James Taylor grew up in Harlem, NY. His mother and father met in a psychiatric ward when both of them were on drugs. They lived in a house, that Taylor did not consider a home.
“My father was always high and drinking, very abusive. And we didn’t take baths. There was urine in the mattresses, druggies coming in and out of the house,” Taylor said.
“There was a lot of alcohol, arguing and fighting. It was really bad. It was just one of those places that you’d rather sleep than be awake.”
Life outside his home was not any better. Most of the kids would pick on Taylor all the time, and violence became the norm.
“ I really didn’t see anything outside of that,” Taylor said. “That was normal for me. It always made you feel depressed. You always felt like you were a failure, no matter what, you know. Always made me feel like there was no way out of it.”
At the time, James Taylor didn’t feel like he was living, and considered ending it all.
“My father, he just finished beating on me and my mother was never really around, so what I did was I went on the roof, contemplating suicide,” Taylor said. “Ironically my uncle was up there smoking crack.”
His uncle talked him out of jumping off the roof, yet a week later took his own life.
“For somebody else to tell you, you can make it and that you’re going to be a better person, and that they lived their whole life miserably and then they kill themselves. You think “wow,” you know,” Taylor said. “That was the first time I thought there was a God. I said, ‘Okay, Lord, you really must care about me.’ I mean, if you’re gonna have somebody who kills themselves from a drug overdose share something with me, it’s an impact.”
James Taylor was 13 years old when the Bureau of Child Welfare came and took him from his parents. At the time he was asked who he wanted to live with.
“I couldn’t live with my father’s side of the family because they were drinking and doing drugs, so I asked to live with my grandmother,” Taylor said. “And that was the first Christian home I lived in. And that’s when my life really began to change.”
Taylor was a very rebellious child.
“I was doing everything wrong: fighting, fornicating, cussing people out, getting kicked out of school all the time, gang violent, all this different stuff, but I never wanted to leave her.”
Taylor was constantly loved on by his grandmother.
“She was always saying to me you can do it,” Taylor said. “My other family members would call me a failure and she’d be the first one to say, “Yeah, you’re bad right now, but you’re gonna be better than what you are if you just apply yourself.”
Taylor graduated high school with the help of his grandmother, yet after high school, he had no direction for his life.
“So I’m sitting on the couch and I see this preacher on TV, and I’m like, “That’s what I want to do,” Taylor said.
At the time Taylor’s grandmother was unhappy with him because he had just failed out of college, was in and out of trouble. Initially she discouraged him from the idea of becoming a preacher because of her frustration.
“So she goes upstairs and she starts praying for me, comes back downstairs and repents to me and says, “That’s exactly what you’re going to do. That’s exactly what God has called you to do, but you have to change your life,” Taylor said. “And after that she kicked me out the house.”
At the time, Taylor had no drive or ambition to do anything.
“ I was sitting in the house all day watching TV. I wasn’t really trying to be anything in my life. And the sad thing is, that was the first time I knew I had a call on my life to preach the word of God, but it wasn’t something that I wanted to really work hard at, because I was still battling that whole, you know, ‘Why would God use me because of my past?’” Taylor said.
Taylor thought if he became a preacher he was going to fail. His grandmother knew if she allowed him to stay with her, he would never be able to trust God on his own. She told him crying,
“You have to get of my house. You have to get out of my house. You sink or swim.”
Taylor joined the navy and moved to Norfolk, Virginia. A guy from his ship invited him to church where he saw something he had never seen before: real men.
“I think what impressed me about the men at the church was that they were fathers, and they were black, so that was huge for me,” Taylor said. “Seeing men loving their families was big for me. I saw a husband tell his wife he loved her, and tell his kids he loved them. My father didn’t tell me he loved me with some sincerity until now.”
It was consistently seeing those men that compelled Taylor to give my life to Jesus Christ. He doesn’t remember walking down that aisle, but remembers feeling freedom.
“I felt like I could be free from my past,” Taylor said. “You couldn’t hold it against me. I wanted a family. If I was going to have a family I had to be saved. There was nothing in my own personal track record by my own personality that was going to make me a good father. Nothing!”
The men in Taylor’s life had a history of abuse- from his father all the way to his great-grandfather.
“They all had the same name,” Taylor said. “There was no track record or no history to say that I was going to be a good dad.”
Despite the enormous odds against him, Taylor held onto the knowledge that many men he knew who were ex-drug dealers, ex-cons, became fathers.
“And they loved their families, and the only reason why they were able to do that because they were children of God. You know, that’s the only place you can go and your track record is totally changed,” Taylor said. “When I got saved, I realized my role was to be the standard for my family, which made it really hard because that meant all the pain that I was freed from, I had to now confront so that people who were my family could get the same type of freedom.”
To set an example, Taylor called his father on Father’s Day and his mom on Mother’s Day.
“The Lord chose them to bring me into this world, so there’s a reason behind them being my parents and for that I should honor them,” Taylor said. “And that was apart of my healing process.”
Now, James is married and has a wife and family of his own.
“I can tell you I’ve changed, but no one knows me like my wife Jackie,” Taylor said.
“I’ve seen the Lord really just minister to him as he’s made it a point to start his day with his devotions,” Jackie said. “Not do anything else before. I’ve seen him really become healed from his past really through his own children and through being able to develop relationship with them and teach them even at a young age. I really believe that God is using his children to redeem his past.”
Since Taylor has given his life to Jesus Christ, he has never been the same.
“I’ve had many dark days, but through it all Jesus Christ has helped me through it, He’s healed my wounds, given me a career in music, blessed me with a beautiful wife, and is teaching me how to be a husband and a great father. My life journey started out rough, some would call it hopeless, but God came in and rescued me. By His grace, God has held me up and has kept me strong, and He’s bringing me to my final destination, which will be heaven.”
