by Judy Wright

When Terry was 13, his mother became angry with him for some infraction of the family rules. At her urging, Terry’s father got a horsewhip from the shed and began to use it on his son. As the blows rained down, Terry curled up in the floor, screaming in agony. He crept into the corner where the whip was not as effective, so his mother began screaming, "Kick him! Kick him!"

Terry's oldest brother, Roger, age 18, grimly went to the kitchen and got a large butcher knife. He picked up the now-abandoned horsewhip and hacked it into a dozen pieces. Meanwhile, the parents had worn out their anger and were sitting at the kitchen table. Roger placed the horsewhip on the table in front of his father. “The next time you touch him,” Roger said, “I will take this knife and do the same thing to you.” The parents never touched Terry again.

But through years of violence, the emotional damage had been done. While the absence of physical abuse brought some relief, nothing could give Terry a sense of love and acceptance. He felt hated, and he hated in return.

Terry rebelled against the rules of his conservative “Christian” home. He rebelled against the society that had failed to protect him. He rebelled against the God who he assumed was a duplicate of his earthly father.

Terry began drinking heavily. He began smoking. He partied into the morning hours. His family often did not know where he was for days at a time. When he turned 18, he joined the Navy.

In San Diego for basic training, Terry changed very little. One of the rules was that sailors were not allowed to go south of the Mexican border on weekend leave. Nevertheless, Terry convinced a few buddies to hitchhike with him to Tijuana. On the way home, they hitched a ride in a stolen car. Border officials realized the car was stolen, and they threw all of its occupants into a Mexican jail.

Terry and his buddies told the authorities they were only hitchhiking, and knew nothing about the car being stolen, but the driver said they were together. The officials believed the driver. As soon as the guards left, Terry turned on the lying car thief and beat him senseless. Soon Terry was placed in solitary confinement.

The young sailors were declared AWOL, but the Navy somehow found them and bailed them out, only to put them in the brig back at camp. Before long Terry had a nervous breakdown, and a sympathetic prison physician arranged for a medical discharge rather than a court martial.

Terry began wandering the country, and one night ended up in El Paso. In a drunken state, he saw a man on a deserted street who reminded him of his father. He beat the man to death. When he woke up the next morning, Terry was terrified. He avoided police, and even temporarily avoided liquor, as he waited to be arrested. But the newspapers were silent. Terry finally concluded his victim must have been an illegal Mexican immigrant, and the local police in the rough border town hadn’t cared enough to investigate. The murder reinforced Terry's belief that God had forsaken him.

But then a miracle happened. Terry met Caren and fell in love. The miracle was that she also fell in love with him! Soon they married.

Caren's steady love helped Terry settle down. He began working steadily, and he seldom drank. Three little boys came along, and Terry, in his desire to provide for their needs, became a productive member of society. But the demons that drove Terry were not yet finished. As he stopped his heavy drinking, he replaced that addiction with another, and became a compulsive eater. After a few years, Terry weighed more than 600 pounds.

As he approached age 40, his ankles could no longer support his weight, and he was unable to walk more than a few steps. He developed severe diabetes, then blindness. No longer able to work, Terry collected Social Security disability while Caren continued to work as a waitress to help support the family.       

But now, finally, Terry had slowed down enough to hear a gentle voice that had spoken to him so many times before when he had been too angry to listen. "I want to go back to church," Terry told Caren. She agreed. Before long, both of them committed their lives to Christ. Terry struggled to stop smoking. Caren also smoked, and found it difficult to break the habit, but they now believed they should. The day came when Terry and Caren were baptized. Terry began the laborious task of exercising on a treadmill in his living room. He eventually lost more than 250 pounds, enabling him once again to move around the house.         

Terry’s face glowed as he told me his story, ending with the words, “I'm blind, but at last I can see clearly! It took losing my physical sight for me to be able to see Jesus."

As he got older, and the ravages of life increasingly caught up with him, Terry went to live in a nursing home. A few months ago, he fell in the bathroom, breaking a leg. While in the emergency room he suffered a major heart attack. Then, because of his diabetes, the leg did not heal and had to be amputated. More recently, the other leg also had to be amputated.

In recent weeks, Terry recognized few people, though he did still know Caren. When the nurse brought his meal tray, he still remembered to thank the Lord for his food. Finally, on December 2, 2006, Terry died. But as long as he could remember anything, he remembered his friend Jesus, who, after so many troubled years, had finally brought peace to his heart. 

Judy Wright is a freelance writer whose home is in New York State. Terry was her brother-in-law. She and her husband attended Terry’s funeral in Texas the first week in December.