My name is Gary Crisp, and I’d like to share a little bit of who I am, and how the Lord has blessed and enriched my life. I will ocassionally add to this page, and when I do I will place an “updated” notice on our main page. I am currently preparing to “jot down” my military experience (or, maybe non-military experience would be more accurate). This particular part of my life is an amalgamation of many things -- sad, humorous, shameful and hopefully even uplifting. When I finish that, I’ll place a “conspicuous” notice on the main page.

I grew up in a sleepy little suburb of Dallas, known as Garland, Texas...“Garland is carland” was our city’s most prominent slogan for my growing up years. Even to this day, you can still drive down Garland Road and see all of the many car lots -- both new and used. Another one of Garland’s great assets was a terrific Little League Association, of which I and my brother were willing participants. It also had a wonderful old movie theater, The Plaza, located at the heart of downtown Garland. My brother and I were also very willing participants of this establishment. Many were the long, dark hours spent within the high, stately walls of that old theater. Escapism it is called. Only we did not know that then. That’s what we were doing, though...escaping -- escaping from our very own family.

Ah, yes...family.

Our family -- consisting of me, my older sister and younger brother -- lived with our parents at 1628 Nash Street, on one of the few dead-end streets that also possessed a small circle of houses half-way down our street. It was your typical Atomic Age Family, this being the early fifties to the early sixties, and we were sort of “normal”. One thing we did not do, though, was attend any kind of church.

So, none of the Crisp children grew up in a “traditional, church-going” home. As a matter of fact, my Dad “claimed” to be an atheist, although he was really just an agnostic. An atheist doesn’t believe in the existence of a God; an agnostic doesn’t really know for sure, but they don’t usually hang around people who do know Him (probably because it makes them feel uncomfortable). Anyway, I was not really exposed to the Lord until I was in my early teens. We no longer lived in Garland; our Dad had separated from our Mom, and we now lived in some very depressing, low-rent government housing projects in Dallas, right in the shadow of famed Baylor Medical Hospital. It was the sixties, times were not especially good for anyone we knew (I mean, Dallas was still reeling from the disgrace of the Kennedy assassination), and I was just generally a sad teen-aged kid.

That’s when a Baptist church from big downtown Dallas sent a bus through our neighborhood four times a week -- twice on Sunday, once on Wednesday, and once on Tuesday night.

Tuesday Nights...that’s why I started going to that church, for the Tuesday night “Recreational Time” -- A roller rink, a bowling alley, a gym that also included a trampoline, there was a snack bar on one of the three floors of activity, and I’m sure there was more. You know, God reaches out to us in simple and subtle ways sometimes. Not all of us get thunderbolts or visions or angels or some great revelation. Some of us get roller rinks! What I got in my introduction to Him was a “fun time at the ole rec center”. And, while I really wasn’t paying very much attention, He patiently started moving into certain areas of my heart. It was when I least expected it, but it was when I needed it the most. At that particular time in my life, I was at an especially low low.

I made some pretty good friends, as teenagers are accustomed to doing, and I had learned how to “make peace” with the bullies in the schools I attended. Now these were not your typical bullies, for many of these particular bullies carried knives, some carried guns and all of them carried very real threats -- and this was just the early-to-mid sixties! I constantly had money, food, homework and even test papers “taken” from me. And these “takers” were good, having already learned (as young teenagers) how to manipulate and intimidate with a minimal appearance of law-breaking -- they always insisted they were just “borrowing”...not “stealing”.

At one of several junior high schools I attended, I once saw a friend get “knifed” in the hallways! At the same school, while attending a school baseball game, I saw the most intense fight -- between two teen-aged girls. It made any of those so-called “cat fights” bragged about on the TV soaps look very, very tame. The year President Kennedy was shot, we had a schoolmate gunned down in the front of our very own school. He died. I also witnessed some very terrible things in our own neighborhood: Gangs, gangfights, and various shootings (we once had a next door neighbor “shoot it out” with the local gang, the “Project Prowlers” -- right next door to our very own apartment!). And...one Christmas Eve we even saw our own father and two of his friends beaten, knifed and kicked right in front of our apartment.

It’s a long, complicated story, but the short of it was the three were nearly killed by a gang of fifteen to twenty guys. It was the local gang, the “Project Prowlers”, who had done the deed, and they came back -- about twenty minutes after some mysterious onlooker had graciously and thankfully dragged the three limp bodies into their car and then drove them the three blocks to nearby Baylor Hospital. Yes...they came back, armed with guns and other weapons. I very vividly remember a shotgun being pointed at me (me being the oldest boy), as their very real threats warned us not to call the police or tell anybody about what had just happened. I was fourteen at the time, and I wouldn’t tell a soul for many years to come. My own brother and sister, who’d witnessed this scene along with me and countless neighbors, would not even talk about this nightmare for quite a few years. That’s what fear does...along with the silence, it will isolate you.

I left the Washington Place Projects as soon as I could, but lived in fear nonetheless. Sometimes we do not know or understand the trauma that follows us as we go on with our lives, thinking that once we leave the traumatic background we’ll have peace once again. Actually, I’d never really had true peace anyway. I began living with first one foster family, then another. I once looked at a Dallas-area map and counted out nearly two dozen homes I had lived in during little over a five year period! All of the homes were related to the downtown church I had attended; by that I mean they were called Mission Churches. Even in Christian homes, I still felt lonely and forsaken and forgotten. It wouldn’t be until 1970 that I would find real, true Peace...the kind of peace I had been searching for all my life, and the kind of Peace that only comes through Jesus Christ. This kind of Peace can dispel any darkness, drive away every fear and bring comfort and solace to any wounded or broken soul. And my soul was wounded and broken.

As terrible and as utterly frightening as some of my youthful years had been, I still must say how thankful I am for those “early years”. Looking “back” in retrospect is so much easier (and safer) than walking “through” a nightmare, but I learned so very much, and I did make some very valuable friends. I thank God for those horrible times, even though that may sound strange to some of you, but it has caused me to see and understand and be more sympathetic to those I have met and talked with over the years. It was a rough spiritual “boot camp”, but I survived. Speaking of “boot camp”, I will one day soon get the courage to relate my nightmarish and shameful experience in the U.S. Navy, even though I never left “stateside” (meaning I stayed here in the states for the whole time I was in the service). It is a bittersweet story, and when I get the time and the Lord will help me, I will relate the story, for I spent many days “crying out to Him” at that point in my life. But did He hear? Well, of course He heard, but how did He and in what manner? Stay tuned to find out.

As with most who eventually “find” Jesus, my journey to Him was quite circuitous. For those early years, spent in the shadow and under the care of the Baptist church, I am truly grateful. I made some terrific friends, as I had said, but unfortunately I didn’t really get to know the Lord till perhaps seven or more years after my initial introduction to Him. It’s funny that way, but if you think about it, most of us have friends that we may have known for many years, and every now and then they may do something that causes us to think: “I thought I KNEW them...”, or we may do something that causes them to exclaim: “I thought I KNEW you!”

It’s the same way with God...we may think we know all there is to know about Him when we first meet Him. Then, as time passes, and we grow, we begin to see that He is so much more than we could ever think or imagine. Unfathomable... measureless...with mysteries hard to comprehend. God is All in All to everyone everywhere, while always being Everything we need Him to be right in “our little part of the world”. He never fails, never falters, never slumbers, never sleeps, and He’s never been late or missed a beat.

Now...I truly cannot understand all of these things, and that which I can’t understand I cannot fully appreciate, and sometimes that’s frustrating. So I move forward, step by step, hearing a little here, growing a little there, moving closer and closer till one day I’ll know more than I know today; more than I dreamed I could ever know. This is how we all grow in Grace in Him. Daily. Gradually. And sometimes, ever-so-painstakingly-slow! But the point is...we do grow. And we do get to know Him better, until one day “we will know (Him) even as we are known” (1st Corinthians 13:12).

One of the wonders of this great universe is not in wondering or worrying “who else might be out there” (as so many people seem to do nowadays, and with the recent Mars Probe and other activities that interest has really been heightened), but rather learning “how to get to know Him better”. That is one thing these pages, more than anything else, will hopefully reflect.

Speaking of “getting to know Him better”...One of the things that hinders our “getting to know God” is our flesh. If you find yourself having “something of a struggle” in your heart, in your thought-life, or you just plain feel like your flesh is “out of control”...don’t panic! All Christians go through this at some point during their walk with Jesus (and often many times!). Click HERE for a link that you may find to be of some help. Hopefully, it will also be of some comfort to you. God, being a Wonderful God of Love, has done, is doing and will do all that He can to make our lives more secure, more grounded and more complete in Him.