I heard myself scream as the liquid fire from the frying pan melted into my left leg.  I had always assumed that being burned would hurt but I could never imagine the pain that I experienced that day.  I went into shock before the fire hit the floor.
 
That was how I began a long, slow realization that God truly existed.  I had not grown up in church.  My mother was a backslidden Pentecostal and my father was a practicing alcoholic.  Disillusioned at age 14 I declared myself an atheist and attempted to destroy the faith of any 'Christian' I met.
 
My father abandoned my mother, my younger brother and me when I was 16 years old.  He had moved us out of the only home we ever really knew, moved us to another area of the state and then just disappeared.  Mom couldn't work because of back injuries.  
 
My brother David was only 15, too young to work.  It seemed that I was the only logical means of our family surviving.  I had already dropped out of high school to work for a living.  I didn't have any skills that would support a family.  Mom signed the paperwork for me to enter the Navy at age 17.
 
My first taste of the real world was extremely bitter. I had led a life sheltered from the outside world and didn't know what to expect.  I had the paperwork for dependants nearly completed when the first letter from home appeared. The sum of the letter was, "Dear Tim, Dad's home.  Thanks a lot.  Have a nice life."  I was 17 and had signed up for 6 years.  When you're 17 years old 6 years is your life.
 
The Navy gave me a general discharge under honorable conditions one and one half years later.  I had become so unmanageable that they didn't want to deal with me. "Psychologically unable to adapt to the military structure of life."  Those were the words they used to describe someone who would no longer take orders from anyone!
 
I was 20 when I met my future wife.  We met in May, dated in June and married in December of 1976.  She became pregnant in December and our first son was born the following September.  I was 21 years old.
 
What a contradicting pair we made.  She came from a good family and she had grown up in church.  I was so psychologically damaged that I could not believe that love truly existed.  I had fallen heavily into drugs and had to sell drugs to make enough money to support my habit.  When that no longer met my habit I began growing marijuana for personal use and for profit.
 
We decided that I was so well known in the drug world that I could never get off drugs in this area.  We made plans and moved to North Carolina near my grandmother.  We found a nice duplex just outside Salisbury and began looking for work.  Within two weeks I had made a connection and was using drugs again. The move had been a complete waste of time, effort and money.
 
I found work at a local convenience store.  It was working out very well. They were looking at me as management material.  My wife had just fixed breakfast and I had rushed her to go to the store for me.  I was so surly and dominant at that point in our life that she left as quickly as she could.  She had forgotten to turn off the electric burner under the frying pan.
 
I smelled the smoke.  I saw flames coming from the frying pan as I ran into the kitchen.  I had been through fire fighting school twice.  I knew better but I threw the back door open and grabbed the frying pan.  I pulled it toward me and attempted to turn to throw it out the back door.
 
When I made the turn the grease poured out of the pan and hit my left leg.  My skin disappeared under the sculpting of the flames.  The grease made a small lava flow down  my inner left thigh. It flowed over my knee, past my calf, over my ankle.  It finally ended at the bottom edge of my foot.
 
I didn't know much about anatomy then but I have since learned that beneath the skin is a layer of fat.  Fat is just another word for solidified grease.  The fire turned the fat layer of my body into fuel and began to travel around the sides of my leg.  
 
I quickly put both my hands around my upper thigh, pushed hard and literally squeezed the fire out of my leg.  It was the only thing that I could think of and it worked.  I stood there in my kitchen with the skin of my left leg in my hands not knowing what to do.
 
I have heard stories about people who do funny things when they go into shock but I never really believed them.  I had been lounging in my birthday suit when this happened.  I suddenly realized that I needed help and needed it fast.  
 
I ran upstairs, put on my swimming trunks, ran downstairs and out the back door.  I crossed the lots behind our duplex and ran across the sharp gravel of the convenience store parking lot.  I burst inside and asked for my wife.  She had not yet arrived.  To this day I don't know how I could have beaten her to the store.
 
Once I found out she was not there the first layer of shock disappeared.  I looked at my leg and began swearing about my stupidity.  I realized that I had really screwed up badly and that this was not going to be an easy fix. When my wife pulled into the parking lot I walked over to the car, without letting her see the leg.  I prepared her for the shock then showed her the leg.
 
I learned a lot about burns in the next few weeks.  I learned that the body has pressure pushing out from the inside and skin equalizes the pressure.  When the skin is no longer there an intensely painful pressure results and must be medicated to overcome.  
 
I learned how to debreed wounds, which is a fancy way of saying that they plucked out the dead skin.  I learned that when bandages remain in place too long new skin will grow into the bandages.  That lesson also introduced me to smelling salts.
 
For five weeks I heard about burns.  I had experienced severe second degree burns.  Third degree burns are the worst.  They inflict permanent tissue and bone damage.  I got sick of hearing about burns.  I couldn't bathe myself.  I could barely move around.  I couldn't work and I didn't have any income.  My wife wasn't working but the bills kept coming.  My body was healing my knee joint and my ankle joint in bent positions.  The doctors told me that I had a 90% chance of being crippled the rest of my life.
 
The slightest smell of smoke sent waves of terror through me.  The emotional trauma was so bad that I began to have nightmares about fire.
 
One nightmarish dream frequently occurred.  I was in a dark place like a cavern.  There were three men in front of me.  One man was standing off to the left side.  There was a lake that appeared to be covered with oil because it was on fire.  People were burning in the lake.  
 
The man off to the left side grabbed the first man and threw him way up in the air and into the middle of the lake.  He screamed as he flew into the air and into the fire.  The same thing happened to the other two men in front of me.  Finally I stepped up and he turned to look at me and said, "Son are you going to be next?".  I would wake up in a cold sweat.
 
My grandmother was a Christian and I had heard about hell so this was no real surprise.  The surprising thing was that I was having this exact dream 2 to 3 times a week for five weeks.
 
I finally came up with what I considered a fool proof plan.  I was in a marriage that I didn't want.  I had a child I didn't want.  I had a crippled life I didn't want.  I had $100,000 in life insurance.  I decided to commit suicide. Have one final big party.  Overdose and enjoy a painless death.  I didn't want Christine to find my body so I had planned to hobble out into the woods and let the police find the body later.  I planned the suicide for a week.  I had finally found peace.  I knew it would all be over soon.
 
The night finally came.  I lay in bed beside my wife.  I waited until she fell asleep.  I lost track of time but it must have been somewhere around 3:00 AM.  I was ready to sneak out and a thought suddenly hit me.  "What if there really is a God?"  I had planned for everything except that. I didn't really believe in God, but, "What if..."
 
I knew that God could listen to silent prayers because my grandmother had told me that.  So I silently prayed to a God that I didn't believe existed.  "God, I don't believe you exist.  But just in case you do I don't want to go to hell. I am going to commit suicide.  If you don't prove to me that you are real then you aren't a loving God.  Therefore you have no right to send me to hell because you didn't stop me."  
 
I thought hard for how a prayer should be prayed while I waited to see if anything happened.  "I've heard my grandmother say that you have to plead the blood of Jesus over your sins to be saved.  Cover my sins with the blood of Jesus, in Jesus' name."
 
"That should do it," I thought.  There was no way that I could have prepared for what happened next.  I felt a warm, thin sheet of sticky blood begin to pour over my body.  It began at the top of my head and slowly progressed down my body until it covered the bottom of my feet!  
 
Never in my entire life either before or after this incident have I ever experienced terror to such a degree.  I guess that God felt this display of his love would not be enough.  My wife sat bolt upright in bed from a sound sleep and yelled, "Tim, what's wrong!?"
 
I could barely speak but I explained.  I didn't know what to do.  One moment I desperately wanted to die, the next I desperately feared that God would kill me.  He had proved his existence and I suddenly knew all the things that were sin in my life.  
 
Christine had to explain to me that God didn’t do things that way.  She told me that he loved me.  Then she helped me to kneel beside the bed and she led me in a formal prayer that asked for God's mercy.
 
That was the beginning of a new life for Tim Russ.  It has been an adventure with God since that initial meeting on June 17, 1978.  I have at times disappointed God but he has never disappointed me.  Today I have four children and the same wife.  I want them all.  God healed my leg miraculously.

WOW Tim,
 
Great testimony bro.  
Thanks for sharing it with us.  
 
Blessings,
Linda