God’s Perfect Timing
Breaking the Cycle of Poverty with Education and Faith
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Preface
God’s Perfect Timing: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty with Education and Faith is about how important events in our lives happen according to God’s timing, not our own. Come with me on a spiritual journey through poverty, child abuse, and my struggle to overcome a learning disability through special education. I share a chilling account of how I survived being struck by lightning at football practice at the beginning of my senior year of high school. After my dream of becoming a professional athlete got shattered, I survived on the streets with dangerous criminals….
Introduction
The year was 1977, and I was just beginning my senior year of high school. I was seventeen years old, and my dad and I merely coexisted. He was working as a Maytag repairman and could have abandoned my little sister, Debora, and me after our mom divorced him, but he didn’t. His pride forced him to work, and he did what he could to keep us from being homeless. We moved from one flea-bag motel in the red-light district of Colorado Springs to another until he managed to pay the rent on a three-bedroom apartment on the northern part of Nevada Avenue. Debbie and I were happy to have a place to live and we were glad that we could give people our address instead of telling them that we lived on North Nevada Avenue.
Our apartment complex was a huge, multi-family complex, on the outskirts of town. It was built to warehouse low income renters who were just a notch above trailer-park status. Most of the time, I walked the five miles, to and from school. Walking along the street meant walking on gravel where truckers parked their rigs, ate fast food, and solicited prostitutes. There were no sidewalks to walk on, but the view of Pikes Peak from the street was breathtakingly magnificent.
Sometimes, rather than walking along the street to school, I shortened the distance by walking across an open field and crossed Fountain Creek that ran alongside I-25. To cross the creek, I walked across a twelve-inch pipe, fifty yards long, and twenty feet above the slow-moving crystal-clear water below. Other times, I walked across the thin ice that covered the creek during the winter months. Many times, the ice caved in under my weight and I fell in, but I kept going. I ignored the freezing cold waters and the pain that I felt when my hands and feet went numb.
One particular week in August, my dad agreed to pick me up after football practice. I waited for him near the mostly vacant and dimly lit parking lot, but he never came. It was cool and dark outside, and I knew the way home. I walked down Fillmore hill, crossed I-25, and began walking down Nevada Avenue. As I passed the K-Mart and red-light district motels, I flirted with the prostitutes who propositioned me. Somehow talking to the prostitutes changed my focus from the future, to the here and now. In the here and now, I was hungry and broke, and on top of that, I was exhausted from a week of practice and working my part-time job as a dishwasher on the weekends.
As I continued along my way, I walked past the dog track where desperate gamblers tried to beat the odds. I saw my dad through the fence throwing down a handful of losing tickets. He had lots of company, and somehow, he and the other losers appeared to be delighted by their misfortune, and smiled broadly. As far as I could tell, my dad gambled all of my life, but rarely won. When I got home, there was no food in the apartment and only ice and water in the fridge. I was hungry, angry at my dad, and I prayed to God that day. I challenged God to prove to me that He really existed.
God wasn’t happy with the anger and challenge in my prayer, but he answered it anyway. The next week, I got hit by the largest bolt of lightning ever to hit a person who lived to tell about it. In the book of Job, chapter 38, verse 35, God asked, “Can you make lightning appear and cause it to strike as you direct?” I was at football practice at Coronado High School when a bolt of lightning ripped through the clear blue sky and found its mark on the very patch of dirt where I stood….
The lightning bolt hit me in the head, cracked my football helmet, entered my body through the left frontal lobe of my brain, traveled down my body right past my genitals, down my legs, and exited through both ankles. I still have the scars to prove it.
My doctors used conventional wisdom to determine that my left-brain controlled hidden talents including memory, vision, language, spelling and reading, as well as doing algebra. They believed that each talent in the left-brain is a complex network of different processes, beyond those mentioned here, but injuries in that area of the brain often resulted in serious loss of those specific talents. In other words, my doctors believed that the quality of my life was going to be severely diminished.
As I lay dead on the ground, I accepted death….
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About the Book
"God’s Perfect Timing: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty with Education and Faith is about how important events in our lives happen according to God’s timing, not our own. Come with me on a spiritual journey through poverty, child abuse, and my struggle to overcome dyslexia through special education. I share a chilling account of how I survived being struck by lightning at football practice at the beginning of my senior year of high school. After my dream of becoming a professional athlete got shattered, I survived on the streets with dangerous criminals."
“Can you make lightning appear and cause it to strike as you direct?” (Job 38:35)
Lucky to Be Alive
“For on August 18, Caruth was standing in the defensive backfield during Coronado’s football practice when an incredible event knocked him right off the football field and literally into medical journals. Dressed in full football gear, Caruth was struck by on the head by a bold of lightning. The bolt burned through protective padding in the helmet at the point where a metal screw was fixed, blacked the neck of his jersey, singed his pants, and left his socks looking as though they’d been treated with a blowtorch.”
—C. W. Nevius
Forward By Reverend Alfonso Wyatt I spent my career as an educator, youth developer, advocate, counselor, role model and minister transforming the lives of countless young people caught in tumultuous life circumstances beyond their control or choosing. The aforementioned perspective allows me to understand and appreciate the profound power contained in God’s Perfect Timing: Breaking The Cycle of Poverty with Education and Faith, by Dr. David D. Caruth. Brother Caruth unapologetically takes readers into his world and lays bare horrific childhood events namely: physical/sexual abuse, hunger, deprivation, physical, emotional challenges as well as the need for special education. If this were not enough, David, as a promising high school football player, with dreams of turning pro, was struck by lightning while on the practice field—100 players were leveled by the bolt, David was the only one that did not get up. The story could have ended right there with yet another African American child failing to thrive, doomed to living in the now all-too-familiar clutch of poverty, crime, drugs, gangs, incarceration, nihilism and neglect—or dying too soon. The seeds of failure were clearly sown into the life and psyche of the author. Yet the reader will discover that in the midst of seemingly insurmountable odds, David is able to change the odds. This “social miracle” was accomplished by seeds planted by David’s mother, namely the seed of faith revealed in the telling of biblical stories like David and Goliath (a Divine metaphor if you will).… This book shows educators, faith leaders, policy makers, parents, young people and yes, even the naysayer, how the cycle of poverty, perpetuated by low self-esteem, academic indifference, victim thinking/blaming and dysfunctional family life can be broken once and for all. So beloved, come on the arduous and ultimately triumphant journey of David D. Caruth’s lifetime. If you accept this invitation please be open to the reality that the same power that found a young boy at his most vulnerable time; the same power that snatched him from the sure grip of death; the same power that helped him overcome staggering life obstacles and receive a terminal degree, is the same power that can change the lives of readers—now that God’s Perfect Timing is in full effect. The Reverend Alfonso Wyatt has four decades of experience developing young people as well as working with public, private, community based youth serving organizations and the faith community involved in the same effort. Reverend Wyatt, a D.Min candidate at New York Theological Seminary, is an ordained Elder on the ministerial staff of The Greater Allen Cathedral of New York and he and his wife are co-authors of Soul Be Free Poems Prose Prayers. Preface God’s Perfect Timing: Breaking the Cycle of Poverty with Education and Faith is about how important events in our lives happen according to God’s timing, not our own. Come with me on a spiritual journey through poverty, child abuse, and my struggle to overcome a learning disability through special education. I share a chilling account of how I survived being struck by lightning at football practice at the beginning of my senior year of high school. After my dream of becoming a professional athlete got shattered, I survived on the streets with dangerous criminals. Throughout my life, my mom, Zelna A. Caruth, was my primary source of strength. She was raised in Chicago and overcame more adversity in her life than anyone I knew. Her father died in a fire when she was 4 years old and her mother passed away when she was 12. As the oldest of four siblings, with two younger sisters and a baby brother, she called Bugs, her childhood ended at a very early age. She was also my most important teacher and source of strength. She taught me not to criticize or judge others until I walked a mile in their moccasins. I understood her lessons, because I had seven older brothers and sisters and one younger sister, and my own shoes had cutout cardboard for bottoms. Like a sponge, I absorbed as much of my mom’s wisdom as I could. She taught me about the Bible, and to believe that God works in mysterious ways. She let me know early on in life that man would let me down, and that I needed to put my faith and trust in the Lord. If I “trusted in the Lord,” she would say, and “not worry so much about what other people had,” only then would I begin to see the miracles that God was performing in my own life. She was right of course. When I look at my own life, there are numerous times, too many to count, when my life could have, and probably should have ended, and God made a miracle happen to keep me going. I also learned that not all miracles are pleasant. Unpleasant miracles are difficult for most of us to grasp. We find it difficult to understand why a loving God would not only allow, but cause unpleasant events to happen in our lives. I questioned my mom about why bad things happened to good people and good things happened to bad people. My mom’s answer was that, “God allowed Jesus to die on the cross,” only to raise him from the dead to glorify his own power. She left it to me to figure out the meaning of her words. For most of us, those with children anyway, we find it difficult to imagine allowing our child to be crucified so that the world could bear witness to our power. God help us if our children get injured on fields of play. If our children get hurt, our hearts fill with pain and sadness, and we want the world to see us rush to comfort them. We grow up learning that people who love us should protect us from unpleasant events that occur daily in our own lives. In our house, my brothers and sisters seldom felt protected. What we felt on most days was hunger, jealousy, misery, envy and multiple kinds of abuse. I wrote this book, because I believe that, in spite of the challenges we face and endure day after day, miracles happen every day of our lives; however, most of the time, we don’t recognize them when we see them. After reading this book, my hope is that you will begin to see how God works through people to influence the lives of other people. You will learn how to recognize God’s Perfect Timing in your own life, and to take action when the time is right. If God can bring me through poverty, child abuse and special education, back from death and homelessness, to earning a PhD, buying several homes for my family, and sending my children to private school, then you too should be able to have faith that God has a design on your life, and has already blessed you with miracle after miracle.About the Author
Dr. David Caruth is presently the Director of Institutional Research, Assessment, and Planning at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, DC. Dr. Caruth is also a former Director of State Regulatory Affairs, Programs, and Policy for Lesley University, and was directly responsible for Lesley’s national state authorization and program approval efforts in seventeen states. Dr. Caruth is an experienced college professor having taught at Regis University, the University of Wyoming, the Metropolitan State College of Denver, and Lesley University. As President of the Caruth-O’Leary Research Institute, he secured grant funds to help fight drug abuse and authored program evaluations that were received favorably by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development for many years.