My Spiritual Autobiography, in the Style of Augustine's Confessions

Early in my Christian life, I read Augustine’s Confessions. Augustine (354-430 AD) lived a monastic life and pursued a life of writing. One of his writings, Confessions, is his spiritual autobiography, but it is unique in that he wrote it before the face of God. What this means is that he constantly interjects a conversation with God as he recounts his life. “I ask you, my God...”; “Accept my confessions, O Lord”; “In the sight of my God I will describe the twenty-ninth year of my age.” And so forth throughout.

This greatly changed the way I journal. Now, when I journal, I journal before the face of God. What is written before you is my spiritual autobiography before the face of God of how Jesus changed me, what I was like before Jesus, how I met Jesus, and why my life is different because of Him. I offer this up to Him as His testimony of saving grace and whose love is everlasting.  

O Lord, may this brief testimony display the grace of Your salvation in my life. I praise Your Sovereignty over me, for I know that my life is not random, nor was it ever according to me to run and to will my own chosen path of life. My family of origin, where I lived, the historic time of my birth, the culture in which I was raised, the people in my life, my vocation, the day of my salvation, all life events that I have experienced, all of this was written in Your book, the days ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them (Ps. 139:16).

You formed me and brought me forth from my parents of Your choice (Ps. 139:13). These were very broken people who never knew You. You saw all the wounds inflicted upon me by these poor souls. My father, not knowing the love of his parents, took to drinking early in life and became addicted. My mother, not receiving the love of her father, mistook lust for love and became pregnant with my sister out of wedlock. They married because of the pregnancy. This was my father’s second marriage. My father’s addiction also brought forth deceit and marital infidelity, and in this context, You brought me forth in my mother’s womb. My birth was traumatic for my mother, and she had to return to the hospital for a time.

I was not well cared for, and so soon in life, I experienced the loss of being-in-relatedness with my mother and the terror of separation anxiety. This would haunt me all my life. Promises and broken promises continually stressed the marriage of my parents and our home life. My mother became pregnant with my younger sister. My father’s addiction to alcohol became more open and violent. He was also addicted to opioids. In my teenage years, I had to stay present with my mother to protect her from the threats of my father.

 I had grown up and lived my life alone without any real connection with my father or mother. My mother had nothing to give out of her own emptiness. She was content with sending me to my room to be by myself, away from her presence. I soothed the vacant emptiness and want of my mother’s love with the gratification of sexual lust. It was the only way I knew how to feel loved. I felt abandoned by my mother. Every “relationship” in high school always ended the same. The woman abandoned me. Feeling desperately alone, defeated, and angry, I hated my father. I hated God. And I had no feeling for my mother.

My mother divorced my father. My father abducted my younger sister. Later, he was found, arrested, and sent to prison. I ran away to the Marine Corps, hoping for some kind of redemption, that if I suffered “hell I would get to heaven” (a line I had picked up in the ‘70s from the Steve Miller Band, Jet Airliner). To my chagrin, boot camp was not my redemption. I still felt alone, defeated, and angry, still hating my father and God. I started drinking for the first time. And I drank a lot. And I fornicated a lot. O Lord, You saw me sinking into the miry clay, the pit of darkness, the place where the soul wishes to end its life. When I realized that I was becoming like my father, the one whom I hated, I turned on myself with hate, with a loathing, despising hate. The time to end this was at hand. I was twenty years old.

I will always remember that night, my Savior. The night which I chose to end my life was the night You chose to rescue me. The suicide letter, the letter of hate, was written. It was down to how I was going to do it. It was at that moment that You sent a dark, heavy dread upon me that froze me. I dreaded facing the next day. I could not live through one more day. And I had this other dread of the finality of death. I couldn’t move in either direction. Then You brought to my mind my friend who had recently been born again and who tried to tell me about Jesus and what the Bible said, but I stuffed my ears and rejected him.

The Bible. The Bible. Why was I being drawn to the Bible at the very time I wished to end my life? I did not have a Bible, but my sister did. I was alone at home, went to her room, and found it. I had never read it before and didn’t know how to read it or where to start. So, I looked at the first pages. There was a list of helps pointing where to read (it was The Way Bible). “If you are suffering, read Job.” This caught my eye, and I started reading Job. Right away, I identified with him. Both of us cursed the day of our birth, wishing we had never been born. I was feeling all of what Job was saying in Chapter 3 of his story. How did this sufferer come through? So I kept reading, and the more I read, the more confusing was the story. I didn’t understand the dialogue. I did not understand what was going on, but I needed the answer.

No longer thinking about killing myself, I met with my friend the next day so he could explain Job to me. He could not. He just started reading the Bible himself and was reading the Gospels. But he invited me to speak with an elderly man at the church he was attending. I met with him, and we started talking about Job, but he soon turned the story to Jesus and told me His story, the story of the cross and resurrection for my sins and salvation. That man led me to the Lord Jesus, and I received Him as my Lord and Savior. My burden of hate rolled off, and I no longer hated my father, but felt compassion and wanted him to know my Savior (that is another story). Look, O Lord, how You drew me to Your Son Jesus to begin my life in Him! (Jn. 6:37, 65)

 O Lord, I often wondered about the first gospel communication that comes to those whom You call, and if that identifies what one’s journey will be like. Saul, the persecutor of the early church, met You whom he persecuted, and You showed him how much he must suffer for Your name’s sake (Acts 9:16). Your gospel communication came to me in Job, and little did I know at that time how much loss I too would suffer after becoming a Christian.

I suffered the loss of friends straight away when I told them of Your salvation. My own family did not approve of my faith in You. Yet, O Lord, you did not leave me as an orphan, but provided me a church family in your household (Lk. 18:29-30).

Later, after I married, I had, for the first time, a vision for my life–to pursue a liberal and theological education for Gospel ministry. With the blessing of the church confirming this calling, I moved my wife and children out of state, believing I was following Your call, only to find that doors were soon shut to that calling. My life was redirected to labor as a plumber’s apprentice. Being disillusioned with the purpose of my life, the angst of abandonment and rejection resurfaced. I felt rejected by You, Father. But I stayed the course, finished my apprenticeship, and became a licensed journeyman. I thought if I submitted to whatever hardship and trial You had set before me, I would then receive Your approval to pursue the path of my desire. But I felt Your displeasure even more as days turned to months, and months to unchanging years.

O blessed Father, forgive me for thinking this way about You. This was coming out of my diseased introspection, and not being able to sense Your faithful lovingkindness toward me. Knowing I was unable to return to higher education, I still tried to prove my worth to You, and I set out to self-educate in the theological disciplines, sleeping only four hours a night, trying to be more righteous, holy, separate from the world, hoping to prove myself to You and that You would open the doors You had shut in pursuing the desires of my heart.

But the doors remained shut, and I was stuck in the trade You placed me. And I broke. I was back to anger with You. My marriage was falling apart. The separation anxiety, loss of being, and well-being resurfaced. I felt abandoned by my wife, alone, and defeated. In anger, I sought comfort outside my marriage. Then You did what Luther calls Your alien work. You drove a lance right through my heart when my precious Katie, only seven years old, was taken by drowning in Lake Michigan. As they searched for her body, I dropped to my knees on the beach, sobbing and remembering Job again, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be His name” (Job 1:21). Words I spoke out loud, but my heart was dashed in a thousand pieces like broken glass. Again, I was brought to the place of loss, suffering, and abandonment, stricken down by You. I know now, blessed Father, that resurrection only comes after death and that I had to lose my life if I wished to find it (Matt. 16:25). You were bringing me to the end of myself that I may be found in Christ and might know the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings (Phil. 3:9-10).    

The depth of this pain changed me. A few years later, my wife and I divorced. Even my children (we had six children together) rejected me. It was like suffering five more deaths in losing all my children, and I was alone again. More loss and suffering. My soul started down a dark descent. A counselor I was seeing encouraged me to attend Leanne Payne’s Pastoral Care Ministries (annual weeklong seminars held at Wheaton College). I attended for four years and went through intense suffering and anguish (what PCM called redemptive suffering). I walked the edge again and pleaded with You to take my life.

O, Lord, You went deep into my soul and visited the wounds and sins from the past. You were pulling me out of the deepest and darkest pit I had ever fallen into. You began to bind up my broken, torn, and diseased heart and heal all those traumatic wounds. What was pierced, torn, and shattered, You bound up and healed, and I remember Your words spoken to me while in silent prayer, “It is finished.” Never again have I felt the depth of suffering and despair that I suffered those many years. You brought peace, comfort, and closure to my heart over my daughter Katie. For the first time, I was able to receive Your love, and never again would I say that You hate me. Not having father or mother, You took me up and became for me my Father, and you took me as your son (Ps. 27:10). I have heard Thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees Thee! And I repent (Job 42:5-6).

O blessed Father, I wish I could have been a better son to You. I look back and see so much brokenness, adversity, and failure. But You never broke off with me because You have chosen to be a Father to me and I a son to You. When I committed iniquity, You chastened me with a rod, but Your lovingkindness never departed from me (2 Sam. 7:14-15). You alone have shown me what love is, what it is to keep covenant, to set Your love upon me because You chose to love me despite my desperate condition. You drew a wretch to Your Son, and He took me as His own. He is not ashamed to call me brother (Heb. 2:11). Faithful are You, O God of peace, to change this wretch into an ornament of beauty after the image of Your Beloved Son to the praise of the glory of Your grace (Eph. 5:26-27; Song of Solomon 7:10).

 As I have entered in my sixth decade of life, I still experience loss and suffering. The glory of a young man is his strength (Prov. 20:29). This, too, I am losing. Eventually, I will suffer the loss of all things as I approach my death. But with each loss I have experienced in my life, I have gained more of Christ and will ultimately attain to the resurrection from the dead and be fully found in Him (Phil. 3:8, 11).

Blessed Father, You are so merciful! I weep often, and it is a mixture of grieving and gratitude. I have never known love like this! My Lord Jesus, Your right hand is constantly under my arm to hold me up. I wait upon You, O Lord, to direct my steps one day at a time, to walk in a way that pleases You, to do those things that You have ordained that I should walk in them. Show me my purpose as I walk through life with my brothers and sisters. Supply me with the equipment of the Spirit to share in the building up of the body of Christ. May You restore what I have lost, and may I find comfort among my brethren for all the adversities that have come upon me, and may my days end well as did Your servant Job.