Testimony For Celebrate Recovery December 19, 2014
Buddy Gray
I am a grateful believer in
Jesus Christ who lives a life of victory over being molested as a child and
living in an alcohol enriched environment for many years. I am especially grateful for my parents Red
and Minnie who raised me to be the person I have become. Their willingness to
allow me to make decisions and to hold me accountable for my bad decisions has
been helpful all my life. The only
missing element in their lives was Christ.
Christ and God were all talked about in exclamatory manners as the
Lord’s name was used in vain usually just after something painful occurred or a
mistake was made.
I grew up in Lake Jackson, TX
near the Gulf of Mexico in Southeast Texas.
Lake Jackson was a city born during World War II when Dow Chemical
patented a process to make magnesium used in munitions and in the structure of
machines the armed forces used. I was
born in 1955 and my dad held two jobs while I was growing up. His main job was
working as a chemical plant operator for Dow Chemical in Styrene
production. His other job was as owner
of a beer joint called the Lake Club. At
the Lake Club, Dad was the barkeep, bookie and he was also the bouncer who kept
the peace when situations seemed like they were getting out of hand. Dad also was a part-time unlicensed dentist
occasionally when patrons had tooth aches, and were receptive to him pulling
their teeth for them. On a few occasions
Dad had to pull more than one tooth to get the bad one out.
Growing up in the Lake Club was
interesting to say the least. Many
nights my sister and I were taken across the street to the movie theaters and
left for the double feature. When the
lights would come on the projectionist would escort us across the street to my
parents care. Dad would comp his drinks
to make it worth his while to watch us.
The strangest memory of the Lake club that I have, other than dad
pulling teeth, was waking up one night in one of the booths with everyone
gone. I got me an ice cold coke, put
some change in the juke box and played shuffleboard, until the local police
chief who was on his nightly rounds of checking the downtown businesses, came
in and asked me what I was doing. He sat
down had a beer and played a game of shuffleboard with me and then took me
home.
Mom and Dad both liked to travel
and especially like to travel without my sister and I. They would travel to the French Quarter in
New Orleans to party and go to the underground gaming halls that were
there. My sister and I would stay with
an aunt and uncle when they went on these excursions. It was during one of these stays at my aunt’s
house that my cousin started molesting me.
He was 12 and I was four. My
cousin bribed me to keep our secret.
Finally, when I was eight, I, figured out this activity was not right
and did not allow it happen anymore. The
shame and guilt of that situation kept me quiet for nearly fifty years until I
gave my testimony in September of 2010. I thank God for the peace that I have
over that period in my life now.
Dad sold the Lake Club and we
moved to a 20 acre farm in 1962. We lived in a little community called Shady
Acres. Dad‘s only job was work at the
plant. Life on the farm was good, we were raising pigs and cattle. Dad also had a couple acres that he planted
in tomatoes, potatoes and okra.
Occasionally we would grow watermelons and cucumbers. At the new house dad always kept a keg in an
old refrigerator that he had drilled to allow the tap to be on the
exterior. Beer was available all the
time after that and my parents did not mind when the neighbor boys and I would
sneak a glass of juice from the keg. Dad
only minded if the keg was empty when he wanted a beer. This also meant that I hosted a lot of
campouts for middle school aged boys.
During my teen years we would go
on annual camping trips to Arkansas to spend time with the relatives from my
dad’s side of the family. It was on one
of these trips that my 2nd cousin’s wife who was 30 years older than
me introduced me to the female anatomy and sex. Again it was a secret that was
swept under the rug, all the guilt and shame associated with this went under
the same rug. Denial is a major way to
deal with a hurt that one cannot discuss safely anywhere. Although the other way to deal with this was
to consume large quantities of alcohol.
Many times in high school I would drink myself sick or until I would
pass out. My dad passed his alcoholic
tendencies to me, as his father had passed them on to him. During this time I was proud of the fact that
it took so much alcohol to make me drunk, I did not understand the chemistry
involved as the body was taking care of this toxin within me.
When I was 18 a young lady
introduced me to Christ. Wow! It was the
most incredible idea that had ever been proposed to me. First to hear that what I was doing was sin,
Romans 3:23, and that the wages of sin was death, Romans 5:8. I understood there things in my life that
were sin. I loved the sin that I was
involved in, but I wanted something more than what I had at the time in my
life. Drugs was never a big part of my
life, all forms of alcohol were. Weed
was present but I did not like how I felt with it. God had plans for me.
In 1974 during the summer after
I was baptized and that summer I lived a solid Christian life. I had confessed my sin and started walking
away from the entrapments of the world.
Acts 2:38 was taken into my heart. I received the gift of the Holy
Spirit and came up out of the water of baptism swinging trying to punch the
devil out of this world. Billy Gambino blessed me by teaching me the word of
God and how it was the most important thing a person needed to know. Pastor Simms taught me the three foot rule of
evangelism. He said, “If someone gets within three foot of you tell them about
Jesus.” Tell them about how you were a
slave to sin and now your life has been changed. So that’s what I did. I walked
up and down the crowded beach talking to anyone who would make eye contact with
me. I had been set free from sin and I wanted everyone to know about it. Pastor
Sims gave me a pair of speaker horns to place on a rack on top of my 1970 Ford
Maverick. Using the PA on my Cobra CB I proclaimed the gospel as I drove up and
down the beach. I preached, turn or
burn, Jesus is coming soon. You better not wait to get on the Jesus train.
The summer ended and my first
gallop in the faith slowly fizzled. I
went to college on scholarship and lived in a house with the other members of
my swim team. None of them were
Christians. They were all very committed
pagans. I fell and fell hard, three
month of Jesus Freaking was not enough fortification for my new Christian
walk. Swimming and School did not take
up enough time, sin was available and Satan filled my life with opportunity.
The year I spent at Midland
College was good for me because I came to my senses after leaving for the
summer break about how bad the party life was for me. I would never get an education and I could
possible end up in bad places living like I was living. Even though I was a
ranked All American Swimmer, I forfeited my scholarship and decided to attend
Abilene Christian University my sophomore year.
At ACU I grew greatly as a Christian learning under great professors in
Bible Classes. My junior year I began dating someone from my home town. Her name was Kathy. We were married after dating a year in
January of 1977. I graduated in May of
1978 and took a job as an Employee Benefits Consultant. Alcohol in the work environment was a great
temptation to me along with weed being as prevalent as Tobacco in the Austin
area. Eventually after being swindled by
a relative I took a job selling furniture in my home town. I became a regular
attender at a church and settled in as a “good Christian.” Kathy began playing softball on a team that
was largely made up of homosexuals. Kathy was befriended by members of the
softball and many others in their culture while being involved in turf war
about the nursery at church. The
argument at the church pushed her farther away from God and she was readily
welcomed by her new friends. About four
years passed, and one weekend Kathy went to a softball tournament and never
returned to live at home again. She
moved in with Debbie and lived with her many years after that.
This was the lowest point of my
life, feeling abandoned by my wife and not feeling supported by people at
church, who could not wrap their heads around what Kathy was involved in. It
seemed like everything going on was taboo at that time. Divorce was not tolerated and fault was assigned
to both sides. Divorce appeared to be
the unforgivable sin and remarriage seemed out of the question at my home
church. Once more rather than turning
things over to God, I sought alcohol to numb the pain that I was experiencing
all the time. Coronas were my crutch and Happy Hour was the
best hour of the day, at least that was how I thought at that time in my life. God,
however, had other plans. He sent an
angel in the form of a good friend to the bar where I was going to each Happy
Hour each day, who rescued me from driving drunk and for that matter drinking
myself into oblivion every day. This
great friend started to point me towards the road to recovery.
After the divorce was final
another friend came into the Chinese restaurant where I was eating one
day. He also had experienced divorce in
our local church, and after a plane crash and found life in Christ again. He assured me that I did not need to be so
stubborn that God would have to crash the plane I was flying in to straighten
me out like he had done with him. He
asked me to go to church with him that evening in Houston and I called in to
the office and asked for the rest of the day off, then headed for the
city. I am forever grateful for my
friend introducing me to divorce recovery at the Westbury Church of
Christ. Jesus was the answer, not the
bottle. It took a good friend to teach
me that lesson that I already had learned earlier. Time transpired at Westbury and eventually I
met a young beautiful woman named Krista on the new side of the singles ministry. I was on the used side, but crossing over was
allowed. She knocked my socks off. It
did not take me long to know that God had sent me the right woman to be my
companion and wife. I asked her to marry
me on our third date. She said yes! From
that time on I have stayed connected to Christ. We have been married for twenty
seven years. Have there been bumps in
the road, you bet there have been. I was
diagnosed infertile and our hopes for children were dashed in 1997. But
God had other plans. After starting
my ministry Job in the year 2000 God gave us a child by adoption. He is one of the great joys of my life today.
My summary
statement is this. For by grace you have
been saved, but that not of yourself, lest no man should boast 1 Corinthians 2 8:9
I thank God for my recovery every
day. God has given me a large forever
family, a wonderful ministry and I am glad that each of you is a part of it.
