Finding My Way Home - A Christian Testimony

When I looked at my home life, I knew that I could not complain. I had been raised in a good, middle-class home where my two sisters and I had always had all the things in life which are supposed to make a child happy. All our earthly needs had been met, and we had had the best or near best of everything. I also could not claim child abuse or bad parenting. My parents had been very good to us and had worked hard and sacrificed much to ensure that we were given the same as the other kids. Neither my sisters nor I often did without during our days at home, and yet my parents did even more!

Not only did they care for our physical needs and wants, but they also tried to attend to our spiritual needs by taking us to the local Methodist church each Sunday morning. My father had served as Sunday School Superintendent and Church Treasurer, and my mother had sung in the choir. We were a typical family of the 1950s and 1960s. Our life was very good, very middle class, yet even with a quality home life such as mine, I was still a teenager in trouble by 1967. What more could a person have wanted? What more could a person have needed? As I pondered those questions from my chair on that November day, I knew that the answer in my case was almost nothing! My circumstances and troubles had been of my own doing, and I could not complain about what I saw as an almost ideal family life.

After thinking about my life at home, I next began to look at other conditions of my youth, such as my childhood environment. Environmental factors often affect the outcome of events, so I felt inclined to consider the social, economic, and political aspects of my early life just to see if I could somehow cast blame on any of those factors. I felt confident that I could not blame my family for my difficulties, but perhaps, I could find fault in how, where, or when I had grown up. I reviewed the above concerns - social, economic, and political - all with the single hope of finding even one flaw in my early childhood which would explain or justify my previous behavior.

I first considered my social environment. As a young person, I had lived comfortably in the small, friendly town of Hampton, Virginia, a town where my parents knew nearly everyone. They were very popular and in the middle of almost every civic activity. Between the two, they had involvement, or so it seemed, in every town function. Both were popular, and both were well-liked. So, our family was socially established in that relatively small town, and if anything, I had profited from being my parents' son.

Because my mom and dad were well-known, I was well-known. Because they were well-liked, I was probably well-liked, or at least tolerated! As a young person, I had received far more than my fair share of attention, and that was primarily because of my parents' strong social ties. Therefore, I could not complain about having encountered any social disadvantages. My opportunity to get along in life had been well above average. Because of my parents, I had had a better chance than most to succeed and get my life off on the right foot. The fact that I had failed to do so could not be blamed on my childhood social environment.

I next examined my family's economic circumstances. Socially speaking, my parents were popular. Financially speaking, our family had life pretty good. We were not rich, but neither were we poor! We lived like most middle-class families, and as I have already stated, my sisters and I really did get nearly everything we wanted. One Christmas, I received a short-wave radio and a tape recorder. Both were quite expensive, and I had not expected either, much less both. So, from that perspective, how lucky could a kid be? I was fortunate to have had so much even though my family was only of average means. Therefore, I had to conclude that family finances were not the cause of my problems, either. I had to admit that my parents' handling of money, whether good, bad, or even just average, were not to blame for my difficulties.

My problem was something deeper, but I did not know what! My choice to go wrong had been mine and mine alone, yet I did not understand why I had made that and so many other unwise choices! If I, based upon the above social or economic criteria, had attempted to characterize my family life during those early years, I would have concluded that we had had a very good, very normal life. To be sure, I would have been, in the eyes of many, counted among the most fortunate. My early life at home had been almost ideal. There had never been, to my knowledge, any warning signals to predict the troubles that were headed my way. Therefore, on that fall November day in 1967, I knew that I did not have a legitimate gripe against either the social or financial aspects of my childhood.

After looking at the social and economic conditions of my early life, I lastly looked at my childhood political environment, both at the national and the local level. In considering first the national level, I thought perhaps that I could blame my predicament on bad national times. However, this, too, turned out to be a fruitless pursuit! I had grown up during one of our nation's best eras, or so it seemed. A few years earlier, the country had concluded World War II, so our nation was at peace! A few years before that, the nation had come out of, or had at least started to come out of, the Great Depression, so most everyone was enjoying some measure of prosperity. As a result of those two very positive happenings, many of society's worries had all but disappeared. Most individuals were satisfied with life, and people, in general, were not hurting! The 1950s and most of the 1960s, when I was young, had for the most part been good, pleasant years for a large number of people.

As a result of those findings, my case against undesirable or poor environmental circumstances was obviously very weak. I could not complain about my home life. I could not complain about bad social, economic, or national-level political factors. I could not even complain about my childhood political environment at the local level, which of course entailed growing up in the small town of Hampton! As a youngster living during what I had thought were nearly ideal times, I had always felt safe. I was never concerned about crime in Hampton because there was no need. I did not know of any criminal element in our small town, so to me, crime was never even an issue! I also was not fearful of a nuclear war because I did not know about nuclear weapons or even about the need for such instruments of destruction. So, once again, I could not raise any legitimate objections as to how I had been raised.

As my search for a culprit began to wind down, I knew that I could not, in truth, blame any of the above factors for my problems. My family life had been good. The social, economic, and political factors of my early days had been nearly ideal. The country as a whole was doing well, and most of my high school friends had also done well. There were not any acceptable or reasonable explanations which might account for my own poor performance. I should have done well, too, yet upon entering the adult world fresh out of high school to face life's initial challenges, I failed miserably! From the very start, I had found myself overwhelmed and unable to cope, but I did not know why! As I looked at this, my own personal nightmare, the whole thing seemed like something which should not be happening, but unfortunately, it was!