I was born with Epilepsy, as an infant what goes on when small children at that age go into a seizure is no different than an infant playing on the floor in a mother’s eyes.
It took a couple of years for the conformation of my having epilepsy. Then as anyone who is just diagnosed with this illness, time to find a medicine (not sure about this age) and many visits to the Drs.
With my parents there dream of the oldest son is now shattered. I can no longer help them on the farm down the road. Also this illness has caused them to take more time away from the work on the farm running me to the doctor and trips to
During much of my childhood my Grandmother and Grandfather looked after me while my parents worked on the farm doing field work or around machinery. My parents grew soybeans, corn, oats, wheat and hay to field the livestock.
Came time to go to school I rode in a bus going just around the corner in the country to a one room schoolhouse. There was about 40 of us in the class with 2 or 3 sometimes 4 or 5 in each grade. The seating was all single seats 6 rows wide and 7 seats deep. The grade one’s and two’s sat on the teachers left and worked their way across the room. Many times I would end up in the teachers office resting on the couch when I had seizures at school. One time at school when I was in grade 2 I picked up the desk I was in and threw it across the room. This desk made of heavy steel and wood plus many books in side of it must have weighed 100 pounds or more. So I was told by other students in the room at the time. I spent 4 ½ years in this one room school before they decided to close it and put us in a bigger school.
At my new school there are nearly 400 students from age 6 – 14 years plus kindergartens. The grade one’s and two’s where at the old 4 room school. With this many students I still didn’t have many friends. Many of them kept away from me in fear something would happen if I had a seizure.
Come time for me to graduate I chose to go to the
I went to school in Blenheim for two and a half years. That is when the guidance counselor thought I should quit and find a job before the other students got out for the summer. Did it work? No. The employers said either I didn’t qualify or they didn’t need my help. I think some said they didn’t need me so they wouldn’t hurt my feelings about not hiring me cause of my epilepsy. They would pay big dollars on compensation and there insurance would sky-rocket if I got hurt.
Rather than tell my parents I quit, I would still take the bus to school, but then go up town to the pool hall. This went on for two months before I got caught. Trying to explain this to my parents was tough.
From that moment on I would help them on the farm, greasing machinery, feeding the animals, milking the cows by hand, feeding the chickens and gathering the eggs. Sometimes I would do all the choirs while mother and father worked the field. On my parents farm they grew wheat, oats, corn, soybeans and hay. During the haying season I rode the wagon stacking the bales to take to the barn. When we first started into the haying season we used a bale elevator to put up the first ten thousand bales. Then we would stack the bales on the wagon using slings, nine bales of hay and sixteen of straw. With the hay or straw that would be about a thousand pounds of weight.
During my school years I was allowed to go youth groups at the
As I became a teenager my parents joined a square dance club called “Kent Klodhoppers.” The adults formed one square the children another. Then the time came for everyone my age to get their license, I was denied driving due to having Epilepsy.
In the late teens as most teenagers were out partying and having a grand ol time I had to stay home. I continued with the square dancing. Out in the country my nearest neighbour was 300 feet away to the edge of the property and no one cared to take me out with them to join in the partying. I then had to create my own pleasure; I played cards amongst family members, put jigsaw puzzles together, watched television and other little things. Life was a bore when you know what everyone else is doing and you can’t join in. Life goes on and all I did was go to Sunday School, church, square dancing and work on the farm.
When you know what other people are doing it’s like being in jail, but only in my own back yard. At one time in life I got fed up with the life on the farm so I packed my back pack and was going to leave home. I stopped to say good-bye to my Grandmother who lived only 50 feet away on the same farm, but that was as far as I got. I stayed there for about 2 months before returning home. While there for me to earn my keep I had to help my Grandmother with the housework.
Back with my parents now, that is all I did year after year Take care of the animals, hoe the beans, help load the hay wagon and hoe the thistles out in the cow pasture. This is all I did because there was not a single job for me due to my having epilepsy. I wasn’t able to drive which means I couldn’t go out and have a good time on my own, which means I couldn’t date a girl like the other boys my age did.
In 1985 I was fed up with my lifestyle, so I started to pray for deliverance. I told no one out there to pray for me to be delivered of this illness. My parents didn’t even pray for me. Due to being fed up with this illness and lifestyle I included in my prayers, “Lord Jesus, take this burden of Epilepsy away from me. I am useless with it. No one wants to hire me, my father won’t let me help to full capacity of what I want to do. I can’t go out and enjoy myself like other people my age. Take this burden from me now Lord I ask this in Jesus name.” I prayed this prayer everyday, month after month while waiting for my deliverance and never losing faith or letting disbelieve step in.
Also during this time I was fed up with being a shadow to my parents. I wanted to quit going out with them and to do so I had to hire and pay for a babysitter. Hard to believe a 27 year old had to have a babysitter. As time moved on I continued to pray for deliverance of my epilepsy twice a day. This went on for nine months when my mother to pack my suitcase. I asked her for what reason, because I didn’t know what was going on. Then she explained to me that I was going to the hospital for surgery to stop my seizures. I went off to pack my suitcase to go to the
After 4 days of the operation I was sent home instead of the seven days that most patents wait for. Now after 4 days had passed by I believed I had an answer to prayer. The doctors still told me I would have many more seizures for up to 2 months. I still held to my believe, and thanked God for my answer to prayer.
On the farm things went on as before, my parents working the fields and planting crops, while my brothers and I took care of the animals. My brothers could have worked the land too except there was a limit to the tractors we had. Five weeks went by and I came down with the flu bug and with it I had a seizure. I still kept the faith that I will never have another seizure.
Life goes on as usual, the same ol, same ol for another 2 years. That’s when the decision came to allow me to be on my own, at least away from my family. I applied for disability so I could have money to pay the bills and other necessities.
I was put into a group home to learn how to cook for myself as well as for a group of people. I stayed in there for about 9 months and then I moved into my own apartment. I was there for about a year before I moved to Ridgetown near
Shortly after returning to
After that I got myself a few paper routes to keep myself occupied and to make extra money. At one time I had 8 paper routes which kept me occupied 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. The daily hours consisted of 4 hours delivery and 4 hours of collecting the pay.
Then I had a man whom I knew from the mall approached me. Said he had a word from God for me. The word was I was to go into business washing store front windows. I was shocked about that cause I wanted to get into the Lawn cutting business. Love the smell of the fresh cut grass and the outdoor air. He said that he had four customers that I could start with and that I could buy his equipment to get started. He used the money from these customers to buy Christmas gifts for his Children. He just got so busy with his main job he couldn’t do the other as well. I told him, “If God is in it will flourish, if not it won’t.”
I took over these four customers and continued with my paper routes. Then after supper I went out into the business areas of the city and put out an advertisement in all the store fronts, a different area every night. I did this on a monthly basis for a few years. Over a 10 year period I built up the business from 4 customers to 120. As I made the same amount of money with the windows compared to the papers I dropped the routes one at a time. I managed to live on the window cleaning alone for a few years, riding a three wheel bike around the city with jugs of water and my equipment.
In the Spring of 2007 I started to lose customers, rough time coming in. The beginning of the recession was on its way in, even though no one seen it coming at that time. I lost some 20 customers and then decided to open a consignment store where I could market my t-shirts and other items. Any excess space would be rented out to people with items they wanted to sell. To spend a sufficient amount of time in the store I had to drop many more customers.
During this time I had a woman who was suffering from schizophrenia come around me, a woman who I knew from other sources. She started stalking me, followed me job to job with my window cleaning and spent most of the time in my store. She thought she owned half of it, the way she hung around. After a couple weeks of this I had a police bond put on her, so she would leave me alone. I could only do this with my store front cause with the window cleaning I had some 100 locations where I worked.
With the consignment store not working out and me still losing customers with the windows I decided to close the store in June of 07, shut down the window cleaning and move out of the city to get away from this stalker. I figured if I moved to
I spent 15 months in
In October of 08 I decided to move back to
In the fall of 09 my Pastor spoke out in church with a prophesy, not sure if she knew who it was for or anyone else did. I did cause I had already started working on the project. With most of the windows now behind me it is time to move on as an inventor and author.