Spend It Any Way You Like
by Greg Hartman
Jim Centifanto parked his motorcycle and walked into
the Florida woods. He loaded the 12-gauge shotgun he
had borrowed and took a deep breath. Holding the
shotgun's barrel in his left hand, he pressed its
muzzle into his stomach. Leaning forward, he pulled
the trigger with his right hand.
The blast threw him off his feet and left a gaping,
fist-sized hole on the left side of his abdomen.
Dropping the gun, Jim staggered back to his
motorcycle, rode to his mother's house four miles
away, and passed out on her front steps.
Four days later, as he was waking up from a coma, he
heard a voice speak to him. "I saved you for a
reason," the voice said. Centifanto looked around,
startled. The room was empty.
Centifanto's father had taught him and his brothers
and sisters to respond to problems with violence.
Lawrence Centifanto, a career Marine, married his
wife, Ysolina, while he was serving in Panama. Soon
after Jim was born, his father went to Korea for three
years, then to Vietnam for another three years.
Centifanto was 6 before he knew his father.
Lawrence Centifanto sent all his money home for the
six long years he was at war. He asked his wife to
save it up for him, and expected to return home to a
sizable nest egg. Instead, she moved her family from
New York to Florida and put herself through medical
school.
"I'm not sure if he loved my mother," Jim said, "but I
know she didn't love him. She only married him to get
her American citizenship and an education."
Centifanto's excitement at meeting his father quickly
turned into horror when his father discovered what had
happened to his money. He made his children sit on the
sofa and watch as he beat and choked their mother.
Living with his father, Centifanto said, was like
living with an unpredictable volcano. Lawrence
Centifanto viciously beat his wife and children at the
slightest provocation, or for no reason at all. One
time, he tore an earring out of his daughter's ear.
Another time, after being out of town for a month, he
pulled up in his driveway and saw Jim pull aside the
curtains to look out the front window, excited to see
his father. Lawrence responded to his son's
enthusiastic greeting with a savage beating. "He told
me I could have gotten dirt on the curtains,"
Centifanto said.
Finally, when Centifanto was 9, his mother divorced
her husband. Ysolina Centifanto's solution to her
ex-husband's brutal discipline was to avoid
disciplining her children at all. "We went from one
end of the scale to the other. She said, 'This will
never happen to us again,' and she let my brothers and
I run totally wild. We did anything we wanted."
Within a year, Centifanto was expelled from the
Catholic school he had been attending and joined a
gang with his brother. He began using and dealing
drugs.
One day the vice president of Centifanto's gang, Bobby
Hicks, showed up at the gang's hangout with a short
haircut and wearing a suit and tie. "We thought he was
going to court," Centifanto said. "You know, when you
have to see a judge you dress up nice and hope maybe
he'll be more lenient. That's what we thought Bobby
was doing."
Instead, Hicks threw his fellow gang members a curve.
"I just got born again!" he announced.
"He could have said, 'I just went to the moon,' for as
much as we understood him," Centifanto said. "We just
laughed and said, 'You did what?'"
But when Hicks started preaching at his friends, the
gang's leader stopped laughing and provoked Centifanto
to fight Hicks.
"Bobby was 20 six years older than me," Centifanto
said, "and he weighed about 250 pounds. I'd seen what
he did to other guys. I whipped him with a bullwhip
and chased him down the street; I totally humiliated
him in front of everyone. The day before, he would
have killed me. But this time, he wouldn't fight. I
didn't know what made him act so weird."
Centifanto soon forgot his former friend's odd
behavior as he sank deeper into his world of drinking
and drugs. "I stayed stoned all the time, 24 hours a
day," he said. "I'd take enough drugs at night to keep
me stoned until I woke up, then start over again."
In 1970, when Centifanto was 15, his girlfriend broke
up with him. "She was the closest thing to love I had
in my life," he said. "I hated life, just hated it. No
one loved me and when she rejected me, too, I couldn't
take it." He borrowed a shotgun and shot himself in
the stomach. Incredibly, he lived.
"I was in a coma for four days," Centifanto said. "No
one expected me to live; they couldn't believe I'd
even managed to ride my bike to my mother's house."
Soon after Centifanto awoke from his coma, his mother
announced she had had it with him and sent him to live
with his father in Chicago. Within a year, his
stepmother kicked him out, too. He was 17.
Centifanto got a job at a steel mill and lived with
Terry, a co-worker, and his parents. Terry and his
father worked at the steel mill with Centifanto. After
work, the three of them got drunk almost every night.
Then Terry's mother surprised them all one day: She
announced that she had become a Christian.
"She used to try to talk with me about Christ for
hours," Centifanto said, "even though I was usually
drunk. I accidentally walked in on her one night and
she was praying, just weeping and asking God to have
mercy on me. Everyone else had rejected me, and she
didn't have any benefit from trying to reach me. But
here she was praying for me. I just couldn't
understand it."
About two months later, Centifanto joined the Marines,
and found he made a good soldier. "I went in there
full of bitterness and violence, and they said,
'Here's a gun. We like it if you want to hate and
kill.'" But peace of mind still eluded him. His
drinking continued unabated, landing him in the
hospital twice and almost destroying his kidneys.
Two years later, Centifanto was stationed in Hawaii.
One night while his platoon was on maneuvers, a
soldier from another unit struck up a conversation
with him.
"He told me about what Jesus had done for him,"
Centifanto said, "and I just started weeping
uncontrollably. I could see he'd been where I was and
I wanted what he had." Centifanto asked the man if he
could go to church with him, and the man agreed to
pick Centifanto up at his barracks the next Sunday
morning.
But Centifanto had neglected to get his name, and when
he didn't show up, Centifanto was desperate. Finally,
about two months later, Centifanto ran into him again.
"I shook him and yelled at him: 'You said you'd take
me to church! You better show up this time!'"
Centifanto said with a chuckle. He got the man's name
Donald Taylor and eagerly awaited the next Sunday.
Taylor showed up as promised this time, and took
Centifanto to church. "I was mad at Don because I
thought he told Eugene Stober, the pastor, about me,"
Centifanto said. "Every single word that came out of
his mouth was about me and my sin.
"When I was 14 and Bobby Hicks got saved, I didn't
understand what he was talking about. I heard God
speak to me after I shot myself, but I didn't listen
to that, either. And Terry's mom explained the gospel
to me, but it still didn't stop me from sinning.
"We have to come to the end of ourselves before we
realize how desperately we are in need. I was at the
end of myself this time. I was so ripe for the gospel.
This time it was different; this time the ring of
truth was going through my heart."
Centifanto began attending church with Taylor. A month
later, while supervising the armory guard, he read a
magazine article about the end of the world and
panicked. "I was convinced Jesus was coming back
tomorrow!" he said. He left his post a court-martial
offense and hurried to the church. Finding Pastor
Stober, he begged him to tell him how to get saved.
Eugene Stober led Centifanto in prayer. That night,
Aug. 17, 1974, in Oahu, Hawaii, when he was 19 years
old, Jim Centifanto asked Jesus Christ to forgive his
sin and be his Lord and Savior.
When they were finished praying, Pastor Stober handed
Centifanto a quarter. Confused, he took it. "That's
what salvation is like: a free gift," Stober said.
"And that quarter is just like your life, too: You're
free to spend it any way you like, but you can only
spend it once."
"That's when what had just happened really hit me,"
Centifanto said. "It was like scales fell from my
eyes. All the hate and bitterness, the way I hated
myself and everyone else and hated life so much it
left me; it was all gone, just like that."
Centifanto returned to the base, expecting to face a
court-martial. To his surprise, his commander said,
"Well, don't let it happen again," and dismissed him.
When he awoke the next morning, he received another
surprise: His desire for drugs and alcohol was gone,
never to return.
Today Jim Centifanto and his wife and four children
are missionaries in Guatemala. "The minute I got saved
I started witnessing to everything that moved," he
said. "I could never see any way to live after that
but in service to God. When Pastor Stober handed me
that quarter, God changed my life forever. He really
did change my heart and make me a new creation."
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"God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ...If I should boast I will boast of my
weaknesses, for when I am weak, then I am strong.
For I can do everything with the help of of Christ who gives me
the strength I need" (Paul)
"Accept the reality, do you best and God will take care the rest"
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Website:www.gki.org
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