Bob Allport

Bob Allport

A Testimony by Bob Allport

I really hope and desire that some of the things I have to say will be a blessing to you.

I’m going to attempt to give you my complete testimony. Turn to the 66th chapter of the Book of Psalms, just one verse. I came across this verse about three years ago; I was just reading my Bible one day, and this verse kind of jumped out at me. Have you ever had that happen? I mean, you’re reading along, and you may not be paying attention at something, and something just strikes you. This verse grabbed my attention; I looked at it and I wrote down right next to it, “Testimony verse.” A few months later, I got to use it.

Psalms 66:16: “Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul.”

Everybody knows my name, so I won’t have to start there. But I would like to start years ago in 1961, in Portsmouth, Virginia. This was the place where I was born. My dad was in the Navy, and that was the place where he was stationed. I really don’t know much about what happened, but I was born, as you can see tonight.

That would be 29 years ago. From there, my parents later moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at which I spent the next seven years of my life. From there, at age 7, my dad moved up to where he was from in the western part of New York. I spent the next fourteen years there.

Now, my name is Bob Allport. I lived in a town called Gasport, New York. I went to school in a town called Middleport. After I got saved, the town where I went to church was called Lockport. And all this is west of Brockport. Hence, my name is Allport.

My upbringing is what you would call typical. We lived on a small farm. My dad worked a regular job, so naturally I got to do all the work on the farm. He worked at a plant. He was not a religious man; to this day, I believe he’s still lost.

My mom did have some upbringing in church, but the extent of my religious education was perhaps two Sundays a year. So, I was lost.

I was like everybody else; you knew about Jesus and what He did. But, it was never personal; it never was applied in my life in a personal wife. It was a known fact; but it was not heart felt. There’s a big difference.

I continued in life, went through grade school and high school, and had the peer pressures there. I did some things that I won’t talk about. I remember, now that I’m older, that I was working in a machine shop. How I got into this trade, I really don’t know. I just wound up in it.

This period of life was a very dark time for me. I did something that I’m not going to talk about now; I have things in my life that I hold back and never talk about–just as you have things in your life that you hold back. It was something that was very deep and very dark, and hurt a great deal.

At this time, God started dealing with my heart. At this time, another man was hired in the machine shop; his name was Steve Baer. He was from a place called Pensacola Bible Institute. I heard that he was a preacher; by this time, I was burdened and decided to go talk to him. I really wasn’t ready for some of the things he was going to say.

I’d ask a question; he’d have a Bible answer. I’d ask him another question; he’d go straight to the chapter and verse with the answer. This was the first person in my life who actually did that with me. I mean, through all the other religious experiences I had, nobody ever sat down and opened a Bible and showed me, chapter and verse, where the answers were.

He started dealing with me. He told me about salvation. He asked me if I was saved.

I said, “No.”

When I was hired at the machine shop, I actually replaced a person named Rod Phillips. He was actually from the same school as Steve Baer–Pensacola Bible Institute. He came up to Lockport, New York, to start a church. By this time, he was pastoring full-time.

I knew about him from some of the guys I worked with–some of the things he did, his mannerisms, etc. So I decided that maybe I’d rather talk to him. I said, “Steve, can you set up an appointment, so I can come to talk to Rod Phillips?”

Steve said, “Yeah.” So he made an appointment at his house one night.

I was true to my word; I decided to go.

Once again, I wasn’t ready for some of the things that were going to be put before me. There it was–an open Bible again. I mean–the Truth! Answers to my question.

This conversation we had went on for maybe 15 or 20 minutes–I don’t really remember now. At the end, he brought it all together right down to a point. He said, “Bob, would you like to accept Jesus as your Saviour?”

Now, I really knew neither one of these guys. If you knew me, you’d know I’m rather shy at nature. I was embarrassed; I was drawn back. I said, “No, not right now.”

But I knew that what the man said was true; I knew that this was the answer to my burdened heart.

I said my goodbyes; I got up and walked down to my car. Right there and then, in my car, I bowed my head and accepted the Lord Jesus as my Saviour.

From that day on, things started to change. I had a purpose in life. The burden that I carried for so long was now gone. There was a peace in my heart.

I continued at the shop, and the fellowship that Steve and I had was a great thing. At lunch, I could sit down and talk to him, and he would teach me from the word of God. He was planting seed; he was working with me. Then, after he was laid off, he started inviting me over to his house, and we had Bible studies, and I started to grow.

I met my future wife at these Bible studies. Debbie and I were engaged and decided to get married in a few months–during May. During this time, the Lord had been dealing with me about going to school. I surrendered to that.

I know for a fact, as you read these very words, that I was called to go to Pensacola Bible Institute. I know that. In trying to be obedient to my heavenly vision, as it is, I decided to go.

Two weeks before we moved to Pensacola, Florida, my wife and I were married. Then, just two weeks later, we packed all our earthly goods in a four-by-six trailer, hooked it onto our car, and we just took off. I was 23 at this time. My wife is a couple of years younger than me.

This is where things start changing.

I remember driving down the highway, and suddenly I experienced one of those joys that everybody looks forward to on a trip–a flat tire! I just spent half the day loading all of the heavy stuff in the car and in the trailer, and then there it was. I was going down the road, the tire blew out, and thanks to my Mario Andretti driving skills, I quickly maintained control and pulled it over to the side of the road. There I was, unloading all of that stuff.

I remember a guy in a pickup pulls over and stops just ahead of my car. He gets out and walks back toward me. I was changing the tire. I knew what to do; I had everything under control. He said, “You need any help?”

I said, “No, thank you.”

He kind of hung around for a few minutes; I don’t know why, because I already told him I didn’t need any help. He got back into his truck and took off.

Just as I finished changing the tire, I remember standing there looking down the road ahead. I’m going to say something right now that doesn’t make much sense, but it really did happen. I remember looking down the road, and time stood still. I something ahead.

It was darkness.

It was pain.

I can’t describe it any better than that.

But, my Bible says, “The just shall live by faith.” Even though I had no comprehension of what was waiting for me, I pressed on. Had I known what lay ahead, I probably would have turned around and gone back.

But, “The just shall live by faith.”

So, I continued.

Our journey took approximately three days. We arrived in Pensacola, Florida–with all the cockroaches and fire ants and sand–no grass. We stayed with one of Steve Baer’s friends, who put us up for a few days. After that, the Lord opened up an opportunity to get a trailer.

Then, the Lord provided a house for us. Let me tell you how the Lord provided it. Now, this is strange, but in the end, you’ll see how a lot of this stuff will fall into place. There was a little house we were looking at, and we were fourth on the list to get it. The dimensions of this house were 20 feet by 22 feet–all three rooms! One things I did like about it was that it was cheap. I knew that I wasn’t going to get very high wages down there, and $100.00 a month was something I could handle. So, the Lord opened that opportunity. As I said, we were fourth on the list, and the landlord called us and gave us the house. That was the first thing.

The next major experience we had was a job provided for me. I waited for a long time–I believe about four weeks–before I found something. God first provided a gas station for me to work in. As I’ve said, my trade is a machinist. I wasn’t getting anywhere in that trade, and in fact I wanted to get out of the trade at that time. I decided to try working at a gas station just to help make ends meet.

I remember I got into one place; they seemed to like me. But soon they knew of another place in their organization that needed a worker, so they farmed me over there. This was a bad ordeal for me, because it was a “family-run”-type thing. I don’t know if many of you have ever worked for a family-owned organization, but when you’re one of only one or two “outsiders,” things just don’t go too well for you. You are always the guy who is accused of doing wrong, you’re always the guy who makes the mistakes. The family’s kids never do anything wrong.

Pressure was mounting up. I remember one day I decided that I had enough of that place. Around the corner from the tire shop where I worked was a machine shop. One day, I just got fed up with the place and said, “That’s it. I’m going down to that machine shop and try to get a job.”

I walked down to that place. It was a Saturday, and he was open. I walked in there and applied for a job. He looked at my application and said, “I just let go of a guy, so I’ll offer you the job.”

I wasn’t making very much at first–a grand total of $4.50 an hour. I’ve already spent four years in my trade, had served in apprentice school and had journeyman’s papers. Those wages were really low for my trade. But, as you’ll see, this comes in play, too.

Now, I had a house. I had a house. I was ready to begin school. The next thing caused me to experience one of the joys of a young parent– you find out that your wife is going to have a child!

Just one little complication here–we had no insurance.

I was concerned, as a father would be. I’m the provide, and I want to provide for my own. The Lord intervened, so that we could enter one of those programs in the hospital, to where you only have to pay so much.

Debbie’s pregnancy started out as normal as any other. She was growing larger and larger every day. School was starting, and the pressures were beginning–having to work all day, come home, go to school an average of three to four hours a night, all the tests, the pressures of trying to pay the bills.

Toward the end of her pregnancy, complications started to set in with my wife. I can see clearly now, because I can look back with hindsight. But at the time this was happening, I didn’t have the knowledge about it which I have now. She started to swell tremendously; we’re talking thirty pounds of water weight! At the very end of her pregnancy, the doctor insisted she have almost 20 hours a day of bed rest. Toxemia was setting in.

I remember the hour and the day that our first child was going to be born. My wife was lying in the intensive care unit at the time. I remember the doctors were all gathering around the bed, and they brought the machine over which they called the ultrasound machine that would take pictures. My wife was not dilated; things were starting to go wrong. Her blood pressure was going up. They started the machine, and began to take photographs of the baby.

I was standing right there, in a darkened room full of all these doctors–standing, looking at this screen, looking at my child. One of the doctors, a particularly foul-mouthed man, came over to the machine, and he cussed and said, “That looks like swollen ventricles!”

My knowledge of medical things at this time was not very extensive. I knew the heart had a ventricle; that was about the extent of it. I did not know that the brain did as well. So, he started looking, said a few more words, and walked out. As everyone was leaving, I turned to the lady who was pushing the machine out and said, “What is this? Is there something wrong with the child?”

She looked at me funny. “You’re going to have to talk to the doctor.”

I waited. The doctor came in later. He stood straight and looked at me and said, “We think your child has hydrocephalus.”

I didn’t understand.

He explained, “That word is hydro, the root word for water.”

I still didn’t quite grasp it.

He broke it down one more step. “We think it’s water on the brain. We’re going to have to an emergency C-section. A normal birth won’t be possible at this time.”

I said, “OK.”

He walked out of the room; I walked out of the room. I went down this little corridor leading out of the building. I stood looking at the sky, looking at all the pure, white clouds going by. I remember thinking back of all the times that I prayed for a healthy. I mean, what father doesn’t? I asked for one, and it seemed to me that at this time the heavens were just brass, and none of my prayers, no matter what I did or said, were getting through.

I couldn’t understand it. Darkness prevailed.

I looked up at the sky and asked the question that so many people ask: “Why me? Why me?”

Brother James McGaughey once gave an illustration of a piece of pottery going through the fires. But I just couldn’t take any more; I turned and ran back into the hospital and down the corridor, through these two double doors, and then I stopped and looked. Just about knee-high on the wall was a poster; there was a silhouette of Jesus hanging on a cross, with His outstretched arms, and underneath it said, “With an everlasting love I have loved thee.”

I dropped my head and walked back.

They performed the emergency C-section and called me afterwards. We had a little girl.

We named her Christina.

When she was born, her head was 17 inches in circumference. Inside your brain, you have four chambers which they call ventricles. These chambers, on a daily basis, produce and store spinal fluid. These things are connected to your spinal column. This fluid is renewed in a day-by-day process. They figured that, somewhere in about the fourth month of pregnancy, a blockage occurred in the bottom half of little Christina’s developing brain. And so these ventricles were producing this fluid, and the fluid had no place to go. So, in essence, the water crushes the brain within the skull.

You don’t see many of these hydrocephalic children today. Most of them are put in homes.

Christina had every feature of a normal baby. She was very cute, with a round face and a little nose. She looked an awful lot like the two children God blessed us with later, which we have now.

I remember the first time I saw her. The hospital was laid out in a strange sort of fashion; I don’t think they consider the ordeal of people who have to go into an intensive-care nursery, because you have to walk right down past the newborn nursery. That may not seem like much, but when you’re going through what we were going through, you notice things like that.

I had to walk down the hall and see all the other parents. I didn’t know whether they were saved or lost. They are looking through the window, happily smiling at their normal babies. I had to walk right by.

I wasn’t ready for some of the shock that I was going to see when I walked into the intensive-care nursery. I don’t know if many of you have ever been to an intensive-care nursery. I walked in and gazed at all the expensive machinery. They made me scrub up ‘way up my arms and put on a special gown. They took me over to where my child was.

On the way over, though I got to see some things. I saw little babies that were no bigger than your hand, wrapped up in cellophane with tape over their eyes, while a machine was trying to keep them alive. You get to see some things that make you step back.

They took me over to Chrissy, and I saw her for the first time. I wasn’t ready for it; so much was happening this day.

I saw her, then I left. My mother was flying in that day; I had to go to the airport to get her. Debbie’s parents had come down to visit us. I was about to go through another experience I didn’t really care for–repeating this story to my mother.

Sometimes, it’s like a wound. You put a bandage on it, then you rip it off. Then you put another one on, and then you rip it off again.

I went home from the hospital and had to face Debbie’s parents. I ran into the house. They said, “What happened?”

I said, “The baby had water on the brain.”

At the airport, my mother stepped off the plane, all happy to see me. Once again, I had to tell the story–everything that happened. And then she said, “We’d better call your grandparents.” Once again, I had to rehearse the story–to my grandparents.

Many details of these days are burned into my mind and my heart. I can’t get rid of them.

It’s hard enough to rear and to care for a normal baby. But try one who’s a little different! Everything that was normal became abnormal, and everything that was abnormal became normal.

She stayed in the intensive-care nursery for two weeks. After that, we got to take her home.

One of the first medical problems which I noticed she was starting to have was something we never dealt with before–she had a seizure. I don’t know if any of you has ever seen that. They can be very scary.

I was at work. I got a telephone call from Debbie. She said, “I had to take Chrissy into the hospital. Something is wrong with her. She started changing colors.”

Immediately the little girl was put on phenobarbitol, a heavy seditive. She remained on that drug until the day she left us.

Let me interject here how God intervened. When I applied for that job at $4.50 an hour, I couldn’t see down the road what was going to take place. But my God did. And even though I didn’t think it was a great deal, He knew some of the things I would have to face without insurance. So He gave me a low wage–just under the “poverty” level, so state funding could take over the hospital expenses. You see, my God provided. How much in total hospital and medical expenses this little girl had wracked up, I have no idea.

On one hospital visit, they presented me with a bill. During the three or four days she was in the hospital, they did virtually nothing more than take a few tests, and it cost $3,000.00.

After we took her home, other complications developed. An additional abnormality for this little girl was that she lost her suckability. You put a bottle in her mouth, and she didn’t know what to do with it. What is normal became abnormal. I think she did take one bottle one time; then she stopped. From that point, Debbie tried syringes and spoon-feeding. For some reason, the girl took the spoon feeding for awhile. But later she got real picky about what she wanted to eat; and then she totally stop.

When she was nine months old, she weighed the same as she did when she was born. The doctors suggested that we allow her to undergo an operation. During this operation, they would surgically implant a rubber hose in the stomach, so we could feed her, and then the hose would be brought outside.

I remember when Chrissy went into the hospital for this. She looked very sick at the time. The operation took a few hours, and was successful.

During this, God taught me something else. I remember going up to the hospital to see Chrissy and Debbie. Debbie said, “Come here; I want to show you something.” She picked up Chrissy, and we went down the hall. We got to a certain room, and Debbie said, “Look in there.”

I said, “OK,” trailing a little behind her. She walked by the room, and I looked, and then I turned away. I couldn’t believe some of the things I was seeing!

Inside that room lay a little boy. His name was Paul. The same thing happened to him that happened to our daughter, but in a different way. His spinal fluid was thick, and his head was enormous! I’m talking about a baby nine months old with a head the size of my own! There he lay, in a little car seat, propped up on a hospital bed. He also had this surgery to place a rubber tube in his stomach.

God showed me some things. Not only was he unable to eat, but Paul had also lost his ability to blink. They had to suture his eyes shut, so they wouldn’t dry it.

I tried the best that I could to minister to Paul’s family. The parents were not around, but I left notes, on which was written, “I’d like to talk to you.”

Once, I bought a balloon and tied it to the baby’s crib. And I stood there with my open Bible, and I read a few things. I said, “Paul, I’ll see you in glory.”

I don’t know what happened to that child. Chances are, he didn’t make it.

I remember another time, when I saw yet another hydrocephalic child.

It’s amazing. When you go through an experience like this, all of a sudden you notice that there are more cases like your own around you than you think.

I was at the supermarket one day, doing some shopping. I noticed a lady pushing a little stroller, and inside there was a little baby. I happened to notice something about this child. The little baby had undergone a medical procedure called a shunt.

This procedure had been performed on my daughter a few days after she was born. A shunt is like an I.V. tube with a one-way valve which they insert underneath the skin, through the skull, into the brain. This bypasses the natural passage through the spinal column in the neck, and allows the fluid to drain all the way underneath the skin down to the intestines.

So, I knew what the shunt looked like, and I recognized it in this little baby in the supermarket. I happened to see this mother, happy as can be, pushing the baby along. I maneuvered myself over to where she was and started talking with her. This case was a little different from my own, and different from Paul’s, and different from any other case. You see, none of these cases is the same. This stuff here affects the brain, right? And what does the brain control? Everything! So, each case is different. At times, you can’t even establish a foundation, from one case to the other, on which to compare notes.

After talking with the mother, I learned that when this child was born, half the child’s brain was born outside the body. These things exist. They had to surgically remove the external half. So, in essence, this child only had half a brain.

As I talked with the mother, I noticed that only one side of the child’s body would move–one arm, one leg.

As time passed, Chrissy’s seizures got more intense. Things got worse. The pressures of school started building up and snowballing. We had to feed the child in a special way. For a period of eight solid weeks, she had one seizure every week. Let me describe what a seizure can do. It’s an electrical dysfunction of the brain, where the waves get screwy. We would first recognize a funny sort of shake come over her face. From there, it would go down to her hand, and then her foot. Her limbs would start twitching. From there, part of the body would get involved; she would get a very blank look to her. At the height of her seizure, she would stop breathing totally, and she would turn blue.

These things continued to get worse and worse. To this day, I don’t know how many seizures she had. I would take a guess at 30 seizures in two-and-half years. Every time she would gain weight, her metabolism would be thrown off-balance by the phenobarbitol–causing her to have a seizure. Every time she had a fever, every time she had an ear infection, it would throw something off, and she would have a seizure. Every time, we would have to go back to the hospital and stay there.

I don’t recall how many times I stood there at night, with my daughter lying in the hospital bed here, and here I am holding a stupid Greek or Hebrew book in one hand, trying to study–how many times, I forget.

As time passed, she grew. She actually was more active than the doctors said she would be; they expected her to be a total vegetable. But she had personality to her. She would smile. At times we noticed her watching things which we earlier thought she couldn’t see. We think she did have some hearing function. At the very end, she was even starting to crawl. She would get up in a crawling position– which was very amazing for a child who wasn’t expected to live.

I remember the adjustments we had to make, with the eating the weight problems, and the doctors. You know, through all this, you try to continue a normal life as much as possible. During these times, we tried to take vacations. I remember one time in particular, I owned a certain car–a Volkswagen Dasher. I’ll never buy another one!

Did you ever have a car that just hated you? Have you ever had that? It sees you coming, and it acts right. Then, you own the thing, and it just falls apart. This was one of these cars. I didn’t really trust my mechanical judgment on a car at this time, so I took a friend with me who worked on cars for a long time. We both went to look at it. Our first mistake was to look at it in the rain. My friend said, “Well, it doesn’t seem too bad to me.”

I needed a new car at this time, so I told the owner, “OK, we’ll take it.”

I took it home and did what everybody else would do; I changed the oil. That was my first mistake. I remember, after changing the oil, I started the thing up–and the thing was fogging from mosquitoes! It didn’t do this when I went to buy it; but, when I brought it home, it decided to do it.

I listened a little closer to this thing–and now it’s making some strange noises! I called my buddy back over. “What does that sound like to you?”

He said, “It sounds like the main.”

I said, “That’s what I thought it was.”

So, there I began this journey of ripping this car half apart. I just did the bottom half; I was going on vacation, and so I was limited on time. I remember getting all the parts, working really hard to put this thing all back together. I remember the day that my vacation had come. We decided we were going to drive back north to New York–1,330 miles one way.

Well, I guess I like adventures! After working all day, we hopped in the car. I drove a little way–about five miles–and the air conditioner quit working. I got a little tired and let the wife take over. At about 2:00 in the morning or so, she was driving and I was dead asleep on the passenger’s side of the car. While dosing in and out of sleep, I listened to the sound of the engine. It’s a four- cylinder; why is it running on three? As I pondered that, I heard a change in the engine noise; it’s a four-cylinder; why is it running on two?

I said, “Deb, pull over.”

She pulled over. I got my tools out; I got the flashlight out. I took a spark plug out, and there was solid carbon all over the thing. I took the other ones out and started scraping them. I also had a spare set of plugs, for which I was glad. I put them in, and we drove another six hours. Then I had to pull them back out, clean the other set, and put them back in.

It was one of those cars in which you pull into the gas station and say, “Check the gas and fill up the oil.” I think, on my one-way trip, I consumed something like 15 quarts of oil.

When I start something, I don’t like to quit; I’m going to see it through. So I got the thing all the way up north. Once home, it started to do strange things. We drove it around during our stay up there, then headed back to Florida–this time stocked up with 24 quarts of oil.

We came to this town called LaGrange, Georgia. I looked at the gauges. I knew that thing was going through oil bad. I said, “We’re going to check it, and we’re going to get some gas.” We pulled over to a gas station; I filled up the gas and checked the oil and, sure enough, it needed some. I poured some in there. We had our daughter with us; she was in the back. My wife returned to the car; I returned to the car. Then we both heard that lovely sound…

Click….

Click….

Nothing’s working!

I got out and looked at it. I tried messing with the timing enough to get it started. It just wouldn’t do it.

A black guy stopped. He said, “You got problems?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “Well, let me try to give you a jump.” He tried, but nothing happened. He said, “I think your starter is gone.”

I said, “That’s what I think it is, too.”

So, I pushed my car out to the side of the road. Keep in mind that I had thirty-five dollars to my name. I had one $300.00 check in my pocket, which Debbie’s dad gave us while we were up visiting him. It was an out-of-state check, which we were supposed to use to send my daughter to a special hospital.

I sat there, looking at my wife, knowing that my funds were low. I looked down the console between the two front seats, and there were some Chick tracts. I said, “Well, I’ve heard of others doing this…”

I said to the wife, “You stay here.” I grabbed the tracts and walked up to the gas pumps.

In a unique way of witnessing, I would start out, “Hey, do you know where there are any parts stores where I can get parts for my car?”

The attendant told me. Then I tried to witness to him and give him a tract.

A red Bronco pulled up. For some reason, I didn’t talk to the guy. He walked buy me and said, “Hi,” and as I nodded my head, he walked in to do what he wanted to do, and came back out. I didn’t stop him. He got into his truck and proceeded to pull out and away.

At about the time his truck was beside my parked car, Debbie was outside with Chrissy in her hands, patting her on the back. This guy had his wife with him, and they had a daughter. They looked over and looked at our daughter. They asked if anything was the matter. Debbie explained something to them.

I turned away, and as I was pondering what I’m going to do and how I’m going to fix this thing, I looked up again–and Debbie was calling me over.

So, I go over, and this guy–whom we don’t know from Adam–said, “What’s the problem?”

I said, “I think my starter’s gone.”

He goes, “Well, I’ll help you. I’ll try to tow-start this thing.”

Well, it’s an automatic. I didn’t know this at the time, but the book says you can’t tow-start an automatic. He left his wife and daughter, and my wife and our daughter, there at our car, took me down to the store where we got a chain. We came back and hooked it up to my car, and we took off.

We were doing about fifty miles an hour–with just two or three feet of distance between us–trying to start this car! I was hitting the brake while he was pulling me–and he wasn’t slowing down; he kept going faster!

Finally, we pulled back into the gas station. He said, “Well, that’s not going to work. I’ll put you up for the night.”

Now, I was kind of leery. Who wouldn’t be? You know what kinds of kooks and nuts are out there. But, I remembered that the Bible said, “The just shall live by faith.” If I had not said yes, I would have missed a great thing.

I said, “OK.”

We piled into his vehicle, and he took off down the road. While he was driving, I was counting the trees! He’s taking a left at this tree here; he’s taking a right now here…. I’m just visualizing the newspaper headlines the next day: Three Found Slain In The Woods.

He pulled in to his driveway and took us into the house. He gave food to my daughter; he gave clothes to her; he let us sleep in their waterbed. He treated us like a king and a queen.

The next day he got up and took off for work. He was a short-distance truck driver. He left word with his wife to help me out. He knew about the check that I had; they helped me cash the check. They then took me to the only parts store there that had the only starter in the whole town that would fit my car. He took me back, and put it back together; I was on the road again.

You say, “What did you learn?” I learned this: that my God is able to prepare a table for me in the presence of mine enemies. Who’s my enemy? The world. He prepared a place.

Just think for a second. What would you have done? Would you have reached back into your wallet and pull out that ol’ plastic money? Would you have done that? I didn’t have any credit cards; I’m glad I didn’t, because I got to see my God move in a marvelous way.

I continued to go through school.

By the third year of my schooling, the closer I seemed to get to graduation, the stronger the pressures became. Down there, it’s a pressure cooker to begin with, but some of the things I was facing made it even worse.

The next thing I was about to face caught me all off guard. We tried everything for our daughter; what parent wouldn’t? We went to different doctors; we went to a naturalist doctor, who suggested using certain foods. To be quite honest, what the guy had to say was true; it actually started to help my daughter. But the one thing that using juices and special natural foods didn’t do–and I’m all for it one hundred per cent–was help my daughter gain weight. Now, since I was making a low wage, the state was still taking care of my daughter to some degree. But they kept their “eye” on me; we had to take her in for checkups. But for awhile, we didn’t have to take her to the doctors or to the hospital, because she wasn’t having any seizures as of late. So we didn’t take her in for a few weeks, and they wondered where we were. So they sent out some social workers to see us– unannounced.

They came into our house and looked at our daughter. They didn’t say too much and took off. A few days later, I saw a white car pulling up in my yard. Somebody gets out and serves me a subpoena to go to court–for medical neglect.

I did everything they said! I tried everything I could think of. To give you some degree of the complexities of these things, her records were over 50 pages long–50 pages of visits, of complications.

Here I am, trying to finish school, trying to pay the medical bills– and now I have a lawyer to deal with!

After I was through some of these things for awhile, it just didn’t seem to have much devastating effect on me anymore. I had seen God move in some mighty and strange ways, and I was learning how to lean on Him more and more, learning how to let Him take control.

The day I had to go to court, I was reading my Bible, and a verse stuck out at me: “I will build a hedge about thee; I will make you a brazen wall, that none can come close.” The lawyer, who was also a Christian, went in there with me. A few days later, the lawyer called me and said the state decided not to press charges.

My God was delivering me again. He was taking care of me and providing for me.

I remember graduation day. I finally got to the end. Oh, what a feeling! You get to the end, and you are finished. You know, your life falls into a routine; we were getting used to it.

One day, my little girl had a dietary imbalance. She started a seizure right after church. We came home that night, and she started in with the twitching right away. Usually, a seizure lasted only five minutes; it seemed like an eternity, but that’s usually the extent of it. This one went for two-and-a-half hours.

We picked her up and took her to the hospital again. They injected her with heavy drugs, but they wouldn’t sedate her. The seizure kept going on and on.

I had a friend at this time; all this time in Pensacola, God used only one person to comfort me. The preachers who were there did what they could, but God used a fellow classmate who was more helpful than anybody else. He was there with me that night in the hospital; he was showing me scripture; he was saying things. He was a real, close friend–oh, the times we spent together!

You see, many times I stood all alone, walking out into my yard at night, listening to my wife rock a baby who was crying and wouldn’t stop. I would look up into the heavens and say, “God, I just want to quit. I’ve had enough!”

A few days would go by, and then somebody would come up to me and say, “You know, I really get a blessing out of you.” I don’t say any of these things to give me glory by any means; in fact, to hear them say that was a humbling experience. I would then say to God, “Yes, God, I want some more. I won’t quit. I’ll take one more step. One more step.”

After all, isn’t that what life is–just one step after another? We have a tendency to look ‘way down the road and think that happiness is a thing that’s ‘way over here–but it’s not. We think that if we just own this one car, or this one house, living in a certain place, we’ll be happy. But happiness seems to be a thing that eludes us. It seems to be a pot of gold at the end of a receding rainbow.

What is “happiness”? Knowing the Lord. Walking with Him. Talking with Him. That’s when the joy and the happiness come in–and the “peace of God, which passeth all understanding.”

By graduation, my daughter had grown somewhat, but not normally. One time, when she was born, her whole body proportions were out of whack; the head was larger than the body. Because there was so much brain damage, the brain would not develop. So, now, at the age of two-anda -half years, her body had grown larger in proportion than her head.

Something started getting seriously wrong with her in September of 1986. During one week, we took her to the doctor every day for four days in a row. She was acting strange in way that we had never seen before; she could not be comforted by any means. She would lie in her crib and just moan back and forth and just moan and cry, hour after hour.

We took her to the doctor; the doctor would say, “Oh, it’s just gastritis. Here, give her this medicine.”

We did that. The next day, it was no better. We took her back. “Oh, it’s this, this, and this. Let’s do this….” It was no better.

The third day, we took her back. “It’s this, this, and this.” We did what they said; it was no better.

Now we come to September 17. At this time Debbie was carrying my son Joshua. That right there in itself added to the pressure. You already had one that wasn’t right. You wonder about the second. As before, Chrissy could not be comforted, so we took her to the doctor again.

Looking back now, I can see clearly what was wrong–why the doctor didn’t tell me at the time, I don’t know. I looked at the doctor as she looked at the baby; the doctor had perplexity in her face; she didn’t know, and she wasn’t about to tell me. Had she told me something, I could have tried something else–but she didn’t. She mumbled, “I think it’s this.”

We went to get some medicine again and went home. Debbie, carrying Joshua at the time, was very tired. I said, “You just lie down. I’ll put Chrissy in the crib and do the grocery shopping.” There were two stores I was going to. After arriving at the first store, something– I don’t know what–told me that I better get home quickly.

I put the groceries into the back of the vehicle. I looked down the road, and up ahead I saw flashing red lights. I saw an ambulance. I muttered a prayer, “God, I hope that’s not my house.”

But it was.

I pulled into the driveway; they were wheeling a stretcher across my yard. I went in the house; Debbie was crying. The preacher had just arrived, and motioned me to go toward the back of the house with him.

You know, people react differently to this kind of stress; some people just break down and cry. But I, at the time, had a tendency to get very angry. I wasn’t angry at anybody; I wasn’t angry at God. I was just angry at the fact that I had been fighting for two-and-a-half years, and I felt like I had just lost the war.

As they were working on my little daughter, they asked me questions. I snapped the answers back to them. They asked for a name, and I would almost spell it and spit it out to them at the same time. They looked at me strangely–but it was my way of handling the stress I was facing then. It’s different when you see your own child right there.

They wheeled her out and put her in the ambulance. The preacher left, but his wife stayed with us. We got into our car–that piece of junk I had, the Volkswagen–this time it was fixed, but it still couldn’t go fast very fast. As we were driving toward the hospital, I was trying to keep up with everybody, but I couldn’t. They were speeding down the road, and Mrs. McGaughey, the preacher’s wife, said, “Hit the horn!”

It didn’t work.

We arrived there a little later than the ambulance and everybody else. We had returned to a hospital I had been to so many times, I almost knew it like the back of my hand–where the corridors were, how to get to where. I pulled in. We go through the preliminary paperwork, and then they took me back to a place I hadn’t been before.

This was a Catholic hospital. The only reason we were dealing with a Catholic hospital at this time was because they happened to have some of the best equipment.

This nun came out and started talking to us. When they were leading us to the admissions office, I walked right by where they were working on Chrissy. At the office, they said, “Here’s a form we need you to fill in.”

I put the form before me and started to fill it in with my name. At the very end of the form, there was another blank I needed to fill in–the time. I signed the form and then glanced up at the clock for the time.

If anybody reading this knows anything about Bible numerics, you’ll understand the significance of this–the time was 5 o’clock–exactly. That’s the number of death in the Bible.

I looked at that clock and then started to realize what was taking place.

The doctors never knew what happened to the girl. They performed their tests, and after working on her for a period, they came to us and said, “She’s now totally brain dead.” Now, they were keeping her alive with a machine.

I remember going into her room. They had her in a bed with a special heating element over her. There are some things you see that you just never forget. I remember looking at her eyes, as she just lay there motionless–it’s a look I’ll never forget. There was no light coming back out. None. Have you ever seen a dog, when they are playing? Their eyes flash and light up? You can see that in a lot of people, too–their eyes just have a life about them.

But that was gone.

Like shades pulled over the eyes.

Once again, there at the hospital, the staff put me under some tremendous pressure by confronting me with a decision. Thank God for doctors; they can do a lot of good things. But there is one thing they cannot do–prolong life. They can keep the body lying there, and they can prolong agony at times.

They had done some good, but now they came to me and said, “We’ve done all we can do. Now what do you want us to do?” Now, they placed the burden back on me.

Had things gone on in a natural course, that girl would have died that day. But they decided to prolong her life with machines–and now they’re putting me under more pressure.

I had never had to face this before–whether to keep her on the life-support system, or take her off.