In the beginning.........

As a beginning of a Toby Mac song goes “Stories.  We all got ‘em.”  But what does that have to do with me writing this to you?  Well, there has to be a beginning and I didn’t know where to start.  All great writers have this attention getting statement, but I couldn’t come up with a catchy one.  I begin this by saying that I am doing this in pure obedience to God.  For years I have felt this tug at my heart to share my testimony with those who may have lost someone, for those who think that life can not get any worse, or for those who may be contemplating suicide.  My name is Jimmy Clouse.  I was born in Portsmouth, Virginia in 1979.  That’s where I will begin my story I suppose.  There always has to be a beginning.  My dad, whom I am named after, was a military man.  He was in the Navy and he followed the footsteps of his dad.  My mom, Cindy, was a stay at home mom, a job in which I respect all women for.  Let’s jump approximately 17 years into the future.  The year is 1997 and it’s a summer night in Virginia Beach.  I have tears running down my face, and my hands are trembling.  I hear the waves crashing against the shore, and I am on my knees.  I hear a siren in the distance and I am utterly alone.  At least that’s what the devil wants me to believe.  He wants me to believe that I don’t belong here.  I have a gun in my hand, which is the reason my hand trembles.  The gun is my fathers’, and I took it from the safe.  My dad was working part time as a security guard at the Norfolk Grey Hound station at the time, and the safe was not locked.  “Just my luck” I thought before I left the house.  Before I left the house, I witnessed, yet again, another drunken episode by my dad.  He came into the house in a rage, yelling at mom and beating me and my sisters down with his words that made me feel as though I could do nothing right.  But why do I have his gun you may ask?  Well, I was going to commit suicide.  With tears on my face and a light breeze off the ocean, I placed the gun barrel in my mouth tasting that cold steel.  I take it out. Scared. Then I place the gun to the side of my head.  With the gun ‘s barrel pressed firmly against my head, my hands really begin to shake.  I begin to cry and lower the gun.  “What am I doing?” I ask myself.  "How did I get here?  I’m a popular guy.  I am one of the Captains on the swim team, I don’t think I’m an ugly dude, so what could have caused me to be on the beach, in the middle of the night ready to end my life?"

The day is August 19, 1992.  We live in Roland Park in Norfolk, VA.  I have two sisters.  I am the oldest sibling. We are playing in our backyard on a swing set that my dad built for us.  It only has two swings, and my dad never completed the slide, but there is a platform and we have fun with what we have.  I remember that we have a few of our friends playing at the house with us.  It’s about 10 a.m in the morning when my dad comes in the backyard and asks our friends to leave.  He asks us kids to come into the house.   We’re confused, because we think we have done something wrong.  But this time it’s different.  My mom is crying, and my dad sits us down.  He tells us that our grandmother, my mom’s mom, and my uncle, my mom’s half brother, have been murdered.  But that wasn’t all.  They have been murdered by my grandfather. My sisters and I don’t know how to react.  We live in Virginia and my mom’s parents live in Edgewater, Colorado, just outside of Denver.  If there was a day that I had to pin point a day I grew from being a child into a man, I would pin point this day...............