I was resting in my bunk after a long day building a humble house in the Baja sun. My youth pastor placed his hand on my sunburnt shoulder and said, “Dan, there’s, uh, a phone call you need to take.” Instantly, I knew something was off. Families were instructed not to call the small YWAM missionary base unless it was an emergency. I entered the director's office and picked up the sun-faded phone. My mother’s trembling voice was on the other end of the line. She got right to the point.
“Daniel, Jack died today.”
“What? What happened?”
“He drove up to the mountains, and he shot himself.
"I’m sorry, son. He’s gone.”
It was a fierce goodbye. The moments that followed were a little blurry. I handed off the phone and stammered out of the missionary base down to the beach. The “base” was really a half-finished resort. The location was tucked tightly in the northwest corner of Mexico, so much so that we could see the border fence extend into the Pacific Ocean.
The youth leaders knew to give me some time alone. One of our leaders was Carmenza. She was a Colombian-heritage mother of a dear friend, and she had become a spiritual mother to me. Over the next few hours, Carmenza sat on the sea wall behind me and prayed.
When I made it to the beach, I collapsed in the sand. I was so broken and defeated. I thought, “Here I am, trying to reach the “lost” in another country, yet souls were perishing in my own home.”
My step-father, Jack, did not support my spiritual endeavors. In fact, he used to call me an effing hypocrite when I would leave for church youth group. Jack was an addict, a quick-tempered and abusive man. Yet, he was the only father figure I had known. Eventually, a guilt-ridden sense of relief would come over our family. The abuser was gone. But that liberation would take years to flesh out.
For now, I just wanted to be alone on that beach. I needed to gather my thoughts and pray, if I could muster it. However, when my bare feet hit the sand, I had no idea of the spiritual and psychological warfare that would take place.
I’m not gonna say I could hear something audible from satan, but he took control and poisoned my thoughts. Like one of those movie scenes where the screen looks inside someone's mind as it races. Blurry scenes of my life were flashing with intensity. So much that I squinted my eyes and pressed on my temples. My consciousness was overwhelmed by this presence.
Then he began to weaponize a voice - my own voice!
The voice was not kind.
“Nice try, Dan, but it’s time to give it up”
“Nice try with this whole Christianity thing, but these people don’t care about you.”
“Basketball at the Christian college? You’re gonna make a fool of yourself.”
The voice doubled down:
“Dan, no Christian girl is ever gonna want damaged goods like you.”
“Give it up, Dan. Go back to the drunken parties. Go back to the girls who just use you. You don’t deserve any better.”
Then, the final blow…
“Look at Jack. You come from nothing but shameful men, and you’ll never be any better.
SO GIVE IT UP!”
By now, my face was buried in the sand, sobbing, and I was pounding with my fists.
There I was. A young man with so much potential, absolutely shattered on a beach in Mexico. I stayed on the beach for hours. As the sun began to set, I sat up and wrapped my arms around my knees. I started to reflect on my life. What if the terrible voice was right? What if the things Jack said about me were also true?
As the emotions subsided and the mental fog cleared, I wiped the sand that was stuck to my cheeks. Slowly, I began to recall all the promises I had clung to since I first heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. I began repeating all the assurances a fatherless young man would cling to.
“You are fearfully and wonderfully made”
“See what kind of love the father has given to us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are.”
I repeated words of my pastor, “Son, you are a child of the living God. You are a winner!”
I sang the words of Rich Mullins, “Hold me, Jesus, cause I’m shaking like a leaf. You have been King of my Glory. Won’t you be my prince of peace”
The tears returned.
By now, I could hear my friends singing in the chapel behind me. I knew I should try to join them. When I was ready, I grabbed two handfuls of sand as I rose. Then I chucked that sand as hard as I could toward the ocean and yelled, “Liar! You’re a filthy liar!”
I made my way up the beach where Carmenza was still waiting for me. She put her arm around me as I staggered down this aisle of the chapel where I could hear their friends' voices lifted in song. I made my way and collapsed at the altar. We spent the rest of the evening, weeping, singing, and praying together. A few days later, we packed up the church van and made our way back to Colorado. Then I did my best to put our shattered family back together.
After the funeral, I asked Carmenza what she saw on that beach that day. She simply said, “I saw it all,” and gave me a hug. It would be more than a decade before I spoke about the encounter again.
Thirty years later, I see God‘s hand in all of it. God knew exactly where I needed to be when that attack came from the weak side. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t stuck in my childhood basement where terrible things happened to children. Nope. I was on a beach in Mexico, with an army of missionaries praying for me. Watching over me was a spiritual mother who would’ve stormed to the gates of hell to bring me back. The support from those lovely people, and the few precious bits of gospel truth I was able to muster, are the only reason I am not a very different man today.
To this day, when I reflect on that encounter, I get chills. I was so close to throwing in the towel. That demon very nearly broke me. What a tragedy that would’ve been. A young man with God’s best all laid out before him, only to walk away from it all. Heather, my beautiful children, all of it… washed away into the Pacific.
And for what? Simply because I couldn’t decipher the TRUTH concerning who God says I am, as opposed to the rotten deceptions of the father of lies.
I’m middle-aged now, and I wish I could say I won the war on that mission trip, but the battles and the lies keep coming. Satan still whispers devilish falsehoods in my ear. People, even those who claim the name of Christ, have slandered me more than Jack ever could. Yet the defense system remains the same.
Are these claims true?
That’s what they say about you. What does God say about you?
Then I pray…
