I grew up in Hamilton, Canada, with my mother and brothers. Quite literally, I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, in that part of town where poverty, substance abuse, crime and violence conspired against me to create a very unstable environment.
During my formative years, my mother was the girlfriend of a high-ranking outlaw biker. Every payday he went out drinking with his mates, came home drunk, was sick to his stomach, and would hit my mother. One occasion was so bad I witnessed him shoot at her with a handgun. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop him.
One morning I woke up to find a police officer outside my bedroom door. He instructed me to put on some slippers because there was broken glass all over the floor. My mum’s biker boyfriend shot someone dead in our living room during the night. While he safely went to jail, my family and I were not so lucky. The relatives of the dead man retaliated a week later by setting fire to our house. One of my brothers died in that fire.
After my mum finally separated from that man, we survived on a merger income of government assistance. Too often, on cheque day, my mum would find her way to the local pub. On more than one occasion I had to plead with her to come home, since we had no food for dinner.
This is all rather depressing. I apologise. I would not wish my childhood on anyone. My point in sharing these stories is simply to highlight for you that I grew up with no expectation of a good life, because of these and other experiences. The beliefs, values and lifestyle demonstrated for me, in my home and neighbourhood, were training me to follow a way of life that would not end well for me. In fact, most of my childhood friends ended up in jail or getting their girlfriends pregnant.
Luckily for me, my mum sent my other brother and I to any local church’s Sunday school, to “get us out of the house and give her a morning off”, as she said. At those places I met faithful Christian people who demonstrated for me “the way, the truth and the life” of Jesus. As a result, when I later felt at my lowest, like I was heading toward disaster, I called out to God, in a dark field out front of my home, and I felt spoken to. That ‘voice’ encouraged me with hope for the future and gave me a glimpse of what that future could look like. I have tried my best to follow the way of Jesus ever since —and, no, it has not always gone smoothly.
In that dark field, I discovered that faith in Jesus and a Christian lifestyle results in hope, and that moment gave me a glimpse of a path I could follow toward a life that is better than good. When you read the Bible, you discover Jesus promises a free, full and forever life. I can certainly attest to the fact his way of life truly is better than any good life we can imagine or achieve for ourselves.
If you have some time to spare, you can watch the following interview recorded as part of the We Are Men project. During the interview, I describe some of those times where my life and faith have not always gone smoothly:
If you have even more time to spare (and I mean lots of time) or you are particularly bored, you can watch another interview recorded for the Kintsugi Heroes project. Their aim is to, “help people tell stories that they need to share so others can discover the story they need to hear”:
For those who are really gluttons for punishment, you can watch me share my story at the Bathurst Bike Show in 2012, where I was interviewed by none other than the late, great Greg ‘Hirsty’ Hirst for the awesome and now-classic Temporary Australians: