Episode: Pat's Story

Pat McCool takes his turn to discuss the twists and turns of an extraordinary life, sharing how Jesus watched over him and guided his path until Pat was ready to turn to Him. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the two Unlikely Christians podcast. I am Pat McCool comedian author, coming to you from the Banks of a lake deep in the Piney Woods of Southern Mississippi, and my co-host from all across the Atlantic Ocean and academic capital of the world, Oxford, England. My brother from the mother country esteemed psychotherapist and addiction specialist, Richard Tull. How you doing, rich? Hello, pat. I'm alright, pat. I'm alright. You uh, I am good. I will be a lot better in a few hours.'Cause today is yard work day? Do you have yard work day? It's, you know, I mean, I know you're, sophisticated academic. I don't know what do you guys, do you have somebody trim your shrubs? How do you handle the yard over there? Well, because obviously I live in a castle pat, so. My state ranges for many, many miles, you know, so I, I tend to let the, like the, you know, like the poor farmers that I, I rent various lots to, they do it, they do all the work and then they bring me like an offering, you know, at the end of each season, um, into, into the Great Hall where I sit there. Eating chicken, you know, eating chicken bones and front by her head and stuff. Oh, I see. The uh, and I'm assuming, does the butler kind of direct this to make sure don't, do you have a guy at the door with the Uh, yeah, there's the doorman and then there's the butler and then, you know, so the doorman director, the butler. Butler brings him through, and then the guards take them to the dungeon. You have the guy, you have the doorman. That j just a opens the door. That's good stuff. Yeah. Well, one to open, one's are close. Uh, I see the, um, and the south here, we do it ourselves. See, that's one of the rite of passages to manhood. You have a mower. You know, you have a leaf blower, you have a chainsaw, a pole saw, and a wreck, and, and you, you say those names very slowly as if I don't understand them. I got'em from, and of course a nine millimeter pistol chest in case. Yeah. Because we have the yard work and you go out and you do it, you know, you work up a sweat and it takes hours. And then you, because here we have pine trees. I'm looking at water, but I've got pine trees, shrubs, you, I mean, you, you name it. Pine straw. We have snakes. Do you guys have snakes in England? Like allegedly, like I've, I've never seen one. Um, so we have like adders apparently, but I don't think anyone's seen an adder since the eighties. Um, and grass snakes, those are the two snakes that are native to England. We have a very small, almost on existent selection of things that in nature that will kill you. Um, whereas obviously in America you have like a lot of different things that can slash will kill you. On my property, I have seen copperheads rattlesnakes and a coral snake, which is even is a rare poison snakes, but supposed to be one of the most poison snakes in the world. Uh, they're everywhere. Now, maybe in England. Uh, well, you have to watch out. I mean, they're not just like sitting outside waiting on you. You just gotta watch when you're walking out, in the woods. And you have to be careful. Maybe in England, the, my namesake, didn't he run the snakes off of Ireland or, um. So they say, or was it St. Steven or something, drove the snakes out of Ireland or something? St. Patrick, I think it was St. Patrick, Richard St. To St. Patrick. Yeah. Yeah. I dunno, man, us in the Irish, it's not, you know, it's, it, it's, it's never really gone that well, so, no. Yeah. Yeah. The whole enslaving thing was, was a bit of a, was a bit of a, kind of a tedious thing. You know? It's like you guys, uh, you know, it's like my wife is part Welsh. And so people in America, we don't have the royalty, but we all think that we have some royal blood, you know, so we go to England, we, you wanna search and you just know that there's some royalty in there. But if you're Irish, like my name is McCool, you just skipped that because you know you're in America because somebody ran out of potato somewhere. You know, there's not a crest waiting on you when you get over there. So no. Maybe a, a hedge school, I believe was a thing over there, you know about that. A what? But they had hedge schools because apparently English wouldn't let the, I wouldn't let the, the native Irish people have schools for their kids. So they, they had schools like hidden in, you know, like in, in trees and. Like bushes and stuff like that. So like Yeah. Hedge schools they had, yeah. Well see, I didn't know. Well it just, that's probably your ancestors holding mine back so that could be why you have an MBA from bath. Both. Both sides of the pond. And I've got a GED and a certificate. Uh, from a alcohol safety awareness program that I got a scholarship for when I was 16. So, you know, I at least got some credentials somewhere. So, well, any of those that are joining us for the first time, this is the two unlikely, Christian. Podcast and we're unlikely Christians because we spent the early part of our lives working against, God and, with destructive behavior. Because when you're not following Jesus and you're living a destructive lifestyle, you're causing trouble along the way. And after we overcame those, uh, we both have a deep desire. To, share our experience and have other people experience the joy and the peace that we've had. So, which is why we're doing, uh, doing this podcast, and we figured the best way to start off was give you our background. We spent the first couple of episodes with Richard telling us, how he reached his moment, where he started his relationship with Christ. And so today, uh, we're gonna start on mine. Mine's a little lengthy. Also, I've written about it in my book Bonsai wasn't really that big of a hill. One man's walk towards God. And, uh, we're not gonna go through the whole 25 chapters of it. So I'm gonna give you the Cliff's notes. Do you know what Cliff's Notes are? Do y'all have those? In England. Uh, what are they? So, so they, cliff notes were a book in school that when you were studying for, uh, in a subject for a test, you'd get a little book and it's called Cliff's Notes. So it just condensed everything down to notes on the subject so you could, you know, it would kind of help you along. Uh, bless you. You're a simple people. Yes. Yeah. Yes. We are rich. So, so speaking of school, we will start off my, I do not have the Richard, uh, had a bit of a tougher childhood growing up with a dysfunctional family. I didn't have it. My father was a military officer. I was born Fort Benning, Georgia on a military base. I had the love in my family there. You know, there wasn't alcoholism, there wasn't abuse. Uh, my father was, he was a strict kind of an army guy. And, um, so, you know, there were things, as I got a little older that kind of took its toll, but I, and you as a psychotherapist, rich, you probably, I've never really understood why I did a lot of the things I did, but I just remember in the first grade, walking in and sticking the stoppers and the sinks, uh, of the bathroom, turning the water on and flooding the bathroom and going back to sitting at my desk and coloring monkeys until the water. Came under the door and then I was off and running. By the third grade, I shoplifting, moved to Hattiesburg, Mississippi into fourth grade new town. Figured I'd try shoplifting again. Wasn't good at that. Got caught doing it. Fifth grade vandalism. Um. Six, seven. Similar to you, I noticed you said at 13 you had started doing drugs and that's about the time that I started them. And then you were selling drugs by 14 and I was also at 13 years old. Um, I. I was arrested with a pound of pot and, and a box of baggies. So there's really no way I could say this is my, I, you know, I was just gonna smoke all this myself. So I, you know, I was on my way to being a bit of a criminal, and I was probably far less successful at it than you were because I kept, I would always get called. Uh, but I got into vandalism, blew the backstop up on the baseball field, just'cause it was there. It was just little things that I kept getting into trouble and as I said, I didn't come from, uh. You know, an abusive background. My, childhood was great growing up on, on Army Post. Uh, but my father was that kind of post-World War II kind of generation and there were things going along the way where, you know, like playing baseball, I didn't wanna play baseball. I got, you know, by the time I'm six or so, I'm into things like, musical, whatever girls, uh, but my dad would force me to play. Sports. And you know, one day I was, um, at practice, I was goofing off at practice and after the, and the coach got on, told me after practice was over with, we gave a couple of my buddies a ride home and my buddy start deriding me about getting, I. Uh, the coach getting on to me for goofing off at practice. Well, I get home and, and I get a severe butt whipping for, you know, goofing off at practice that I didn't wanna be at in the first place. Mm-hmm. So there, there was some of that, you know, and, and I think you saw in my book, by the time I'm in the eighth grade, I'm not wanting to play football anymore and my family used, we were supposed to play it. I didn't wanna play football by the time I was in the eighth grade. My dad forced me to play. I signed up, but I didn't go out. But I was hanging out in the first day of practice, uh, in the locker room, talking to my buddy, the equipment manager, and I. The, one of the coaches called and said, well, you know, Pat's not out on the field. Well, my dad shows up and gives me a butt weapon in front of my friend for not being on the, so it was that kind of thing. You know, I just kind of developed this, you know, I don't wanna say hatred because I came to love my father. He, I admire him immensely. I'm looking at a flag that draped over his coffin. He's at, buried at Arlington National Cemetery, which is the cemetery in America that. Not everyone can go to, you either died in battle or you had married to. So I loved my father. He stayed with me through all of the trouble that I got into. But looking back on it,'cause I always kind of, kind of look back, so I, I'm always trying to figure out what causes people into things. So I think there was maybe. A feeling of a lack of love or security. Yeah. You know, and, and that type of thing. But, um, but the relationship was just souring quick. I, by the time I'm in the ninth grade, I'd run away from home. My dad would try to discipline me. I would crawl out of the window and just disappear. Uh, for, for days, you know, they didn't know where I was and they would find me staying in a vacant house, uh, that I'd, you know, come back home. And by the time I am in the ninth grade, uh, I had been, arrested for burglary. You, you, you name it, was doing drugs, getting drunk all of the time. I had such a reputation in the ninth grade that on my way to the practice field, on the first day of practice, I'm, still playing football. The defensive coordinator actually approached me and asked me, uh. If I could get him some pop, I was like, this is, this is crazy. Uh, and I worked out a deal. It turned out he was our science teacher and we worked out a deal that we would get good grades if, uh, he would give us a passing grade if I gave him a, if I gave him a bag of weed every semester, which I did until we showed up in the third, in the, during the third, it was me and a buddy of mine. And in the third, semester. We show up at school and the coach is standing out in the driveway lean, and he leans in the cars and my brother was dropping me off and said, Hey, I'm doing a different deal. Uh, I didn't know what he was talking about. I go on into class, he said, I'm not gonna be there. I go in, I start asking some of the other guys, so what happened to Coach Steele? And he said, well, it turned out he had forged his teaching certificate, so he was fired. And that was test day. So we took our science test and we were getting bs. You know, we were getting. Ds C minuses, but that one B that we were getting in science made me and my friend look like a couple of idiot savants. Like maybe they just struggle in these subjects, but somehow they're coming through with the bs. Well, that day wasn't going to happen because we could barely get our names right on, on the science test. So we set up on a. His de the, by the windows of the science class. And another friend saw the test that everybody had taken just sitting on the side of the desk and he threw a lighter across to us and we got the bright idea to set the test on fire because, hey, you know, if we've burned the test. They can't see that we knew nothing about third semester science. Well, we threw one of those out of the window and there were weeds down there and the thing ignited and there were flames shooting five to six feet up in the air. So we effectively sent. The, uh, set the science class on fire in the ninth grade, and they promptly invited us to not come back, to the Hattiesburg Public School system. And we enrolled in a private school. About a week later, our parents enrolled us in there. My buddy showed up, his dad had given him a butt whipping for something, and we got the bright idea that, uh, well, why don't we just, uh, skip all this. KISS is playing at the Superdome during Mardi Gras and we're 14. So we haven't even been to Mardi Gras, so why not? So we walk out of the school and, uh, spend the night behind somebody's house, hitchhike to New Orleans, and we hang out on the streets there for a couple days. We meet a couple guys that are going Los Angeles, and we decide we're gonna go with him. You know, great plan. You know, we didn't have a plan to start with. We might, as we might as well, just keep doubling down on stupid. So we end up, riding with these two nefarious characters. They were adults. We were both 14 years old. Uh, we realized we got a problem the first, when we're in Houston, Texas, and this guy runs into this elderly woman runs a red light. Me and my buddy jump out to go check on the woman he yells at us to get back in the car. We get back in the car. Long story short, ends up leaving this woman screaming and crying on the side of the road and we drive off. Now. Now we were wannabe thugs, but we weren't really the hardened criminals we thought we were. Then we get to this town a few hours later called Columbus, Texas. So we're four or 500 miles away from home, 14 years old, thinking we're striking out on our own. Well, that night we get, highly inebriated. Uh, my buddy gets into a scrum with one of the guys. We wake up the next morning and they've taken all our money. We're stuck in Columbus, Texas. And we decided that we're gonna kind of end our life on the road. We weren't quite ready for it, so we're gonna go home. And we decided the best way to do it was to steal a car. Now, neither one of us had a driver's license and had ever driven a car day in our lives, but that wasn't gonna stop us. So I go down the street and I, there was a car behind the Dairy Queen with the keys in. I jump in the car, fire it up, come around the corner, almost take out half the people sitting in the. And the benches on, uh, and it had like a gravel driveway. I go pick up my buddy and he runs out and he's got a couple pillows. He thought, Hey, we might need some pillows for the ride back. Let's put a little thought into the ride back. Well, five minutes later we, we've pulled out on the interstate and I get to see what the barrel of a 44 Magnum looks like from some Texas law man. With the hat. You've seen the movies, right? They wear'em. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the guy's got the hat. He's pointing the gun out of the window four feet from my head. And our grand theft auto ended five minutes later and we spend two weeks in this jail in Columbus, Texas eating bologna sandwiches, uh, with a bunch of hardened criminals until our parents came and got us. And you would think that we learned our lesson then. You'd have thought wrong.'cause I was just getting started. It was, I would continue with, uh, DUIs. I would continue with getting trouble. Uh, and my father, everyone in town called him the colonel. They loved him. He was a really nice jovial guy. And so every time I got into trouble they would say, you know, this is the colonel's son. The colonel will take care of it. They didn't realize the struggles that the colonel was having.'cause I, like I said, I would run away from home and, um. Anyway, so I came back and continued to get in trouble, continued getting out of trouble, but it was drugs, it was DUI and by the time I'm 18 years old, as you know, when you live that life, You're devoid of any kind of peace. You don't like yourself, you don't realize it, but there is no self-esteem. You start having no hope there. And the drugs. I wasn't as you, you said you weren't physically addicted to drugs. Uh, I, well, no. I mean, I was, I was a heroin addict, so I was, I was definitely physically addicted. Oh, so you were physically addicted? So you had to go through withdrawals and the things like this? Yeah, many times. Many times I was, you know, we never had the heroin show up, uh, in Hattiesburg. I lived in a small town. Thank God. I thank God that the methamphetamine, that the ease of all of the highly addictive substances that people are dealing with today, we didn't have access to that. You know, we had the cocaine and, that was one of my problems when a friend of mine, I, by the time I'm 18, me and a friend of mine are living in a house and I'm selling drugs out of the house, living fine guy, and a guy comes back from Miami with a big bag of rock cocaine and a needle. I. Once that happened, the party was pretty much over. I wasn't physically, but I was emotionally, I literally thought the only happiness I had was when I was, what we called high. It wasn't high, but either taking pills, doing the cocaine, and I would do anything I could to get the cocaine and I had, um. I, I had had moments throughout my life where I, where I had these times when I felt something was kind of looking over, kinda watching over me. Like I, I told you about getting DUIs one, one night when I was, 15, we could get our driver's license. Back then I had gotten, highly drunk and was driving home from a party. And, and there's a reason I'm telling you this'cause it sets up something on down the line and I was driving home one night and I was almost home. And before I pulled into down my street, I decided I was going to get something to eat and I turned down this street and I punched. The gas pedal on my Mustang, and I just left it there. I don't know why. Oh, and I, I had also tried to commit suicide a couple of times. By the time I was 18, I was that unhappy. And I just remember that night turning that corner and just putting the foot on the gas and I was like, you know what? I just don't care. And I got to the end of that street and before I could make the turn, I. There's no way I could cross the street. I went straight across the road, I hit an embankment that had a, what we call a guy wire that holds a telephone pole, and the car just smashed the front end all the way to the, into the, to the driver's compartment. And it launched the car up in the air about 30 feet. And the car started sailing upside down. And, and I remember looking at the steering wheel, I. Of the car just for a moment I can remember it like it was yesterday and for the first time ever, because remember I didn't go to church, you know, we went like Easter or something like that. Sure, sure. I had been christened in the Episcopal, but there was no, uh, I had no relationship with God., But I was flying through there. I remember looking at that steering wheel, feeling so helpless, and I remember saying, God, help me. Please, God help me. Just in that moment and a moment or two later, the car landed upside down and about 30 feet. It had flown through the air and the roof of the car had been flattened all the way to the top of the car except for one place. Right above where I was sitting, there was a bend, almost like the steeple of a church right above my head, and I crawled out of the car. I had knocked the power out from the neighborhood. All the neighbors, you know, knew who I was. They all came walking down. They were looking at the car thinking, oh my God, he's dead. He's in there. I'm standing out on the road without a scratch on me. And I say all that because I kept going. I actually crawled out of three total cars, either driving or a friend driving the car. Um, something was watching after me, but when I turned 18 years old, I've, as I said, I'm very. Unhappy person. You as a psychotherapist might know the words for it, but there's no self-esteem. There's no hope. You don't like yourself. I don't know the, the words for it there. Uh, but I had reached that point when I started doing the cocaine, and actually, you know, when you go back and say you were physically addicted to the heroin, I do remember the time when we took a needle and shot cocaine. That was a feeling that I felt like. This is it right here. If I can figure out a way to feel like this for the rest of my life, okay, I can do that. If I can just function and feel like that.'cause I felt it right there. But it was actually the, on the first time was the only time I felt that way. Every time I was chasing it, every shot from that point forward was chasing. That feeling that first, that's cocaine. That's, isn't it? Yeah. Happy. This is it. I found it. I'm there. Everything else is a desperate attempt to get back to that joy you think you have found? So when I'm 18 years old, I had gone in the army. Uh, the Army reserves I had come back, thought I was going to get my act together. I was kind of like you, you're trying. But you keep coming back, you know? Yeah. You keep falling back in. I came back from basic training, started doing the drugs again. Uh, and then that had led to, you know, the cocaine and, I had reached a point in, January of 19, 82 or 81, and I, the, I just, I would do anything. To get back to that high that I had. So I tried to rob a store down the street from where I lived, a con convenience store. I mean, I, I was in a haze all of the time. You just woke up in a haze. You never thought straight. So I go to the store. And I'm going to try to bluff my way. I wasn't a violent person. I was extremely dangerous person because driving through town drunk and all the things and, and using people along the way makes you quite dangerous. But I wasn't the guy that was gonna go up and point a gun at somebody, but I acted like, uh. I acted like I had one. I did the, Hey, I've got a gun. There was a woman standing behind the counter that almost had a heart attack. She started screaming and, uh. Almost then I instantly regretted it, and then I instantly regretted it even more because behind the counter was the owner of the store who jumped up from behind the, uh, behind the cash register, and he did have a weapon, and he points a gun at me and starts chasing me out of the store. I run out as fast as I can. This guy's right behind me and he starts shooting. I heard the first gunshot go off and I'm waiting for the impact. I'm thinking I've done it. This is it. But I see a hole blow into a tree in front of me. I. But I, and I keep running. I don't feel an impact. I hear another shot. I see another hole in a tree. I keep going down a hill where I park the car. He keeps shooting and I get to the bottom of that hill. Get in the car. I hear a bullet hit the car, a bullet hit the car right behind me. And I drove off. I got away for that moment, but they knew who it was. They, you know, by the time I got home that night, they were, the sheriff's department was waiting for me. So I end up in this jail cell in Pervis, Mississippi, which ironically was not far from where you and I met. And I am sitting in this jail cell and everything I had done has now come home to roost. Uh, I'm 18, so dad can't just come get me out. Mm-hmm. I'm not just a juvenile. I serious. I it, this is serious. So I'm sitting there, I'm in despair, I'm in tears. There is no hope left for me. And this elderly man, I don't know if he was a trustee. I don't know what the situation was, but this guy comes in and leans in. He hands me a small cup of coffee, asked me what I was there for, and I told him and he handed me this little red book and it was a Bible. And he said, well, I don't know how long you're gonna be here. I don't know what your situation is, son. He said The answer to all your problems. Or in this book, how'd that go? And I took the book though. I remember squeezing it. I was in such despair. I didn't even open it, but I said, God, if you are real, I'm ready to find out. And there was some, a sincerity, and obviously I was at the end of my rope. And so many people turned to God when they have nowhere else to go. But then again, he knows that and he's waiting for you. Well, no angels, Blair, Jesus didn't walk in the cell. But something changed. Uh, I got bailed out the next day. It wasn't looking good because I heard the attorney tell my father said he, oh, he's looking at some time. But there was something had changed at that moment. So I went back while I was waiting. And, uh, for my trial, I, I got a job, showed up at the job, actually. We'd go home at night, wasn't going out partying. I started doing, you know, just doing the right thing, doing things that I was, that I was supposed to do. 12 months passed while I was waiting for the, uh, while I was waiting for the trial. And I had, um, knowing that I was going to jail knowing that I was going to, I spent some time in prison. I end up go, I walked in the courtroom and my attorney, I saw him come, I saw him come out of the back of the room with the judge and he came out with another man and they motioned me over to the side. And I walk in the room and he looks at me and he said, you are the luckiest client I've ever had. And I said, what do you mean? He said, we got it. I said, we got what? He said, we got probation. He said, here's the deal. He said, you're gonna walk out of this courtroom today, and if you stay outta trouble for five years, you'll spend, never spend another day in jail. And they can wipe this from your record, but you mess up one more time and you're gonna spend five to 15 years in the state penitentiary. Wow. I dropped to the, my chair. I burst into tears. I couldn't believe it. I said, how? How did this happen? He said, well, it turned out that the guy whose store you tried to rob went to the judge and he went to the district attorney and asked them to give you a second chance. And he said, if I was you, I would go thank him and apologize. So I did that. I got an appointment with the guy, he owned some other businesses I went to, uh, had a meeting with him, walked in, and I told him what, uh, I said, you know, I thanked him profusely. I wanted to apologize to the woman. He said, the woman doesn't want anything to do with you. She, she's not happy that I've done this. I've understood. But I apologized to him. Thanked him profusely. For what he did. And then when I got up, Richard, I said, well, look, I wanna thank you for one other thing. I said, I wanna thank you. He said, what is that? I said, I wanna thank you for not killing me that day. He said, what do you mean? I said, well, you, you didn't shoot at me. He said, you were obviously, I said, you were the shooting to scare me. I said, you were right behind me. So you were just, you know, obviously just trying to scare me as I was running away. And he looked at me and leaned up and put his hands on his desk and he said, I don't know what you're talking about. He said, because I was shooting right at you. I was so mad at you. He said, I did want to kill you that day. He said, but it was like the bullets were going right through you. And he said, I never seen anything like that. Wow, man. Got goosebumps. And I went home. I got him at that moment. I went home and I told, uh, he went, said, I went home and told my wife, he said, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. And he said, that's what prompted me to go to the district attorney. And this is what prompted me to go to the judge, to tell them, to give you a second chance because somebody's looking after you and somebody has a purpose for you. And if I was you, I'd find out what it is. And I told him I would. And I remember walking outside and I looked, I got in my car and I looked at the steering wheel and I remembered that moment. Of flying through that air, asking God to help me, and I realized he had been with me all the time and had been watching over me, and it was at that moment that I decided I. That I was gonna follow his path, which ended up leading me to giving my life to Jesus and the joy. And that was it. Uh, when I gave my life to Jesus, I was healed of all of it. And now I have turned into one of the happiest people on the planet. Unfortunately, we're running out of time, again, because Phoebe says that you have a meeting. Uh, but we can pick this up, at our next meeting. But that was kind of my story up to that moment. Right up to the moment that I had that time where I said, I realized you've been with me all of this time, waiting for me to turn and realize that you were watching over me just like he was watching over me, over you waiting for you to reach that moment. Uh, yeah, absolutely man, it, it's beautiful, isn't it? And yeah, thanks for sharing that, pat. It's really, you know, I really feel that. Yeah, it's moved me to tears, man. You know, like just that, like the, the beauty of that, that love, that care, that guidance, that moment, you know, and those, it's those moments of desperation where we turn to him, you know? Yeah. And um, it's funny, like. I was thinking about this and it's like, you know, too, and maybe we're not so unlikely as Christians.'cause actually asked we, he came for people, our customer, yeah, he came. We're not interrupt you, but we're about to end, but we are not unlikely. And we'll keep explaining that to others, to hopefully others can share our path there. Alright, love you man. Uh, I'll try to see you next week and we'll pick up the next episode. All right, man. Take care. Bye. God bless you, man. Bye-bye. God bless you. Take care.