A Man Sent from God - Part 4
(By Ceci Sullivan - Part Four )
It became apparent to me that I was going to have to stay personally involved
if Michael was to be arrested and brought to justice. The investigators
questioned why I hadn�t come forth at an earlier date. I had to admit
that, because of advice given to me in the past, by many church officials
and leaders, I wouldn�t make a judgment that agreed with my own conscience.
Even counselors that didn�t vow to silence because of priestly vows, didn�t
go to officials.
In all the multitudes of friends and church members I spoke with over
the years, no one ever suggested to give information I knew about Michael
to the authorities. I began to see how terrible the church�s position
on �not making a judgment� really is. In fact, Jesus said �judge righteous
judgment.� Looking back on it now, and remembering all the people I spoke
with who have great influence and authority over peoples� lives who failed
to see the violation of conscience Michael lived in, scares me. We all
make judgments about things and people anyway. To say we don�t is to lie.
It�s what we do about the judgments we make that either pleases or displeases
God that matters!
How could he even think of knowing forgiveness when he failed to go to
those he offended? There was a responsibility he needed to fulfill. A
decency and order in taking responsibility for what he had done. I always
asked the question, �What about the mothers who have lost daughters? Shouldn�t
Michael at least let them know he was an alcoholic and has stopped drinking
and was sorry?" No one could ever answer that, and I knew in my heart
that wasn�t right. The truth is he loved to use women, control them, and
gratify his lust regardless of who got hurt. Everyone was willing to excuse
his behavior because of alcohol. The disease, was a scapegoat for sin.
Looking back on our church experiences, we never met a man who had taken
the log of lust from his own eye, so he could see clearly what to do with
Michael. (At least no one who was willing to come clean with their lust
problem). What man growing up in this day and age could possibly escape
life without having to deal with lust? When you excuse your own wrong
behavior, you�re more than willing to excuse the wrong behavior of others,
not help them face the truth, and do what�s right. I have come to love
the Judgment Jesus talks about! The bible says God loves judgment and
we will be saved by judgment! As Psalm 119 puts it �unless I had made
God�s judgments my delight, my soul would have perished in my affliction!�
Jesus judged the robbers in His Father�s house. He whipped them and threw
them out! He continually judged people's problems, and told them specifically
what it was and gave them the cure. Jesus came for judgments sake, not
to condemn, but to save.
I had the feeling that the detectives would have been indignant towards
my apathy had it not been for their own organizational incompetence in
transferring the information I had given months earlier. I never did get
an answer why there had been such a gross failure to communicate information
between counties. Michael could have been arrested months earlier.
There was a serial murderer and rapist loose in Denver during the time
I found him out. When he was actually arrested, God only knows what criminal
behavior he was up to in those months. I consider it a miracle I stayed
with my friend�s mother. She provoked me to call and discover critical
information had been withheld. This event did lead to his arrest weeks
later. Who knows how long the system would have taken, or if he ever would
have been apprehended and convicted without one phone call, without making
a judgment and following through with it.
Hopeless and despairing, my mom had no idea what to do with me. I was
on drugs for depression, and was sick and melting away from stress and
lack of sleep. I was falling off the deep end of hopelessness, flipping
out. My mom took me across the state to an Adult Children Of Alcoholics
Clinic run by a priest she knew from her past. After I was there two weeks,
they told me I needed to leave, because I was endangering the lives of
others if Michael showed up.
I packed up the kids and me in the morning and right before I left, a
detective called. They wanted my help to find Michael and arrest him.
They told me to make a plan to meet him somewhere, and instead of me being
there, they would show up and capture him. I suggested his parent�s home.
Then I called and left messages with people we knew. He called me back
and I arranged to meet him. I went to the city with the kids and rented
a motel room until they called me to inform me they had apprehended him.
I was nervous all night and feared Michael might recognize the car, because
the motel was right off the highway. I tried to hide it the best I could.
I cried with relief upon receiving a call the next day � they had broken
the door down and had him in custody. They staked out the neighborhood,
which I�m sure was terrifying to the whole neighborhood. I knew it was
questionable how long they could hold him, or if his relatives would help
him make bail.
Everything was resting on his willingness to confess. My relief was short
lived when I received a call from the authorities that he was not cooperating.
When he called me from jail, I told him I didn�t have the strength to
take care of the kids and me and I wasn�t going to speak to him again
unless he made a full confession. He had already spent thousands of the
taxpayers� dollars with his manipulation and control.
I started thinking, �If I had murdered and done the things he had, I would
say I�m sorry and I�m worthy of death, and let the chips fall where they
may.� I knew he wasn�t really sorry. He was sorry for himself, and he
still didn�t care about pleasing God. I wasn�t willing to be his conscience
anymore. He ended up making a full confession the next day, but only to
stay in control of the kids and me. It was my requirement, and he had
fulfilled it, not because of his convictions, but mine. I was seeing how
truly sick our relationship was, and always had been.
Though he was locked up, I was tormented with the possibility of him making
bail. The state had let him go after a psychological evaluation before
his arrest. They said he showed no signs of mental or emotional disturbance.
They were trying to prove him insane. They wouldn�t let him confess. They
were trying to protect him and get him off the hook. It was insane!
Friends and relatives helped with my kids. The stress was just about unbearable.
Life didn�t seem worth living. How could we ever outlive the effects of
the father-husband murderer? Aren�t the sins of the fathers passed onto
the children? What hope would my children have? I was traumatized, and
they were traumatized. I felt dead inside, and was terrified they might
still let him go.
My sister offered to take care of my baby for awhile. I thought they would
all be better off without me - without the remembrance of Michael and
me. Too bad they weren�t all babies and could put this nightmare behind
them. Michael had terrorized our oldest daughter, and her teacher by kidnapping
her from school, and trying to drive her across the state line. He turned
around when he realized he was being followed, and couldn�t escape with
her.
I considered the power of words, the song that was going on in my heart.
You see, when I was nine years old, I learned to sing and play the guitar.
The first song I learned was about a railroad boy who forsook his girl.
She hung herself to death. I sang the song over and over as a kid. Now,
the man of my dreams had forsaken me and I�m left suicidal. The song of
my childhood came true. The power and spell music has in lives can be
devastating. I needed Jesus to put a new song in my heart.
Nine months later as I was returning from a Christian retreat, my car
broke down. I ended up very near to where Michael was being held and sentenced
for murder. I felt God�s destiny in my going to the hearing, and after
what happened, I knew it was. As I sat in the courtroom, watching some
of Michael�s victims come in, one girl in particular with a long scar
across her neck, I didn�t think I could handle it.
I went downstairs to a cafeteria, unable to control my tears. A young
police officer addressed me, and asked if he could help me. I told him
the circumstances of why I was there, and he told me what circumstances
had brought him there. He was the family representative for his niece
Michael had murdered. Her 13 brothers and sisters were too enraged to
come. I was shocked as the realization hit me....I was standing in front
of the uncle of one of Michael�s dead victims! A sobering sad reality
of lost life.
He was kind as he took me back upstairs. The bailiff addressed me and
told me the Judge and Michael wanted to see me. Michael was losing his
nerve to confess. I realized why I was there, and I began to preach to
Michael regarding confessing as the right and only thing to do, and I
was indignant in my position. I told him it wasn�t right to put conditions
on the consequences and he should accept them, come what may if he was
truly sorry.
Well, against the advice of his counsel, and the pressure of my being
there, his attorney plead guilty. He went on to give all the reasons why
Michael was a good criminal and should be rewarded for his honorable behavior.
The judge then delivered a powerful, anointed address to the courtroom.
He said, �Woe unto us the day we reward criminals for doing what is right
and their obligation to do in merely confessing and owning up to their
crimes.�
After all the sentencing was over, Michael received 150 years. He would
be a free man today had he not confessed. He never has faced responsibility
for many of the crimes he committed, because of the statute of limitations.
Detectives from ten counties met to discuss the possibility of solving
murders Michael could be linked to. I received two phone calls saying
they would give him amnesty if he would confess to the murders they thought
he was responsible for. I doubt I will ever fully know the extent of the
PRIVATE life he led apart from me in our time together.
I was beginning to face the multitude of bad counsel I had received from
religious leaders. Michael was begging me from prison to �do things his
way.� I knew in my heart I was his umbilical cord to his God conscience,
and the cord must be cut. Wasn�t divorce the unpardonable sin? The bible
says �what God has joined , let no man cut in half.� The downright truth
was, God never joined us together! Our sin, compromise, and selfishness
joined us. God had nothing to do with it, and we had lived a life apart
from Jesus. His Spirit, The Spirit Of Truth, hadn�t been a part of our
union, and that�s why we could never truly be joined.
I finally became willing to call dead something that had never lived (our
relationship)! I got the feeling from the religious circles we were in,
that I was committing a sin greater than murder. The truth is, Michael
had always been joined to his love of crime. The spirit of divorce was
always alive and well in our relationship, long before we got a paper
from the state to validate the fact.
We had lived in a state of divorce from the day we were supposedly married.
Michael was irate, because he would lose points, and privilege with the
prison board if I were to leave him. I had been taking the children to
jail to see him and it was devastating them. They only knew the Dr. Jeckyl
dad, not Mr. Hyde. I didn�t know what to do about taking the kids to see
him. The church was telling me I needed to love him unconditionally, but
I wasn�t sure I was doing the right thing for my kids. I plopped open
my bible and I told God I needed Him to show me what to do. The first
thing my eyes fell upon was a scripture that says, �Because of the pride
of the land, no one shall go out or come in, and then they will know that
I am God.�
Pride was something Michael and I had discussed time and again. I realized
pride was the number one thing on the list of things God hates in Proverbs
6. Lying was number two. I knew he continually lied to me to present a
false front. He always lied to protect his pride, and God is never mocked.
What you sow....is what you will reap. Every tree will eventually bear
fruit for all to see.
Watching Michael�s face on TV continually, and in the newspapers, caused
great shame to come upon me. For a year and a half, I went to bed wanting
to die, and woke up in the same condition. I believed we could never outlive
the reproach that had come upon us. I hid in a lonely world of depression
thinking no one, not even Jesus, could understand. The door of my heart
was wide open for destruction and despair to come in, and in they did
come.
I remember watching the movie �The Never Ending Story� with the kids.
The Big Nothing was destroying the land. That�s what was destroying me!
I had daydreams of how much better we might be if we departed from this
world. The baby was gone, she was staying with my sister, and would never
remember Michael, and the horrors we were living through.
I went to church and was pitied, and found I was feeling increasingly
sorry for myself and depressed when I left. The bible says �without vision,
(understanding), the people rot from the inside out!!� It also says, �Because
you don�t have faith in the operation of God, you will be destroyed, and
not built up.�
No one had any understanding to help me. I knew I could spend a lifetime
with people pitying me, and it didn�t seem too appealing. I had come to
realize that many times, those who pity you will end up despising you.
The life of Jesus isn�t in your soul when it brings you life to have others
pity you!! Feeling sorry for myself and the kids, was killing me. It was
draining away what little faith and hope I had. Focusing on me, myself
and I, and my fear was tormenting, to say the least.
I was realizing I didn�t really know The Lord of my faith, and that the
only kingdom I understood was man�s kingdom. My world of fear, doubt,
and unbelief was crashing down on me. I remember thinking my life was
one pile of.......(dung). What good could possibly come from it? I heard
that still small voice in my head say, �I use dung to make fertile ground!�
Continued here...
Ceci
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