I was born in 1938, the third pregnancy but the second surviving child. I came into the world under a shadow of death. It was a long, dark shadow that impacted all of us deeply but it left my father with a root of bitterness toward professionals in general and doctors in specific.
He also hated business owners and managers. Not because of the death of his first born son but because they had money and he did not. And, because he had lost most of the fingers on his right hand in a factory accident as a young man. He blamed the owners.
Dad had a very rough life. His own father died when Dad was about two years old. His mom married a man who drank and who beat his step son. He had four siblings, two of which suffered from serious disabilities. Joe, the eldest, suffered from epilepsy. He killed himself as a teen. Then Denzil, the youngest, had a high fever that left him developmentally at age three.
Our family was well acquainted with griefs and sorrows! We were also very poor but my mother's parents owned a small store and helped out a lot. Our neighbors in that small village also chipped in and helped.
Poverty and sickness make life hard. Looking back it is probably one reason I have worked so hard to escape both. I sometimes wonder why I am so driven to get ahead and why I can't bear to see either poverty or sickness prevail if I can do something to relieve the people affected.
Christ came to set the captives free. Praise God He set me free.
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