The Past

I realise some of my readers are from America, and so, perhaps with a prejudiced view of American theology, I have been a little remise in discussing my past. Now, I know you might think, “well, we have been told about your past, that’s fine” – but there is more, much more, and I want to write at least a little about it so that when the desire to make passing references to things in the past comes up, I know you already have the background.

I feel I need to give this some kind of an introduction, which possibly displays my nervousness. If people live a terrible life before they become Christians, then have a miraculous conversion, we rush them to the front of the church to give testimony. There seems to be nothing we love more than a good transformation story. In my life things have not been so simple. I relate better to Paul saying “the good I want to do, that I don’t do! The bad I don’t want to do, that I do.”

In my early life; well, from the age of 16,I had a lot of sexual partners, sometimes at the same time. Some of them were already involved with other people. At 18 I got married, and continued to engage in sexual activity with other people, even with groups of people, as did my wife. I was by this time already a Christian, in the sense that I had made a commitment to God, albeit a shaky one that, for the most part, I did not put into practice. Three years into my marriage I got a phone call from someone I had been seeing telling me that they were pregnant with my child.

I woke my wife and told her, and the following day she attempted to take her own life, before leaving me and moving to London. It was at this point that my life really turned around. I might go into more details at some later point, but suffice to say that a light went on in my life, and changes began to take place. A few months later she moved back in and we started trying to rebuild our marriage. My wife asked that I had nothing to do with my child; something that broke my heart in two.

Fast forward three years, and I was still on “the straight and narrow” but my brother had just died of a heroin overdose and my wife left me for another man.

I realise that I am only giving you snap shots, snippets; but I can’t bring myself to go into all the detail right now.

With my marriage over I was able to have some brief contact with my daughter, but my child’s mother got into another new relationship and again said she didn’t want me involved in my child’s life.

My current marriage is my second marriage.

Fast forward to six months ago: My 10 years old daughter has finally been told that I am her father, and I can, at last, have access. Fast forward another 3 months and a DNA test reveals she is not my daughter after all.

For some my past disqualifies me from ministry; the biblical passage that says a leader should have “but one wife” is often not taken (as I take it) as a reference to polygamy, but as a bar from those who have been divorced and remarried entering into a position of leadership.

I am not proud of my past, and while there is much I wish I could undo, I can not change it. The experiences I have had have formed me, and broken me in more ways than I can begin to describe. I share them here in the hope that you will understand a little of where I have come from. I believe that my past is forgiven, that on the cross, the person I have been was dealt with, paid for in full. So, why bring it up now? Well, as I have noticed that this blog has attracted a few more readers since it started, it occurred to me that some of you may have issues with my past, and I don’t want us to go too far down this road together, and me to then say something which lets out a bit of my past, and for you to feel I have been stringing you along; that if you had know my past you would not have wanted to know me and that you feel as if I have hoodwinked you. So there it is.

Yours as ever,

The Broken Man