I'd lost all of my old high school friends and some of my relatives because of protesting against the war and growing long hair. Finding a decent job was becoming more impossible as time went on. It took a while, but it was all beginning to wear me down...
Society tells us to be strong and tough things out, and not to take things too seriously, which unfortunately, is the way most people seem to handle their problems. Sometimes though, when we can no longer ignore them, because they've become impossible to live with, we've reached the end of the road. What do we do then?? It's a humbling experience to admit that giving it our best wasn't good enough and that there's nothing more we can do to fix the situation. Ironically, it would seem, sometimes finding the answer requires us to face reality and admit it to ourselves that either alone, or with some other person's help, there's just no way to fix the problem! If we kid ourselves into thinking that we can once again worm around the issues or minimize the extent of our problem, it just gets worse. Admitting defeat is seen as a weakness in character by our ill-fated peers, but when we've reached the point where there's nothing else humanly possible we can do to rid ourselves of the problem, we need to give up, before we destroy ourselves or someone else by trying to do the impossible. If we don't already know it, swallowing our pride and coming to the realization that we're not perfect can be quite instrumental in helping us get rid of the problem....
While we should do what we can possibly do, humans aren't designed to have the ability to remedy every difficult situation. If we had that ability, the world we live in wouldn't be in such a mess that it is. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who want others to believe the unrealistic notion that when someone breaks down, it's a lack of having it together. There've been several times, especially in Vietnam, when the person I'd known to be the strongest, broke down and cried. It's a humbling experience, but also a necessary one. When directed to God on a very personal level, it becomes a healing experience that I believe we all need to have at some point.
One evening, back in the rear bedroom of the house in West Hollywood, it was my turn to go through something that would once again change the course of my life. I'd finally come to the conclusion that after all of the attempts I'd made down through the years at trying to make something important happen in my life, over a long period of time, that it just wasn't gonna happen! It took a lot of hard times and depressing experiences, especially of trying to make a relationship work, in order for me to realize that I couldn't keep going the way I'd been going any longer. I didn't have anything left in me to give and I was at the end of the road. I needed something in it for me, but there wasn't anything. I laid down on my little makeshift bed in the back of the house and said, "Father, I don't want to be here any more..., Take me out of here! There's nothing for me here..."
While lying there in the fetus position and silently crying out with every ounce of energy I had, to the one who I believed was in control of everything, the barriers to peace were finally removed. I'd finally broken down the devil's strong hold which was pride... After searching through the scriptures in the Bible and wading through the teachings of other religions, it was obvious to me that the truth was in the Bible, and that Jesus made it possible for us to speak directly to the mastermind of all creation. The only thing I needed to do, according to His Word, was believe in His Son which was something I'd believed for years. I said, "Father, take me out of here. I don't want to be here anymore." I didn't ask Him, I told him... He didn't need a lot of explaining to know that I wasn't lacking in faith and that I meant business. He honored my petition and understood my situation, but before He could do anything, I had to get out of the way, and I did, along with a ton of stuff that had been bottled up inside of me for a long time. I no longer felt what seemed like a monkey on my back. After that, it was all His ball game.
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