Let's Go Ministry >> Tommy's Tract

I grew up in a loving but dysfunctional family in Maryland. I was the oldest of three siblings. My mother became pregnant with me before she married at the age of 19. She divorced my father when I was one, and remarried her second husband who became the father of my brother. Shortly after, her second husband died. Her third marriage lasted just a short time and her fourth husband was the father of my sister. Husbands five and six followed, as did three long time boyfriends. Drugs and alcohol were common place in our house, and I remembered as a child yearning for any type of stability. As I got into my later teen years, the drugs and alcohol that surrounded me as a child started to work its way into my own life.

What I did have was a loving grandmother and grandfather who cared for me and my brother and sister as much as they could without living with us. They were the one constant in a very unstable environment…especially my grandmother. She was a wonderful woman, a devout Christian, and it was my grandmother who told me about God and about Jesus. Still my understanding was very limited, and I hardly ever went to church except occasionally with her.

Going back to my earliest memories, I had a recurring nightmare. It was the same dream every time, or at least the same terrifying feeling every time. I’d wake up trying to figure out what the dream was about and what was happening in my dream that was so terrifying, and

each time all that I was left with was the same horrible feeling and no idea of what was happening to me. I’d have the same dream every month or so up until my early thirties. As I got older, I was more likely to have the dream after a night of drugs or drinking. I remember thinking maybe one day while boarding an airplane I’d get that same feeling and it would be my sign to get off. I didn’t know why I was having the dream, all I knew was it’s the same dream I had as a child, and was something I just learned to live with.

I’ll get back to the dream later. Now I was in my mid twenties, had graduated from college, was still involved with drugs, mainly cocaine, and had no plan for my future. A good friend of mine worked as a bond trader for Merrill Lynch, and got me an interview as an institutional bond broker on Wall Street. Suddenly as a 24 year old kid, I was working in NY, surrounded by excess, which included drugs, alcohol, money, limousines, five star restaurants, the best tickets in town, etc. I got married a year and a half later to my wife Julie who I had known since we were kids. She had three children at the time, Tommy and Sam who are twins and were 1 ½ years old, and Brent who was 5. Maybe because of my upbringing or maybe just because I was young and naive, taking on a new family at the age of 26 didn’t worry me. Two years after we married on July 7th, 1987 we had a son named Joey.

Life seemed very good. This was the mid 1980’s and Wall Street was flourishing. My drug use had subsided thanks mainly to my wife and new family, but still wasn’t out of my life completely. We’d go to church occasionally, I’d pray at night as my grandmother had taught me, but the reality was that God didn’t play much of a part in my life. I was consumed by the material part of Wall Street, money and prestige, and my career took priority. This was all about to change on Friday June 16th, 1989.

It was two days before Father’s Day and I remember coming home on the train that evening from Manhattan to Ridgewood NJ, looking forward to a Father’s Day weekend. I remember walking into the house and nobody was home. This seemed unusual and a very uneasy feeling came over me. I went upstairs to change and out of the bedroom window I saw Julie walking down the driveway holding hands with a woman I recognized. Her name was Anna, and she had been Julie’s roommate in the hospital two years earlier when Joey was born. Holding hands with a woman was extremely uncharacteristic for Julie and I instantly knew something was very wrong. As soon as she saw me, she said “Joey’s gone.” This was before cell phones, and while I was commuting home, Joey had found his way to our back deck and had fallen into our hot tub.

Why did Julie call Anna? She didn’t see her often after Joey’s birth. She had other friends she was much closer to. What I was about to find out was that even though God had allowed Joey to die that day, he was still with us and had a plan for our lives. That evening Anna brought over the pastor from her church. His name is Lee Everleth, and Lee was not only a pastor, but he and his wife had lost two children. There is no doubt in my mind that Julie calling Anna that day was part of God’s plan for our lives. Pastor Lee was exactly who we needed at that time. A man who knew the unbearable pain we were feeling and also a man who could begin to answer the many questions we would have.

Suddenly Wall Street and all its material trappings seemed insignificant to me. I wanted to know if God was real. Was Jesus who my grandmother had told me about? Was there a heaven, and was Joey there? God would use that horrible day to lead our entire family on what would mark the beginning of our Christian journey. Through Pastor Lee, prayer, reading the bible for the first time, and going to church, we began to learn what it was to be a Christian and have a real relationship with God’s son Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Let me finish the story about the nightmare I used to have. The dream continued after Joey’s death. One night in my early thirties I had the dream again. This time I woke up as I always had, having this overwhelming feeling of fear, but instead of not knowing what my dream was all about, this time I woke up with the answer. In the dream, I was in a place totally without God. I remember in my dream it being a terrifying place and all I wanted to do was get away, but I couldn’t. I vividly remember thinking, that’s what this dream has been about!! I had that recurring dream from my earliest memories back when I was three or so years old until that night in my thirties. It’s been about twenty years since that night, and after the revelation that my nightmare and feelings of fear was about an existence without God, I’ve never had the dream again. Maybe God was giving me a small peak at hell?….a place totally devoid of God.

God used one of the worst fears parents have, the loss of a child, and brought our entire family to Him through that event. In the midst of our greatest suffering we were given our greatest gift; a relationship with Jesus. Three years later we received an incredible answer to prayer, our daughter Christin (Christ in) who is now 19. Our three boys are all Christians and have married Christian wives. Pastor Lee and his wife Judy have been dear friends of ours for the last 24 years. We left Wall Street seven years after Joey died and are now in Virginia where we call home. Julie and I have been married over 25 years and God is first in our lives. Julie has followed in the footsteps of her mother and my grandmother, becoming a wonderful Christian mother and wife. Through my faith in Christ, I still often stumble and at times fall, I know God is with me, He forgives me, and never again whether it be in this life here on earth or after God takes me home, do I have to worry about an existence without God or Jesus my Savior.