My Autobiography
Part Twelve--Healing and Forgiveness

Right before I left, I attended a service at Mt. Hope Church in Lansing. The pastor drew an analogy of buying a Corvette and driving it with flat tires. “Pretty soon, those tires are going to come off and tear up my car,” the pastor said. “You cannot continue to live your life holding on to hurts because sooner of later, the will tear your life up.” It definitely gave me something to think about. Just a month or so before, I had been accused of stealing at my job. The reason was because a friend of mine that had helped me get the job was fired for giving unauthorized discounts. He had told them that I did the same thing, which was not true. I was carrying around a lot of anger toward him and toward Amanda. When I got back to the apartment that day, I was flipping through the TV and I happened to catch a program by Charles Stanley, pastor of First Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He was preaching on the same thing! Even more interesting was that I had never got this channel in before and when I did this time, I could only get the audio, not the video, but I listened. Before the sermon was over, I was lying prostrate on the floor crying out to God that he forgive me of my sin and give me the strength to forgive others. There was a book suggested by Charles Stanley called The Source of My Strength. It was all about forgiveness. The next week was spent sitting on the beach reading about the forgiveness of God and soaking up more discipleship from Dan. What a fantastic week! I returned to Tyndale in the fall very refreshed from a wonderful summer in the Lord. I got a job working as a waiter at Jonathan B. Pub.