Hurdles will get in your way but they won't stop you

Hurdles will get in your way but they won’t stop you

When I was about eight years old I went to bible school and they pulled me aside and asked me if I wanted to be saved. I was thinking “Saved from what?” I went home and told my mom what had happened and she acted kind of nonchalant, saying “They will ask you to be saved, that is what they do” Then she asked me to get some silverware. I started going to the Baptist church that sponsored the Bible School which I was saved. I was sitting in the second row, in the middle and started falling asleep. The preacher was a Southern Baptist preacher from Georgia, even though this was Northern Lower Michigan. All of a sudden I was startled awake with the preacher pointing right at me yelling “Hell fire and Damnation” I didn’t go back.

I used to hitchhike a lot and I can’t tell you how many times I would get picked up by someone who would start witnessing to me and ask me if I wanted to be saved. I would go along with them, let them pray for me and I would confess that I believed in Jesus. I just wanted to get a ride to my destination.

I joined the Navy and the Chaplin for NTC addressed the class and told us that if we went to Mass then we would be able to get away from the Company Commander for an hour and get coffee and doughnuts. So I started going to Mass but because I had not been baptized I wasn’t allowed to except communion so I felt out of place and didn’t go back.

After ten months in “A” School I got orders to Pensacola Florida and I started boxing with Roy Jones Sr. I wasn’t doing very well, I had lost only two fights and we were fighting the Rebel Boxing club in Soso Mississippi against Jeff Shonavich. I was weighing 125 lbs and he was Klan but Roy Jones Sr. seemed to have a good report. I was scared, the place was packed and the crowd was on their feet cheering for Jeff. The butterflies in my stomach were so big they felt like Bats. My mind was scrambling to get them under control. I had to do something, then the thought popped in my mind “Rocky prayed in the movies” So I knelt in the corner and someone had taught me that the first thing I needed to do was ask for forgiveness of my sins. After I finished asking for forgiveness of my sins I asked God “Please give me your strength and courage and keep us both from harm and let me do the best that I can do?”

When I stood up those butterflies weren’t as noticeable and I thought “You know if there is a God and he is on my side because he just asked me to be, I have the advantage. This whole place could be full of demons and King Kong could be in the other corner and I would have the advantage” Jeff Knocked the crap out of me the whole first round but he didn’t knock me down. Roy Sr. asked me “Do you want me to throw in the towel?” and I told him “No” and he said “You better start fighting or I will” Jeff was still knocking me around and then we were leaning on each other the middle of the second round and I noticed that he was breathing hard. That gave me a confidence and I started ripping him with body shots and the crowd went silent. I turned the tables and had my way with Jeff but at the end of the fight they raised his hand instead of mine.

On the ride back to Pensacola Roy Jones Sr. was talking excitedly about “Reuben shut the crowd right up! You started ripping him with body shots and the crown went silent” It felt good to hear him praising me. I told him about my revelation in the corner and he said “You put a con on yourself”

Then I was driving back from a pro fight in Mobile Alabama when I saw two girls hitchhiking, carrying big backpacks. They were missionaries coming from Omaha Nebraska following a priest named Fr. Jack McGinnis who was the head of the charismatic renewal in the Catholic Church. One of them was pretty and sweet, her name was Oliva Garcia and I dropped them off at the bus stop in downtown Pensacola she gave me a number. When I got to the barracks I called and she made it to Fr. Jack’s house and she invited me to a New Year’s Eve Mass at their house. I excepted her invitation and as soon as I walked in I saw they had an open bar. I didn’t drink but I thought “Oh these Catholics are cool”. There was a covered patio in the back and Fr. Jack was playing guitar and everyone was singing. We held hands and bowed our heads for the Lord’s Prayer and while are heads were still boxed Fr. Jack asked us to forgive someone in our lives that we needed to forgive and I forgave my step father who beat me severely enough that I was taken away from my family and put in a foster home. I had planned on getting revenge ever since and that minute I forgave him. I just let it all go.

This was amazing to me, I never thought I would ever forgive him. It was such a distinct event I went up and told Fr. Jack and he had me tell everyone. I remember thinking “I can’t just let these people disappear out of my life.” So I started going to Mass and sitting next to Alice Noe a theology major and I would ask he questions I had about the bible but she told me that it wasn’t appropriate for a man to be mentored about the bible by a woman so she turned me on to Harry Hebb the deacon a at the church. We would sit down a couple of times and I missed an appointment once and he missed the next appointment and it just kind of ended.

Then I went to BUD/s and I would go to Mass on Sundays with other classmates. Ensign Hansen and LtJg Farley also attended Mass. Ensign Hansen attended seminary before he decided to go to BUD/s. I wasn’t able to take communion but I went every Sunday. I got dropped from BUD/s 12 ½ weeks through training and I received orders back to Pensacola and I meet Rich Close, he was an Aircrew candidate who got in trouble for drinking and fighting and he had to go to AA but he asked me “Where is a church that I can go to?” So I took him to St. John’s church just outside of the base. We road our bicycles and were we sat in the middle of the church and started singing. He was a base and I am a tenor, he was trying to match my pitch and it wasn’t working. I told him “You are a base, sing your natural lower tome and we will harmonize” We were singing away and our contrast sounded pretty good. As they Mass ended everyone filed out of the church and we just kept singing with the choir. When the music stopped the lady in front of us turned around and said “You sing really good, you should start singing in the choir” Rich and I looked at each other and said “Why not?”

We headed toward the choir director and this girl came up to us all excited and said “Do you want to sing in the choir?” and we joined the choir. For almost two years before I went back to BUD/s I attended Mass, singing in the choir without receiving communion.

The girl who came up to Rich and I was the choir director’s daughter, her name was Clover. I was smitten with her right off but she had a boyfriend, then she dated Rich, then an AOCS candidate before she settled with me. We got married in the Catholic Church and we had to sit with Harry Hebb the deacon and he tried to talk us out of getting married but I just looked him in the eye and imposed my will in the situation. We were engaged for two years and at the wedding in front of the whole congregation he told everyone “I have been trying to talk them out of getting married ever since they came up with the idea” After the wedding I told him “I never have to listen you lecture me again”

We moved to Panama in 1990 after the invasion of Panama “Just Cause”. I attended instruction to become confirmed and be baptized Easter of 1992. Afterwards I went on a trip to Paraguay for a MTT (Military Training Team) There was a guy with Special Boat Unit who was raised as a Jehovah’s witness and an Ensign who was very open with his Christian faith and he was asking this guy what his faith was. When he told the Ensign that he was a Jehovah’s witness so he looked up in a book he carried with him and started telling him what was wrong with his religion. I challenged him saying “What gives you the right to tell him what he believes is wrong?” He asked me “What is your faith?” I told him that I was Catholic and he opened up his book and he read from it and proclaimed that “You worship idles” I said “What are you talking about?” He said “You worship the saints and Marry” Then these words came out of my mouth all by themselves “The Catholic Church is based on basic leadership principles, it is design to reach those people at the lowest level, the ones who would say “I don’t get this faith thing, just tell me what I have to do?” He got all excited and said “It is just like it says in the bible with all of the churches coming together before Christ comes again”

I pulled back thinking “Wo!” I could see that he noticed my reaction. It bothered me that day as we flew back to Panama and at the end of the day I called him up to my parachute loft and I told him “I know you know something that I don’t know but I will figure it out”

Then I was transferred to the states and I attended a business convention and the keynote speaker was Rudy Ruettiger from the Movie “Rudy” I was excited to hear him, his story was like me playing high school football, boxing and trying to get into SEAL Training and becoming a Navy SEAL. As he was talking about all of the trials and tribulations in his life he said “I was able to keep an even keel because of my faith” and I thought “I didn’t do that” Then after he got off of the stage a protestant minister got on stage and made an alter call. When he asked “If you want to have a personal relationship with Christ come up here to the stage” I was the first one up there. Then he said “Open yourself up to the Holy Spirit” I am standing there saying “I am open, sock it to me I am open” He said a blessing over me and gave me a New Testament” I went back to my seat not really sure what had happened. I just knew that something was different.

Then when I got back to Monterey and I was had been working out at the boxing gym on Casterville, California and sparring with a bunch of pros who regularly fought on ESPN and I was eating them up but I was going to have to work in the evenings as a study hall monitor which would not allowed me to keep up my boxing training. On top of that the SEAL Detailer forgot to reserve a seat in my Spanish class and I got in trouble because I had a new recruit with me after curfew and got written up and sent to XOI. I decided that I wasn’t going to wallow in self-pity. That same recruit used to hang sheet rock before he joined the Navy and he was part of a working party hanging sheet rock in the cruise lounge but he was only being utilized as gofer being told “Get this, hold this….etc” I decided that I was going to take over that job and teach some leadership. As I was looking for the Chief Master At Arms, he was coming down the hallway saying “Petty Officer Lowing, I have a job for you” I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t care if he wanted me to scrub a dumpster with a toothbrush, I was going to it the best that I could and he said “We need someone to work at the gym” Right that second I knew God had done that for me.    

I was in my room in the barracks I dug into my bible, starting it “Acts of the Apostles” I was in a two-man room all to myself and I had K-LUV radio station playing 24/7 and I prayed and read the bible whenever I was in the room. It was late and I was laying on my bed falling asleep and I started dreaming. Usually my dreams were always in black and white and intensely violent but this dream was in color. I was in my room, laying in my bed reading my bible and there was another person in the room on the other side. He had long scraggily hair and a beard. He was wearing a dirty white gown down to his ankles, he was bare foot, he had either scars from being scratched or burned and pig eyes. I grew up on a hog farm and pigs always look at you like the want to eat you. Then I fell asleep in my dream and I dreamt that I awoke and this guy was laying on top of my and he had a forked tongue like a snake’s tongue. I started speaking in tongues, something I had never done before and I awoke and he was gone. To this day I seldom remember my dreams and if I am always helping someone.      

After I checked into SEAL Team One and went to Pensacola to pick up my wife and my son I everyone was uncomfortable around me and my outwardly confident faith. I was told my mother in law “New Christians need to be locked up for a year”. I remember witnessing to Roy Jones Sr. and Master Chief Mike McDonald and they both told me “Ya I know; I was just waiting for you to figure it out”.

When I got to SEAL Team one, one of the guys in training handed me a video tape about “The Crisis in the Catholic Church” It showed dwindling numbers attending Catholic Masses. I confronted him and let him know that if you didn’t make it to Mass early on Sundays you weren’t going to get a seat. Then I had to go through STT with all of the new guys right out of BUD/s which was fine with me. The class Officer was LtJg Orlin Sell was also an open Christian. We were in Fort Chaffey Arkansas and we found a bible study at a local church and we went to a café afterwards and the other officers in the class came in and said to us “Hey Thumper” I didn’t know what they meant so I asked and they told me “It means bible thumper”. I asked them “What do you believe?” One said “I am agnostic” I didn’t really know what that meant so I asked him and he said “It means that I believe that there is a higher power, I just don’t believe that it is the way it is in the bible” Another one said “I am atheist” I don’t believe in anything. I just said “That is what I used to believe, you are young, you’ll figure it out”

I started going to church a lot, there was an assistant pastor in Imperial Beach named Mike Robinson, he was 6’ 5” tall, he had a degree in phycology and as a manager for the Marie Calendars Restaurant chain he helped them expand into Oregon and Washington state. Every time he gave a homily it was like he had been living in my back pocket. So I would get up early and got to Mass at 7:00 AM and if he wasn’t preaching I would stay for the 8:00 AM Mass and if he wasn’t saying mass for that service I would go an pick up my wife and son and attend the 11:00 AM Mass and if he wasn’t preaching for that mass I would come back at 6:00 PM for the evening Mass. Then we got invited to Church of His Kingdom a non-denominational church and the amazing thing was that the pastor there seemed to always be preaching on the same readings in the missalette.

Then the Jehovah’s Witnesses came by the house and they started talking about things in the bible I wasn’t too sure of so I read my bible again, starting in the profits and then when I reread Revelations it made more sense. Then one of my friends who was a Mormon invited us to his son’s baptism. He baptized his own son. That excited me, I wanted to become a Mormon but my wife told me that if I did then she was going to divorce me. So I read their book of Mormon and the Christian bible again and all I could do to justify not joining the Mormon faith was that I could tell that whoever wrote the book of Mormon wasn’t the same one who wrote the Christian bible.

Then another friend of mine who was from the Church of Christ invited me to a bible study and the guy leading the bible study wove his way through the scriptures to where it said “It you don’t join our church you are going to Hell” All I could say it “I will meet you there”. They tried four times with different people from their church. One pastor was a football player who was offered a professional football contract and turned it down to be a preacher and he kept talking about all of his infidelities and all I could think was “You can quit bragging anytime”

When my wife left me I emotionally collapsed. I cried every day for seven months and every other day for three and a half months after that. When I went out to the Indian Ocean to work as an anti-piracy security agent, I brought my bible and other faith based books. On the way out to sea I was talking with the other three former Navy SEALs who were out there with me and the conversation of religion came up and they asked me what my faith was and I told them “I am Catholic but I had my own faith experience” and I told them about it. They all claimed to be either atheist or agnostic and again I just said “That is okay, you are young. You’ll figure it out” It wasn’t a big deal with me but it was for them. I felt like they hated me. I couldn’t really put my finger on the problem until another openly Christian SEAL Friend of mine went out with the same company and had a similar experience.

Then I went to Las Vegas. I had a lady in San Ysidro I liked and I read her the whole New Testament over the phone for Lent. Then she told me that she liked me as a friend but she found another boyfriend. Then I moved to Texas in the Dallas area where I attended Mass in Lewisville Texas. My business partner and roommate was an atheist. He was a former cop and attorney. We would debate all of the time about religion. He would always get to a point where he couldn’t keep up with my understanding of the bible and he would ask “So where are the space ships?” I would tell him “In Exodus an Ezekiel” Then the conversation would turn to Mercedes Benz or Barbeque restaurants.     

We moved to Mercedes Texas and I would pray every morning before I worked out for God to pull me out of my situation. I would pray for God to find me a wife and I described exactly what I wanted, and faithful woman who believed in God and Jesus Christ, didn’t drink or smoke and loved me to pieces. Then one day my business partner told me “I am tired of living this way, I can’t take it anymore” So he left for Georgia and dropped me off in an apartment in McAllen.

I read my bible, prayed and I went to a Toastmasters meeting because I knew that I needed to get better with my presentation skills and I meet a woman who was very friendly and I saw how she was with everyone and thought “Oh, she is that way with everyone” She was a John Maxwell Leadership trainer which intrigued me. I also ran into Chuy Ramirez. He was a scout for an organization called Trail Life. They are the Christian version of the Boy Scouts. He was trying to entice me into becoming a troop leader and I was thinking “I have a business to run and I want to go to college” but I hooked him up with the pastor from my mother’s church in Weslaco Texas.

Then the next time I went to Toastmasters this lady was back from getting certified as a John Maxwell Leadership trainer and she was talking about the experience. I noticed that what she talked about mostly was the people she rode the bus with and attended the training with. This told me that she was a people person. She was exactly the woman I had been praying for. We got engaged, then married shortly afterwards. She surprised me without wedding. The church we were attending had to move and I was doing business with Enviro-Lite solutions and John Phillips one of the owners invited me to his church for Christmas and he was giving the sermon. I told my wife and she told me that she liked that church and that she had been there before.

We went and Pastor Stevens was on the stage preaching and something happened in the spirit and he said “I am going to come down there and we are going to deal with this right now. If you don’t like the way we are doing things here, if you don’t want to follow the Holy Spirit, there is the door” I thought “I want him to be my preacher”. Pastor Stevens is also an outdoor enthusiast and is interested in the Trail Life organization.

At the men’s bible study at Center Church they discussed a ministry to mentor new Christians who have just excepted Christ. It is amazing the path the Lord will take us on to get us to the place he wants us.