Out of the Ashes and Into the Fire
The two lives of Ceci Sullivan
Ceci
Sullivan was immediately star struck when she first set eyes on Michael
Davis. He was definitely tall, dark and handsome. And as a 17-year-old
girl living on her own, she was blindly swept away by his movie star
charm. When you don't look deep inside of your own soul, it blinds you to who others are also.
At the age
of 14, Ceci left her dysfunctional home in Arvada, Colorado. She could
no longer take her step-father's emotional abuse. She worked for her friends family's apartment
complex and lived in one of the units.
It was a chance meeting in the elevator where Ceci first met Michael and
struck up a conversation. Looking back, Ceci wonders how "by chance"
this meeting really was. "He probably saw me and watched me," she says.
"He was a hunter and women were his prey.
"I have a really distinct memory of coming home from our first date and feeling really sick inside, like there was something really wrong and I didn't know what it was. It was like that still small voice of God, was saying 'Warning! Danger!' Sadly, I never listened to that voice." Ceci adds, "That's how shut down I was emotionally." God was always there I just didn't have ears to hear Him.
As the manager of the apartment complex, Ceci had a master key for each and every unit. When she went away one weekend to visit her sister in Durango, Colorado, She had no idea that Michael had taken her master key and made a copy.
Several days after she got back from her trip, the police woke her out of a dead sleep at 4 in the morning. They were looking for answers in a violent attack on a young college girl, living in the large complex. Ceci says as she reflects back, "There was blood all up the stairs and across the doors. She was beaten to a bloody pulp and she came very close to dying." There was no evidence of a forced entry. Investigators asked Ceci if anyone could have gotten access to her master key. She said, "No," and never thought twice that it could be her newfound boyfriend.
She and Michael
continued to date and within months, were married. Within a year, they
welcomed their first of four children. Shaking her head, Ceci says, "I
ended up marrying him because I was so lonely. I think he married me
because he thought I might cure him of his crimes." At the time, she had
no idea what kind of monster lived inside Michael's head. People get as hooked on being deviant criminals, like getting hooked on drugs. Not that I'm excusing him, she said."
As time went on, Ceci's soul became more unsettled. One day she remembers Michael coming home. His pants were drenched. "I started realizing that something was really wrong. I said to the Lord, 'I don't know if you are real, but if you are, I just pray that you would show me the truth about the darkness I feel surrounded by.' After that point, my eyes started to be opened. When I was with Michael, I felt like I was in the presence of a diabolical spirit." Ceci adds, "He had this rage that scared me to death, even though he was not violent with her."
Michael eventually confessed to some Episcopal priests. In time, he came to tell the full story of his criminal past, uncovering multiple rapes, an armed robbery and sharing the details of a murder that only the criminal mastermind himself could know.
Ceci thought finally she would have some peace. Michael would be locked up for his crimes.
But instead of peace, Ceci realized the Priest's had no intention of turning him in. They told her not to either. Ceci says she kept being told his crimes were due to his alcoholism. He wouldn't have been violent if he wasn't drunk. He had a disease called Alcoholism. They were told to go to meetings.
"Growing up in a home where people are disgusted with you, look down on you, don't help you, nor have answers, can make one recreate the same spiritual environment they have grown up with. I grew up fearful, and married someone who facilitated that same spiritual climate. Fear, unbelief in God. It's easy to not live in reality, and not face problems, when that is what you watch your mother do as a child, she said".
It wasn't until she came home one day to find a business card from the local Sheriff's Office stuck in her door that she started to feel that her prayers were being answered. She confronted Michael about some of the facts coming in on a new and violent rape case. The perpetrator had jumped 30 feet down a steep cliff and injured his foot. Michael had come home with a limp. "I had to turn him in. It was the only thing left to do." Ceci says they spent money on every kind of therapy. Blamed everyone in both of their pasts. Blamed everything on diseases, not choices. Ceci packed up and went into hiding, praying Michael wouldn't find the children and her. With four kids in tow, she says, "We roamed from place to place in fear. We stayed at the women's shelter. I was wandering with the kids at this point." She decided to make calls to the different authorities in all the counties she had once lived with Michael after 4 months on the run from him. She shared bits and pieces of factual information she was able to cobble together. Her breath was taken away when one detective visited her with the composite sketch from one of the unsolved rape case files. The picture looked just like Michael. There were finger prints. He was arrested 2 months later.
Again, they had done all kinds of therapy, but she realized the one thing no one ever told him to do was be responsible and take responsibility for his actions. Michael's brother, a clinical psychologist, who treated sexual offenders, finally found out about Michael's problems. Pride, lying, hands that shed innocent blood are the first on the list of what God hates. Ceci was the seeker of help and truth, not Michael. The worst of his problems was Pride and Lying. Prideful liars get help for nothing until they are humble and honest.
With the composite sketch, some
fingerprint evidence, and Ceci's critical testimony, it wasn't long
before Michael confessed and was sentenced to 150 years in the Colorado
Correctional System for his part in the rape, murder and kidnapping
charges connected to attacks on six different women. He's still serving
time in the Freemont Correctional Facility in Colorado and won't have
even a chance at parole until the year 2032. She realized you can get a piece of paper from the state to be married, you can go into a church to get married, but what God doesn't join, He's not obligated to keep. There was never a spirit of marriage she said, because you can not graft into a person who lies and hides, and you always have to police their conscience because they deny God's voice in their conscience themselves. Like the bible says, "through deceit, they refuse to know Me. You can never know a deceitful person,"
This, however, is not where the story ends. In fact for Ceci, you could say it was the beginning. She knows each and every experience tilled the soil of her life to get her ready for the next chapter.
As she was trying to dig herself out of the depths of depression, she had an interrupting thought to go to a concert. She knew that thought came from God. Obeying His still small voice was about to drastically change her life forever. She met Gene "Sully" Sullivan, a stunt man who had once worked with the likes of Evel Knievel as a body guard. He came from from a family famous for good, and he policed his own conscience so she didn't have to. Unlike Michael. The two crossed paths at a Christian concert and, as Ceci says, "We felt a connection immediately." She had no idea at the time that this man was a motorcycle-jumping stunt man who was traveling the country preaching to people along the way. She laughs as she says, "Christianity and motorcycles? What? That seemed crazy!" The outer man with Gene was baffling to her, his outer appearance, and life growing up with the rich and famous. Inwardly she saw who he really was. That the angels of Mercy and Goodness were following him. Pslam 23
Gene
Sullivan is the founder of the Jump for Jesus ministry. Over the past 4
decades, he's toured the world, performed for royalty and even has been
on several TV shows, and has appeared in many documentary's. He spoke in the Funeral of Evel Knievel, you can watch it on Youtube. He is the son of the NFL Hall Of Fame football player, Ernie Nevers. He was raised by Prescott Sullivan, who's life became a Comedy Movie called, THE ODD COUPLE, with Walter Matthau.
"I think more than anything, I started to put the pieces of my life together when I sat and listened to him preach," Ceci says as she reflects back to those early days. "Here I was with this guy who was so open, so honest. The sound doctrine he preached helped me pick up the strewn pieces of my life. Meeting him became God's divine plan to deliver me from a lifetime of darkness." She adds, "That was the one thing that I realized when I met Gene. I realized how open and honest healthy relationships is. I met a man who was not emotionally abusive like all the men I had know. One who was not indifferent, but lived in reality and in the now. One who actually had answers for people's problems instead of condemning them."
A year later, the couple married and Ceci says, "I'm still madly in love with him after 36 years!" Gene continues to tour and Ceci is part of the event's music ministry along with her son, Dan (who Gene adopted along with his three sisters).
While
the show's mission has remained the same over the past 40 years with
the same high flying action, motorcycle ramps and plenty of fire, Ceci
says it's all become clear as to why she's here. She had to live in the
darkness in order to see the light. "It's pretty moving. There have been
so many lives that have been changed because of Gene and the ministry. I
have been able to help a lot of women actually count the cost of what they do today and how it will affect their tomorrow. The Lord started to show me how to help other
women who were down and out, instead of looking down on them. No one helps other's understand they're problems until they understand their own problems. She used her own life as a blueprint to
heal others. Help them stop closing their eyes, blaming others, excusing themselves. To think and learn from past mistakes, and what God is saying in them, to be able to change the future.
With the help of a side burn sporting, Jesus loving, motorcycle stunt rider, she can clearly see how she rose up from the ashes, and back into the fire of Jump for Jesus. "When I saw Gene give people his heart, all I could do was cry. Most people don't have father's with answers, who have wisdom and understanding to help them. Gene has been a father to many to help many. Ceci says with passion, "When you know God's love, and people with God's love, if you receive them and don't reject them, you can learn constructive relational skills with Godly people, you did not learn in your own family. When you understand your world falling apart, you can give yourself away when God helps you pick up the pieces. That is what makes life fulfilling."
Gene said on one TV show, that "What God has done for me he will do for you also, He is no respecter of persons." Ceci quotes, "We don't wrestle against flesh and blood but principalities, powers and rulers of darkness. Being filled with the Holy Spirit gave me the ability to see the enemies of my soul I did not see before. If we don't understanding the pitfalls of our lives, they will keep on being our pitfalls. As the scripture says, "with all your getting get understanding", that is what totally turned my life around. God can only use those who understand their own pitfalls, to grab onto the hands of others to help them out too. That is who Gene is a man who "gets" the pitfalls, who understands the principalities, powers and rulers of darkness, that are killing, stealing and destroying people's lives. As the bible says, "I will give you good shepherds that will feed you with understanding." Overcoming life's ills is not possible for those who have no understanding of their past so their future can be different.
Her life is so different, life with Michael Davis is like a long lost bad dream. God took her pile of ashes, that became the garden of her soul, where God's beauty has grown like flowers instead of weeds.
Jump for Jesus
To learn more about this full gospel stunt
program, visit jumpforjesus.net. Gene also made an
appearance in the documentary, "Being Evil, along with others, Richard Hammond Meets Evel Knievel, to name a couple you can find on Amazon.com." This was just released this
year at the Sundance Film Festival. The film chronicles the life and
times of the 1970s daredevil and close friend of Gene, "Evel" Knievel. You can also google his name and Jump For Jesus on YouTube to see video's. Or contact them at genejumpforjesus@gmail.com
