After a life of abuse, anger, and heartbreak, a man find restoration through the love of God

By Duane Gaylord

It’s not like I am anybody of notoriety in this community or any community to speak of to this crowd or any crowd. But I do think God can inspire anyone’s testimony of Jesus Christ. One thing I found when I came to faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord—the greatest shock that hit me the moment I opened my heart and life to Jesus Christ—is His great, true, lasting, and deep love for me no matter who I am, where I came from, who liked me or who didn’t like me, or what I did or didn’t do that was right or wrong. I didn’t and still don’t deserve His love, but He gave it to me anyway. The worship song, The Power of Your Love, rang deep and true in my heart, starting that day I was ‘born-again.”

My path to finding Jesus was not without struggle and pain. But even through the brokenness, I now am able to see how God used certain things and people to bring me to Him.

Military Brat

I was born in Hawaii to parents who were both Hawaii born and raised. The big difference I had with other Hawaiian’s was my father was a military lifer—serving admirably in the US Army for over 28 years before he retired. That meant, unlike most of my relatives who never ventured off of the islands and who grew up within the security of nurturing family relationships, us “military brat” children had to uproot every three or four years and move to another state or country and re-establish relationships, constantly starting all over again. Sounds like a wonderful type of life when you’re an adult, but when you are a child and a teenager, not so fun or easy, and it opens you up to a host of insecurities.

To add to that, my father was a brutally abusive, angry man with some of us children. There were five of us children and I constantly heard him say, “they should have stopped after two.” He came home from work looking to beat someone up, and I am not talking about discipline. He searched for reasons to demoralize me and other siblings in more ways than I feel free to explain. He was a martial artist and some of his children became his Shaolin Kenpo Karate, Jiu Jitsu dummy. He could brutalize us at any time of the day—morning, afternoon, at the dinner table, night, weekends, or even while I was sleeping. 

No Safe Place

There were no safe times or places unless we were in public. Even in public, he found a way to make a threat by whispering them into my ear when no one was looking. As soon as we got back home, he never forgot, and he would mercilessly collect his “rain check.” No matter how many times you asked for forgiveness, it seemed to anger him even more and the worse his retribution would get. Most of the time I didn’t know what I was even asking forgiveness for.

When something in him hit the boiling point, he exploded with violence. I remember one of my grandmothers in Hawaii was a very godly lady who took care of handicapped children and would pray over them. She recognized the fear I had in me of my father and would put me in her lap and look at my father and say, “You better stop putting your hands on these children—you won’t dare do it in front of me.” 

That usually tamed him for a few days. She passed away before I was nine years old and was no longer there to shelter me. She was the first person to ever talk to me about Jesus Christ. I used to dream about the stories she told me about Jesus.

Hate’s Hold

I have to admit, when I was a teenager, I hated my father to the point of murderous thoughts. When I got older, I would lock my bedroom door and then sneak in and out through my windows so I wouldn’t run into him. I learned the only thing that kept him from breaking into my room were my threats to go to the military police. He didn’t want to ruin his long years of admirable military service and his fame of being a “great soldier.” It would only take one abuse claim on the military “blotter” that would go to the base commander and it would sink his ship. So it kept him at bay.  

I don’t want to speak on behalf of any of my siblings, but his abuse crossed other lines that should have sent him to prison for many years. I never heard the word “love” pass his lips. I had no idea what that was, so I had no idea what I lacked until I was later confronted with having to give love. But I was real familiar with the word “hate.” I used hate to fill the massive hole left by the lack of love.

Fighting was a common thing in my house and the neighborhood. One of my brothers was my nemesis. His use of drugs, his thievery and his other insidious and perverted things he did angered me to hate him, and we often got into real knock-down drag-out fights, leaving holes in the wall when we missed a punch, or breaking things if they got in my way from getting my hands on him. He often wore a belt with a knife attached to it, even when he was only in his underwear, to try to fend me off. Most of those big fights happened when our father was away on extended duty in Vietnam or other oversea assignments. My anger even overflowed on any neighborhood teenager who crossed me. If someone said harsh or critical words and they sounded spiteful towards me, I wouldn’t talk. I’d just swing with pent up anger exploding, as if he was the worst enemy on the face of the earth. As angry as I was, it was impossible to lose a fight unless they knocked me out, and no-one did!

On My Own

When I turned 18, I packed my bag and said “I am leaving for good” to my mom as I passed her walking out the kitchen door exiting our house. Her response was, “Good. Get the hell out!” 

I never blamed her for those words. She lived in hell just like everyone else did. The only reason I could figure why she didn’t divorce the man was it would be a loss of a very good retirement plan for her. She never worked out of the home and depended on my father financially. By my perspective, she was an alcoholic who used booze to cope with my father. When she was drinking, she was at her happiest. I have to say, he never laid a hand on her. Every once in a while, she would stop him before he beat us into a coma.

I joined the US Army, married my high school girlfriend, and moved back to Hawaii where my marriage became a battleground of angry emotions. The marriage was doomed from the start, so it seemed. Then one day she told me she was pregnant and lo and behold a little girl, Brandy, was born into our dysfunctional tattered family. 

I thought, “What a way to restart and reinvent our marriage—through our own little girl.”  But it never happened. 

There was something wrong from the first day Brandy was born. She was having difficulty eating, sleeping and waking up. We thought it was our poor parenting abilities, but when she was three months old, we found out that she was born with a very serious internal birth deformity which took her life at six months old. A few weeks after our baby’s death, my wife left me and didn’t look back. My world came to a crashing, screeching halt, and I fell in the ditch of despair. The misery and anger inside of me was eating me inside out. I hated my earthly father, I despised the very family I grew up in, and I hated God for doing all this to me. I was about to explode and needed to take time to pick up the pieces and try to put myself back together.

Orchestrated By God

I stayed in Los Angeles where we were stationed at the time for about six more months to try to get myself on stable ground—going to a psychologist and group therapy with other broken and crazed people even worse than I was. All of us were seeking help finding a way out of our misery and seeking answers that would help us face a better future. 

For fun, I got involved with a weekend LA party circuit of young people, and I also landed a great job working as one of three leasing agents in a large condo complex in Playa Del Rey Beach. Every day when I arrived at my job location, a new employee would give me a crumpled up, torn piece of paper. On it was a handwritten name and two numbers with one or more sentences scribbled under them. She was a Southerner, and I hardly could understand her when she spoke to me, and she also had horrible handwriting, but every time I deciphered what she wrote, the words would break through my hard anger and I would weep in the privacy of my apartment when I got home. Every single note she gave me touched my heart. But the next day, I would wake up angry against God. I found out later that she was giving me Bible verses “the Lord put on her heart.”

One night, I went on blind date with a daughter of one of the ladies I worked with, Sarah. She took me to a play about Jesus Christ, presented in a very large auditorium in her church. She was such a sweet and pretty redhead, and I was very distracted and really didn’t take much of the play in. What really distracted me was the amazing care and warmth everyone had for each other in the auditorium, who were also there to watch the play. I can’t remember how many people came up to her to say hi and also took the time to greet and hug me or warmly shake my hand. I never had that before. I sank down in my seat, feeling so out of place. I didn’t tell her, but I longed for what everyone had and how they were so openly warm and loving to others—I was very moved by it. 

Later, after I committed my heart and life to Jesus Christ, it became clear that these brief relationships were orchestrated by the hands of God—His own therapy into my brokenness and dysfunction.

Breaking My Inner-Self

After living in the Los Angeles area for six months, it was time to wrap things up and move back to Hawaii. In actuality, there were many more things that happened to me while living in Los Angeles that were clearly the hands of God, but it would take forever to share them. So I packed up the little I had and went to visit my sister in Sacramento, California before flying to Hawaii to live with my godmother and her family.

When I arrived at my sisters home, she already knew what I was going through. She knew about the loss of my child and the end of my marriage. She also knew the past dysfunction of our family because she lived through the horrors of our father as well—having her own burdens to bare. She was happy to see me and told me she had invited a friend, a youth pastor named Fred, to dinner and hoped I didn’t mind.

When he came into the house, he immediately struck me as a warm, bright and a happy person. He looked me right in the eyes and greeted me as if I was his lifelong friend. He was exactly like the people I met in the auditorium when I went to see the Jesus play with Sarah.

When we sat down for dinner, after friendly and kind chatter, he mentioned his deep sorrow and regret for the loss of my dear sweet little girl. I choked up from genuine sincerity in his voice. Then, he started to tell me a story about a “Father, because of His great love for me, who willingly gave up His Son to death—a Son who was brutally beaten, spit-upon, falsely accused, rejected by His own kind and finally put to death…”

I interrupted him right there! At that second, Fred the kind youth-pastor, turned into my mortal enemy. Anger gripped my heart and rage started to overcome me. But this time I didn’t swing at him. Instead I blurted, “How could ANY loving Father give up their child to brutality and DEATH!” While I said that, I looked at him like I wanted to pull him apart. But what I saw looking back at me was the same warm, unthreatened eyes that greeted me when he first walked into the house. I didn’t scare him. 

Unfazed, he continued to share the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who willingly gave up His life, who shed his blood, who resurrected, who took ALL the penalty of our sins, our rejection of God, our anger against our Heavenly Father, and paid our penalty—God’s judgement of Sin—to reunite us with God’s unconditional LOVE and bring us to a family who will never reject you, harm you or desert you. 

At that moment, I literally felt a breaking in my inner-self. I tried hard not to, especially at the dinner table, but I broke down in a sea of tears—desperately needing what he was talking about. These were the words I have always longed to hear, expressed by a person who seemed to really care about me and who portrayed “peace.” Something inside told me his words were real and they were for me. I felt warm hands on my shoulders as my sister, Fred, and my brother-in-law surrounded me. Fred asked me if I wanted to accept Jesus Christ into my life.   

“You really desperately need Him, Duane!” he said.

My answer: “Yes.”

I followed his prayer and repeated everything he said as if the words were buried in my heart, waiting all this time to leap out of my mouth.

Transformed

My life did change immediately. The past seemed to be so much farther away from me, and was no longer haunting me everywhere I went. That night, the truth of Love was revealed to me by allowing Jesus Christ to rule my life from that day forward. There was so much more I knew I had to learn and submit to God. I had many more miles to walk to continue God’s work of uprooting the horribly bad seed that was planted by living in circumstances that could have taken me on the path to be a criminal of the worst kind. But God intervened and immediately rescued me and started me on His journey of restoration. God stepped in and became the Father I needed to guide me, forgive me, encourage me and build me. 

I am still on that journey, but today always looks better than yesterday, even when I stumble. The good news is, Jesus Christ is real and He will constantly show Himself to everyone who will trust Him to love you to healing, restoration and freedom.

To believers, I hope this will help encourage you to realize that even the smallest acts of kindness to share Jesus Christ can make the biggest difference when they are used of the Lord. Neither of those involved, the Southern lady who handed me the Bible verses every day or the date who took me to the Jesus play know that I eventually accepted the Lord... but they will one day.

This article was originally written for the Summer 2019 Edition of The Journey magazine.