The Testimony of An Old Man

Robert Heatley

            Let me start by stating for the record, I have never written a testimony before or attempted to do so.  This is my maiden voyage.  I’ll start by letting you know that I’m a 60+ years military brat raised in the turbulent 60s.  I’m not sure if you know what the turbulent 60s were, but it was during the Civil Rights Movement and the marches Black people staged in order to let the world know of the racial injustice we faced at the hands of the government run Ku Klux Klan.  We marched against social injustice and the right to be seen as human beings. 

            My father was a Marine (which in itself is an oxymoron) and an officer to boot.  We had to live in officer’s housing in Camp Lejeune North Carolina which at the time was a major factor in the “Jim Crow” laws of the time.  I was the middle of seven children; three older and three younger.  We moved from place to place as the government saw fit and I never really got to know anyone else for long other than my family. 

            We were taught to stick together and if one came home with as much as a scratch, we all had better have the same scratch.  Needless to say, we fought every day for years and I mean years!  We had to fight our way to school and our way home from school.  And by the time the school kids had received enough beatings from us, we’d be off to another community to start the same cycle all over again.  I hated White people with all the passion that they hated me.  Anybody of the White persuasion had a negative connotation attached to them.  To this day, I still view Whites as a whole as the ultimate enemy and the tools Satan used to keep the rest of the world under foot.  At the same time, some of the best people I’ve met along the way have been White.  It’s kind of ironic that some of the very people that were trying to kill me for being Black contained within them some of the best and loving people on earth.  At home the contradictions continued.  We were taught to respect our elders and to view each man as better than us on a human level, but to take a back-step to no man at the same time.  Whatever White people can do, make sure you can do it ten times better and ten times smarter.  But they didn’t tell us that most of the time that still wasn’t enough. 

            I saw way too many contradictions in life to ever trust a GOD that seemed to be as bad as the White man that wanted my life.  I couldn’t fight back, and I was under manned.  My parents couldn’t protect us even though they taught us to never stop fighting.  They did all the right things but had no fun.  They were up against it, but at the time all I could see was a contradiction of life.  I was being raised in a family where in my mind I just didn’t fit.  There was no room for me, and I couldn’t be protected from a world that was out to kill me just for being born in the skin I’m in.  In my childish mind, there was just no way I could make it in this world without taking what I wanted or killing all those trying to kill me.  I just needed the means and the ability to do so before they killed me.  It was futile thinking and I knew it was close to impossible to carry out. 

            I was raised in church and my family were the leading members of the First Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia.  They sang in the choir, preached from the pulpit, and were the deacons and elders of the church.  In those days, they preached the message of fire and brimstone which taught us that God saw everything you did and was at the ready to punish you now and at the Judgment Seat at the end of days.  At the same time, I watched as Blacks were being lynched and burned, attacked by dogs, beaten by police and the White general public while this God they spoke of in the church house watched and did nothing.  So, I developed a real distrust for the God of my family and a whole lot of disdain for them.  How can you worship a God who stands by and says He punishes those who do wrong, but the only people I saw being punished were Black and that was for fighting (peacefully) for the rights all people were supposed to be entitled to?  I just learned to hate, and I never learned to love.  I knew of God, but I never knew the loving, caring, protecting, prospering God of reality.  I only saw the God Satan wanted me to see.  Truly, the cares of this world had blinded me to His love.

            Being the middle child and being raised to pay attention and observe things, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to make it in the situation I was in.  I realized there just was nothing there for me.  My parents were educated and were self-made, and I just wasn’t anybody’s favorite.  I wasn’t getting an inheritance or even a start or financial push into the future. 

            At 13 years of age, I realized I only had a couple of years to live and I had to figure something out.  At 18 years old, I was out on the streets and I needed to etch out a way for myself in this thing called life.  I started talking to God back then, but I didn’t know how to listen much less wait for an answer.  So, when I didn’t get immediate answers, I saw God as the one who was out to get me.  I feared and didn’t trust Him.  I took off running from God; and at the end of it all, I had been to the youth authority twice and I’ve probably fought cases in every county in this state and in quite a few other states as well. 

            I started stealing cars and eventually moved up to selling drugs.  God waited for me the whole time, but it wasn’t until at 40 years old.  I was in the midst of fighting the death penalty for murdering a White man who I felt was trying to set me up that I finally asked to meet and understand the loving God my parents had told me about when I was growing up.  I tried to read the King James Bible, but it was like trying to read a foreign language.  I got on my knees and asked God to stop playing with me.  I asked that He either show Himself or introduce Himself to me or at least show me how to understand Him and what He expected of me.  I realized I was moving too fast.  I needed to take this thing slowly and ask God for patience. 

            Two days later, I went to Chapel in the county jail and I picked up a “Free on the Inside” Bible.  Then I went to the “Good News Bible,” the “Standard,” The “Expanded Standard,” the “New King James” and finally the “King James” with so much more understanding and a lot less me in the equation.  Still not trusting Him, I started using some of the things I read and studied.  I’m not a trusting person and God knows this.  He has protected me through this prison thing, brought my family back, never allowed me to go hungry; but I still haven’t learned to trust Him in doing the things I’ve always taken care of myself. 

            I’m understanding God allowed me to come to prison in order to keep me out of my own way.  I’ve seen the end of myself and it’s me costing someone their life.  I still have nightmares twenty years later, and I deserve them.  I played God and the repercussions were hurt people and often reached much farther than just my victim.  I can’t find a way to make the pain go away, but I rest on God’s forgiveness and pray for the family of my victim and their protection, guidance, and prosperity.  God told Paul that it’s tough to kick against the goads; and man, do I understand it now.  Today I’m a walking, squawking child of the living God and with the love only He can show.  Agape love.