“Innocent Blood on My Hands”
For most of my life Wine, Women and Song is all that mattered. Possessions or things were never very important and neither were people outside of my family. I remember so many times driving my Barracuda wasted and wondering about how I ever made it home. Risk taking with vehicles and relationships just to see what I could get away with was considered good fun. If someone got hurt it wasn’t my problem.
Often when I was getting high there was a dealer around offering to boot up for free, but for some reason something inside me whispered “no”. Years later I realized whom that voice was.
In 1980 when a car making a left turn came over the centerline hitting me on my motorcycle I somehow ended up on top of my bike sliding across the road to the curb then rolling on the grass. After realizing that all my body parts were unharmed it gave me even more of a feeling of invincibility. A short time after that I bought my KZ1000 LTD. My attitude turned up from that point on.
“In what ever deceit or wrong action there was always an excitement and pride attached to not getting caught”.
My foolish decisions, idle words and disobedience to God would fill volumes of encyclopedias. I don’t dwell on or get bound up in the past but many times I wish I could tell some of those people I’m sorry and ask for forgiveness but God will bring about the right circumstances for that.
God has put me in positions where sharing these things has helped others understand Jesus’ unconditional Love and Forgiveness. Until this letter I have not written about the “innocent blood on my hands”.
In 1991 driving through Freehold NJ my heart was touched while listening to Greg Laurie and Charles Stanley on my trucks radio. I opened my heart and accepted the saving Love and Forgiveness of Jesus Christ. Soon there after my sins entangled me and I didn’t have much of an outward change but on the inside that soft voice that used to whisper “no” was now yelling “NO”. For years I drowned it out in alcohol and sex.
During these years my actions created three babies (that I know of) resulting in three abortions. Their “innocent blood” in my mind has been on my hands ever since. As I write this letter my children would’ve been 13, 12 and 10.
May 1994 I moved from Jersey to the NC area. After a quick and brief relationship I then met and fell in Love with the most wonderful woman of my life, Rose. Rosie and I were about in the same spiritual boat. Knowing right but doing wrong I believe she had the same voice yelling inside of her too. In the past Rose had a close walk with God and after our marriage in 1995 she turned toward Him again. As I saw her on her knees before God her actions made me hear that soft voice inside me again, this time it was whispering, “yes”. Rosie’s Love and obedience to God led me to want a real relationship with Jesus. She told me how she would pray for God to open my heart to Him and His Word.
As we drew closer to God and each other we both had bouts about the innocent blood on our hands from before we met each other. We understood God’s unconditional forgiveness, but not emotionally allowing ourselves to be forgiven continued to hold us back in our walk with God.
In 1996 we found a Bible believing and Full Gospel teaching church. As I sat listening to others share God’s Good News there was a swelling desire in me to tell people about forgiveness and eternal life through Jesus. For quite sometime Satan would go down a grocery list of my past and current sin. As I repented of the sin I was in and reminded Satan of his future for awhile there was always one thing that he knew would get to me. It was his draw card “the innocent blood on my hands”. Even after accepting the forgiveness of Jesus and knowing God had forgiven me I didn’t understand how my three aborted children could forgive me. Regret and feelings of unworthiness kept me from moving forward in directions that I felt God wanted us to go.
As Rose and I studied God’s Word the eyewitness account of the disciple Stephen’s murder sank deep into my heart and was the key to unlocking the chain that was so tight around my mind. As the Pharisee named Saul (who would become the Apostle Paul) initiated the act and probably held the coats for the people that were stoning Stephen, I am also just as guilty of shedding blood. As Stephen was being stoned to death he looked up and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. When Stephen was in the presence of the King of Kings and in the power of the Holy Ghost, Stephen amazingly said, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin”.
Now knowing that our children are in the presence of the King of Kings I fully realized that they also would say, “Forgive them Lord”. When we repent and accept the Love, Forgiveness and Lordship of Jesus as our Savior, He pays our debt and we are pardoned from the punishment of what was meant to be a devil's hell (John3:16-19). As Jesus said on the cross “Father, Forgive them, because they don’t know what they do” (Luke23:34).
I still have a passion for cars and bikes but since 1999 we use it to Glorify God. Vehicles seem to have played a strange spiritual role in my life. 1991 I was saved while driving a truck then 1995 Baptized in the Holy Ghost while driving our 1972 Dodge Demon (kind of ironic).
Anything God uses to direct us to Him the enemy wants to use it to destroy us. Since 1980 the Devil sent two more vehicles across the centerline to kill me. In 1997 one came into the driver’s door of my car again miraculously I received only minor injuries and the other in 2005 when an unattended pick up truck free wheeled down a hill, across the road and into the kitchen of our house where I was standing seconds before. But I’m still here Glory to God!
Now I really have an attitude…
Dominick Gaetano Jr. / Redeemed Prodigal Ministries / RPM (® 2005). www.rpm4Him.net
