Where do I start to explain my life?  I guess it all boils down to choices, since that is what got to me to where I am now.  I was born in 1961 in Harlan, Kentucky.  By the time I was five years old, my mother said I was preaching at our coffee table.  But our home was dysfunctional and after my mother’s second marriage and move to Dayton, Ohio (which proved to be more dysfunctional than her first marriage).  At age 12 I began to choose to run away.

What I need the most was the very thing I ran from all my life.  Running is what caused me to make bad choices.  Many times I looked for the “right thing.”  I was searching for a normal life, but found out my life wasn’t going to be normal anyway. 

My step-grandmother saw to my getting to an apostolic church, which was the only stability that I knew of at that time.  I was baptized in Jesus name and received the Holy Ghost when I was a teenager.  But I soon strayed away from God, which was the worst choice I could have ever made.

At 18, my bad choices hit me front and center.  I committed a crime and was sent to the penitentiary.  Thank God for Godly men and women who continued to pray for me.

After seven years, I came home and married a girl from my childhood but soon found out I’d made yet another bad choice.  I went through a bad divorce and then, once again, made a bad choice which sent me back to the penitentiary.  It was while sitting there that I began to think about choices and where would I go from there.  And that is when I began to purposely choose to do what I was running from for so many years, go back to God.

My bad choices cost me 16 years of being locked up.  I couldn’t blame anyone but myself.  I needed to start making better choices.  I wanted to live better than I had.  I knew I could only get through the years by relying on the Lord by praying and turning myself totally over to Him.  I made up in my mind that this time I would choose the right thing.  And for me, it meant having a family.  Six years of praying for a Godly wife and eight years of corresponding along with monthly visits brought my wife and I together.

God brought my wife and I together and it is the same God that will carry us on.  The Lord caused my wife to see beyond the bad choices I’d made.  She believed with me that I am better than yesterday’s choices.

Today, I can say that I’ve learned the importance of making right choices and standing by them.  I am a product of God’s grace and mercy. 

I am married to Pastor Michele Turner, we have two dogs and currently reside in Pittsburgh, PA.