Jonny Gaston grew up in Theodore, Alabama, just outside Mobile. From the outside, Jonny’s family looked pretty normal.  Dad had a good job; mom stayed at home and Jonny had an older brother to look up to.  But as life often is, looks can be deceiving.

His dad, a workaholic, had a successful landscaping business that had him working from daylight to dark. Once his dad came home from work, he would begin to drink.  As a matter of fact, all of the men on his father’s side of the family where, as Jonny puts it, “drunks”.  The men he needed to look up to as mentors were failing him.

 His mother, a stay-at-home mom, was angry and depressed.  She had a bitterness inside that took control of her life.  She was unhappy and wanted all those around her to be unhappy too.  The woman he needed  to love and nurture him did not have it in her.

His brother, who had been abandoned by his biological father, was rebellious and angry.  He was involved in drugs, alcohol, girls and anything else he could get into.  He was bitter and on a self destructive path. 

As a child, the normal means of communication Jonny had with his family was yelling.   By the time he was 8 years old the fighting escalated from verbal arguments to physical altercations.   He remembers a time when his dad and brother got into a fist fight in the living room.  Jonny was so scared that he ran into his room and hid under the covers.

 He watched cartoons on TV as his escape from the verbal fights.  As the fights got louder, so did the volume on the TV.  But one night, the fighting was so loud that the TV couldn’t block out the sound and as Jonny turned toward the kitchen to see what was going on, he witnessed his brother punch his mom in the face.

With all the physical, mental and emotional abuse happening around him, Jonny desperately was looking for someone or something to fill the void in his life.  Finding a friend in his neighborhood proved to be quite difficult.  Jonny’s brother was the neighborhood bully. Therefore, all the kids of the neighborhood would pick on Jonny in retaliation.  But then, a guy who was about 14 years old showed him some attention.  Finally, he felt like someone had accepted him.

Jonny’s new friend lived across the street and they began to hang out together, with the friend being a baby sitter of sorts.  Being a child of 9 years old, Jonny didn’t realize his new friend had taken a sexual interest in him.  The grooming process began slowly as games, but over time had become full blown sexual molestation that lasted about a year, ending when he moved away from Jonny.

What little bit of childhood and purity Jonny had left, had been taken away.  His heart was filled with shame, confusion and anger.  He had no family or friends to turn to and felt he was too far gone to seek counseling.  In his mind, he was simply too broken.

By the time Jonny was a teenager, he was struggling with severe depression.  He couldn’t get the “movies” as Jonny puts it, out of his mind.  The memories of the abuse would replay over and over as if he were watching a horrible movie.

As if life wasn’t bad enough, Jonny, now age 13, was riding his bike as a distracted driver swerved off the road and hit him with his car.  Jonny’s head hit the hood of the car when he was struck.  The accident caused his brain processes to slow down significantly.  The teachers at school began to notice that he was unable to comprehend work as easily as before the accident.  As a result, he was placed in classes for those with learning disabilities, which only gave the bullies more ammunition.

With everything that had happened, Jonny wanted so badly to fit in.  Conforming to those around him, he began to steal and lie about everything. He was searching hard for acceptance and an identity.  He was broken and lost and just wanted something to grasp onto. 

His depression had grown so deep that suicidal thoughts began to enter his mind.  He began to think of ways he could force the memories of abuse to go away.  He thought about drugs or alcohol but saw those things as band-aides. He felt as though his scars were so bad that he needed more than a baid-aide to cover the pain.  He had been covering his pain for long enough.  He needed something to take it away.

One night while sitting in his room, he began to think about how everyone else had caused him so much pain and maybe he could find a way to control it. He thought that if he could cause a greater self inflicted pain, that maybe the other would not hurt as bad.  Although he had never heard of ‘cutting’ before, he began to consider it.  Part of his thought process was “if I can cut myself, then maybe I can shoot myself.”    

So he got a razorblade and cut his wrist.  As the endorphins kicked in, he experienced a rush that for just a minute, helped him to forget about the pain and abuse he had endured.  Cutting became like a drug to him and he began cutting himself more and more often.  In order to hide what he was doing, he would cut himself on his stomach, his back and other places that could not be seen.

But then he began to see the cutting as just another band-aide.  So he made the decision that he had to kill himself.  He was not afraid dying, he saw it as joy.  One pull of the trigger and all the pain, anger and abuse would be gone.  He would finally be healed.

One night while his parents were gone, Jonny, bleeding from cutting himself, walked into his parent’s room and took his dad’s loaded pistol back to his room.   At 13 year old, Jonny sat on his bed, made sure the safety was off, and put the gun in his mouth.  He pulled the trigger half-way down to where he could feel the pressure of the trigger on his finger.  His hands were shaking so hard that the site of the gun was ripping the skin in the roof of his mouth.  At that moment every bad memory of his life began to rush through his mind.

Although Jonny was not religious, the very last thing he did before pulling the trigger, was to cry out to God.  Jonny said, “God if you are real, you are my last hope!”  In that very moment, he felt God’s presence.  He was overcome with an overwhelming sense of peace and a warmth he had never felt before.  The feeling of warmth began at the top of his head and moved down toward his shoulders as though God were wrapping his loving arms around him.  The warm feeling began to make its way through is body , down his arms and as it reached his hand, his fingers opened and the gun dropped to the floor.  Jonny threw his hand up in the air and his legs grew weak and as the warm feeling of peace made its way through the rest of his body.  He knew in that moment that he was experiencing God, because He showed him He was there and He was real; that He was the answer.

Up to this point in his life, Jonny considered himself to be an atheist for a couple of reasons.  First, his parents said they were Christians and even took him to church occasionally, yet they acted anything but Christ like, causing him to hate Jesus. Second, if there was a God, then why would He have let Jonny be abused in such a way.  But on this day, one thing was for sure…God had been there when Jonny needed Him.  The feeling he felt was one that Jonny would begin to pursue.

Part 2, The search for who God is… continues tomorrow, posting at 6 p.m. CST