LAR – Robert Heatly – September 21st, 2020
THE TESTIMONY OF
ROBERT HEATLEY
I am a 62-year-old Black man raised in the sixties and because of the times and the struggle, I come complete with the anger and rage the fallout left. I was raised in the church, but I never knew God. I thought I knew who He was, but it turns out I only knew what or how I portrayed Him in my own mind.
I was raised with a moral compass and the ability to know right from wrong. That in the end just led me to prison with the dreaded L.W.O.P (Life Without the Possibility of Parole.)
I was trapped between two worlds. The streets with the glamour and the money (fast money) and what I knew to be the right way. Ultimately, I chose the streets since by then I had a family with mouths that needed to be filled and bills that needed to be paid. I was the one everyone came to with their problems, and I could not even solve my own.
I masked fear and guilt with the problem solving I was doing or thought I was doing. God was not going to waste His time on me because of the way I saw it was that He only looked out for Jews and White people. I was Black and for the most part, broke. Then in the end of myself, I committed the ultimate crime against a person. I killed a man and got sent to prison for the rest of my life.
My family gone, the money gone, and the life I knew gone. I was left with the problems I had never dealt with for all my life—low self-esteem, fear, the lack of trust, and the inability to admit them even to myself. In all earnest, I asked God to take care of my family. I did not hear a voice from on high that sounded like a trumpet blowing or thunder; but at that moment, I realized that He was the one who had been taking care of them from day one! They were a gift to me from Him. He was and is the one who had been taking care of them. Not me! Today I trust only Him. Today I give all that He gifted me, and I do all for Him.
That is my gift to Him. That is my testimony.