"Alabama Cotton Candy Skies"

“Alabama Cotton Candy Skies”

”My Story”

“Northern Born-Southern Bred…Been Corner-to-Corner and Coast-to-Coast and Back Again and Again” is the best way to explain my life in a nutshell…

Born in 1965 in Billings, Montana to a very young but loving mother only 16 years old and beautiful, now referred to as “Miss Terri” and mother to countless extended brothers and sisters that have been adopted by love in to our extended family.

At a year old, my mother moved to the South, had my brother in Montgomery , Al. and eventually ended up in Douglasville, Ga.. I myself was molested at a very young age which led to my mom divorcing my birth father and by age 6, she had remarried to Rickey Lamar Hyatt…the man I know as my dad…the only one I have really ever known and I call him “Daddy” not “Rickey” and if you ask me “why?” today,…I would tell you, “Because he earned it!” There is nothing easy about taking on a pre-made family when you are young. I know because I myself also dove into a “full grown” family at age 16 and my step daughters were almost my age. So if your looking for colorful…well lets just say my life was “phsycodelic paisley” with a gummy bear and cherry on top….and just a little melted. LOL

We were adopted into the Hyatt family and as far as any of us are concerned…there is no question whether or not we belonged there…we shared in every miss-fitted, dysfunctional situation associated with young families trying to survive in America during that time and fended as well as any other of the “Jones’s” going through the same things. We were the “poster child” family of functional dysfunction. When I think of what we were as a family, all I can picture in my mind is the stick people families you see on the back windows of SUV’s…all the way down to the stick figure cat and dog. If you were able to flip the stick people over and see behind their backs, you would see all the ugly things that are hidden under crossed fingers and promises to tell the truth. As individual as our problems seemed, I now realize there were so many more dealing with the same struggles as us…that didn’t survive.

I started smoking cigarettes at 11 years old and it wasn’t long after that, I started smoking weed, drinking and experimenting with whatever would help me to fit in…by high school, it wasn’t unusual for our group of “Heads” to pass around 10 to 12 joints in the smoking area at school before class started. After being put into a drug rehab by 15, it wasn’t long before I had quit school, run away from home and gotten married to my first wife, who was 34 years old and I was only 17 and had my first daughter…Bobbi.

Needless to say, I was a rebel at an early age. I remember one afternoon before I ran away from home that sets in my mind forever…I had just had my girlfriend at the time break-up with me for getting stoned, was too shy to approach other girls and really depressed so, knowing where my dad kept his 38 Special, I sat in the closet of my bedroom, crying and chewing on the gun barrel for a couple of hours shaking profusely. I know God was right there with me, but I didn’t realize it until a year after my first daughter was born. I had taken a friend of mine Larry Weaver and his girlfriend and my stepdaughter with me to a place called “Bankhead Courts Apartments” off of Fulton Industrial Blvd. to buy some weed. The place was a projects and even in the 80’s, wasn’t the smartest place to be anytime of the day.

That night, in front of my 13 year old stepdaughter and two of my high school friends, I was shot in the face at point-blank range with a 22 pistol. The barrel was so close to my face that I looked like a Joker card, half of my face was powder burned. The bullet pierced my cheek bone, shattered my jaw bone and lodged in the back of my neck less than an inch from my jugular vein. If your thinking, well, it was just a 22, 22 caliber bullets bounce like bb’s in a boxcar off of bone. The doctor’s called it a miracle, but I knew it was God’s hand that directed the path of that bullet that night for two reasons….He has a purpose for me….and He wanted to show me what it really was like to face death and after that incident, I never had an urge to take my own life again. I was cured of that thought but, not of continuing down the path I was on. I now realize that that path was just as suicidal as chewing on the barrel of that 38, it was just that the trigger was a little different.

You would have thought that after that divine intervention I would have changed my ways and learned a lesson, but I didn’t. As a matter of fact, I only got worse.

!0 years on crack cocaine, 32 car wrecks, 5 marriages, 25 years on meth, 25 years away from my family and running from the authorities, changing names and social security numbers…you name it, I called it my brother and broke bread with it and I have so many horror stories that Steven King himself would cringe and crawl in to a fetal position, praying for daylight.

So when I said that God has a divine finished work in my life and a purpose I could never imagine….I meant every word I said. If He, the Creator of all things can find a use for my undeserving and desecrated life, imagine the unimaginable…because that’s how much He loves me…and He loves you with that same passion.

I was never homeless, jobless, or without responsibility or a family to take care of….no, I was much more dangerous and damaged than that…I was a functioning addict with a college degree in Aviation, an accomplished musician and artist, a father, a mechanic for 35 years, a ship builder…but most of all, the Prodigal son…loved by my Father…Christ Jesus.

So if you think you’re an exception or this guys life doesn’t apply to my situation…let me share another thing that might surprise you…I was saved September 18, 1977 at 12 years old, but because my Father loves me and has a finished work in my life that I haven’t finished yet…He delivered me again with arms opened wide on September 14th, 2014 so I could be right here at this very moment sharing my testimony with you. If He can love me that much…what makes you think for one second, He doesn’t love you?

All I’m asking from you is to just…”Think about it.”

P.S. I wasn’t going to include this brief summary of my life…everybody has got a story…some much more horrific than my own, but when I shared my progress on this book with friends for their opinion, I was constantly asked how come I didn’t give my testimony along with it? I soon came to realize the importance of that testimony to those seeking truth and the conviction our own hearts feel when we come to the realization that we truly aren’t alone in the struggles we face everyday.

My own saving grace was when I came to realize I really didn’t have control of my situation and that the more I tried to take control, the further I spiraled …falling into an abyss I couldn’t crawl out of.

When I looked up and saw God, my Father’s hand. Reaching out to me…still…after all I had done…I realized at that moment, I had never been loved like this before. Truth is the countenance of His eyes…life , the breath of His lips….and in His arms alone, the Comforter rocked me like a baby in His arms….even after all I had done.

This is a story of my own growth in building a relationship with Jesus…not a guideline for your journey…every journey is different…much more than you could ever imagine, so I encourage you to walk your own journey…this is just my own testament of How great He has been to me. I hope it blesses you as much as He has blessed me.

“God Bless us all”

Sincerely, Robert William Hyatt aka Anthony Micheal Roberts

“A Bible if Mine”

“In the midst of life’s design…we enter into with broken wings…

Challenging every path we choose…fatally diseased.”

“Although we seem to feel just fine…something is amiss…

Something not present deep inside…like an empty abyss.”

“We struggle along grasping at this and that…accumulating everything we can touch…

Realizing finally in our haste… it’s still just isn’t enough.”

“So we chase the fleshly things…that last only for a season…

Leaving behind a catastrophe…without a rhyme or reason.”

“So then we listen with open ears to the tongues of “Theology”…From a gathering of mouths that consume… instead of trying to feed.”

“All these things I done myself…All of them in vain…

Fighting a war within my heart…trying not to go insane.”

“In my exhaustion , I finally looked at a book…that had been thrown aside…

The book that spoke the truth so clearly…

was a Bible of mine.”