I am honored that I was asked to share my testimony.
I view it as an opportunity to share the Lords work in my
life. I will apologize in advance for not being a writer.
I will certainly not “wow” anyone with my vocabulary.
In fact, I am hopeful that I will not confuse you. My
intent is to only brag on the Lord. As I think about
everything that the Lord has done for me, I am challenged
to put it into words so that others can understand. But….here goes. I pray that these words, will, in God’s own way, help someone today. I think that, as a Christian, one of best ways that we can witness to others is through our testimony. I am truly “Better than I deserve!”. Those words are so true when it comes to what blessings have been given to me by our Lord and Savior. Like many others, my life has had its share of challenges. The Lord has seen me through those challenges, and then some!
I come from a split family and am the oldest of two children that my parents had together. They divorced before my brother and I were five years old. We didn’t have the opportunity to have a very close relationship with our Father, as we lived with our Mother out of State for several years. My Mother remarried and had a daughter a few years after she divorced my Father. This marriage turned out to be physically, very abusive. I will never forget how my Mother was mistreated. That marriage did not work out and we moved from Clarksville, TN back to Killen to live with my Grandparents. We learned to be really close as there were six of us living in a two bedroom, one bath, 800 square foot home. My Grandparents didn’t have a lot of wealth, but they loved us dearly and cared for us. After only a few months at their house, my brother and sister were taken by my step-father while they were playing outside. Everyone else but my Grandmother was gone for the day. While they were in the yard, he drove up and persuaded them to get into his car. We wouldn’t see either of them for a very long time. The police and FBI looked but couldn’t find them. We all were very heartbroken. For the next several years, it was just my Mother and I. We had some challenging times with failed relationships and the challenges that go along with raising a son as a single parent. My Mother has always done an outstanding job of providing for me. She is a very loving lady that showered us with love at all times. During this time, I began to get involved with the wrong people and do some pretty bad things. I began to abuse alcohol and drugs. As a very young person, I was smoking marijuana and getting drunk routinely. I was interested in anything that would give me a high. I also got involved with a gang. I don’t want you to think that this was some huge, high profile group……just a small group of punks that wanted more attention for themselves. I was very much a punk. I was obviously looking for something that I could not find. All of this was done without my Mother having any knowledge. While she was busy trying to earn a living for us, working nights as a waitress, I was busy being a punk. Then one day a miracle happened for my mother and I. After many years of my brother and sister being gone from our home, out of nowhere, we received a telephone call from my brother. He told us that he had been placed in a children’s home in Shreveport, Louisiana and had been there for a long time. Somehow he had remembered our telephone number and had gotten the opportunity to call us. We made the trip to Louisiana to get my brother back. What a wonderful day that was for our family! Our sister was still with her Father, we just didn’t know where. We would come in contact with our sister a few years later, after her father died. I have only seen her a couple of times since.
My brother and I were extremely close. Being 14 months apart in age and having experienced what we had, it helped us to foster a very close relationship. My personal life began to settle down during this time. I became involved with a wonderful family that encouraged me to attend church regularly. I made new friends that were much different than my old friends – ones that had much more of a positive impact on my life. I became involved in more positive things, like sports, at school that helped to move me in a different direction. This was the time in my life that I began to develop discipline that was very much needed to get me away from my old lifestyle. Then the best thing was happened to me in my entire life took place: During the spring of my senior year of high school, I accepted Christ after several months of deliberation. I have not done much in my life without deliberating it pretty extensively, and this was no different. I wasn’t sure I had been good enough to be saved. I was finally convinced I could never earn my way to heaven and that regardless of my past, the Lord would save me if I accepted him as my Lord and Savior and believe that he died for my sins. The Lord delivered me from the terrible lifestyle that I had lived. He truly changed me into a new creature. After graduating from high school in 1985, I enrolled into college at UNA. I enlisted in the Army in 1986, and later enrolled in ROTC and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1989. I went on to graduate from UNA with an accounting degree in 1990. My brother joined the active duty Army and moved away. About the same time, my Mother married the love of her life. A few years went by, and my brother fulfilled his Army commitment and moved home. He lived with me as he worked and I finished at UNA. While we were living together he started dating a girl that he later married. Those were some really great years with him! I am so glad we got to share that time together. I was growing as a Christian and the Lord was really blessing me and my family. Life was good.
I didn’t know it, but 1992 was to be a very tough year. But, God in all his sovereignty, was preparing me for what was about to happen - an event that would change my family’s life forever. About a year after my brother got married, his marriage began to be strained and they moved to Georgia to “start over”. They got pregnant and were settling into their new home in South Georgia. My brother was working construction and his wife was preparing for the baby – a little girl, who was to be born in December of that year – when things went horribly wrong. Just before his 24th birthday, while my brother was working, a safety harness that he was wearing got tangled into an electric engine and it slammed him into a metal platform. He suffered severe injuries. My mother received a call from my brother’s (Billy) wife on the morning of November 18th, 1992 to tell her of the accident. I rushed to my Mothers’ home and placed a call to that South Georgia hospital that was caring for him to enquire of his injuries. The emergency room nurse explained the injuries. I was unsure of my brothers true condition until I asked, “ma’am, are you telling me that my brother is dead?” and she replied, “yes Sir, I am”. On that day, I lost my best friend……..my brother. This was a devastating experience for me and my family. He, of course, never saw his daughter that would be born only weeks after his death. It seemed liked it had only been a short time ago that we were picking him up from that children’s home in Louisiana. I don’t know how I could have handled that tragedy without the help of my Lord, my church family and my friends.
Several years later, my Mother gained custody of my brother’s daughter. She still lives with my Mother and step-father, and has grown into a wonderful 17 year old girl. She has been one of the great joys in our life. A little gift left behind by her daddy that we cherish, as a family, every single day. A girl that looks just like her daddy! (funny how that works)
I feel like the Lord began a new chapter in my Life from that time and forward. I became very settled into my civilian career and my National Guard career was continuing to progress. I met the Love of my life, Jennifer, in 1995 and we married 11 months later. It only took us 3 months to get engaged! A little over two years later our Hannah “Banana” came along. Fifteen short months later, Micah came along. What a surprise he was…..a GREAT surprise! Those two guys are so very special to Jennifer and me. We have a wonderful family! All of us are very close and spend so much time together. The LORD has blessed us with such a strong family. The dynamics are so very different from those that I grew up knowing. God has taken a very DISFUNCTIONAL guy, with a very DISFUNCTIONAL past, and put total FUNCTION right into the center of it all! Funny how his word always works and speaks truth into our lives. He tells his he works ALL things together for his good. My life has proven to be a living, breathing testament to that word!!
In summary, I am blessed to have been married for 14 years, have 2 wonderful children, a satisfying career in the military, and a job that supports my family. I returned from a successful deployment to Iraq a few years ago and have just recently rotated out of Battalion Command with the National Guard. I have been selling pharmaceuticals with GlaxoSmithKline for the past 10 years. My Mother has been happily married for the past 20 plus years, and they have done a great job raising my Niece. I think that my life has shown me that regardless how bad you think you might have been throughout your life, the Lord can still save you. He will also prepare you and help you overcome any situation or obstacle that you may find yourself in. And he can and will bless you beyond anything you can ever imagine. God is so Good!!
Roger Presley |
