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    Sole Survivor
    Sole Survivor
    Sole Survivor
    Ebook94 pages2 hours

    Sole Survivor

    By Rev Paul J. Bern

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    About this ebook

    Based on a true story, this 100-page book is the third title from Christian nonfiction author Rev. Paul J. Bern. This Spiritual self-help book and Christian testimony is a memoir about raw survival when the odds are stacked against you. It tells how the author started life in foster care only to be put out as a teenager, only to find Christ and be adopted into the Family of God as an adult. It's a quick, easy and inspiring read that enlightens, uplifts and refreshes, telling a story so rich that it's well worth your time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRev Paul J. Bern
    Release dateOct 23, 2015
    ISBN9781311907417
    Sole Survivor
    Author

    Rev Paul J. Bern

    I am Rev. Paul J. Bern, a long-time Atlanta resident and a well-known Web minister, evangelist, and blogger on The Progressive Christian Blog (revpauljbern.wordpress.com or progressive-christian-blog.blogspot.com). Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, I am the published author of "Sole Survivor", "Occupying America: We Shall Overcome", and "The Middle and Working Class Manifesto". They are available on Amazon or from my website at http://www.pcmatl.org/books-and-donations. Prior to becoming disabled in 2008 due to a stroke, a pacemaker implant plus some other health issues, I was a computer/IT professional with 21 years experience. I have been a life-long antiwar activist, and I currently serve as a volunteer church musician at Atlanta's Prayer of Faith Church of God in Christ.

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      Book preview

      Sole Survivor - Rev Paul J. Bern

      Sole Survivor: One Man's Testimony for Christ

      by Rev. Paul J. Bern

      copyright (c) 2015 by Rev. Paul J. Bern All Rights Reserved

      Table of contents

      Chapter One My First Encounters With God

      Chapter Two Meeting the Real Jesus in a Most Unexpected Place

      Chapter Three Unsought Legal Encounters

      Chapter Four The Ups and Downs of Life

      Chapter Five Restored By God, Driven Away

      By Man

      Chapter Six Restoration Again, and a

      Badly Needed Overhaul

      Chapter Seven Epilogue and Update

      Chapter One

      My First Encounters With God

      It would be an understatement to say that I didn't get off to a very good start in life – awful would be more like it. Born in 1955, I grew up in a foster home on the western side of Cincinnati. Back when I was about 6 years old I remember being told that I was adopted, and I just took my7 parents at their word, being too young to understand my circumstances and too naive to know when I was being deceived. My earliest memories consist of being kept indoors a lot, having few if any friends, and evenings of being coached with math flash cards and extra reading assignments consisting exclusively of Catholic literature that my foster/adoptive parents would have me go through repeatedly, supposedly to give me a head start in school. Unfortunately for all concerned, it had the opposite effect that was intended. By the time I was old enough to start school – ultra-strict and super-conservative Catholic parochial school at that – I was already fed up with school and learning, and I revolted. I remember trashing an exam paper in the first grade and handing it in to my teacher. The following day when my adoptive parents found out what I had done, my dad beat me with his belt really bad. I mean, it's one thing to have some discipline in the home and at school, but he beat me so badly I had bruises and sores on the backs of my legs. I was never asked why I had done what I did. It didn't matter to him. All my dad knew is that I had done something terrible and that I needed to pay for my rebellion. From that day forward, the relationship between my adoptive father and myself was continually adversarial.

      My parents both became nearly impossible to please, and I absolutely hated school anyway, so there we were at an impasse. They were always insisting that I get better grades, and I would respond by doing just enough work to get a passing grade. So every so often I would get another whipping with a belt, particularly around report card time. Sometimes it was because I had a lot of behavioral problems at school, other times it was for an unsatisfactory report card, and once for going over to the house of someone I knew from church to listen to their Beatles records (the Beatles were a very big deal during this time). I remember one day I just sat in my room after enduring yet another beating – I don't remember what it was for but that no longer matters – and cried to the point of sobbing uncontrollably about my whole situation. I was saying, Why me, Lord? Why does it always have to be me that gets beat with a belt? Is my whole life going to be like this? Is there no way it can get any better? It was at just that point that I heard what seemed like a soft, low voice. Although not audible in the human sense, it was just barely audible deep down from within me, and it said, You can't possibly imagine the things I have in store for you. I did not realize it at the time, but I had just had my first encounter with the true God. Although I understood the words well enough, I failed to grasp their meaning because I was only about eight years old. But I have always remembered what happened when I was alone in my room that day.

      The next time I had an encounter with God – which interestingly enough never occurred when I was in church – was about a year later. By this time the abuse that had been going on had gradually gotten worse. The animosity between my parents and myself had grown a lot right along with it, and the beatings had become more frequent. I remember hating not just my parents, but my entire family situation as well as detesting school. Quite frankly, I was bored nearly to the point of insanity with school. Second grade was a rehashing of first grade, third grade a rehashing of the second, and so on, as if we needed to learn everything twice in order to grasp its meaning. I have heard some talk and read on the Internet about the dumbing down of America primary and secondary schools. Well, this has been going on ever since the 1960's at least, and probably even before that. It's just that no one noticed it at first because it began so gradually. To this day, education reform has been one of the causes I have undertaken in my adult life.

      By the time I was age nine I had decided to take matters into my own hands. So I prayed to God and I told him, Lord, I can't stand my home life any more. But I can't leave because I have no where to go (at this time it was during the winter, and Ohio winters can get very cold). If you won't do something to make my dad go away or to get him off my back, then I will be forced to defend myself when the time comes. At the time I got no reply at all, and I remember being concerned that God hadn't heard my prayer. I had been saving the small weekly allowances my parents would give me, 25 cents here and 50 cents there, that sort of thing. And so I resolved in my mind that I was going to settle things between my parents and myself once and for all by spending what I had saved on a cheap handgun and shooting my parents. Fortunately, at the time I prayed this misguided prayer I barely had a third of the money I would have needed to buy a cheap 22 caliber handgun, and I had also forgotten to include the cost of ammunition, not to mention the fact that I was only nine years old. But I will tell you without a doubt that I was serious about wanting to kill my adoptive/foster father because I was very afraid of him. I couldn't even stand to be in the same room with him. I recall that the consequences didn't matter much to me at that time. As before, fortunately, I never got to carry out my dad's assassination. But it is what occurred a couple of years later that made me understand why such a heinous act would be unnecessary. It was not just because it would have been a grievous sin and a capital crime. It was because God wanted to show me that I wasn't alone, and that He was standing beside me.

      After this prayer with no response, about two and a half years went by. Things were continuing to get gradually worse, and I continued to hate school all the more. I kept waiting for God to do something about my parents, especially my dad, but I saw no sign of change. So I would do things that would get me away from home more often so that my parents and I couldn't argue about anything. I played in the band at school and took music lessons, and I discovered that I was good at music. I joined the Boy Scouts so I could finally have a chance at having a few friends, and because it was one of the few things my 'adoptive' parents would let me do. The rest of the time I was kept cooped up in that little house, and the tension at times was unbearable. One Saturday morning a year or so later some of the boys from the scout troop and a number of their dads went on a 10 mile hike in the Kentucky countryside. My foster/adoptive dad went along too, much to my surprise, since he only occasionally took me anywhere. So we left Cincinnati in a small caravan of cars and drove south down I-75 into Kentucky to our starting point, with our destination being a monastery near the central Kentucky town of Bardstown. I recall that there were about 20 or maybe 25 people altogether. So we started out on our hike together on a mild November day, and we'd been hiking about 3 hours or so when my dad suddenly stopped walking

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