Taming of a Wildcat
by Bill Billard

Are you a cat lover? As a small boy, I had a deep affection for cats. Early on, I learned how cats always land on their feet, and because of their incredible agility, cats have nine lives. I believed it! Back then, I could never imagine there was a possibility I could also have nine lives. I say that because I am about to celebrate the twelfth birthday of my seventh life.

I don’t have a hidden furry tail, so I am probably not part cat, and no, I haven’t died and come back to life six times. I have, however, had six close encounters with death. I courageously admit I chose three of those close encounters, and because of my bad choices, for many years I suffered from periods of deep depression and suicidal thought patterns.

Sensitivity to rejection, unresolved conflicts from years gone by, and a profound sense I was not good enough continuously flooded my thoughts. I lived a life filled with overwhelming feelings of rejection, humiliation, and a desperate, lonely desire to be accepted. I hated the intensity of all of those raw emotions confronting me daily. I thought the best way to deal with the pain was to find ways to distract attention away from it. That “head in the sand” strategy led me deep into marijuana use and casual sex as a cover up for my constant hopelessness.

On the outside, I did my best to be a skillful provider for my family, but my marijuana addiction and lack of clear focus kept me dissatisfied with even the most promising opportunities in the field of electronic technology. I trained to excel, but I walked away from many good jobs excusing the separation as a fault of the job; the boss, the company, or whatever “reason” I thought would explain away my disregard for a need to be clear-minded and solution- focused.

My despair and self-loathing reached a tormenting point toward the end of 1975, when I decided to end my life. In the moments surrounding my decision to die, I reflected on how my act would affect my family, and I decided to end it all by setting fire to my home. The fire would be considered an “accidental death” and my family would be spared the shame of suicide. After smoking several joints, I lit the match, started the fire, and then settled into a bathtub full of water to keep my body from being consumed by the flames.

I survived that dreadful decision, but then faced a charge of arson for setting the fire. In jail awaiting trial, hopelessness struck again, and I attempted to take my life again because I thought I would surely face many years in prison. However, to my amazement, I received a hopeful letter in the mail. After taking an overdose of medicine that I had squirreled away under my bunk, I was still lucid enough to read. The letter from my attorney said there was a probability of a reprieve from imprisonment. With that stirring of hope, I voluntarily sought help in recovering from my poor choice.

I decided I could use my skills and power to help myself recover and reassess the circumstances that led me down such a dark path, so for the next month, I sat all day journaling an account of the experiences that had overtaken me. It helped me temporarily and gave evidence to the judge handling my case, that probation for my choices was appropriate.

Yes, I avoided prison; but I also avoided accepting actual responsibility for the underlying issues of my poor decisions. Shortly after my release, I was back to my sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle. I remained in this depraved indifference to life for another ten years, stringing one bad decision after another. I roamed from Florida to California and many places in between.

I sought to put together a “stable” life on the outside, but relied solely on the self-medication, via drugs and sex, as the foundation of my deepest motivation and desires. I clearly stated to my second wife, Marcia, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Meanwhile, I want to have fun and play hard while I still can.”

Have there been times in your life where you have found ways to escape from the painful memories of your past?

At age 40, “playtime” came to a jolting halt in the mountain valleys of Northern California. I made a meager living as a professional gold miner. In my “strike it rich” gambling mentality, I spent three years gold dredge mining on the Klamath River and finding the minute amounts of gold that kept me in food, pot and gas for the next day’s possibility of the jackpot treasure.

For more than six months I ignored the growing painful lump in my right bicep. Finally, the pain and the lump grew too big and too painful to ignore.

My doctor delivered the worst-case scenario. “You have cancer; we have scheduled you for surgery to amputate your arm at the shoulder.” I am sorry to say the surgery will give you relief from the pain and slow the spread of your cancer, but it will not be a cure. We may be able to slow the process, but you probably will not survive for more than six months.”

The shock of that news was devastating; however, it was the beginning of the sobering journey I needed to take as I began my fourth life journey. That journey commenced with time alone and the wise choice to take a day to collect my thoughts.

I climbed high up on the mountainside, and in that quiet setting began to think carefully about what was paramount and about whether there was any real value in what my life had accomplished. I thought about what I allowed myself to believe, justifying my choice to isolate myself in that river valley, totally disconnected from my family and consumed by the relevant meaninglessness of my mining “quest.” I was neither rich, nor had I created any legacy to pass on. Now I was going to die.

I was raised to believe in God and to recognize the existence of life after death, but did I really believe it? Now I was not far away from some type of eternal future, if it was true. Did God actually exist? If so, was I going to spend eternity in Hell? While I was raised in a home that believed in God, I concluded God was a myth created in the past ages to induce fear and keep the masses under control. That conclusion made sense to my wander lusting, isolated and rejected heart. It sounded plausible and relevant to my rebellious spirit. But now in this compellingly quiet moment, I am asking, “Is my basic argument the truth?”

In the moments after asking that question, humbling doubt found its ground. Was my argument truer than what wiser men than me discovered? The men that tested the truth of their conclusions for most of recorded history? Finally, how could I be so arrogant to believe I had the truth about the motives of the men who honored God as a real being, and not just a myth or legend?

On that mountainside in those deeply reflective moments, a change began to grow within in me. It was not a sudden return to God and a life of faith, but it was enough for me to catch a glimmer of what life could be for me. I walked home with a changed perspective. I somehow knew I was going to live in spite of my cancer, but I had no idea what turn my life was beginning to take. I just knew that life was a precious gift and in that simple truth there is hope.

Over the next several weeks my medical outlook changed dramatically. The origin of my cancer was re-diagnosed and determined to be far less life threatening. There was no spread of the tumor, and surgery was performed to remove it from my arm.

If my life were a fairy tale, I would immediately learn how to be cat-like and land on my feet. Afterward, life would be easy and perfectly beautiful.

In real life, progress is much slower when you are untangling the effects of years of depraved thinking. Within three months, I made a decision to separate myself from all of the disruptive habits I engaged in for seventeen years.

Without looking back, I left drugs, casual sex, and the gambling mentality of “strike it rich” gold mining and moved back to my family home in Texas. I returned home to a warm welcome, and I began to build real relationships with others.

The most significant of those new relationships started my first day home. My sister and her husband, Dennis, also returned to Texas that day. Dennis had just retired from twenty years of naval service, and they too had decided to make Texas their home as well. We became fast friends, and his friendship showed me the value of honesty, compassion, and consideration. Without effort, he became my mentor.

The tragedy of a cancer diagnosis struck again in my life, but this time, I was not the victim. It was Dennis. For the next seven years, Dennis lived a heroic life of submitting to chemotherapy, followed by periods of remission, followed by the next advance of his disease. Then finally, Dennis said his last good-byes at home and passed away quietly, surrounded by his family.

Before Dennis, I never had a real true friend relationship with another man. There were superficial acquaintances, but never the valued, open honesty that characterizes true love and honor. I was not prepared to meet life without my best friend. I did not have any idea that I would deeply grieve the end of our friendship, and I was not ready to know how to deal with the dark void of love confronting me. My relationship with my wife Marcia was about the convenience of companionship and codependency, not a sincere, loving commitment.

I longed to have real meaning and honest love as the foundation of my life. Marcia and I agreed that our life together should come to a close. For the first time in my life, I took the time to think carefully about what mattered to me. I started by determining how I would find a genuine and loving relationship.

The next year was a slow process of inner domestication from alley cat to house cat. I spent time carefully considering what I valued most in both my environment and in my relationships. I could more clearly define a healthy living environment. But deep inside, I yearned for a relationship based on acceptance of my strengths, as well as my weaknesses. More than anything, I longed to be considered worthy of honest enduring love.

I met Laura through Match.com. We chatted via email and then finally by phone before agreeing to have our first date. In our first face-to-face meeting, I fell in love with the nurturing grandmother who made no excuses as she busily tended to the care of her nine-month-old grandson Ben.

During moments of quiet conversation, later in the evening, Laura asked me specifically about my faith in God. My best answer was that I did believe in God as the creator of all things and that I honored him for the beauty of His creation. It was not the answer Laura wanted to hear, but she accepted me into her life as a work in progress.

I cautiously accepted her invitation to join her in regular attendance at church. Knowing I had my relationship with her at stake, I walked into a church for the first time in thirty-two years. My anxiety about possibly being rejected by God and the people of God evaporated in my first experience. Instead of meeting a group of stern-faced rule keepers, I met a group of open, caring, loving new friends who accepted me and who openly loved God in their joyous praise of him. In that one experience, I knew without a doubt, God was real, and that I could learn to love Him as well.

Within a year, Laura and I married. It was a drama filled relationship because we spent much of our time caring for and nurturing her son Barry, whose health rapidly deteriorated from an incurable disease. Yes, you probably guessed right, Barry had cancer. He passed away six months after our vows, and I wanted to be the rock of support Laura deserved to have as a husband; but as a new believer, I still wasn’t as strong as I should have been during that trial.

However, my awareness of God’s presence grew immensely over the next twelve years. There for me through the most difficult moments, I learned how much I could trust Him as he healed me completely from an accident that crushed a vertebra in my spine. In that learning, my outlook transformed from despair at the probability of my future as a cripple not capable of continuing my difficult life as a handyman, to a conviction that God was right there beside me, and I could trust Him completely for a full recovery. He fulfilled my hope beyond my wildest imagination. He erased all of my pain, and I returned to a normal routine in just a few days.

Just one short year later, I suffered a second catastrophic accident. This one left me in complete paralysis. I learned how intimate and tender deep prayerful moments with God could be as He nurtured and taught me. While I learned from the Great Teacher, He restored my health. God transformed me once again from being completely incapacitated to full restoration. Yes, the accident broke my body, but not my hopeful, trusting spirit.

I made it all the way through both of those experiences in complete peace and quiet calm. They changed the person I am in the most dramatic ways possible. I now experience each moment in unshakable confidence that I do not walk alone. He is always with me.

I struggle moment-to-moment to describe adequately how intensely God poured out his love to us. John 3:16 says, “God loves every one of us so much He gave up His only Son, a part of himself, so that whoever could believe that he is a real person, would have the opportunity to spend all eternity sharing life with Him.”

Can you remember the most intense experience you ever had being loved by another person? Was that tender moment more precious and beautiful than you can describe? If you could, would you distill the beauty of the moment and put it in a spray bottle to carry with you? You could pull it out, spritz yourself and experience that same intensity all over again whenever you wanted.

Would you have your bottle with you all the time? Would you ever lose that bottle?

If someone could discover how to pour God’s love into a bottle like that, it would sell in the most exclusive shops, and the wealthiest of men would be willing to pay more than the entire lifetime earnings of the average person for it. They would be standing in line for their bottle because they would have heard that. Just one tiny drop of it would instantly reward them with the greatest intensity of love they ever experienced. It would be perfect, fulfilling, overwhelmingly tender, and compelling beyond all of the experiences of love in their entire life combined, and it would change their life forever.

Fortunately for each of us, God is not a merchant selling His love to the highest bidder. He gives it all away for free! Father God continually pours it out into each and every one of our lives in an endless stream of love through the unstoppable power of His Spirit presence. In fact, He is recording every precious moment of our life here on this earth. When we spend the rest of eternity with Him, we will have the precious gift of memories restored to us. Even better, we will be able to experience those memories anytime we want; not in the small sometimes insignificant way they are perceived now, but from the grandest perspective possible through His eyes.

To God, every moment is precious, sacred and intensely valued. If you could, wouldn’t you sincerely desire to experience your life in that kind of way? Wouldn’t that be precious to you beyond your wildest imagination?

I have made several references to my cat-like nature as I share my story with you. No, I do not think I am a part cat and part man. I am truly grateful to be one of God’s human creations. I know that every moment of my life, He has been patiently tending to the creation process within me. He lovingly informs every cell with all the information it needs to have a healthy life, and he gives me wise, clear insight by the commanding presence of His Spirit living in me. He shows me what the next best choice is for me to make in my life and my relationships.

I could, if I choose, believe that I am a cat person living a “charmed life” and ignore the still small voice within me. However, I chose that ignorant path for far too many years, and I do not want to live a life of despair now that I have opted for a life of peace and joy and personal agreement with Him. More than anything, I would not want to give up sharing my life in eternity with the Lord, my dearest best friend.

I’ve learned the life I now live is the life that promises an eternal future. Even if it ended today, my next life would be in Heaven. I am grateful for God’s intervention. Like a cat, I’ve finally landed on my feet!

Bill Billard is a Texas transplant from New York City. He and his wife, Laura, have four daughters and eight grandchildren. Bill is the author of The Healing Power of God’s Love My Journey which will be published in November 2016. His passion is lay-led ministry.