Jeffrey Jay
I Am Jeffrey
I am currently sojourning near Tallahassee Florida, formerly in Michigan. I came down here last year to be a blessing to my mother who has macular degeneration and my step father, in turn they have been a blessing to me during my time of need after a recent divorce that left me with a handful of clothes and a car to travel in.
My father passed away in nineteen ninety three. My mother has been with her common law husband for over fifteen years now. I have an elder sister who is around twelve years older than me, I also have two elder brothers that are about fourteen and sixteen years older. There was another elder sister who passed away at a young age from a brain tumor, and twins that passed at birth.
My family now is my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Matthew 12:46-50 KJV - 46 While he "Jesus" yet talked to the people, behold, [his] mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. 47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. 48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? 49 And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! 50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.
Ephesians 3:14-21 KJV - 14 For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, 16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; 17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what [is] the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; 19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. 20 Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, 21 Unto him [be] glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Early Years
I vaguely recall attending a Catholic church until I was around the age of five. That was the last time I attended a church until I went to a private school, and after that I didn't go for a good long time.
I began getting into unrighteous behavior early in my teenage years thanks to an unrighteous "friend" and neighbor but yet it was my free will choice too. At the time my neighbor was talking about going to a private boys only Catholic high school to play football. I thought that it would be great to go there too especially since I thought he was going. I convinced my parents that was what I wanted to do and I wanted to try out for the football team. I was accepted and my neighbor was not so I ended up going there alone.
At first it was great because before school started they had an early football camp and had tons of fun plus I got into great shape. Unfortunately, I was drawn to a few "friends" that were bad influences on me and looking to get into mischief. When school started me and these miscreants were getting into all kinds of things, including breaking into the church and drinking the wine.
After being at the school for a semester or so I began experiencing some physical health issues. One day I went to the school nurse and discovered that my heartbeat was two hundred beats per minute, the nurse freaked out and called for an ambulance because she thought I was having a heart attack. After going to the hospital and taking several blood tests they really could not find anything that was causing the issues. When I went back to school my health was getting worse and worse which resulted in more and more tests still with no answers. This obviously affected my school work and inevitably I had to eventually drop out.
When I moved back home I started going to the local public high school. I continued seeing doctors until one day a doctor noticed that I had a goiter which for those who don't know what that is it is a swelling of the neck resulting from enlargement of the thyroid gland. At that time we were told that there were only two choices to correct the goiter, one was surgery and the second was to take a radio active iodine pill. I certainly did not want to go for the surgery so I took option two. As a result my thyroid was mostly destroyed and they told me that I was going to be on prescription medicine my whole life.
After School and the Secular World
After finishing high school I had the choice of going to college or getting a job. Now that I think about it I really didn't have a choice because I had not money to goto college and I was not about to get myself into a huge debt to goto school. I was fortunate because my father was a draftsman in the automotive industry working both for Ford in his early years and General Motors for over thirty years. I ask my father if he could help find me an entry level job somewhere and he gave me several places to apply. I eventually was hired by one of the many "job shops" that were around at that time. So I began work almost immediately after graduating from High School running blue prints and doing corporate runs delivering parts and such.
During the first six months I was encouraged to work with and help other tradesmen when I had free time. This gave me an opportunity to try out many different trades. After the six months was over I requested and began to work as an apprentice doing variation simulation modeling. During this experience I worked closely with computer aided drafters/designers (hereinafter CAD) and became intrigued and wanted to learn how to do that. The company was offering some classes and I took a couple. After the classes were completed I asked to be moved into the CAD department but I was told that there was not any openings at the time so I decided to quit and take a vacation. I ended up going to Europe for six weeks.
When I came back from vacation I was hired as an apprentice CAD modeler at a new company and learned how to build surfaces and automotive components.
During that time I also took up a hobby and began taking singing lessons. I did that for a couple of years until my father passed away. His passing was very difficult on me so I quit the CAD job and went to school for music as a vocal major. While taking a singing class we were encourage by our teacher to sing and play an instrument. I did't know how to play an instrument at the time but I had just finished several music reading and writing courses. One of my favorite bands was Pink Floyd and I always loved the bass line in the song Money, so after class I went to a music store and bought a bass guitar, amplifier and the music for the song Money. After several weeks of practice I went into class with my instrument and sang the song. Once I finished the teacher commented "I didn't know you played an instrument." and I responded "I did't until a few weeks ago." After the semester I was encouraged to become a dual major in both Vocal and Bass guitar. After attending school for almost two years I began running out of money and I couldn't afford to finish my degree, so I left school to pursue work once again.
I ended up getting hired as a CAD modeler for Cadillac ( a subsidiary of General Motors herring after GM) and was encourage to take some training courses in a new software call Unigraphics (hereinafter UG) that GM was merging into. After taking the UG courses and working for a couple of years I witnessed another CAD software called Alias that was being used exclusively in the concept studios to develop surface. I again became intrigued and wanted to learn how to use it. Unfortunately where I was at they did not have any opportunities to pursue that so I left and looked for a place that did. After a couple of stints working short term contracts I finally got hired into the interior trim group which was one of the GM studio working explosively on interior trim parts.