By dustinhedrick
Introduction & Early Life
I’ve been asked many times to write a record of my experiences growing up. So this book is an undertaking of some of those experiences. It’s taken me some years to be able to write something like this. It’s really not easy to write a story about your own life. That’s especially true for someone like me.
I was born in Statesville North Carolina. I grew up on a farm dear just outside of the city. There really isn’t anything special about my early life. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a logger. And I was actually born very sickly. My mom tells a story about me when I was a baby and how I almost died in the night because they couldn’t get me to breathe. When I was a child I had very bad allergies. But no one really knew what allergies were so parents just got upset and they were told that their kids were disobedient or spoiled.
The doctor told my mother that I was spoiled. So she said that’s great I’ll take them home and beat him until he’s quiet. He said wait wait maybe there’s one more thing it could be. Maybe it’s allergies. And that started a long period of tests and pins and pricks and needles. All the way through middle school I will be treated for allergies had him so badly that I could hardly eat anything I couldn’t be around most animals and I was allergic to most things in or outside of the house.
Growing up on a farm is a different kind a life. It’s just a little bit tougher and it’s a little bit rougher. I remember growing up having to do a lot of chores. My dad had to be gone a lot working in the woods. So that left me in charge of doing most things around the house. It was normal for me to have to Chop wood Split wood Stack wood do with the cows or other animals we had big goats and chickens and dogs and all kinds of animals over the years. And then I have to take care of the yard work in the garden work a lot of folks working the garden but I was the one that had to weed it and hoe it and keep it clean.
A normal day for someone growing up on a farm could be the woke up in the morning and took care of the cows and went to school came back from school to care of animals went to a ball practice came back home take care of other chores and then before you went to bed take care of any of your studies by 10 or 11 at night. So even to this day I find it hard to go to bed early and I found myself working until sometimes we hours in the morning and getting up early again just to have prayer and keep going. It’s almost a curse but in some ways the blessing when it comes to being with God.
Growing up on a farm your families little tougher to my mom and dad were a little bit more on the tough side. I really don’t want to get into all the details of my family history but let’s just say that it’s a miracle that I’m still alive.
My dad was a tough guy he was a bit more on the abusive side. There were good times, but he had a lot of trouble after the dissolution of his first logging company when I was a kid. I hated it for him. I’m not going to say a lot about the kind of things I saw him do or that he did to me when I was a kid but what I will say is that when I was in college he accepted Jesus. I prayed for him every night all my life. Actually, I prayed for my entire family every night before bed and before any of the passed away, I talked to them about Jesus, witnessed to them and asked them to receive HIM. Some did. My wife went with me when I confronted my Grandpa Hedrick while she and I were first courting.
As for Dad, I got them to go to a promise keepers rally in Charlotte North Carolina and during the invitation he went forward accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It made all of the years of enduring his anger and issues and struggling with him worth it and I never stop praying and God answered. And now he and my brother have a successful logging company that weathered the down turn in 2009 and is now even stronger.
My Grandmother Hass who lived on the front side of the 80 acre farmland we lived on became a Jehovah’s Witness when I was really young. So, I learned the art of debate from that age. I had to know the Bible because I had to know when my granny, uncle, aunt and cousins were talking about things that we cult belief and I had to know the King James Bible reference to hold them at bay. It is strange when you start that kind of faith life at 5th grade. Needless to say, there were many times we would go head to head over the years about Jesus and the Trinity and end at a stalemate, me quoting Bible reference, them quoting, “The Watchtower.”
It’s really cool because my Granny Hass, one of my cousins and my uncle all accepted Jesus Christ. My Granny accepted Jesus one time after she had attacked me verbally and kicked me out of her house while I was still in High School. At that time and all through college, I was also responsible to take care of her properties, the yard work and barns. I was always working on something from plumbing to mowing to painting sheds. And so, as normal, she would fuss at me for no reason and this time, she accepted Jesus in her heart in my parent’s back yard.
She always had a tough time, but at least she left the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I still have the first Bible that I took her to the store to buy and helped her pick out after she accepted Jesus. It’s held together by a rubber band. She wore it out.
At any rate, I am ahead of my story. I always do that. I am a rabbit trail kind of guy. I hope you can keep up!
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