44. Aspergers and Bankruptcy
© 2021 Daniel Yordy
June 2010 – September 2011
In late June or early July of 2010, I went together with my family to the Barnes and Noble at Gray and Shepherd, just down the street from our usual Sunday-dinner Souper Salad. I was fifty-three years old. As usual, everyone quickly scattered through the rows of books. I went into the upstairs of this store and turned down an aisle between two book shelves. At the far end of the aisle, on the bottom row of the shelf running perpendicular to this aisle, I saw a book.
Now, it might seem an “extraordinary” thing to you that I saw a book in a book store. Nonetheless, what I saw was a picture of a twelve-year-old boy with his eyes squinted tightly shut. I could not do anything but run down that aisle. When I was close enough to see the title of the book, I read, “Look Me in the Eye.” With a picture like that under those words, I could not do anything else but grab that book, buy it, and begin to read.
And what I read, in that book, was the story of my own life. You see, when I was a twelve-year-old boy, the most awful words I could ever hear was some stern man commanding me, “Look me in the eye.” I never did; I could not.
In actuality, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger’s is the autobiography of John Robeson. John Robeson is my same age. Outwardly, the course of his life was very different from mine; inwardly, our life was identical. In his teenage years John had known some abuse; I had known none. Yet the things he did and the reasons he did them in his teenage thinking were identical to mine. Then, in his twenties, his love of designing patterns took him into becoming the stage designer for the rock band, KISS, with Gene Simmons, whereas my love of designing patterns took me into designing and building Christian community, very different outwardly, but identical inside in our thinking and all our approaches to what we did. And we were doing these things through the same years, for we were about the same age.
From beginning to end, this little book described all the love and passion, hurt and confusion of my life. It answered every unanswered question, thousands of them, even questions I did not know were there. Such profound relief, such joy, to know that I am not WRONG, that there are other people who experience the world in just the same way I do.
Asperger’s is a sub-group in what is called “the Autism Spectrum.” It is typically an inherited condition, rather than the medical injury that is most of today’s autism, abusive injury coming from the vile practice of injecting loads of toxic chemicals straight into the bloodstream of infants. Asperger’s are also called “high-performing autism.”
If you met me face to face, you would at first not think me any different from anyone else. Nonetheless, if you were to walk with me through daily and public circumstances, it would not take you long to notice my autistic peculiarities. And if I did not point those things out to you, it would not take you long to define me as so many have.
In July, we purchased tickets and attended the circus at the large Reliant Stadium as a family. Before the show started, the performers were rehearsing inside the rings, while crowds of onlookers pressed close to watch. Maureen and the children pushed through the crowds until they were against the dividing fence in order to watch the rehearsal. I did not. I feel very UN-comfortable in such public and exposed settings, and so instead, I backed up all the way against an outer fence with no one behind me. From this protected place I could enjoy my children’s enjoyment from a distance. Then, just before the show began, we went up into the stands to find our seats. You see, I had a ticket with a seat number on it. Then, I found the seat with that SAME number and sat down. Instantly, I was completely safe; I was now in my place where I was “supposed” to be.
This had been my norm all my life, yet all the way through I had puzzled and agonized over “what was WRONG with me,” and other people as well, reacting to my responses in the way that all who are Asperger’s experience. As I stood there in my temporarily almost “safe” place, and when I sat down in the chair where I BELONGED and all thought of exposure vanished, in both instances I marveled and said to myself. “I am Asperger’s. This is Asperger’s. Many other people are the same as I. I’m okay; it’s all right. I am free in Jesus to be what He made me to be.”
I purchased several more books on Asperger’s over the next while and connected with some Asperger’s things online. Several months after this, while I was teaching college, actually, I attended a gathering of Asperger’s with Maureen at the University of Houston, in a program overseen by Dr. Katherine Loveland, professor of Autism Research. As I listened to those others who were Asperger’s sharing of their life experiences, I heard my own life experience in theirs. There was a real sense of belonging for me. Nonetheless, I had two problems. The first was internal, you see, I was a highly educated professional, a college instructor and a literary man; most Asperger’s don’t do well in school. This was a bit hard to put together. The second was towards Professor Loveland. It seemed to me that we were “specimens for study” to her.
I have not continued these connections, for there is no fruit of Christ in the knowledge of God through that avenue. Nonetheless, I have learned something very important through my study. Those who research and write “about” Asperger’s as a field of study mostly don’t know what they’re talking about. If you read official stuff, don’t take it as complete reality. In contrast, everything I have read written by people who are Asperger’s just sings as truth to me.
One of the most important things I have read is this, and I paraphrase. “Many think that Asperger’s people have no feelings or empathy towards other people. This is opposite of the truth. Asperger’s carry a deeper empathy towards the hurts and sufferings of others than most, but the problem is that they feel TOO MUCH. For that reason, in order to cope with life, they learn at an early age to compartmentalize their feelings, and to disassociate from them to a certain extent, so that they will not be overwhelmed.” And so I did and do.
The responses of zealous Christians towards those who are autistic can be brutal at times. Even at Lakewood Church, one of the children’s pastors had an autistic son. He shared one time about their love for their son and all he had learned caring for the child. He brought the boy out onto the stage as a blessing. This was all wonderful, but I thought to myself. “No sir, that boy is not in your life so that you can discover healing from God to ‘fix’ him. That boy is in your life to show you Christ Jesus through him in a way you have never considered.”
In fact, that experience inspired these words written in October, 2011. – “If we want to know the way into the fullness of Christ, we had better go looking for people who never get it right, for people who are crippled and maimed in body and in soul; we need to follow the blind. If we want to know God, we better find a Down syndrome boy and ask him to tell us the secret; we better find an autistic girl and learn what makes her sing.”
Asperger’s as How I Function
The question here, however, is what does being Asperger’s mean inside this time period and in how I approach and write about God and the Bible?
Asperger’s includes the following qualities: (1) an obsessive mind, driven to see patterns; (2) a deep vulnerability and inadequacy, a deep sense of peril – this quality creates blinders around the mental drive, it also causes the ‘blocking out’ of other people as unsafe; (3) an inherent, even compelling need for honesty; (4) a profound empathy, a deep sensitivity that becomes way too much, and thus requires the practice of disassociation.
Please understand, I did not make myself this way; rather, I am only discovering how God designed me and His purposes for my design. Thus, in sharing these things, I am not boasting of myself, but only seeking to understand myself as God made me, and thus to become more comfortable with His purposes.
To people in general, I am a strange mix of contradictions, seemingly empathic and seemingly disconnected, seemingly kind and seemingly self-centered, even harsh. To bullies, I seem an easy target, yet they are always astonished to discover that they never had the slightest hold on me. To God, I am always in great need of salvation, and, having found my Salvation, I will never let Him go.
Yet it is towards the Bible that all of these qualities come into play, as well as the kind of mind, both the brain-mind and the heart/gut-mind, God gave to me. Intellectually, God gave me a reasonably high IQ, at the bottom of the level required to see and understand the larger picture and where things fit. But my mind is also literary and tends towards story; I can do math, but I don’t like it. At the same time, I have a practical side, specifically in construction, and thus I am driven to see how things fit together.
And that’s the key word – driven. My brain goes non-stop, and I spend much of my time doing things that calm it down. I HAVE TO understand the world and how everything fits together. And I remember many things, not photographically, but rather, things that interest me. At the same time, the sensitive vulnerability carries all hurt. Even through the years of the “Season of Symmorphy,” coming up, the very thought of Blueberry caused only severe and sharp pain that could not be viewed.
Consider the three places where I feel completely safe, where I “belong.” First is my home library and my easy chair where I read or watch stories. Second is the classroom, where I am the teacher – this extends itself to writing. And third is the construction site, where I fit things together to create places where people can belong.
Yet look at this balance between a mental drive that never slows down and a desperate need to find safety in an unsafe world, along with a requirement for honesty. You see, I cannot treat the Bible intellectually, for how could my brain ever place me into the salvation of God? It is my desperate vulnerability, then, that requires me to find and know a Personal Savior, both in my heart AND on every page of the Bible. My requirement for honesty is what causes such pain inside when I hear preachers abusing the word or what the Bible says about God. I have never been able to ignore any challenge to what God says, for I must worry that thing for months until the Word God actually speaks has become my only dwelling place.
This is an obsession, driven relentlessly. I must know God; I must know Father with me at home in my heart by every word that He speaks – and I cannot really say “or I will die,” for there is no thought other than the obsession.
My Project Guides
I continued writing the project guides for individual homeschoolers and putting them for sale on my website into the summer of 2010. I did get to meet one of those students and her mother, who lived in Katy, Texas, at an event in a state park both of our families enjoyed. They were Sufi Muslim, from Indonesia, and they were wonderful and caring people. I looked up “Sufi” afterwards and was astonished at the similarity it shares with union with Christ. The thing is, Jesus is Savior, not ideas of the mind.
I can include this regarding Asperger’s; the thought that having the ‘correct’ mental ideas might ‘save,’ a delusion held by many Christians, is only absurd to me.
Nonetheless, I found that writing each next project guide became harder and harder. It was like trying to swim through, first thick syrup, and then becoming as wet concrete. There came a moment when my ability to put my mind around one more project guide vanished as a snap, as a great gulf. The “wet concrete” had become a “brick wall” in my mind. I was unable to finish all the guides I had agreed to write for the girl from Katy, but her mother was very understanding and was happy to support me, regardless.
And so my great intention to provide for my family through an Internet business came to nothing.
Another School Year for the Children
In the fall of 2010, Johanna was looking at 11th grade, Katrina 8th grade, and James 5th. Homeschooling under my direction had not proven very productive for them. Only Katrina wanted to continue with her self-directed studies.
We enrolled James in Royalwood Elementary School, a public school several blocks from our home. James was born in October, like I was, but whereas I started first grade at 5 going on 6, we did not start James until he was 6 going on 7. For that reason, he was in the older segment among his classmates, and a bit bigger than most of the other boys. This made me very comfortable, for he would not be a target for bullies. More than that, James has always carried himself in a way that such difficulties would never be an issue.
We met James’s teachers; they were good Texas women, primarily Christian, and that would be true whether African or European American. It did not take long to discover the results of a year of “un-schooling.” Although his mother did have to stay on top of his getting his homework, done, typical for any boy, still, he was better off in the classroom because of the year’s break.
James would spend the next four-and-a-half years in the public schools of Sheldon ISD.
Each one of our children is quite unique, and I love pondering over their similarities and differences. Johanna did not fare so well in the isolation of homeschooling and more than that, having seen me in the classroom, and then comparing that outgoing and expressive “me” with the “me” at home that was incapable, I realize only now how hard that must have been for her.
My first problem is that females terrify me. I can talk personal things only with Maureen and that only sometimes. I can converse freely with my boys about every sensitive topic, but when it comes to personal issues with my daughters, I leave that to Maureen, for I am scared witless, that is, it is venturing out into a very unsafe place where I do not belong. In fact, it’s too far out there for me even to consider such a venture.
But that does not answer the heart-need of a teenage girl.
You see, I titled this chapter “Asperger’s and Bankruptcy,” but I could have also titled it “My Season of Failure,” not as different from all the other chapters of my life, but where failure became intensely personal.
Johanna always got mad at me when I tried to share some understanding concerning this world. She did not want to hear any such thing. In the opposite direction, however, Johanna had me wrapped around her little finger and knew that she could get me to do or buy for her anything she wanted. “Daddy, could you get this for me?” Saying “No” never entered my mind, that is, if I could afford it.
That brings the thought of Cracker Barrel. We enjoyed many times at various Cracker Barrel restaurants as a family. We would first eat their good home-style meals. Kyle and Johanna often sat together at their own table. They grew up being very close friends. We would play checkers or the little triangle peg-jumping game while waiting for our food. Then after we ate, we would wander together through their country store, always ending up at the stick candy display each time. Each of us would pick out two or three choices of stick candy flavors; I made sure they all learned to like horehound. Then we would sit in the rocking chairs out front, sucking on our candy sticks.
I left out the fourth place where I was safe; I was safe going out with my family, doing such pleasurable things together. I was safe when one of my little ones held my hand and said, “Daddy.”
But I still could not talk of personal things with girls, nor intrude myself into their lives. And so Johanna also objected to “Christ is my life; I have no other life.” At least, that’s what it seemed to me, a continuation of her antagonism towards my talking about this world.
Later in the summer, after Johanna had set her heart on going to school at Upsala Christian Community, I drove home from somewhere, just me and her in the car. Somehow our conversation had become prickly, and I was feeling very defensive. She wanted to tell me how difficult being at home alone was for her, but I did not know that. Her frustration with me and my inability provoked in me only a tighter clasp of my own blinders and inability to connect.
In my foolishness, I imagined she was attacking me, and so I said, “Christ is my life; I have no other life.” But in her teenage girl’s need, she heard only a dad who was shutting her out. She got out of the car angry and in tears. I did not know what to do.
I did not understand any of this until my recent visit with Johanna in Canada, where she shared of this and I could hear her freely. It was this sorrow that was the first pause in my writing of this chapter.
Johanna, I do not use my searing inability as any excuse; I was wrong. I ask you to forgive me. And I think you know that I have always loved you deeply, and that I have always covenanted with God for your sake.
We were visiting with Sandy and Richard in The Woodlands. Sandy gave our children the task of sorting through a large number of coins. Many of these were Canadian coins, which she then offered to the girls, knowing they were Canadian.
Johanna took the Canadian money and said, “What will we do with this?” Maureen answered her, “Maybe you can give it to Matt when you see him at camp next time.” And then, without thought, the words flew out, “Or maybe you can spend it when you go to school up there.” And in that moment, Johanna grabbed hold of that thought as from the Lord and would not let it go.
Johanna went to the youth camp in Missouri again in July, where she visited again with her friends come down from the Christian community in Upsala, Ontario. At the same time, she applied for and was accepted into the school at Upsala Christian Community, about a hundred miles northwest of Thunder Bay, which is on Lake Superior. A number of the people there knew us well. Johanna is a Canadian citizen, so that was never an issue.
Now, I have never done anything in my life that demonstrates my profound trust in God than to allow my daughter to return to a move community and to be again part of “the move.” To release her utterly into God, that He directed her steps, and that He alone kept her, this was not an easy thing for me, yet it was also never a question. It was always the only possibility.
And so Maureen and I placed our precious daughter into God our Father, and released her to leave home far away for her last two years of high school. And somehow we also knew, both of us, that Upsala was different, even though we had never been there, that the family and ministry in that community would receive her with kindness, in ways that were not the same in all other move communities I had known. We could not have agreed to anywhere else.
During the first part of September, we drove Johanna to the large airport in Houston to put her all by herself on a plane flying to Toronto and then to Thunder Bay. Our Jo was just sixteen. Johanna is very intelligent, but she can also be oblivious like her dad. We stood there watching as our little girl went through security and then to where she would go either left or right to her gate. She turned the wrong way and vanished from our sight!
And in that moment I discovered that I had married a Lioness. My wife would not be turned aside. She persevered and persevered before every obstacle until they allowed her through to find her daughter and bring her safely back. She insisted until they had placed Johanna on another flight the next day.
When we took Johanna to the airport again the next day, she was now focused. Her flight went well and she was welcomed back into Christian community in the wilderness. I must also mention here that Kim and Joe Rideau wanted to help provide for Johanna’s school costs, and so they paid her living of $100 a month for the first school year. Later, Johanna was able to earn the money to pay her own costs.
Katrina wanted to continue the homeschooling another year, and so it was just she and I. In my mind things went better, and I really enjoyed overseeing her learning. We sat together each day and went through her various studies. I laid out for her the work for the day, and then left her to do it as she wished. Her studies continued basically as before.
Meanwhile Kyle continued at South Plains College outside of Lubbock, staying with his Aunt Lois.
Bankruptcy
In September of 2010, the money that had been available for Miss Ruth to be cared for in her own home ran out. Maureen had a good relationship of friendship with Miss Ruth’s daughter, Sandra, one that has continued until now. At the same time, of all the people Maureen has cared for, Miss Ruth was the most kind. And so it was very sad to everyone involved that Miss Ruth had to go into a nursing facility for the duration. She did not last long there, but passed on a short time after.
Maureen had lost her good job, and we now had no income.
And so the expectations had all vanished, the hammer had swung home, and we were now faced with a terrible reckoning. I’m sure an astute reader will have picked up on a whole lot of spending of borrowed money. Here I must give a full account.
We were scrambling to pay the bills. We looked for and found help from a number of directions. Lakewood Church helped us a bit, and Sandy and Richard Roberts were very generous to us.
After about three weeks, Maureen did find a new care-taking job through an agency, assisting an elderly couple, Art and Mary Katherine Kleiderer, in their home, which was several blocks south of the Lakewood Church area. At the same time, I also looked for part-time work, and so, even though it was late in the season, I did apply for a job as an adjunct, that is, a part-time instructor with Lone Star College. I had no idea of getting such a job, however.
Even though we were late on our mortgage payment, nonetheless, we were somehow able to pay all of our bills.
Yet these weeks without income had thrown us into reality, for we had been “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” as is said, for sometime now, finagling our finances somehow to keep up with all the payments, which were low on each, and thus nothing was being paid off.
It had to stop, and so we found a bankruptcy lawyer, and managed to put together the $1000 he required. We could do that because the moment we signed a contract with him, we no longer had to pay any of our many bills, other than ongoing utilities.
Here is reality. From the time we left Blair Valley, from September of 1998 until September of 2010, twelve years, our living had cost, on average, $1000 more each month than our income. Now this did include the three years of living on student loans, and I do not include the mortgage on our house in this overall calculation. With the student loans, although I did make many payments, I was also able to obtain long periods of forbearance in which they allowed me not to pay without placing me in default.
The majority of the burdensome debt, however, came from my many attempts to provide for my family through self-employment, starting with the cabinet-making tools I bought while we were still at the Applegate trailer park in Lubbock. I never really paid any of that back, and further attempts only increased that debt in sizeable increments. I also got too excited buying stuff for my kids, especially at Christmas time.
Yes, I wore blinders, always HOPING that next time something would work out.
The worst though was the money I borrowed from my mother. When Franz and Audrey took our home place and made it their own, they paid mom an agreed upon “mortgage” with a monthly payment. In 2005, then, Franz’s bee business, Snow Peak Apiaries, was doing well enough that Franz could get a new mortgage that also allowed him to expand his business. Land values on the west coast were going up and up. With that new mortgage, he was able to pay mom the remainder of what was due to her, about $80,000.
We had so many high-interest bills at that time, and so I asked her if we could borrow $40,000 from her to pay off those high-interest bills and then pay her a sizable monthly payment in return. At the same time she sent us the money, our furnace/air conditioner went out and we used a few thousand of that to replace it, though we got a tremendous bargain through one of my students at C.E. King. We did make the payments to mom for several years, through our time at Family Christian, but then we just did not have the money and so I stopped, again, hoping that my Internet business would provide for all.
The truth is, I did not include this fact in my earlier chapters because I am ashamed of it. Sometimes it’s good to be ashamed of things, at least for a bit.
Bankruptcy is deeply humiliating. We had to give an account of every single item we owned. That’s when I discovered that we had over three thousand books. I’m sorry, but I do like books.
Not long into this process, I woke up one night and, for the first time, realized the awful thing I had done. You see, when I speak of “being oblivious” or “wearing blinders,” I’m not speaking of something incidental, but of something complete. I did not know; I had not seen.
As I lay there in the awfulness of having borrowed nearly $150,000 from other people and then spent it, never to return, my precious knowledge of union with Christ seemed to be entirely inadequate. And so I spent that night, trying to pull the old familiar darkness of shame and accusation back upon myself.
And in this season of failure, I failed at that as well.
Let me share what union with Christ means to me. It means one thing, that Jesus is an integral part of my life, that every moment is He sharing Himself with me. And inside of all my inability, Jesus remains Himself, real and alive, living inside my heart.
By morning, Jesus Himself arose inside of me in all joy, “My son,” He said to me, “I carry you, even in all your failure, even in this.”
From the time I began writing the Christ Our Life letters in November of 2009, this level of Jesus saving me became a regular occurrence. I know Him, and no one could ever take from me the joy of a living Savior arising every moment.
Sure, I experienced times of discouragement through these years, times when I did not send out any letters for a week or two, but they never lasted long, and they always ended abruptly in the joy of my Savior singing inside of me.
Jesus is real, and He really is my life.
Into the College Classroom
Then, on an incredible day, September 22, 2010, I received a phone call from Beverley Turner, the Dean of Developmental Education at the Montgomery Branch of Lone Star Community College, located in The Woodlands. She said she had my application and resume and asked me to come for an interview the next day, a Thursday.
Beverley Turner was an older, gentle woman, almost like the Mennonite women I had known (if she was Christian, it would have been private in that setting). The interview went well and I was hired to teach developmental writing. Of truth, Miss Turner was the “best” female boss of my experience, similar in many ways to Warren Yoder.
This was late in the semester. The reason for their need to hire me was that a number of students had applied late, and thus needed a late-starting developmental writing course. Developmental reading and writing are considered pre-college courses, and thus my Master’s degree in education qualified me for that position. To have been hired to teach regular college composition, I would have needed eighteen credit hours in graduate level English of which I had only three. Nonetheless, I much prefer to teach struggling students to write than to deal with those who already can.
I stepped into the college classroom again on Monday, September 27, 2010. The Montgomery Branch was just past The Woodlands off of I-45, about a 50 minute drive from home. I had the red Buick, with all of its problems, for this drive.
Here is the front main entry of the college. I did teach in the building on the left for a couple of months. That was the English Department this first semester and where I had the interview. My first classroom, however, was in a temporary classroom module, located to the back right, next to the cafeteria. In the spring semester, all English courses would move over to a new building just finished to the left of this picture. The developmental reading and writing courses were their own department, but they were also tucked into the English part of things.
This was so exciting to me, having a college classroom in which to really develop my writing course. I had around twenty students, of varying ages, some just out of high school and some much older, come back to school to gain a better job. These were students who had not done well on their writing entrance exam and thus needed instruction in writing to do well enough in their regular college courses. Miss Beverley had given me her own syllabus to copy and change for my own use; I had done so with a quick layout of my approach. The developmental writing course has a lab component, making it a 4 credit course, and thus I had sixty classroom hours into which to fit my writing course. This was absolute fun.
The difference with teaching college is very simple. These were adults, and they needed no baby-sitting, neither did they talk while I was teaching (except a few fresh out of high school, and only a bit). Basically, you condensed what would take a year in a high school classroom into, in this case, twelve weeks. I went up to The Woodlands two times a week for my one course. The down side of teaching college, however, is that the college students are in for one semester and then gone. There is no real ongoing interaction with them outside of the course itself. For that reason, there is little to share about any interaction with people in this part of my work life.
A Time of Humiliation
Before I got the college instructor job, however, Sandy and Richard Roberts had offered me a job building kitchen and closet cabinets for their home. They were remodeling it to prepare it for the market. They planned to sell and find a more rural place to live as they continued to talk about “community.” This was a big job that would provide us with some income, and so I tackled it. I had only the simplest of power tools, however, and only my back porch in which to work.
I had contracted with the Roberts to be finished by the end of October. Because of gaining the teaching job, however, my work slowed down a bit, and the finish date was being pushed back. They were patient and understanding. The problem was that they also had a deadline for the sale of their house.
Sandy and Richard did have some strange ideas, including not wanting anything to do with the Holy Spirit. Maureen and I went with them to a Bible study put on by some others whom they had connected with through the same ‘community’ website. We rode with them to Bryan, Texas for that get together. The brother was teaching from Ezekiel, and he seemed to have no knowledge of Paul’s gospel. We did visit about community with this group, but it seemed that we were on different planets.
In seeking further relationship in the Lord with all of these, we found no knowledge of the Spirit, nor any perception of what I teach.
Persevering with the cabinet work became more difficult for me. Again, I was feeling the mental disconnect that made it feel like swimming through thickness to keep at the job. I confess that at times I chose to write my Christ our Life letters when I should have been working on the Roberts’ cabinets. I have never tired nor ever known any disconnect in writing to know the Lord.
And so time went on, and I was not finishing. It was into November, and, as I was installing the first parts, I think they were not satisfied with the results. It is difficult to do fine woodworking without high quality tools. I really should not have taken on the job. I knew I was not meeting their needs, but I could not face it, so I put blinders on and kept going forward. In that state I am unable to communicate; I can only plow ahead, refusing to see outside of my narrow path. I do that because I feel very unsafe.
Sometime near the end of November I took up a load of bedroom closet cabinets to install. Not long after I started, Richard came home from work to talk with me. He informed me that they had decided to hire someone else to do the job, someone who would do it much more quickly. He doubted that this new contractor would want to use anything I had done. He offered a much smaller sum of money than what I was expecting to earn. I had been counting on this pay for our living, and so I remonstrated with him, but it was final.
I drove home in complete humiliation. I was 54 years old and still subject to public, autistic humiliation. I was in pain. I cried out to God in desperation, “I didn’t mean to be this way, God. I didn’t mean to be.”
By the time Richard came down a couple of days later to pick up the materials I had purchased with his money, I had humbled myself. I accepted the money he offered and my wrong and asked his forgiveness.
Then, I had entered the college classroom with a bit of a poor attitude towards these college students. I had pre-judged that they “should have” learned to write when they were in school, and that it was “their fault” that they had not. This was not a strong attitude, but it did show itself in comments I made from time to time. At a certain point, I realized that I was completely wrong. There were any number of reasons why these older students needed help learning to write better and most of them were not their fault. I apologized to them for my attitude and have not carried that self-righteous view of others since.
Sometime in October, then, a teacher of developmental reading had to take time off for health, and so Miss Beverley asked me if I would take on that class. This would be on the same days on which I already taught. And so I stepped into the middle of that classroom. I did not at first connect well with this group; they were accustomed to their former teacher and were resistant towards me. At the same time, I knew little of how one might “learn to read,” as I have said before. This was also before my self-righteousness had come to its necessary end. These students seemed quite immature, even though they were older. In fact, one was a young police officer who was acting like an adolescent.
I became angry with this group one day and said some unkind things. One of the young ladies, a strong-forehead sort of person, filed a formal complaint with the appropriate authorities in the college. This was frightening to me, but Miss Beverley helped me with perspective. During the next class session, I shared with them that I had not slept well and was under some stress. I said that I was not offering that as an excuse, that the comments I had made were wrong. I asked for their forgiveness. After this semester was over, the same young lady who had made the complaint wrote a comment of how much she appreciated my stance and how much she had learned from me.
In November, a pickup ran into Maureen’s blue Prism and totaled it. She was not injured, but now we had only one car, the somewhat unreliable Buick.
Maureen and I went before the bankruptcy judge in December. This was a very somber occasion. Our lawyer was with us as well as a number of other people in bankruptcy with their lawyers. We went through the process; it is not designed to make anyone feel very good about themselves, but there were no snags either. When we left, we had no more debts – except the student loans, which cannot be bankrupted by decree of congress contrary to the U.S. Constitution.
This was a low moment for us, but we were free.
Also in December, while I was feeling quite low, Bonnie Morris shared with me that a ministry from Phoenix, named Rick Manis, whose messages she had really enjoyed, would be sharing in a little Pentecostal church in northeast Texas, called Life Tabernacle Church. At the same time, a sister who lived in Longview, Texas, had been in communication with me concerning what I teach. And so I took Katrina and James with me for this trip. We spent a night in the home of the sister in Longview and had good fellowship with her, then we went on to Life Tabernacle Church Sunday morning. While we were sitting in the pre-service “Sunday school” time, an older lady began to speak in the anointing of God. I said to James and Katrina, listen carefully, for you are hearing a mighty woman of God. They had already recognized it.
Rick Manis had a good word; I visited with him a bit, though no long-term connections were made. But then I also had the chance to visit with the older lady who knew the Lord in such power. It turns out that this church was the first church in Texas to receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit right after Azusa Street, when her own parents were young. I drove home from this experience much lifted up and restored by the Lord from the lowness of the prior couple of months.
Learning from Pastor Joel
Pastor Joel always started his sermon with a silly joke. Thus, when we opened our Bibles, we were laughing. This worked well, as it came naturally from Joel. Then, Joel had one basic message, and that is to be confident in God’s presence and favor in our lives. Yet each time he taught his primary message, it was always fresh and new and anointed of the Lord.
On a number of occasions, Joel shared about how God enabled him to deal with criticism, his nicer word for the onslaught thrown against him by so many. I embraced what he shared into myself, for I needed such help. Joel shared that when God gives you a path to walk, there will always be opponents, but to counteract them, we should gather around us those who see what God is doing and who support and encourage us in that path.
Pastor Joel said two things, one often, and the other in every service, that were as an open door for me into the heavens, enabling me to receive whatever God might be teaching me through Joel’s illustrations and stories. The first was – “in all that God intends for you,” and the second was, “you don’t have to attend here, find any Bible-based church where you are comfortable.” Those seem like little things, but in the Spirit, I knew they were huge. In the Spirit, Joel was saying, “You are not tied to me, but go with God as far as God would take you.”
At the same time, Joel was never political. In fact, he did not usually share on political Sundays, leaving that to others. I learned to avoid those Sundays. The absence of any politics in Joel’s word left me free to enjoy hearing from God.
And so I would sit there in that anointing, hearing God speak to me through Joel’s words, things far beyond what was even in Joel’s mind, let alone those sitting around me. And when God is free in any service, He will speak different things to every person there, according to their own walk with Him. You see, because I was also writing the Christ Our Life letters all through this time, the word I heard from God in the Lakewood services, was always an extension of what I was writing. In fact, I marveled so many times that when I wrote something in a letter going out early Sunday morning, that same topic and those same verses would be the center of the service that day at Lakewood.
As I have said many times, the thing I learned the most from Joel Osteen was to stop speaking all the endless curses against myself in my mind and to walk in confidence in the goodness and favor of God.
At some point during these years, Pastor Joel offered to hold a baptism in water service. Many signed up, and so Joel had his work cut out for him. Nonetheless, we placed our two youngest on his list, and so Pastor Joel Osteen baptized Katrina and James in water.
Through 2011
In January of 2011, the new building for the English Department was completed, and so we all moved over to it. This time I had two full developmental writing classes, on the same days. This made the long drive cost effective. I always arrived an hour before my first class started; I need that quiet time to be ready for my students when they arrive. On more than one occasion, however, problems with the Buick made me almost late.
Other than that, this semester went quite smoothly such that I have little memory of it. Each time I went through my writing course, however, I made continual improvements, removing things that did not work, adding new good ideas that fit, and adjusting everything to be more effective in the outcome of those students leaving my course, knowing how to write well.
This spring I decided to reduce some of the stuff we had. I sold the two canoes I had made for the boys, which had not really worked out all that well for them or for me. I sold the generator I had bought for Ike, it was too big and I had no place to keep it. I sold a number of other things, some of which I regret, specifically my drill press and the potting bench I had made. I was no longer gardening, so it seemed to be unnecessary. I reduced our continuously increasing selection of books by around 1000 books, some to used book stores, but many I sold through Amazon.
The biggest thing for me, however, was that I also sold the Blue Van, for $500. The Blue Van had quit running well in 2006, and so I had parked it in the back corner of our yard and used it for storage. But as it was being pulled out of the yard, I was very sad. The buyer would not let me talk him out of the sale, however, and so it went. That van was the single most meaningful possession to me in my life.
Maureen had also taken on a job caring for an elderly woman in The Woodlands, named Mrs. Dotson, two nights a week. That was a long drive in the Buick, an unreliable car, especially at night. At the same time, she had to drive me up to teach college and then come back to pick me up after the day’s work. This was simply putting too much on my dear wife.
Meanwhile, Claude had been keeping Grandma Susan’s little 1980 Toyota running, barely, and offered it to us. Not knowing better, we accepted it. He came with it but then returned to Bowens Mill. We now had two cars again – except the Toyota was in worse shape than the Buick. It worked for a while, but it needed oil added almost daily. At a certain point, while Maureen was driving through Spring on her way to The Woodlands, the motor froze from low oil, and that was it.
Claude wanted to come fix the Toyota, rather than just letting it go for scrap. He came in May and spent several weeks with us working on the little Toyota under our back porch, trying to rebuild the engine. He spent several hundred dollars; we helped as we could. In the end, he was not able to make it work.
My relationship with my father-in-law was cordial, but as time went on, there was a growing strain. I will not share the circumstances, but an incident happened in which he came towards me in all the “correcting power” I had known of him when I was under his eldering at the Ridge. I could not have that, however, and so I said, with strength, “Sir, no sir.” To my astonishment, Claude did an about-face, saying nothing.
I did not see this as any sort of “triumph,” and as an Asperger’s, this was really “out there” for me. I went to bed right after, feeling very unprotected. As I lay in bed, I saw, in my mind’s eye, Brother Claude with Brother Buddy behind him, and all the condemnation I had known from them. I looked straight into the eyes of Jesus, again in my mind, and I said, “Jesus, You are my life, and You share all things with me.” Immediately, all the horror of condemnation pressing all around me vanished, and I could sleep in peace.
Probably before Claude left, Maureen and I had found a lovely, red 2007 Toyota Corolla, for which Maureen qualified for financing. This was the best car we have ever had, well-built and faithful. It served Maureen and us well until it was rear-ended in May of 2018. After Claude left, we then sold the 1980 Toyota for a couple of hundred dollars and sent the money to Claude to pay for some of what this whole thing had cost him.
I taught my writing course during the summer block. This was more concentrated, about four hours each day, covering only a few weeks. My course works well, however, as it has distinct components that can be fitted to the times available.
Johanna remained in Canada through the summer. Maureen made a surprise visit to spend several days with her in her new experiences. At the same time, Kyle had returned from his time in Lubbock, not having quite finished his associates degree in audio engineering. Lubbock had “closed” to him as it had to us.
A Further Progression of Christ Our Life
I gained two new readers of my letters who communicated with me through this time-period. One was Annalize Mouton, a Dutch woman from Cape Town, South Africa. The other was Dennis Rhodes of Western Australia. Both of these have maintained their own websites over the years where they have sometimes shared things I have written, and both continue to read my letters. At this time, they were new to union with Christ and to speaking Christ our only life. I hope that I was able to answer some of their questions.
Through this years’ time, I wrote my first series on “Union with Christ,” the chapters of which folded into my book, The Unveiling. I also continued writing letters that would end up in either The Great Story of God or Gathering to Life. For the most part, the order of their writing is unimportant. I can place two chapters found in Gathering to Life when I first watched “Rango” in March of 2011 and then the fourth Pirate’s movie, in May of 2011, which inspired the chapter “The Water of Life.”
I also wrote “Eating of Christ,” one of my favorites, in the spring of 2011 in response to a question sent to me by Rita Robertson. Then, the last letter of this time period, written in September, 2011, was “Knowing God.”
I also want to add a question sent to me by my sister, Frieda, sometime during this year, in response to something I had written in The Great Story of God. She asked me – what about Genesis 3:23? – Now man has become as one “of Us,” knowing good and evil. Doesn’t it say that God knows evil? The moment I read her question, I knew exactly what I would find when I looked at the Hebrew words of that verse. Sure enough, the Hebrew words say, “man became as one who knows good and evil.” That Hebrew word is one of the most common, used many hundreds of times throughout the Old Testament. Never do the translators ever find the need to insert the words “of Us” as part of its translation except here.
Yet Jerome, and all translators since, driven by a desperate need to line God up with the serpent’s lies, have inserted “like US – knowing good and evil.” Understanding this served only to increase the sense inside of the wrongness against God that fills so much of Christianity, this need to define God by the words of the devil. My burden to remove from God all accusation that He knows evil would be a foundation for the wondrous vision of God that came upon me on October 2, 2011.
Placing It All into Jesus
This was definitely a conflicting time for me, with some very low points of humiliation. How could I “pretend” to be someone who knows the Lord and who shares that knowing with others, and yet be this incapable, even to going bankrupt because I had wasted other people’s money?
I now know that God sees things quite differently from how we see them. And God needed to remove from me the last vestiges of self-righteousness, because He was about to show Himself to me in a way I had never known. Even more than that, God was going to take me into a place inside of Him that few have ever known. No presentation of “ME, MYSELF” could remain. No thought that “I” was anything but unrighteous in myself and an utter failure, even towards God, was required, and that the cross would mean to me a wondrous “good riddance” towards any false claims humans make towards God.
You see, some of my siblings had also gone bankrupt, and I had harbored a “holier-than-thou” attitude towards that fact deep inside. Now that I had also passed through this debilitating point, along with all the other wonderful things God had arranged to increase my knowing of humiliation, all of that was gone. I have not once raised “myself” before God since December of 2010. I am more than content to know Jesus as the only life I am.
As Paul said (my paraphrase), “I count all of my-self in all my so-called ‘achievements’ to be nothing more than dog crap, compared to the wonder and beauty of knowing Jesus in the power of His life and in sharing a death already finished.”
“Father, I thank You that You so faithfully removed from me any thought of separation from You, that I could ever ‘stand on my own.’ Father, I give You thanks inside of all the difficulties of these times, to turn every moment to goodness forever. And I do see the wonder of Your Hand, and Your intentions in my life, not to diminish me, but to remove from me that which diminishes and to set me upon a place of wonder in knowing You.”
I have closed this chapter in mid-September, 2011, including God’s intentions towards me through this season of my life. Then, in late September, I will receive an email that struck me with hurt and anger as great as any I have known in my life and changed my life forever and the lives of many others as well.