I just wanted to take a break from my story at this point to fill in a few of the details. There are so many things I could talk about, some that I remember and some where I can only rely on what others have told me.
I just wanted to break at this time to let you know why I am sharing all this. I don't do it to just talk about myself, however it is always satisfying to be able to talk about me, we all love to talk about ourselves.
The reason I am sharing is to let you know that If I can do it, you can too. Do what you ask? Change, change , change is the answer. I was a mean, uncaring and hurtful person and as bad as some of the things are that I've done to others, Jesus gave my the free ticket to make amends.
Even if you don't feel a need to change and hopefully you've never done any of the stupid things that I have. Just the glory of having Jesus in your heart and leading the charge will make a huge difference in the way you view and approach life. Believe me, I never felt like I needed to change until I experienced what the change could do for me.
I want you to know that it matters greatly that you have faith and that you choose your friends wisely and that if you do screw up, there is an answer. There is a little black book that has all of the answers, yes I'm sure that none of us read it often enough. But the answers are there, Jesus is there and he'll show you the way.
You know I heard an interesting quote on a CD I was listening to the other day. This particular book and CD series that I have been studying talks about the truth of God, did he really create us all, was Jesus the son of God or was he just a man? It's good to get the facts, not to just have hearsay. But the thing that I keep going back to is this.
If you don't already, there are two places in time where everyone will believe in God. That time is the day that we all die. The fact of the matter then is that your going to either be in Heaven or you're going to be in Hell and you too will believe in God on that day. I pray for all of mankind that they get to know God before this day comes, it will either be glorious or it will be much much worse than anything that has or will ever happen to you in this lifetime.
I recommend everyone fills in the blanks before it's too late and know that no matter what has happened, it can all be fixed with a simple decision from you.
About Me
- Jim Bull Talks
- Welcome to my blog - My name is Jim Bull and I share this information with you in the hopes of helping you or a friend or family member in some way. Here you'll find motivational material, my views of life and some background info from my past. I help others live the life they've always wanted through the sharing of information regarding all areas of life.Please let me know how I can help you. Ezekiel 36:26
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Getting Stoned Every Night
I could use the title of this insertion just about anywhere throughout these writings because it was my life. I was either high or drunk for most of my waking hours between the ages of 13 and about 28 years old. About the only time the streak would stop was when I was locked up in jail or at rehab. I would usually take one night off a week, sometimes two so I could regain my energy, but being messed up was my norm.
I had recently made a move to try and get away from the heavier drug use, but here I found myself again not only drinking regularly but back on the coke pipe and selling drugs to boot to support the habit. A typical night now became work til 8:00 then head to the bar until midnight or so. There I would sell a few small bags of coke and catch a good alcohol buzz then head home to stop by the neighbors and do coke until about 5:00 in the morning. Then came the hard part, heading home alone to my bed. You see when you are this messed up, nobody wants to have a relationship with you. You party together as "friends" and occasionally get lucky with some girl you met at the bar or some party, but for the most part you travel home alone, try to fall asleep and wonder why the crap you were doing what you were doing. It really is a lonely existence but the sad part is, the addiction takes over and you are right back at it only a few hours later.
It even got to the point to where I would either hit the bar on lunch break and sometimes never return to work or head home for a hit or two of coke before the rest of my shift at work. At 8:00, closing time would come and you would repeat the cycle. My boss could tell too that I was slipping back heavily into my addictions, he put up with it for the most part but I knew he didn't like it because it greatly affected my time at work.
This went on for a year or so and it got to the point where it was getting hard to pay the rent. My sister wanted to move in with her boyfriend because she rarely stayed at the apartment anyhow and my dad had recently passed away and my mom was at home all alone.
Speaking of my dads passing. My dad and I fought for most of my teenage years, partly because he wasn't always real good at being a dad because of his own addictions, but mostly because of my way of life and this caused major problems between us. My dad had cancer and was at home on his death bed. My drug use had numbed me to the point where I decided it wasn't even necessary for me to stick close to his side. Knowingly with only days left in his life, I packed up and headed off to Florida with some chick to party and told my mom to call if anything came up. Well you already know the rest of this story, yes Dad passed while I was chasing the buzz and the chick.
As I headed home for the funeral I had another realization that I needed to change, that I needed another change of scenery to try and regain some self respect. So it was back to Hellam to live at my moms and to try and sober up some and figure it all out. You know, go ahead and say it or just tune in tomorrow to learn more about what you already know is coming...
I had recently made a move to try and get away from the heavier drug use, but here I found myself again not only drinking regularly but back on the coke pipe and selling drugs to boot to support the habit. A typical night now became work til 8:00 then head to the bar until midnight or so. There I would sell a few small bags of coke and catch a good alcohol buzz then head home to stop by the neighbors and do coke until about 5:00 in the morning. Then came the hard part, heading home alone to my bed. You see when you are this messed up, nobody wants to have a relationship with you. You party together as "friends" and occasionally get lucky with some girl you met at the bar or some party, but for the most part you travel home alone, try to fall asleep and wonder why the crap you were doing what you were doing. It really is a lonely existence but the sad part is, the addiction takes over and you are right back at it only a few hours later.
It even got to the point to where I would either hit the bar on lunch break and sometimes never return to work or head home for a hit or two of coke before the rest of my shift at work. At 8:00, closing time would come and you would repeat the cycle. My boss could tell too that I was slipping back heavily into my addictions, he put up with it for the most part but I knew he didn't like it because it greatly affected my time at work.
This went on for a year or so and it got to the point where it was getting hard to pay the rent. My sister wanted to move in with her boyfriend because she rarely stayed at the apartment anyhow and my dad had recently passed away and my mom was at home all alone.
Speaking of my dads passing. My dad and I fought for most of my teenage years, partly because he wasn't always real good at being a dad because of his own addictions, but mostly because of my way of life and this caused major problems between us. My dad had cancer and was at home on his death bed. My drug use had numbed me to the point where I decided it wasn't even necessary for me to stick close to his side. Knowingly with only days left in his life, I packed up and headed off to Florida with some chick to party and told my mom to call if anything came up. Well you already know the rest of this story, yes Dad passed while I was chasing the buzz and the chick.
As I headed home for the funeral I had another realization that I needed to change, that I needed another change of scenery to try and regain some self respect. So it was back to Hellam to live at my moms and to try and sober up some and figure it all out. You know, go ahead and say it or just tune in tomorrow to learn more about what you already know is coming...
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Settling In to My New Place...
Whew, that was close. That was exactly how I felt as I sat in my new pad in my parents garage. It was actually just a 12 x 24 wooden shed with a garage door and no insulation. It had my dads workbench and tools in one end and I shoved my bed, a sofa and refrigerator in the other. It did have electric so I at least had my stereo to listen too (newsflash, no I pods or fancy phones back then). I think my parents had made room in the house for my dresser so I could store my clothes there to get dressed after showers.
I was back on my home turf and hanging at my home bar. I was off the crack and back to a normal schedule of working to 8pm then hitting the bar to closing time. I would then walk the half mile home from the bar, smoke a bong or two before bed and be up by 9 the next morning so my mom could drive me to work. Yeah, that's right, 23 years old and no drivers license. If I remember correctly after getting my second DUI around the age of 21 they told me I now qualified for the habitual offender law and they took my license for five years.
Anyhow it was back to normal for me. No more smoking crack to 5 in the morning with a house full of people, no more sawed off shot guns under the couch in case things went bad, no more juggling of drug deals through the right channels or pay the piper.
Life was good, my boss had given me my job back at the motorcycle shop and I could just get stoned and have none of the pressures of the major deals and avoiding the man. I know, some of you are thinking normal, yeah right. To me it was normal, it was how I lived my life and my biggest ambition was to see how many different women I could sleep with in a weeks time.
This went on for a few months and I was sticking to my schedule pretty tight, work, party, sleep then repeat. My biggest challenge at the time was that winter was approaching and I was trying to figure out how I was going to stay warm in that shed. I knew my sister was looking for a new place to live and I approached her about sharing an apartment near my work. The price and location was good for both of us, so we made the move.
We got all moved in and I was beginning to believe that I might get some normalcy in my life. I was hanging at a different bar because of my location change and a couple of girls tended bar there that I had my eye on, they were however heavy cocaine users. I hadn't been doing that much of late but I really had my eye on the prize. One of the guys at work was doing a little dealing so I hooked up with him and started to buy a little quantity. That way I could sell a little at the bar on the weekends and provide myself with a small stash at no charge for me and the girls.
We'll if you remember from some of my earlier blog writings, there weren't many things that I did small time and this would just be the beginning of another long slide into the devils den. That winter I started selling more and more drugs and I was taking chances I shouldn't have to get it done. I ended up wrecking my sisters car on the way to make a pickup and I somehow managed to slip through the laws fingers that night (again no license but somehow no arrest) I did however cause around $1000.00 damage to my sisters car that my dad ended up paying for.
Anyhow, winter had ended and as I was leaving to go back to work one spring day after lunch and as I walked past my neighbors apartment someone yelled my name from inside. I knew they were partying pretty hard over there and I tried to stay away. Satan was calling however and as I walked up the steps and into the house a guy I knew handed me a coke pipe. At first I hesitated but after 10 seconds of two years memory flashing through my brain I put it to my lips and he fired it up and the madness began all over again.
It would be about another two year run of all nighters with plenty more jail time ahead...
I was back on my home turf and hanging at my home bar. I was off the crack and back to a normal schedule of working to 8pm then hitting the bar to closing time. I would then walk the half mile home from the bar, smoke a bong or two before bed and be up by 9 the next morning so my mom could drive me to work. Yeah, that's right, 23 years old and no drivers license. If I remember correctly after getting my second DUI around the age of 21 they told me I now qualified for the habitual offender law and they took my license for five years.
Anyhow it was back to normal for me. No more smoking crack to 5 in the morning with a house full of people, no more sawed off shot guns under the couch in case things went bad, no more juggling of drug deals through the right channels or pay the piper.
Life was good, my boss had given me my job back at the motorcycle shop and I could just get stoned and have none of the pressures of the major deals and avoiding the man. I know, some of you are thinking normal, yeah right. To me it was normal, it was how I lived my life and my biggest ambition was to see how many different women I could sleep with in a weeks time.
This went on for a few months and I was sticking to my schedule pretty tight, work, party, sleep then repeat. My biggest challenge at the time was that winter was approaching and I was trying to figure out how I was going to stay warm in that shed. I knew my sister was looking for a new place to live and I approached her about sharing an apartment near my work. The price and location was good for both of us, so we made the move.
We got all moved in and I was beginning to believe that I might get some normalcy in my life. I was hanging at a different bar because of my location change and a couple of girls tended bar there that I had my eye on, they were however heavy cocaine users. I hadn't been doing that much of late but I really had my eye on the prize. One of the guys at work was doing a little dealing so I hooked up with him and started to buy a little quantity. That way I could sell a little at the bar on the weekends and provide myself with a small stash at no charge for me and the girls.
We'll if you remember from some of my earlier blog writings, there weren't many things that I did small time and this would just be the beginning of another long slide into the devils den. That winter I started selling more and more drugs and I was taking chances I shouldn't have to get it done. I ended up wrecking my sisters car on the way to make a pickup and I somehow managed to slip through the laws fingers that night (again no license but somehow no arrest) I did however cause around $1000.00 damage to my sisters car that my dad ended up paying for.
Anyhow, winter had ended and as I was leaving to go back to work one spring day after lunch and as I walked past my neighbors apartment someone yelled my name from inside. I knew they were partying pretty hard over there and I tried to stay away. Satan was calling however and as I walked up the steps and into the house a guy I knew handed me a coke pipe. At first I hesitated but after 10 seconds of two years memory flashing through my brain I put it to my lips and he fired it up and the madness began all over again.
It would be about another two year run of all nighters with plenty more jail time ahead...
Friday, May 25, 2012
Back to the book again...
I've been inspired lately to get back to sharing my life story in the hopes of helping others. I just sat this morning and re read all of my blog posts as I had no idea where I stopped. It seems that I had just moved back to my parents garage as it was the only space they had available. I would have been around 22 or 23 years old at the time.
You see it didn't matter to me. For the past two years I had been smoking crack and dealing drugs with a die hard group of individuals that weren't very smart, but they were very serious about hurting you if the right rules weren't being followed. It was a time when I had no fear of the police or anything for that matter. I had made some friends who were active with the Klu Klux Klan and I was either high or drunk for most waking hours of my life.
Some major crimes had just been comitted and I knew the whole deal was about to blow wide open. I needed to seperate myself for I feared for my life and I didn't want to go back to jail again. You see above I just claimed that I had no fear of anything. The reality of it was that the only thing at the time that was important to me was a fresh opportunity to set up operations with a fresh group of people. So that I could continue on with my mediocore existence of getting stoned and just getting by. (I only feared for my freedom and my existence, nothing else mattered)
So off to the other side of town I went to hang in a new bar with a new group of "friends" to see what kind of "fun" that I could get myself into.
I actually chilled a little at the time. I got back to work at my job and had stopped selling drugs for a little while. I had gotten off the crack and all of the hard stuff. It was back to work during the day, I'd spend the night at the bar and would fill in the gaps with pot and cocaine.
I needed a break from the madness. I watched a few people go down and the crimes were every where from selling drugs, to theft, to attempted homicide. I had managed to slip by this time and I was thankful for it.
It wouldn't be long however until the urge became too much for me. I had to get back in the game, this time with a new set of players and a new set of rules. I was getting a little older but none the wiser. The next chapter had begun...
You see it didn't matter to me. For the past two years I had been smoking crack and dealing drugs with a die hard group of individuals that weren't very smart, but they were very serious about hurting you if the right rules weren't being followed. It was a time when I had no fear of the police or anything for that matter. I had made some friends who were active with the Klu Klux Klan and I was either high or drunk for most waking hours of my life.
Some major crimes had just been comitted and I knew the whole deal was about to blow wide open. I needed to seperate myself for I feared for my life and I didn't want to go back to jail again. You see above I just claimed that I had no fear of anything. The reality of it was that the only thing at the time that was important to me was a fresh opportunity to set up operations with a fresh group of people. So that I could continue on with my mediocore existence of getting stoned and just getting by. (I only feared for my freedom and my existence, nothing else mattered)
So off to the other side of town I went to hang in a new bar with a new group of "friends" to see what kind of "fun" that I could get myself into.
I actually chilled a little at the time. I got back to work at my job and had stopped selling drugs for a little while. I had gotten off the crack and all of the hard stuff. It was back to work during the day, I'd spend the night at the bar and would fill in the gaps with pot and cocaine.
I needed a break from the madness. I watched a few people go down and the crimes were every where from selling drugs, to theft, to attempted homicide. I had managed to slip by this time and I was thankful for it.
It wouldn't be long however until the urge became too much for me. I had to get back in the game, this time with a new set of players and a new set of rules. I was getting a little older but none the wiser. The next chapter had begun...
Thank You Veterans
Happy Memorial Day everyone - I was traveling today and needed to stop for gas. As I was fillling up I looked to the gentleman gassing up beside me and he had a Marine Corps hat on. I asked him if he had served and he said yes. I quickly thanked him and he responded with a nod. If I had to guess he was probably 15-20 years older than me and the thought ocurred to me that if it weren't for him, I might not be standing here today.
As he thanked me for thanking him I responed with my thought and I told him -you're welcome, if it weren't for you I might not be here today. He got a large smile and had that look of pride on his face as if it was something that he hadn't thought about for a while.
How true is it - God put us here on earth for a purpose and it if wasn't for the brave men and women that have fought and served and died for our country, our purpose could have turned out to be completely different, or not at all. I ask that you not only thank these brave souls when you see them but I challenge you this weekend to seek them out and let them know that you are thankful for their sacrifices. It will not only make them feel better, but I bet you as well.
As he thanked me for thanking him I responed with my thought and I told him -you're welcome, if it weren't for you I might not be here today. He got a large smile and had that look of pride on his face as if it was something that he hadn't thought about for a while.
How true is it - God put us here on earth for a purpose and it if wasn't for the brave men and women that have fought and served and died for our country, our purpose could have turned out to be completely different, or not at all. I ask that you not only thank these brave souls when you see them but I challenge you this weekend to seek them out and let them know that you are thankful for their sacrifices. It will not only make them feel better, but I bet you as well.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Its been too long
I'll be back soon, I promise. Life is hurling at the speed of light but I know I can keep up. No time now, it seems like every time I go to get started the bell rings.
See you next time...
See you next time...
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Grace
From - Simple Truths
www.simpletruths.com
Weekly Verse
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the
forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace.”
-Ephesians 1:7
Weekly Quote
“Grace is something you can never get but can only be
given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than
you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks.”
-Frederick Buechner
Weekly Thought
Did you know God favors
you? He does. God favors you out of His grace, His deep, abiding love for you
that is not contingent upon any effort you put forth.
Grace is sufficient for absolutely any need we have—whether health, finances, relationships, temptations, or any other need. Whatever need you have in your life today, be assured, God is on your side. He is ready and able to help you as you respond to Him with faith.
Are you celebrating the riches of God's grace today?
Pass this message of inspiration on to someone else who could use a reminder of God's favor today.
To Life,
Mac Anderson
Founder, Simple Truths
Grace is sufficient for absolutely any need we have—whether health, finances, relationships, temptations, or any other need. Whatever need you have in your life today, be assured, God is on your side. He is ready and able to help you as you respond to Him with faith.
Are you celebrating the riches of God's grace today?
Pass this message of inspiration on to someone else who could use a reminder of God's favor today.
To Life,
Mac AndersonFounder, Simple Truths
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