My Testimony of Willie L. Durst

At the time of my writing this testimony I have been alive for slightly over six decades.  The first was marked by physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.  The second was marked by my actions in response to those abuses.  The remainder has been spent incarcerated as a result of those actions.

Why am I saying this?  Because a great part of the darkness that formed the actions of the second decade of my life was born out of my rejection of God or at least the rejection of the God I heard about.  Some of the things I was told about God made Him appear to me as some all-powerful boogieman waiting for an excuse to burn me in hell for all eternity.  And as such, I turned away.  My turning away, I now realize, was as that of a child putting their head under the covers and closing their eyes really tight so that the boogieman could not see them.

Only in the real world those covers were the acts I committed to distract myself from the pain, fear, frustration, and loneliness I was living.  I tried to fill my time and mind with drugs, promiscuity, anger, and violence to take away the sense of being an outsider.  I had always felt as if everyone else around me was privy to some inside joke; and when I, as an outsider tried to join in, I was immediately exposed.

Known by my awkwardness and uncertainty that I was an impostor.  This served to further my fear, frustration, and loneliness.  I even carried these insecure-born behaviors into my life in prison until in 1992 while watching a special television airing of Schindler’s List, I had an epiphany.  Although the entire movie was shot in black and white, it depicted man’s inhumanity to man in some of the most graphic images I had ever seen outside of a horror movie.  Then a little splash of red appeared in the form of a young child who was desperately making her way against the flow of humanity as the Nazis herded all of her people (the Jews) in the opposite direction.  We see that her ultimate goal was to make it back to her family’s apartment to hide under her bed.  This was the only safe place she could think of.  The only sanctuary in the midst of the chaos that had invaded her world.

Something deep within me could immediately empathize with that little girl.  The little splash of red in that black and white world was hiding under her bed and closing her eyes so that the boogieman could not see her.  And later when that little splash of red was seen lying strewn amidst a mangled heap of corpses, my heart broke as did my mind when that image became superimposed in my memory of the images of my victim’s autopsy used during my trial.  I realized that not only could I relate to that little flash of red, but that I had also become the Nazis.  For my victims, I was the boogieman.

The imagery and the feelings that were inspired within me did not lessen as time went on, but grew and now carried a sense of guilt with them that led me to seek psychiatric help.  This was a small comfort until I remembered my step-grandmother, who was the only person in that first decade of my life who ever took me to church. In my quest to find some relief from the growing discomfort I was experiencing, something she said came to mind, “God would never put more on your shoulders than you can handle.”  With this thought ringing in the back of my mind, I tried many things that I thought might be “God,” for instance like meditation, the third eye, mysticism, Buddhism, knowing my erroneous zones, philosophy, etc.  Until I finally realized that everything that I knew about the God I was avoiding and rejecting had come from the lips of others.  So, I decided to read the Bible for myself to try and find some understanding, some balm to soothe the psychic scars from which I was suffering.

To make a long story short….as I began to read the Word for myself, I came to understand that the turmoil I was experiencing was in fact a blessing. God had blessed me with a broken heart in answer to the intercessory prayer of my step-grandmother so many years ago.  Though I had lost my way like the prodigal son who had traveled to the far country of promiscuity, narcotics, psychology, and eastern philosophy, God was with me the whole time!  I felt like an awkward impostor in this world because this is not my home. My heart was broken because I was convicted by the Holy Spirit who lives within me.  I have come to understand why 1 John 4:1 says that we are not to believe every spirit but are to test the spirits whether they are of God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  And these are they which led me to not comprehend who God truly was and is.  I have come to know that despite the evil that befell me in the first decade of my life, God was with me through the angel of my step-grandmother.  And despite the filth of sin that I perpetrated in the second decade of my life, God was with me through these depths as promised in Romans 8:35-39 never leaving nor forsaking me.

I have grown to know that now and for the remaining decades of my life to this point, I reside in a place I would rather not.  A place not of my own choosing though of my own making.  And by the Grace of God who makes all things work for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose, even this is a blessing.  In this place I have become as it was written of Joshua in Zechariah 3:2 through prayer for understanding, I was by His grace inspired to offer.  He answered concerning me and the Lord said unto Satan, “The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan!”  And I have become as was said of Jesus, “a brand plucked out of the fire.”  And now I know truly what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior.  Glory to God.