bradhensley.com

Is God Even Real?

This is my WARNING. This blog post is my testimony, completely. It is unedited. It is raw. For the first time ever, I share everything. I hope that nobody reads this without parental consent under the age of 13. But I do hope the ones that do read this get something out of my mess. God Bless and thank you for reading my blog.

This blog post will definitely be the toughest I have wrote thus far in my life. Allow me to bring you up to date thus far. Today, I sit here on the other side of a keyboard and mouse in the middle of the most exciting series I have ever been apart of in church called, “Sex, Drugs, Rock’n Roll.” But here is where this series broke some major ground with me. God had been dealing with me about some issues in my life, somethings that I had never talked about publicly. I had attempted to share them in a controlled atmosphere and even lost my temper in an argument with my father to scream out what had happened to get him to understand what we were discussing. This series would shatter some old wounds, hurt relationships, and much hendered growth in myself. My blog’s spine or theme is this: “Make your mess, your message!” I believe that but how could I ever share this with someone? I could I ever tell people what had happened in my life. I can easily talk about all the dumb decisions that I have made. In fact, here is a list: Premarital Sex, Gambling Addiction, Pornography, Extreme Anger Issues, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Control Issues, Verbal Abuse… and the list could continue but I could never begin to discuss what I believe led to my flame engulfed downward spiral, until now. So here is my complete mess thus my complete message…

Up until the age of 14, my life or mess was fairly uneventful; I was raised in a broken family and will blog about that more later. The first day of middle school when I had to transfer, I was involved in a heavy altercation that would land me smack dab in the middle of some of the roughest gang bangers in this area. I was granted immediate respect for what took place but immediately in a very bad place. But there I would meet my best friend. My best friend began to teach me how to survive in that enviroment. At that middle school, he taught me well to keep the gang bangers close but to keep my nose clean. A few years later, when I was 15, my best friend would be killed in a tragic car accident after running away from that garbage life. The car crashed into a telephone poll while the seat belt somehow wrapped around his neck and strangled him. This same year, I would decide to move in with my father which would put about a 2 and half year hold on my mother’s relationship. We never once spoke during my sophomore and junior years of high school. My best friend and the closest person in my life were no longer in my life so, into my life, “ironically” enters a 19 year old female. We can all guess what happens next right…? I would engage in a complete physical relationship only to lose my virginity at the age of 15. We dated for about a year until I realized that God didn’t really hate me and that what I was doing was not what I was taught. I would pray and rebuild my relationship with God as well as my mother. I would pursue a girl my junior year and would date her for the next two years as my relationship with God would only get stronger. I became the captain of the football team, 3 sport letter man, and all while I carried my bible with me everywhere I went. At the age of 17, I would first hear God’s calling on my life, teach. Call it preaching, teaching, or motivational speaking with the Word of God… call it what you may but I knew that one day where God would put me. When I had my first glimpse of this, I did what anyone would do… tell everyone. Going into my senior year of high school, I followed Matthew 6:33 to a literal tee. If I seek God’s kingdom first, then I will get my heart’s desires. At the time, my heart’s desires were as follows: to be offered a full scholarship at The University of Tennessee, graduate in either Mathematics or Child and Family Studies, & then go on to play in the NFL. You may know that this didn’t happen as planned. The closest I got to playing for Tennessee was the indoor practice facility. I would have been engaged my the time I graduated high school to my “high school sweetheart” only to call off that engagement a year later. But handled all that adversity, fairly well spiritually with my walk with God until an event that would make me question if God was even real.

I sat in a parking lot of a local Walmart and asked my mother this question on the phone. Until this day, I don’t think she knows why I asked but I did. I asked her, “Do you think God is even real?” I even began to argue with her that she didn’t really know or not. Being raised to know the lines of blasphemy, I truly believe that I was at the closest point anyone has ever come to that night in the parking lot by myself. I stopped myself and my mind and prayed, “God if you are real, help…” I went on to pray the longest prayer I have ever remembering praying. In fact, I fell asleep in my car in that parking lot. I can tell you two things about God. #1.) I truly and whole heartedly know and believe that he is real. #2.) That night, the nightmares stopped. Here is that event. I have been stricken with nightmares for a few months straight which would land me in the hospital with migraine headaches, seizures, sickness and a slew of other health concerns. About a year earlier of this conversation with my mother, a girl decided to take complete advantage of me. I opened my home to several friends one night and she was among them. She saw to it that she was the last one to leave. I have explicit distinct memories of that night, things that she said, things that she done, things that happened. I would have nightmares for the following year. As her and some of her friends came over, she decided that she would have sex with me whether I wanted to or not. I woke up the next morning completely naked in my bed, with a migraine, bruising on my body, and teethmarks in certain areas. Two days later, I admitted myself in the ER where I stood at 270lbs and 6′ tall while a nurse laughed at me when I told him why I was admitting myself. I told him that I thought I had been raped. I am not sure what was worse… realizing that someone would take full advantage of me while I was partially coherent or actually following through with getting help and getting laughed at to my face. I completed the the rape kit and gave the ER everything that they needed. All the blood work at the hospital would come back negative. All I remember is at the hospital, the doctor kept saying “if this really did happen…” we can’t find this or we can find that. As I left there, I drove down to the jail where warrants are sworn in and asked two city cops, “If a guy gets raped, what should he do?” They also laughed and looked at each other. One said, “…consider himself lucky!” Granted it was past 1:00am but it wasn’t funny to me. I returned to my home and felt completely disgusted with myself and worthless. I set fire to my sheets, threw out my mattresses, took showers until I scrubbed myself raw, at which point, I shaved my entire body trying to get the filth off. This is also a lie that I would like to get out from under. People ask me why I shave my arms, legs, and chest. I was just lucky to make up the story that I was a wrestler in high school and that is just what we did. In fact, it is because of this night that I still shave my body… shew, that feels better… I felt that I had caused this to happen by choices I made and I chose to drink that drink or eat that food that they brought or whatever… I didn’t know what to do. I shut down…I no longer wanted to talk to my family, my friends, or anyone that was close to me. I couldn’t take someone else laughing in my face. I couldn’t take making myself vulnerable again only to be made fun of… so I buried this unimaginable incident and acted like it never happened or so I thought. A few months after this, I would embark on a gambling addiction that would cost me everything that I had ever worked for… I would lose my home, my car, my motorcycle and even sat in my bathroom floor holding a 9mm thinking about to doing everyone a favor and getting rid of this embarrassment of a life, me. That day I wouldn’t attempt suicide, again. But this was the strongest I had considered it since I was 12 years old. (at the age of 12, I felt very similar feelings as I crawled off the edge of my bunk-bed. I wrapped the cords of my blinds around my neck and let my torso hang while my legs stayed in the bed. Just as I began to see “stars” or began to get tunnel vision, the blinds broke, I fell off the bed and the blinds fell on top of my me. They busted my head open.) I would go on to successfully go through “gambling counseling.” But have learned since then, that it was a mere refocusing of my life rather than being counseled away from gambling. I was able to (unknowingly to the counselor) share some of the feelings about desertion and worthlessness that I was dealing with more on the rape issue than gambling but still couldn’t talk about what had happened even to him.

So why would I write this post? Why now?As we embark on this series at OneLife, I have known about it for a while now while planning handouts, illustrations, testimonies and so forth. But God has really been dealing with on many things and the greatest one is the fact that he places boundaries in our life to protect us not to prevent us from “having fun” or “being cool” but to keep us safe. My wife, Crissy is one of the only people that I have shared this with. In fact, I have shared this, in detail, to only one other person and that was two weeks ago. So why would I post this you may be still be asking… to hopefully answer some questions. The biggest one being that God is real. I can’t give you a theological, descriptive answer to the question “why do bad things happen” but I can tell you that in my darkest hour God showed up. His word tells me (and you) that he will not put on us more than we can bear. As I sat in my bathroom, devastated about the events that happened in the next room over there is no way that I would have conceived this idea. If you are going through something, tell someone. If that someone laughs at you do me a favor and hit them square in the nose but then tell someone else. Find someone that will help you. Find someone that you can trust! Go to your local Pastor, go to someone that you respect, or just a friend but do not just bury it. It will alter the life that God has intended on you to live, I promise. If you don’t have anyone else to talk to and just want someone to listen or pray for the situation, you can email me anonymously at me@bradhensley.com but please just talk to someone.

With Love,
bradhensley