After decades of skepticism, I had to conclude that God has protected and guided me. There could have been no other way. If this is not so, I want someone to prove it to me.

Good morning,

Do you still remember the virtual "Shock and Awe" from last year? The one which is still costing a lot of money and a lot of lives? Well, today I will tell you about a real "Shock and Awe." My personal "Shock and Awe." Fortunately, the "Shock" part of my life fizzled out a long time ago. However, slowly but surely, the "Awe" in my soul is soaring ever higher. Because we don't have much time, I will try to speak only a few minutes, even though I could talk about my "Shock" for hours. And about my "Awe" another few hours. I also want to keep my testimony short, because we may not have enough hankies around here. And I won't even talked about my three dozen plus could have-, should-have-died experiences. But I made a list of them, so you can study them at your leisure.

(Read my article, listing my hand shakes with the Grim Reaper, "Angels Are Watching Over Me.")

I am giving my testimony as close to Christmas as possible, because this year will be the fifty-first anniversary of my most memorable Christmas. The day when my mother, my little brother Siggi and I became homeless. Before that day, my father had terrorized the three of us for one year, so we had lock ourselves up, together, in one bedroom of our new three-story luxury home. For one year, we had been so afraid of my father, that the three of us had to sleep in one bed, and climb in and out of the window of our bedroom prison. We wore off the paint from the sill of its only window. And since we never could not do our laundry, the sheets of our bed turned as black as our souls.

On that Christmas Eve day, fifty-one years ago, a judge sent two bailiffs to our luxury home to throw out all of the belongings from our prison. Out into the rain. And left it there. When we returned home that afternoon, the three of us found ourselves penniless and homeless. We loaded our wet mattress and a few belongings into a borrowed handcart and pulled it across town. We hauled our meager belongings up to the attic of a three-story apartment building. Thereafter, we had to squat in one little room in the attic for one long and lonely year. Without the owner's permission. Without any utilities. Without the very personal facility absolutely necessary for the survival of mankind. For one year, we filled our lonely evenings by slouching together on our mattress on the floor. For one year, Siggi and I studied and read hundreds of books by the light of a single candle.

This was but one interlude during the first two dozen years of my life. My first two dozen years were extremely traumatic, and almost continuously so. This was mostly so, because Siggi and I were born into the ground zero of the biggest and most exuberant war in history. And since that had not been enough entertainment for us little children, our parents began battling each other for years through two dozen court cases. Twenty-four court cases. They were our worst enemies, Siggi's and mine.

But until I finished writing my memoir, very few people knew about our unbelievable conditions. This was so, because I never talked about my exploded family background. Even my in-laws of more than thirty years only assumed that I had been poor, because I didn't even own a car when I dated my wife in college. I had to sell my jalopy to a junkyard for twenty-five dollars, so I could finish my trip across the state of Washington on a bus. And I don’t think that even my father ever learned how miserable he had made his family. Brother Siggi and I never bothered to tell him. And he never listened to his nagging wife.

Siggi and I had to learn the basics of living through trial and error. We hardly knew our father, and our mother must have been the laziest person on earth. She had already been worn out from her mistreatment as a child. Her father had literally dented her head, by bouncing her off the furniture, when she was a baby. She cooked only one meal for us. Behind a locked door. We were so poor that she tried to feed us a road-kill cat, which she had skillfully peeled off the pavement.

But at that time our father smoked big Havana cigars, drank only beer and wine, and drove a Mercedes. He refused to pay for our support, and I still have a draft copy of a letter to a lawyer, in which threatened to kill the three of us. At that time, that option would have been our greatest blessing. And in the tradition of a legalistic dictatorship, such as we seem to have now, more than two dozen lawyers and judges refused to hold him accountable under German laws during a decade and a half of parental court battles.

Furthermore, no one seemed to care. Not one individual, not one organization, not even God seemed to care. Not one person ever counseled, consoled or mentored Siggi and me. No one ever took us under their wings. We always just had to grin and bear it: Our gut-wrenching food, our homelessness, our motherly whippings, our abandonment, our slavery. Siggi and I turned the other cheek thousands of times. And this often included the cheeks on our backs, because our mother bared them, and whipped them with a wire cable, and with a fierceness beyond description. And that may have been the reason, why I walked out of this church, crying, during the preview of “The Passion Of The Christ.” I wished that I could have been the one to take His flogging on His behalf.

I never had a glimmer of hope for a normal life until I nearly finished college. Even so, my brother and I always tried to be morally-correct. We did not copy the behavior of our parents. And while thinking back on my life, while writing my memoir, I realized that somehow I had always made the right major decisions throughout my life. And had done so almost from the beginning. And had done so without much thinking. I made major life-changing decisions without thinking about them for more that a few minutes. This could have been so, because I never dared to think about my future as a youngster. And by the time I had become an adult, non-thinking had become my soul-protecting habit.

And thinking about my past had always been very depressing. That is why it is a great miracle, that I did not become a whiny victim or even a killer. It is another miracle, that instead, I have been able to enjoy many awesome wonders of God’s creations all around the world. And His protection and His un-erring guidance in my decisions.

An example my non-thinking decisions and God's guidance: When I was still a slave, in the literal meaning of this word, I lived in the deepest poverty possible. When I was twenty years old, I had to live in a shack on a very lonely and very muddy tide flat, and I still did not even have an outhouse. The one facility absolutely necessary for the survival of mankind. I did not even have a bush to hide my bare-behind-hide behind. I felt stupid, because I had flunked out of the fifth grade and was often told that I was stupid. And therefore I was stupid. Never mind that I could not hear well and that one of my ears was always running with stinky pus.

Back to my example. I made the life-changing decision, without thinking about it for more than a few minutes, to enroll in college. I applied at Washington State University, and was surprised that I was accepted. But I had no clue how I would pay for it. And when my academic counselor, who heard my thick accent, told me to take bone-head English, I told him "no." This was a miracle. I was still extremely shy from years of whippings and a submissive mentality from my recent slavery. I had transitioned from a most frightened child into a fearless man. Because since then, I have looked down the barrel of a gun. And I was assaulted by a brain-fried muscle man for more than fifteen minutes, but I had no fear whatsoever. And guess what, I did not have to take this remedial English course, but earned an "A" grade during my second semester English Composition.

To pay for college and my independent sustenance, I took the toughest job in town, the kind which doesn’t exist anymore. Because such have been sued out of existence. I had to work so hard that I had to sweat a lot. Therefore I will forever be grateful to the company for providing me a bonus. Free salt tablets. So that I would not die from dehydration. I did not want to die now, because I was beginning to claw myself out of two decades of man-made hell. The only financial assistance for my first four years of studies was one hundred dollars, disguised as scholarship, from the boys in my dormitory. They had learned that I brushed my teeth with soap scraps from the dorm showers.

So far I mentioned only a few big miracles in my life: not thinking of myself as a victim and making almost thoughtless but correct decisions. But there have been many, many other miracles. By earning and saving enough during the eighteen months after our graduation, Carol and I were be able to travel around the world for six months. For the adventure of a life-time, witnessing uncountable miracles of God’s creations.

I will say the following with great humbleness. I do not mean to show off. I can only compare my actions, feelings and concerns with those I have witnessed in other people. I must say, that I have never wallowed in self-pity, never thought of myself as a victim, have never been bitter, hateful or revengeful about what people have done to me. Now I even joke about it. And my present state of mind, the state of my soul, has been one of my greatest blessings.

Self-pity, hate and bitterness would have destroyed me long ago. Revengefulness would have landed me in jail, where I would have died from hours of hate, bitterness and self-pity.

The miracles which I have mentioned so far can’t really be measured, visualized or appreciated. Therefore, I made a list of my miracles, which are more concrete. More measurable. This list recounts of how and why my body should often have turned to dust, and beginning when I was still a baby. More than three dozen some times, and from many wonderful causes.

I apologize for having taken so much time. Even so, I could barely touch upon my long years of very intense traumas. And I could only say very little about my awe-inspiring blessings: The gift of discernment, the blessings of God's creations, the blessings of His protection and His un-erring guidance in overcoming all challenges. Many hugs to you and may God bless you as much as He has me.