Living the Abundant Life

My first contact with God was at the moment I came to the end of myself while on a ship in an ocean a long way from home.  I was 24 years old and on the verge of killing myself.  I had lived with depression all of my life, but this was the worst.  Until then, I had never known God.  While growing up, the Roman Catholic Church had done a good job teaching me about God, but it failed to instruct and coach me how to connect with him, know him, and relate with him.  By the time I left my Catholic high school in 1971, I was an agnostic.  Given what had happened in my life until that time, I wasn’t convinced that God existed or had done me any good.  But I retained a healthy skepticism regarding the divine.

 

I got to the place of desperation with the assistance of the U.S. Navy.  After college, I went on active duty with the Navy, serving on a crazy ship in the Atlantic Fleet.  The first commanding officer I served under was so personally lax and disorganized that he would regularly get lost traveling about his own vessel (really!).  The second c.o. was the polar opposite of the first—a perfectionist, and compulsive about cleanliness.  He had us paint the entire inside of the ship white, including all machinery and the decks.  The outside remained the usual haze gray.  Then, nearly 20% of the crew was assigned to daily clean everything from top to bottom, inside and out.  Not a speck of oil, grease, or dirt was permitted anywhere on the hundreds of engines and machines.  Imagine painting the engine compartment of your vehicle white and keeping it spotless every day and you’ll get an idea of what our 300-member crew was faced with on a vessel more than five football fields long, 80 feet wide, and nine stories up from the water to its highest deck.  In order to achieve this, and many other oddball assignments, the captain worked us 20-hours each day while at sea, six days per week.  On Sunday’s he allowed us 7 hours sleep.

 

In 1977, the fatigue and pointless work took its toll on the crew.  While on a 7-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea, we had six suicide attempts, one of which was successful.  My boss had a plan to kill the captain, but fortunately never carried it out.  I too became suicidal and had a clear plan to end my life; thought didn’t want to leave my wife.  Anyone who has suffered from major depression knows how irrational thinking can become, and even though we had only a few months left on this cruise it seemed like eternity.  I saw no way out of my inner pain and emptiness.  I felt trapped and alone.

 

Old habits die hard, and I had taken a bible aboard with me.  Desperate for some hope that God might deliver me from my despondency and despair, I searched scripture for words that might sustain me.  The book seemed devoid of solutions, except for a couple of verses I accepted as a challenge:

 

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.  (Matthew 7:7-8)

 

Not knowing if God really existed, I cried out to him, anyway, asking for deliverance.  At 2 a.m. of the third day of praying, while I was awake and working in my office, the executive officer, who was second in command, called me up to his office—he was also up working.  Unaware that I was suicidal, He asked me if I would like to leave the ship.  In the military, such an offer is unheard of.  Except for family hardship, no one is permitted to voluntarily leave a unit before their assigned time is completed.  Knowing this, I couldn’t imagine that I was being offered a way out.  I felt like I was in a dream and numbness settled on me.  I hesitantly said yes, not believing the first officer would actually let me leave.  But he did.  As soon as we returned from the “Med,” I would be transferred.

 

As I left his office, I was dazed.  A few feet from his door, I realized that a miracle had happened to me.  An impossible solution to my entrapment on that ship had been provided.  From the top of my head, spreading quickly to my soles, a warm, tingly sensation enveloped me, and I somehow knew in my spirit and heart that God was present with me, had answered my prayer, and delivered me.  This was my first contact with the living God.

 

The next day, I was reassigned to other duties that afforded me 6 straight hours of sleep per night.  Only the baker got as much.  My orders were processed, and when we returned to our homeport of Charleston, S.C., I was transferred to temporary duty at a shore facility.  There, I only had to work from nine to five, with a whole hour for lunch, didn’t have to stand duty, so had evenings and weekends off.  I felt and believed that God had blessed me again.  And I began a quest to know this God who had saved me from myself and that ship. 

 

In February 1978, I was transferred to my last duty station, a place I never imagined living, and with orders that did not permit my wife, Christie to accompany me.  But God wasn’t finished with me, and he continued to make amazing things happen to fully get my attention and reveal himself to me.  What happened next will be next month’s Living the Abundant Life article.

 

 

 

Mark Gardner is a Christian Life Coach in Eaton, Ohio who specializes in helping people and churches experience The Extraordinary Life God promises us.  Learn more and contact him at gardnercoaching.com.  Article Copyright © 2007 by Mark Gardner.