Oh Brian!, Brian Hardie [ready player one ebook txt] 📗

blind. Before I got out of the Army I met my soon to be second wife. She was just what I needed and I thought we could make it forever. Unfortunately I started making a lot of money. Definitely an enabler for someone with a root of addiction that was dormant but not gone. Anyway, I found out what opiates were and couldn’t get enough of them. I couldn’t function without them and they consumed me. Well it was ok because I got them from the Veterans Hospital for my knee. Certainly justifiable-“The Doctors gave them to me”. Well one day I ran into a cocaine dealer. I’m certain satan himself set this “chance meeting” up. Anyway, the next few years were all too familiar to me. Back to lying, cheating anyway I could to get money, etc...

Everything on the outside “looked good”. I had a big house, my own brokerage, money, cars, family, etc… My third son, Christopher Andrew, was born in Birmingham Alabama. We were separated during the pregnancy and I was already looking elsewhere for “comfort”. We reconciled a month after “Andrew’s” birth. I was determined to be a better dad and I was. Andrew is an angel, just like Brian and Justin.

It was during this period of time that my mother was getting worse with cancer and she was became paralyzed from the waist down. This was hard for her. My mother was very independent and active.

Right before getting out of the Army, I got a “compassionate re-assignment” to help with her care in Miami. My little brother was doing a good job of it already. He had taken care of her for fifteen years of cancer. After I was there for a month or so, I went into the room one night and she was in bad shape. I told her. “Mom, we have to pray”. I left the room and slept on the couch. In the morning, I went into the room and she looked great. She told me she hadn’t prayed in seven years, but she did last night. There was a great peace upon her. I went to work and she died an hour later. God waited on her to “come back”. At the wake, I could feel her dancing. No need to go to the funeral, I knew where she was. God was opening up my eyes to the spiritual.

 

 

 

Chapter Six

It all fell apart when some of the deals I was working on didn’t close fast enough. It was time to get out of Alabama while I still could. I sold my brokerage to two young men who worked for me for about a year. They were loyal, I thought, but they just weren’t experienced or committed enough to make it work. I moved to Georgia and lived on Lake Lanier for five years.  Through all of this, I went to church nearly every Sunday.  I was looking for help or something. I needed Jesus Christ not religion. I know today that the “religious” killed Jesus and they still do it today. Jesus Christ is freedom, religion is not.

Why couldn’t just one person come to me with this answer?  An entire life goes by and no one tells you. I have been around the world, in church nearly every week, and not one person, no not one, ever offered a real Jesus.

After five years, it was time to come back to Birmingham. We found a home and I started doing construction.  It wasn’t going to work; I was now on methadone and couldn’t think straight if I wanted to. The VA was sending me five medications every month like clockwork. It wasn’t enough. Don’t be deluded, drugs never satisfy. You always need more. That’s why disability is such a sham. I watch people live this lie of government care. They have one week of “good”, one week of “OK”, one week of “survival” and one week of “Hell”. What a roller coaster ride. I was on that ride-seemed normal too. 

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

I was remodeling a house across the street from where we lived. I was working for very little. You must watch who and what you are working for when you are “down and out”. People will capitalize on your “state” to make their god- money.  You don’t feel worthy of even minimum or decent pay and you “settle”. Then you get upset for not being paid and there is never peace. The bible says, “They justify the wicked for reward”. Don’t you know that is exactly what most rehabs are doing? That’s why they are so ineffective.  Their god is money and because of this focus there is no anointing that breaks the yoke of satan’s grips. Most are working to help you get a better life (in this present age) instead of getting life itself - Jesus Christ. 

One day four people came by and all four said, “Jesus Christ is coming soon”. They didn’t know each other and weren’t there at the same time.  I knelt down and prayed, “God, if this is so, do whatever you have to do to get me ready”.  This is a dangerous, but necessary, prayer. It’s a prayer of surrender and it moves God to act. Unfortunately you may get something least expected in this life. Fortunately, you WILL get something least deserved in the next life!

As I walked through the front door of my house a week later I was overwhelmed with a feeling of complete loss of control. I buckled to my knees. My wife was sitting on the couch and I said to her, “Baby, I don’t know what’s going to happen today, but I know I will need God’s help to get through it.” An hour later I was pulled over and the officer said I had fourteen warrants for my arrest. I said I doubted that and he said, “Let me check again.” He came back and said the county wanted me and that they would come get me. This was the first time I was in “real trouble” with the law.  I spent nine days in the county jail. I was confused and in great pain from drug withdrawal. When they finally brought me before the judge he informed me I had fourteen bad checks from my business. He was quite “colorful” with his verbal assault until the DA said that someone else’s signature was on one of them. This opened the door for an offer of two years probation with an appeal opportunity within two weeks.  I jumped at it. He told me I owed twenty six Thousand Dollars and asked how much I could pay back. I merely divided the amount by the probation time and said, “I guess just over a Thousand a month.” I didn’t know that I didn’t have to pay it off in the probation period. They gave me no counsel. It would not have mattered… God was in charge now. I could feel something changing. Anyway, I just wanted out of that hell hole. Unfortunately, I had two checks in another county and they came to get me. By the time I got out the two weeks later the opportunity for appeal was gone.

In court the judge made the comment that when you do something stupid you need a good kick in the head. Sounded just like dad. Since I had made plenty of money in the past I figured I could push through this and put this all behind me. Unfortunately, three months later I found myself behind in payments to two courts, new warrants hanging over my head, and a feeling of drowning. Our judicial system should rename probation to “drowning” because that’s what they do-drown you. They give you a little air and then down you go again. They make it nearly  impossible to “get out”.

I was back doing construction. The people I was hanging around with were mostly drug addicts in survival mode. One of them stole my medication that arrived at my house. I called the VA. They investigated it and called me in for an appointment.  Upon my arrival I was arrested for the outstanding warrants. The officer at the VA was very nice. He let me use the phone. I called my wife and told her it looked like I would be in jail for a while. She cried and asked what she and my son were going to do. I knew she was a “fighter” and would make it. My greatest concern was for my son. I went before the same judge and he started yelling obscenities at me. The he assigned an attorney to me. The first thing he said was that he was semi-retired and that he doesn’t go to other counties. He wasn’t working for me; that was clear. The judge threatened sending me to prison for two years. Just then three friends of mine that I was working with entered the court room. The attorney said I was Two Thousand Dollars behind and that he was going to talk to my friends. After he did so, he said, “You’ve got some great friends, they brought Four Thousand Dollars, You’ll be out of here in a minute”. He went back into the judge’s office and we could all hear the judge screaming. The attorney came out and asked if I had pissed him off. I said, “Not purposely.” He said, “The judge wants all the money or you’ll do time.” I had learned a little in the jail about time. When he offered six months in the county jail I replied. “I’ll go down the road for a year.” I knew four months killed a year down the road. The judge agreed to four months in the county. God had another plan. He gave me little by little, as much as I could handle. I thought I would get out in two months with good time, but was told I had to do four months “day for day”.  I was sent to the work block and put on laundry detail.  What a relief. There was food there; quite a different story than the regular blocks. I already lost a pound a day in the first sixteen days. I can remember being more hungry than I ever had been in my life, even worse than survival training. This particular county had an incentive pay policy for the sheriff and the head of the kitchen where they split the difference in food