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It was like everything slowed down.
I saw the gun.
I saw him pulling it out, 357 Magnum, the trigger being pulled, getting shot
in my shoulder, in my neck, in my hand.
I was told I would never walk again.
I just started asking God, why me?
I was born out of wedlock to teenage parents.
My mother and my father was unable to provide for me, and my grandmother
stepped in to raise me and her twelve other children.
At the age of seven, my grandmother became ill, and I was removed from her
custody and placed in foster care, and that's what my life for the next 10
years went on a pretty challenging journey.
You know, being placed in a basement overnight, sitting up on the top step
just banging on the door, praying and wishing that they would let me out.
I was told I would never amount to anything.
I wouldn't be anything.
Raised in poverty, we've always struggled when it came to having the
resources to meet a lot of our basic needs.
I was stealing from the corner liquor store milk and cereal, and that was
pretty much my diet.
At the age of 10, my father was murdered.
He was shot to death.
And often, people would always tell me, you're going to be just like your
father, either dead or in jail.
I remember learning something, and that's how to
look good on the outside.
You can have yourself well-groomed, but on the inside I was going through
so much pain.
I went through three different foster homes, residential treatment facility,
eight different group homes, juvenile reformatory school, and I was sent to
the largest youth center in the state of Missouri.
This is really your last chance in order to get yourself together.
All I desired out of life was just my basic needs to be met.
So here I am, 17, wanting to do things the right way but didn't know how.
My senior year, I got on a bus to go out to a friend of mine's house.
When I got on the bus, I got in a verbal confrontation with a guy I
played basketball with.
I got off the bus, and he got off the bus shortly behind me.
I threw up my guards, thinking we were going to fight, and he pulled out a
357 Magnum.
I just remember getting shot in my shoulder, in my neck, in my hands.
I was instantly paralyzed, because I didn't feel any pain, and I almost
died that night.
I was told I would never walk again, but the main thing that was ringing in
my head was getting this person back.
Revenge.
My goal was either to put him in a wheelchair or kill him.
And during this time, I had questions for God like why me.
He basically told me, in order to be forgiven, you have to forgive.
And I knew that I would have to forgive the guy that shot me.
That was the only way I was going to be able to have this
relationship with God.
And that really helped me, because it was the first time I really had that
type of conversation with God.
Now what was really burning in my heart was, why did God save me?
Why did I go through the things I went through?
What is my purpose?
I end up getting a full-ride scholarship to the University of
Missouri, Columbia.
I had to write a paper, and I decided to write it on the
juvenile justice system.
And I went back and visited some of the same juvenile institutions I was
in as a kid.
And this one kid came up to me, and I told him my testimony, then he shared
his life with me.
I went to the staff, and I basically said, I don't know that this
particular kid went through the things he went through, and the staff said,
we didn't either.
So, I thought the kid had lied to me.
And that's when the kid looked at me and said, Mr. Flowers, I
didn't lie to you.
I've been lying to them.
And that bothered me.
I said, why me?
And he said, because we shared the same cell.
That one common denominator allowed him to open up and share his
experience with me, and when I came outside there was this lady--
I believe to this day she was an angel-- she approached me and said, I
don't know where you came from, or who you are, or what you plan on doing,
she said, but you have a gift in working with these kids.
At that moment I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
God had just placed in my spirit that this was it.
I dedicated my life to work with kids.
Tyrone graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia
with honors and later earned his law degree.
Today, he runs Higher M-Pact, an organization dedicated to equip high-risk youth with positive leadership.
I realized that, if you're operating in God's perfect will, you're not
disabled, because if you're operating in His perfect will, he's going to
enable you to do whatever he calls you to do, even if that's disabling you.
I realized that the kids that I was working with, all of them are going
through something that I've already experienced.
Their parents are incarcerated, or dead. They grew up in poverty, trouble in
school, the lack of support emotionally, mentally, physically,
educationally.
So, I knew God had equipped me uniquely to work with high-risk urban youth.
I realized that it's not about me.
It's about what God can do through me to change the lives of others.
My name is Tyrone Flowers and I am second.