I’ve learned recently that it is better for me to put into writing whatever is on my mind, or it will just continue to roll around in my head endlessly. I have considered writing and publicly sharing my more complete personal testimony for years but I hesitated, simply because the story is so raw that some may wonder if it were true at all. Well… Given some of the more recent events in both my business and personal life, I believe it may be important to more formally introduce myself. What better way to get to know someone than reading their story? I loathe this saying, but "haters gonna hate", I may as well steal their thunder and tell you what they'll say. I say that with a small whip of jest, but with all respect. If I can't laugh at my own life, I may as well just pack up and go home.
I was a false convert for the larger portion of my adult life. I had never heard this term before reading a book written by Ray Comfort titled “God has a wonderful plan for your life: The myth of the Modern Message”. I read this book shortly after my genuine conversion in January of 2013 and felt Ray had written it specifically for me. Its a good read for any Christian.
I was like many other “Christians” that grew up in the 80s, I had a “conversion story” that involved me being marched down to the front of the church, the pastors coming by the house to visit later, and then me being pronounced to be “born again” shortly thereafter. For me, this experience occurred around the age of 9 at a church in Hampton, Virginia. I cannot recall anything that was said that day nearly forty years ago, or the church for that matter, that alone should be the first cause of concern for any self-respecting Christian, note the absence of quotes. I would spend the next twenty-eight years claiming to be "Christian" despite nothing in my lifestyle reflecting Christ in any way, except perhaps my half-hearted commitment to attend church now and again.
I grew up in a tight-nit neighborhood of Hampton, Virginia and had some very close friends, some of which who are still friends to this day. One of my closest friends lived directly behind me for several years. He was a year ahead of me in school. My older brother Billy, my friend & I would all walk together to middle school, and then they would walk on to high school. As we grew into our preteens, I didn’t know why at the time, but my friend moved away. I found out some time later this was due to some family struggles. On March 28, 1992, my friend was sexually assaulted and then brutally murdered. I was fifteen years old at the time of my friend’s murder. My life took an immediate darker shift. I was already an angry, hateful teenager. I lived in a home with a Viet-Nam Veteran dealing with his own demons by drowning them in alcohol, who also claimed to be a Christian, but never took me to church, ever, that I can remember. My dad never stumbled, never slurred speech that I could pick up on, but be assured, my earthly father was an alcoholic, as am I. I have recently stopped drinking, entirely, period. I am sure that will come as a shock to some of my most loyal haters.
For the sake of my privacy, I’ll summarize this next season and say I had some run-ins with Hampton’s finest during my later teen years. It is not an excuse; but I believe this was in direct response to the unresolved trauma of my friend being murdered. I finally figured that out just a few years ago.
After serving ninety-days in in a facility, I was released to a half-way house in Norfolk, Virginia, in a very rough neighborhood. I was seventeen, my eighteenth birthday not far off, just released from a short "stint" of what felt like a very real prison to me, only to be now living in a rough area of Norfolk. I was scared to death, especially walking to and from school to get my GED. I had decided I was done with school, HA! God had another plan. I did get my GED in Norfolk, thankfully. There was no graduation, no class ring, no prom, no senior pictures. At that point I didn’t care, I just wanted to get the heck out of Norfolk. God has a sense of humor, rest assured.
After securing my GED, I lived in Hampton with a church family, and grew to be lifelong friends. At the time, I was convinced I wanted to be a mechanic. Despite my being a jerk-face, my dad purchased me a starter set of tools and set up an internship interview with a local shop in town.
A couple days before the interview I saw a commercial for ITT Technical Institute (in Norfolk, now defunct). I convinced my mom to drive me over to have a chat. After talking with the intake counselor, they recommended I take the placement test to just to “see how I do”. I did extremely well, especially on spacial relationships, which makes sense considering I loved to draw growing up. I was interested in their CADD Program; I had no idea what that even meant. I took shop class and built crappy relics and ashtrays that everyone broke before they ever even made it home. I graduated from ITT in 1997 with an AA in CADD (Computer Aided Drafting & Design) Technology with a subpar GPA. This impromptu visit to Norfolk ultimately turned out to become the catalyst to a 28-year career in the building design industry. I now own and run my own BIM consultancy (Building Information Modeling). If you know of a manufacturer needing Revit content development, send them my way. If you have no idea what BIM is by this point in our industry, we should really talk, maybe in private. I have worked with some of the greatest, globally recognized industry leading manufacturers, many of which continue to be active clients to this very day. I’m not sure where this current path leads, but my BIM clients will continue to be serviced, once I catch my breath. BUT God.
After ITT Tech, I eventually met my first wife, Nicole, God rest her soul. It is important to understand, that despite my claim of being Christian, nothing in my life had proved that out to date, including this season of life. I believe my first wife was a Christian, no quotes, therefore, I trust she is in the arms of our Savior today. Because I was not a Christian during this season, when things got hard, I ran. You see, my ex-wife had a rare neuromuscular disease, Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA). That particular disease is a real….doozy. It attacks the most vital organs in the body, especially the heart, so my wife suffered from CHF (Congestive Heart Failure). FA is a neuromuscular disease that causes the carrier to progressively lose their balance, eventually confining them to a wheelchair. So, Nicole had a two-for-one special, she had a dying heart from presumably from birth and balance that would progressively get worse. The birth of her son, my step-son in that season, his birth caused some acceleration of her disease through her pregnancy, prior to us meeting. Yep, I was an extra special kind of dirt bag. I did for a season believe I loved her; I carried her up waterfall hikes on our honeymoon in the Cherokee area. I’ve never been back to those falls.
These next events are my recollections…Nicole’s heart condition eventually deteriorated to the point that her heart was not going to sustain life, long term. At the time, we were living in Virginia Beach, she was a military brat too, her father retired from the Navy. After getting no help from cardiologists in Virginia Beach, we relocated to Moneta for two reasons, her parents had land nearby that we enjoyed visiting, and that put us within reach of UVA’s heart center, about 2 hours away to be exact. She was accepted into their transplant program, despite her FA, I believe because of her young age at the time, we were just kids. The TEAM of doctors assigned to her care were phenomenal, every day. They were very up front, this will only buy you a decade, maybe.
Now you would think this would be the season I would genuinely meet my Savior, but you would be wrong. Let me tell you about a word called depravity. You see, we are born with this bent towards sin, towards self, its idolatry, placing all others’ needs in front of your own. I was an especially selfish person. I eventually left, then blamed her for years for not being able to put up with my selfishness, all the while shucking accountability. Nicole stepped into the arms of her Savior, I believe, surrounded by family that genuinely loved her on April 12, 2021 at the young age of 46. I have often reflected on those younger years with Nicole, and I have many, deep regrets that I will undoubtedly carry to my grave, without a doubt.
In May of 2010, my father was dying from exposure to Agent Orange during his time in Viet Nam. I got home to Hampton in time to try to make peace to a man that had already lost his ability to speak. My world literally fell apart, I was too late to make peace with my earthly father. My dad died on Mother’s Day, May 9th, 2010.
On February 2, 2011, I lost my grandfather, one of my few heroes, and our family’s spiritual patriarch. My grandfather, “Bill”, was a waste gunner on a B-24 named “Guess Who’s Here” and flew over twenty missions in WW2, and survived to tell me about it. He did it every chance we got, about once a year, his feet would dance with excitement and pride. He was invincible to me, I had already watched Memphis Belle, many times, not a B-24, but similar stories. I was in the room with my mother and his bride the moment he breathed his last and stepped into the arms of Jesus.
On December 17, 2012, my older brother “Billy” dropped dead one morning while preparing for work. His coworkers (and friends) were around him at the moment of his death, a fatal heart attack, he was thirty-nine. His new wife Val carried his unborn child, unbeknownst to me, I had no idea she was expecting, it was the one small silver lining, BUT God. A beautiful gift in a time of deep, deep sorrow. Billie Leigh has my brother’s eyes, the windows to the soul, not literally of course, but someone does. When Billy died, those beautiful eyes of his gave sight to someone else. I see Billy's mannerisms in my niece when I am around, which is not very often, but every single time it makes me cry, and that’s OK.
I remember the morning my brother died like it was yesterday. At the time, I lived in my mother’s basement, due to the aforementioned family struggles, of my own making I’ll remind you. A call came repeatedly in the morning, ringing the phone in the house above me, waking me up. I remember being irritated about who could be calling repeatedly at this hour, and then I heard it, my mother let out a wail from the depth of her very soul. I can still hear that cry at times in my mind, even today. She had just learned her first born son was dead, and I couldn’t be bothered in the moment. Scripture tells us, accurately, that each man’s date of death has been set, and that it was known by our Father in Heaven before his Son Jesus Christ even formed the foundations of the world through His Word alone. This Truth includes foreknowledge of the death date of my brother, December 17th. He also knows the date of my own death, which will hopefully happen, someday far into the future, with a camera in my hand.
This series of deaths was ultimately the catalyst that God used to finally draw me to genuine repentance and faith. In January of 2013, a TV-series was running with a Biblical basis for the show. Me being my prideful self, self-assured in my own faith, I was going to follow along in my Bible and watch for heresy, what a joke. The theological soundness of the TV-series is irrelevant, I can assure you; God was using this moment in my life to show me with both a visual representation while walking me through His Word.
The TV-series was primarily focused on the Gospel, which is confined to the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John. They are the firsthand accounts of Jesus’ Disciples, each told from their own perspectives of the same events, that being the earthly life of Christ. There are natural similarities and differences between the accounts since each individual remembered different details about the same events. Every word of the Bible is God-breathed through the hand of man, man is no more than the vessel that put the Word to paper.
At some point during the series, I wandered into the book of 1 John. In the second paragraph of 1 John, subtitled “Walking in the Light”, starting with verse 5, it reads
“This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the Truth. But if we walk in the Light, as He is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the Truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, “we make him a liar, and His word is not in us.” 1 John 1: 5-10 ESV
When I read those words that night, it was like a grenade went off in my lap, but that’s not all that was said. In Chapter 2, the indictment gets even more personal, in my opinion, I'm no theologian.
“He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. Whoever says “I know Him” but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the Truth is not in him, but whoever keeps His Word, in him, truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him: whoever abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.” 1 John 2: 2-6 ESV
The next part, “The New Commandment”, cannot be neglected here.
“Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the Word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in Him and you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” 1 John 2:7-11 ESV
After reading 1 John, it was clear I had nothing I could bring to the table to offer for my salvation. I fully understood we are laid bare before Christ; He sees it all, and loves me despite it. My sin carries a price, every day, even now. God requires a perfect sacrifice as payment for sin, one without blemish or spot. This is impossible for mortal man, you and I, but Christ. God in His immeasurable Grace sent His only Son to die on a cross for our sin, yours and mine, but there is a cost.
Christ said count the costs, before you "decide" to follow Me. You must die to self, He must be Lord of your life, your whole life, including all that crap we do when we’re not at His house the rest of the week. There’s scripture that goes into greater detail about following His commandments, there are ten, in a very specific order of importance, but all sin carries the death penalty. Christ died once for all sin, past, present and future. Before I am burned at the stake, God speaks through Paul that this is not a license to sin all the more. Doing such would only serve to prove the illegitimacy of the claim to repentance and faith to begin with.
After over 27 years in the building design community, I am considering stepping away, possibly transitioning into a new season, one where I try to find quiet, peace. My God has blessed me with not one, but two fledging businesses, a 3D content business, and a photography business, both of which will continue grow hopefully. God commands us to do ALL things to HIS glory, not our own. For a photographer, that is a tight-rope walk between confidence and the feeling of conviction for pride in your work. You don't have to tell people you have good work. You either do or you don't. The art scene will let you know, trust me.
When my brother died, I almost didn’t make it out alive. Some of you closest to me know the ugly details of how true that statement is. I was already an ugly person, mean as they come, vile. BUT CHRIST. Depression is a dark, seemingly bottomless hole, but Christ. Search for the Light, it’s there.
These last ten years have been very hard, that sounds like an excuse. My friends and family here in the area watched me move to Florida in pursuit of a lady, this was not wise. I am the man, from a Biblical standpoint, this happened on my watch, I carried the brunt of the responsibility. I also mentioned how we were both unwilling to die to self. One of the many reasons for my coming home, back to Roanoke was my mother, who recently was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. This Christmas has been especially hard as some of you know, harder than all the others, even harder than the year we lost my older brother.
I hated being proven right about my mother, needing to be near her, geographically, emotionally, all the rest, and so soon after returning home. I feel like I have had no time to catch my breath, but she is alive today and in good health considering. This season is hard. Your prayers are appreciated. But Christ.
So, in the Lord’s infinite wisdom, He has seemingly ordained the launch of my photography business literally over the last year. I've been trying to get it going for five or six years, I've lost count honestly. Initially I was using photography to mourn my father and brother unknowingly, I didn’t figure out that part until just a couple years ago. If you look at all the ways He, that being my Father in Heaven, He has made the stars align just right. It is inconceivable to me that this momentum in my business over the last few months can just be “luck”, or simply the result of “hard work”. For those of you who will naturally reach out and share messages of “you deserve this”, please don’t. I deserve squat, I deserve death, just like everyone else on this planet because of my sin, BUT CHRIST.
When considering how to respond to this post. Be careful, be respectful, I will not tolerate attack on my God, my family, my character, my business, fill in the blank. Consider carefully sharing any information that is not known to the general public. If you know me better than some, such as those in my past, I know I am a sinner, thank you for reminding me. I’ve had some really bad days, months, years, especially as of late. BUT GOD
Walk in the Light. Death to Life. Happy New Year everyone. This is one calendar year I have wanted to put me behind me, for the last several years. Make it a point to be kind to every one in the coming year. Very few know the real burdens people are carrying, including me. BUT GOD.
Nick
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