Well where to start, that’s the hardest part you know in anything we do, the starting I mean. For once you get started most of the time, Now I am not saying all the time just most of it. It’s like that snowball that’s rolling down hill and it just takes on a life of it’s own.

I guess that I have in my life now gone what some folks would consider full circle. how to explain what I mean by that. I am let’s simply say somewhat over fifty. And most of my life I have spent growing up in middle size town in the middle of Kansas. And like a lot of other people I know, I spent most of that time trying to get out of that middle size town. Oh! I made it a couple of times but never for more then a year or two at a time.

But twenty-two years ago a young lady came along and all that changed. I had what I thought was the perfect life. But before we get to the here and now and what is to be, I want to talk to you about what was.

So far in my life I have lived in my hometown, Wichita and McPherson all towns of different sizes and all in Kansas. That in it’s self is not so unusual a lot of people are born, live and die within the boundaries of one geographic location.

OK know you have gotten to this point and you are probably thinking what dose any of this have to do with me and how am I going to get anything from his life that would be a benefit to me? And where can I get ride of this book? Well be patient and keep reading and before were done something just might come along that starts to shed some light somewhere in the dark places of your soul and you will say oh! I get it.

You also need to know that I am not a doctor with a bunch of letters and numbers behind my name nor do I claim to be. What I am is a middle age man with health problems staring down the maul of old age and have a story to tell that just might help somebody in there journey of life.

It’s been my experience that other people who are looking in from with out, do not ever really see the storms that are raging down deep on the inside. Oh that say they know what you must be going through or they say that you are being silly its all in your mind or you poor thing get over it lift your self by the boot straps and all that rubbish. Please don’t misunderstand me. There is a lot of truth in that no one can be helped until they are first willing to help themselves. But until somebody shows me differently, I believe that there is no way for somebody to lift your self up by your bootstraps. No we all need help from time to time and there is no way any body can know the battles that go inside each of us unless they have also lived the things, have experienced the things, heard the things that some of us have.

And yes I am one of the us in us. My child hood was I suppose not as bad as some, or worse then others, but weather or not my childhood was bad or worse then anybody else is not important. What is important is that the truth be known. And the truth is that we must start to talk, we have got to stop hiding our secret sins from one another in the dark places of our souls praying ever night that nobody finds them. And no if you were abused or still are as a child or an adult I will proclaim it from the highest mountain top as loudly as I can, it’s not your fault!

There are certain aspects of my own childhood that I will be drawing from in order to write this book. And some other studying that I have done both in collage and out of collage. Here is another fact about my self, I have put this off until now but here we go. I am an evangelist and Pastor.

I know some of you out there are thinking oh, yes one of those religious brother rick better then you who thinks he can save the world from it’s self. Well yes there is nothing more I would love to see then the world come to a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now you ready for another shocker? That’s not what this book is about. I simply mention my job as a reference. In my chosen profession you come across a number of folks with a number of problems. Abuse not the least of them.

Abuse will not be the only subject of this book. There is almost a lifetime of stuff to talk about. Like I said some funny some not. But I hope all of it can be important to somebody. So with all that said if you are ready get your favorite cup of tea, Make sure have a good reading light, sit in your favorite chair and lets start to get to know our selves once again but this time with the guidance of father god.

Know! My family. my hometown was I guess like almost every other small town back in the sixties and seventies. There was a soda fountain in the lobby of what was and still is the tallest building in town it had eight floors of the most extravagant hotel rooms anywhere. But unfortunately like a lot of other things as time goes on, it has changed, the building is no longer in use and has fallen into disrepair. But it was this soda fountain where I first fell in love with a brown sugary substance know as Dr. Pepper.

Every summer all the kids could be found at the local swimming pool thumbing our noses at the summer heat with absolutely no thought of the past school year or the one to come. But when we were not in the pool for some reason you would find us in a large air-conditioned movie theater. Air conditioning was still some what rare thing in privet homes except for the wealthy kids in town.

I also remember that the theater had a balcony and every kid in there wanted to get to the balcony, the usurers seldom went up stairs, which made it easy to through stuff down on the people that sat below. Or so I have heard. This was a theater that served real butter on the popcorn they had a cartoon before each movie started.

It was a thrilling thing to be a child, when the lights started to dim and the huge red velvet curtains that hung from the ceiling to the floor started to part. Reviling one massive screen and a whole different world from the one we really lived in. on occasion you could see dust as it gently tumbled to the floor from the rigging above but that was alright you see we were not there to check on the house keeping.

No we knew that when those curtains opened an adventure was about to begin. The only question was what would it be this time? Pirates at sea with their chest full of gold or cowboys coming to the rescue at just the right time. But you know, as kids we never really gave any thought as to how very much different our lives would really turn out which was almost always nothing like those folks we watched on the screen. No in the real world father did not always know best. And it did not take many years to learn that unlike a movie, the things that came along in the real world, most of the time can not be settled in two hours or less.

The air condusaner we had was called water evaporated cooler. They were not all bad except that my sister and I had to go outside every few hours and what we called water the cooler. The machines would work by pumping water down the sides through a thick layer of straw while the fan was pulling air in through the wet straw and blowing it into your home. there by cooling the air in your home, and usually it was just the room the cooler was in that received any cooling. But not if the air was already hummed and Kansas summers were usually hummed. Another problem was, the hotter it was outside the more often you had to go outside and water the water cooler. They had a system where the cooler would water it's self but my parents did not choose to use it for some reason. Probably the same reason the choose not to buy an automatic dishwasher they said why spend the money when they already had two perfectly good dishwashers, yes you guessed it my sister and I.

You know how smells are a really good memory trigger one thing I remember is the smell of the new wet straw in the cooler it was a very good smell. My folks only changed the straw ever other year or so, which made it extra special when they did.

Now I do not remember this but I have been told that one year on Christmas day our entire family was gathered around the table fully loaded with all the bounties of a loving God. There was ham, sweet potatoes, dressing, and pumpkin pie. The way the story goes is the family had just sat down to the feast but I could not be found anywhere. As it turns out earlier that morning Santa Claus had brought me a toy tool set with a saw and a hammer and a screw driver.

Before any body knew what had happened, one side of the table collapsed to the floor and all the food with it. When the dinner rolls had stopped bouncing, there I was sitting on the floor gravy dripping off my face with my little screwdriver in my hand and a smile on my face.

There needs to be warning inserted here I suppose. Kids do not try this at home. As you can guess the rest of my Christmas that year was a little rough.

I also remember that there were little neighborhood grocery stores, lazy summer afternoons at what you thought was your secret fishing hole. You knew that summer had really started when the diary queen opened for its summer business.

Something else was the summer nights. I can’t count the number of times as a kid I caught fruit jars full of lighting bugs and yes I always-punched holes in the lid so that they could breath. All though I don’t know I put the holes in the lid, I never left them in the jar long enough for anything to happen to them. I always let them loose, usually in my bedroom. But that is another story. I would lay outside and stare at the stars and try to find the man they said lived on the moon.

But then thing I remember the most are the times when every kid and every parent in my entire neighbor hood would get together after dark and play hide and seek. The dads would climb up on the roofs of the houses knowing there was no way we could find them, they almost always won. We did not know this until the end of summer one-year which as it turns out was the last year we played hide and seek. Everybody was growing up; everybody had places they thought were more important to be. Us kids well we thought we were getting too old to hang out with our families it just wasn’t cool any more.

I wonder how many from the old neighborhood, if they could would they go back and play hid and seek just one more time. I also wonder if it could ever be like an episode of the twilight zone I had seen some time ago where a bunch of older folks from a retirement home would sneak outside at night and started playing kick the can.

Yes for you who grew up with computers we used to kick a tin can around and called it fun because it was fun. Anyway as it could only happen in the twilight zone all the older folks became children again.

No you don’t need to worry about me I know it can’t happen. But looking back I now know that it was all such fun. And even though I didn’t know it then, the good times often out weighed the bad. My question now is. Oh! Where has the night gone?

But just so you don’t think that my child hood was all bows and roses I also remember times like when I and my mother were sitting at the kitchen table working on my math homework I could not get the answer right how ever hard I tried. So my mothers answer was to flip the table over on top of me. And on my eighteenth birthday you all know the blank sides on cards my grandmother used the blank side of my eighteenth birthday card as a sort of poison pen letter. She proceeded to tell me how little I was worth and that I only used the family for what I wanted and the world would be better off if I was dead.

And there is a whole lot more stuff from all other family members and the kids I went to school with. Such as one summer I was told that I will play on one of the city’s baseball teams. No problem other then I stink at the game I like watching it but can not play. We lost ever game we played that summer all that is but one, that one we tied, simply because it started to rain. So ended my baseball career. And I was even told how stupid all my ideas were as an adult in the very store my wife and I owned. And just like so many times before I just laid down and let those people walk over my like a rug. At this point you are probably thinking what a wimp, what a looser well you would probably be right. Or some of you may even be thinking poor thing; he had such a hard life. Compared to sum yes I would agree. But I am not seeking any sympathy. You see I am glade that I have had the life that I have. That has put me in a unique position of having been where a lot of other folks have, or will be.

Back in 1988 a beautiful young woman agreed to be my wife. So we marred august 14 1988 in my home town of Pratt Kansas and about three months later we knew that the Lord had his hand in our liver’s and was directing us to go to McPherson Kansas and attend collage. We both knew that for this to happen it would have to be a God thing because it was near the end of Christmas break and classes were about to start in a couple of weeks for the second half of the year.

Talk about a miracle in about one week we had all the funding we needed, class schedules, a place to live and jobs to help with the living. In short we blinked and were sitting in our first class in collage! Starting collage at a rather late time in life, about twenty five for me, had some interesting aspects. Cheryl and I were referred to as everybody’s grandparents. That was ok I was just glade to be there.

My first job that I had in McPherson was with one of their retail stores. Going to school full time and working full time was not an easy thing to do so I tip my hat the other people all over the world that are doing the same thing. Part of the problem was my employer they were not that willing to work with my school schedule. Special note here for people who hire students. Work with them in the world today we should do anything we can to help them if they are willing to try to improve there life and who knows one of them might cure cancer, eliminate world hunger.

Any way after about a year and a half my grades started to suffer and we were getting in to debt than we ever dreamed was possible. So we left school and I got another job to help get us out of debt. At that point I was working two part time jobs and one full time. That was not working we were still getting behind on stuff that you should not get behind on.

So we left school another failure in my life so I thought.

When we left the collage we also left the church that was a part of the school and we spent the next few months doing the Holy Ghost hop. For those of you who do not know what that means we went from church to church trying to find the one we wanted to be apart of.

One day we were driving through town and past a Pentecostal church it was the new life foursquare church of McPherson. My wife said we that maybe we should check out that church she suggested this four or five times but each time my response was the same. No! Not that one u hear those people are strange.

And to you guys out there count your self lucky, fortunate and to be envied if your wife is like mine and dose not give up when she knows she is right and you may not be. The fifth time I said fine the next Sunday we went and ten years later we were still going there and from the first day our lives got really interesting.