Tom’s Testimony, part 1.

Many thanks to Pastor Tom pridham for sharing the powerful testimony of how the Lord has worked and continues to work in his life, which we will be enjoying over the next few weeks.

Foreword:

When I was asked to write my testimony, my first consideration was the potential value for anyone rash enough to read it. Would it be uplifting? Perhaps….in places. Would it strengthen faith? It might, sometimes…..you never know. When I asked myself if it would be educational, I thought I might be onto something – if only because it illustrates God’s grace towards a wholly undeserving and tenaciously foolish person. I’ve learned many things since becoming a Christian – most of them, the hard way. If my story can in anyway make that learning process easier for others, then there may yet be some small value in recounting events….and even in reading about them!

Currently, I’m the pastor of a small (but perfectly formed) chapel in rural South Wales. Despite our fellowship’s diminutive size, it keeps me pretty busy. The busyness is largely a function of the depth of relationships: I have found that sharing out of my own brokenness and damage often provokes others to do the same. It is a fellowship which majors on love, and the honesty which comes from that. We don’t have people who say they are “fine” when they are not, and – quite often – they are not fine.

On occasion, it is me who is not “fine”. Chronic sleeplessness – perpetual nightmares when I do sleep – and bouts of depression, all take their toll. They are the legacy of a traumatic and abusive childhood. But just in case anyone is tempted to write in and tell me I must be a secret sinner or lacking in faith to still have these issues – I would ask them to save such comments for the biblically illiterate. In any event, I would not divest myself of this “thorn in the flesh” even if I could: the empathy it gives me for those who struggle is beyond price.

But it seems to me that my story must include – of necessity – those years before I came to Christ, as they are the context for that which followed. True, they have no educational value, and they are certainly not uplifting. Yet perhaps they will help clarify why God later dealt with me in certain ways, and also explain the responses his interventions elicited. And so to my early years!

Chapter one:

The die is cast.
It would fair to say that nearly all of my early memories revolve around violence, and the fear of violence. Whether that would be my father laying into me with the metal vacuum pipe, my mother hitting me in the head with a heavy frying pan – or my grandfather punching me in the face and then forcing me to spend the entire evening sitting under the sink. The irony of this last one was lost on me at the time – he was actually working for R.S.P.C.C. when he lived with us.

The only other real memories of early childhood also involved pain: I was (and I still am) prodigiously accident-prone. Even now, I shouldn’t really be allowed out unaccompanied by a responsible adult.

The violence continued unabated through the years. But something happened shortly after my eleventh birthday which changed things forever. I wasn’t sure, but I felt I had discovered the meaning of life. At the very least, I had stumbled upon “Ambrosia” – the nectar of the gods. I had taken my first drink. Well, not so much a drink – more half a bottle of Scotch which I stole from a friend’s father’s cabinet. I felt invincible! No-one could hurt me anymore, just as long as I could keep drinking.

Obviously, an eleven-year-old is going to struggle to develop a drink habit – let alone maintain one. But I was an intelligent boy, and quickly became adept at guile, dishonesty and deviousness to service my burgeoning problem.

By fifteen, I was a frequent visitor to the casualty department – either with alcoholic poisoning, or (more commonly) the inevitable results of being very drunk and very clumsy at the same time.

At seventeen, I received my first conviction – assaulting a police officer. I was fined £1, and I was utterly furious. If only I’d known it was that cheap, I’d have had a tenner’s worth! Not yet out of my youth, it’s fair to say I had already developed some nasty attitudes.

A year earlier I had walked into a pub of ill repute in my home town. It was very dark, and the visibility wasn’t improved by the thick cloud of cannabis smoke. There was a man urinating against the bar, and several people lay collapsed on the floor. I well remember what I thought: “This is a waiting room for death….. I’m home.”

I eventually took over that pub, or the “licensed lunatic asylum”, as it was known locally. The back bar doubled as the headquarters of a motorcycle gang – the other customers being mostly drug addicts. The front of the facility was frequented by alcoholics, criminals and residents of the town’s three mental institutions.

People in uniform would rarely come in there. The police did only once, after informing me they were planning a ‘surprise’ raid for the following night, in response to public pressure. It was (of course) empty when they rushed in, and they went home happy. Ambulance staff wouldn’t enter, either – injured customers had to be carried into the car park. It had even been declared ‘off-limits’ by the British Army.

And yet one organization would venture in, resplendent in uniforms. Every Thursday night, the Salvation Army would run the gauntlet of abuse, jostling and the occasional use of their caps as a toilet facility, while they attempted to sell copies of ‘The War Cry’.

The pub would fall silent as they left. Picture this: thirty or forty bikers, druggies and other counter-cultural misfits, quietly sitting there reading evangelical periodicals. Despite the banter, these Christians had earned the respect of the customers. Even I had a sneaking admiration for them, and read the magazine. With hindsight, I suspect those Salvationists prayed about little else all week, other than their next visit to that pub.

Fast forward some years. My drinking, which had been excessive even by alcoholic standards, continued to escalate. There was a reason for this: when I finally got sober, I found out I have an over-active liver, which one consultant compared to a “muscle-man on steroids”. It could cope with just about anything. The cost of servicing my addiction grew proportionately, and I turned to crime to finance the habit. Convictions and short spells in prison became a way of life. For the most part, my guile and deviousness saved me from longer stretches. I would sometimes book into a rehab to show I was addressing my issues – not that I really believed I had any, but it seemed to keep the judiciary sweet.

Alcoholics Anonymous says that alcoholism is the only disease which tells you that you haven’t got it. It was certainly true in my case. I remember visiting a high-flying professor at his alcohol clinic. I was ten minutes early for the appointment, which I had made to pacify the bench in the local court. I was shown to a waiting room. On the coffee table, there was a single leaflet entitled “20 things which happen to alcoholics”. I read it carefully and then left without seeing the professor – convinced I wasn’t an alcoholic. I had only experienced 18 of those 20 things, so I must be OK. The two I hadn’t experienced were “serious brain damage” and “death” – either of which would have made it rather difficult to read the leaflet.

One of the problems with drinking like that, is you spend a lot of your time guessing what you’ve been up to. Like waking up in the cells, and trying to guess what the charge is this time. Or waking up in a strange bed, and trying to guess who the woman next to you is. Worse – much worse – waking up and trying to guess the gender of the lump under the duvet next to you. I never used to believe in God, but that one would make even me pray. ‘Please God…. don’t let it be a man.’ It never was… but that was more luck than judgment.

And then, there’s that great guessing game played by most chronic alcoholics – usually around 4 in the morning. Staggering out of bed, feeling really sick, and in desperate need of ‘number twos’, you have to guess which end to hang over the toilet bowl first. Let me tell you, if you guess wrong – either way – it’s going to be a bad start to the day.

I became something of a puzzle to the legal system: neither they nor I could account for my behavior, which ranged from quiet and thoughtful to explosively violent. During one hearing, I was remanded for psychiatric reports. I well remember the report, delivered in open court. The psychiatrist began, “Mr Pridham could be an Oxford Don”. Promising, but I just knew there was a “but” coming. “But we have never seen such a gulf between a man’s intellect, and his common sense”. I was horrified. I thought, “Oh please, just send me down…I don’t want to listen to this.”

Predictably, things continued to deteriorate. One morning I woke up in the cells, with awful withdrawals. When I finally stopped being sick, I was able to ask a policeman at the cell door what the charges were this time…expecting there had been some minor misdemeanor. “Malicious wounding and firearms” he replied, and walked off down the corridor. It was around this time that God began to intervene.

Both charges were quite serious. While I wouldn’t get the maximum (each carried up to life imprisonment) I was looking at several years. All I could think of was getting out and getting drunk. I spoke to my solicitor, and asked him what my chances were of getting bail, “None whatsoever”, he replied, “On two counts. The first is the seriousness of the charges, and the second is the fact that you’ve never once answered bail – ever”. I was desperate, so I insisted he applied for it anyway.

It was here that I think I had my first encounter with divine power, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. In court, my solicitor – looking embarrassed – mumbled an application for bail. Like him, I fully expected the police to jump to their feet and vehemently oppose it. They did nothing. The magistrate kept looking at them, and they just sat there looking back. Trying to compensate for their inexplicable inaction, the magistrate imposed severe bail conditions, which included a curfew and daily reporting to the police station. I was supposed to first report at 6pm that evening, but I was hundreds of miles away by then.