AMAZING STORY
Saved by Attempted Murder
By Rod Thomas
The 700 Club
CBN.com -“I said, ‘This is it. I’m going to take his life and I’m taking my own. I can’t do this no more.’ So I stood up on the edge of my bed, and he had a 2-foot long machete that he always kept by the bed.”
After years of taking abuse from her husband Bear, Delores Rodriguez was ready to strike back. She describes that night. “As soon as he got close enough, everything in me just screamed, ‘I hate my life!’ And I swung.”
Delores and Bear got together as teenagers. She was a young single mother looking for love. Bear had joined a biker gang, seeking acceptance from a makeshift family. Bear remembers the closeness to the other bikers. “To have a group of guys tell you, ‘Hey, Bear, I love ya.’ ‘I love you too.’ And we all give each other hugs. And I didn’t get love from my father.”
When they married, Bear held down a job at a local factory, but he found out he could make twice his salary there selling drugs. At home, he was always angry and took it out on Delores. “If I would speak to him, he would tell me, ‘Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You are so stupid. Girl, I did not know how stupid you were.’ Then the physical abuse started,” she remembers.
Over the years they had five more children, but Bear continued his reckless life; and after watching her husband abuse drugs for years, Delores also joined in at the parties. “It helped to sedate me,” she recalls, “and then the more he did, the more I did.”
Then Bear got into harder drugs, he lost touch with reality and would go into violent rages. Bear remembers one incident where he went too far. “I’m stoned and drunk, and I used to carry a knife, 16”. I cut the waterbed with my knife. And I gave it everything I could to push my wife in there. I tried to kill my wife that night,” he recalls.
That’s when Delores snapped. “I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to kill him, and I’m going to kill myself.’ So I started doing the drugs, started snorting it left and right, left and right. I did not sleep for that whole three days. And then he finally came home.
Bear looked for his wife. “All the lights are out in the house, and I said, ‘Dolores,’ I couldn’t hear her. I knew she was home.”
“As soon as he got close enough, I swung.”
Bear received a warning: “I heard this voice say, ‘Duck!’” And I went back like this and this machete came across my throat and ran into the wall. But, Delores was not finished. ”He ran out the back door, and that made me even more mad, so I ran in the kitchen and I cut his motorcycle up.”
“She’s over there chopping up my Harley, or putting dents into it. She’s going like a crazy woman. I think that’s the first time I cried. But, I’m thinking, ‘What drove her this way?’ Not realizing it was me.”
Delores was arrested and admitted to a mental hospital. Bear convinced them to release her, but when she got out; she left him and went to live with her sister. Bear felt she had abandoned him. “My family, true family, didn’t want to have nothing to do with me to start with. Her family didn’t want to have nothing to do with either one of us.”
The couple ended up back together, but Delores wanted a change. One Sunday morning, she went for a walk and heard music coming from a church. She went in and had a seat. “When I sat down and the lady stood up and started preaching, I couldn’t hear none of them. All the sudden this white glistening blanket came up out of heaven and it just came down over me – I’m watching this! - and it just flowed and it came down over me and it penetrated inside me.”
Delores remembers. “Everything that was bad in my body was gone - everything. I was in my right mind. I felt love. I felt no more pain. I felt no more confusion, no fear. I had absolutely no fear. And I didn’t want to die anymore; and I didn’t want to hurt my husband anymore.”
Delores started attending the church and they introduced her to Jesus Christ. “I just said simply, ‘Lord Jesus, I don’t know who You are, but I want to know You. Come into my heart and take control of my life - because I’m out of control.’ and He did. He did exactly what I asked Him to do.”
Bear noticed his wife had changed. “There was something different about her, smiling, singing… At night, she was putting oil on the pillow. She was putting oil all over my side of the bed. She was doing that, and I’d hear her talking. She would say, ‘Thank you Father, for giving me a king and a priest.’”
Delores never gave up on her husband, and prayed for him for two years. “After the two years, then he said, finally, he says, ‘Delores, I don’t know what happened to you, but I want to know.’ He goes, ‘You are so happy.’ He goes, ‘and I still treat you like crap.’ He says, ‘So get me some clothes. I want to go to church with you.’”
Bear’s curiosity about God got him watching Christian television. When a minister prayed, Bear gave his life to Jesus Christ. “That night, I said those same words and He came into my life. He was there right next to me. He came and held me in His arms.”
Bear stopped partying and started focusing on Delores, his children and God. “It was like a ton of weight taken off me,” he remembers, “because knowing that I really fell in love with something, because remember, that was my world. And then to know the truth, because Jesus says the truth will set you free.
Delores is thankful for the change in their lives. “Our marriage is terrific. We have become so close. Now I understand what it means to grow into one.”
Bear is also grateful. “I say, “Father, thank You for giving me a wife that loves me. To know that she’s building me up, not tearing me down or trying to cut my head off, that she’s building me up.”
Today, they both have the family and the love they always wanted. “We have 22 grandkids, 17 boys, 5 girls. And we have six great-grandkids and two on the way; so, God’s blessed us big time. And what our job is to instill the Bible into them.”
“When I was out there, I used to say this, ‘I want to die in a gunfight. I want to die in a knife fight. I want to die in any woman’s arms.’ Bear recalls. “Then I got saved. When I die, I want to die in my wife’s arms. Then I fell in love with Jesus. When I die, I want to be in His arms. Because, do you know what He did on the cross for me? John 3:16 says ‘He so loved the world -- He so loved Bear, He gave His only Son.’”
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