Okay Folks, Here Is My Testimony!!!!
I will begin by saying that the picture I am going to be painting here is not always pretty (actually most of it is very ugly). I assure you that the end is beautiful though. I feel like it is important for me to share my testimony early on so that everybody gets to know: Who I Was, Who I Am Now, and How God Has Completely Changed My Life. I will try to make this brief, but can't promise it will be. I ask you to hang in there no matter how long it turns out to be. I am going to be as Brutally Honest as I possibly can be, without being offensive. So, here goes nothin…
Early Life: I was raised in a loving, Christian family. Both of my parents have been very involved in church my entire life. I have an older sister and a younger sister who are two of my best friends in the world. My family life was great growing up. I lived in one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Jacksonville, FL. While my family was by no means "rich", everything I needed (and most of what I wanted) was provided for me. I don't like to use the word "spoiled", but it fits regardless of whether I like to admit it or not. I grew up, going to church, going to school, going to the country clubs, and hanging out with my friends almost strictly in this neighborhood. Needless to say, my childhood was pretty sheltered.
I loved going to church and being involved in anything there was to do at my church. I went to youth group every Sunday, bible study every Wednesday and church camp every summer. I was also very involved in a youth retreat that the Episcopal church puts on at the church camp four times a year. I loved all of these things, but I think I was always more interested in the fellowship than I was in having an actual relationship with God.
During my high school years, while still remaining involved in all of these church related things, I also became involved in drinking and using drugs. My whole life I was always shy and anxious. Drinking and using drugs gave me a level of "peace" that I had never had before. It became easier to socialize and talk to girls (which I saw as a huge upside). I kept this secret from my family. As far as they knew, I was this completely sober "church kid". So, this was the start of my constant lying.
College: My freshman year of college my younger sister and I headed off to live in Tallahassee and go to a community college there (she is a year younger than me, but we were always in the same grade). She and I had a lot of friends there and joined a college ministry group. I enrolled in school for business because I had big plans to take over my dad's vending business one day. I continued to party behind my friends' and family's backs. I got bored with going to class, so I didn't do so well in any of my classes. I basically just wasted my dad's money and did whatever I wanted. After the year was over, I moved back to Jacksonville. This marks the end of my "church life" for a very long time.
Pretty much as soon as I got back to Jacksonville, I started using "party drugs". I started drinking a lot more and using a lot of ecstasy and cocaine. I thought this was the most fun a person could have. I worked for my dad during the day and got as wasted as I could afford to get every night. I spent at least two night a week at clubs and raves until the sun came up. The only time this ever bothered me at all was on Sunday mornings when I would be driving home from the club, totally hammered, passing families on their way to church. I dealt with the shame I felt by drinking more and taking more pills.
After about a year of living in Jacksonville, doing basically nothing, I decided it was time to move back to Tallahassee and get back into school. There were better parties and prettier girls in Tallahassee after all. Due to the fact that there weren't nearly as many drugs in Tallahassee as there were in Jacksonville, my drug consumption went down and my alcohol consumption went way up. Frat-parties and hip college bars became my new reason for living. I did find some access to drugs and started selling them a little because that got me into all of the "cool" parties without ever having to actually join a fraternity (I was so much better than the frat boys after all). I enrolled in some classes, but I'm not even sure if I ever walked through the doors of a classroom. After a semester of that, my dad cut off my financial support (how dare him?). I had to get a job. Like I said before, I was totally spoiled, so the idea of working and paying my rent was beneath me. I got a job anyway. I started cooking at a steakhouse near where I lived and to my utter surprise, I was really good at it. I loved this job. After the shift was over, they gave me free beer and everybody went out and had more drinks down the road. I thought this was totally Awesome!
After about a year of living and working in Tallahassee, I moved back to Jacksonville (for good this time) and started working in the kitchen at Harpoon Louie's, a local pub in my neighborhood. I made a lot of really good friends who actually cared about me, but I continued getting wasted every night. I was back in Jacksonville, so the supply of drugs was pretty much unlimited. I started selling pot and some pills. I was basically just dealing so that I could finance my own drug habit. I started going to culinary school and loved it. I was really good at it without having to put forth much effort. I was on the dean's list my first semester. I thought for sure I had found the thing that would make me happy for the rest of my life.
One day I got a call from a friend of mine who was down in Miami picking up a few pounds of reefer. He asked me if I knew anybody who would buy any OxyContin if he brought some back with him. I did know a few people who took them, so naturally I told him to bring them on. What I didn't know was that he was going to be showing up with 2,000 pills. I decided that i was up to this challenge and dove right in. I quickly developed a huge OxyContin habit myself. This was the first time in my life that I was truly addicted. I couldn't go an entire day without them. They literally became my god and I worshipped them faithfully. I wanted nothing to do with the real God. I got within three credit hours of finishing culinary school and dropped out.
Mid-Twenties: For the next couple years, I worked in some restaurants and ended up taking a job working for my dad's company again. This job paid a lot more than any job I had ever had, but there was also a lot more responsibility involved. I started smoking crack along with the OxyContin. I did this for a few months before the drug use got the best of me and I didn't make it to work one morning. My dad had to come to my apartment and wake me up 6 hours after I was supposed to be at work. He had to fire me. I was so angry that my own father had fired me. It didn't occur to me how embarrassed he must have been. This was the first time I had come close to what they call "rock bottom". After about two weeks of unemployment I went to my parents house and told them that I needed to go to rehab.
My parents found a rehab facility about an hour away from Jacksonville and took me up there that day. I stayed there for two weeks where they prescribed me to a medication that would keep me "sober" while holding off any withdrawals. I thought I had this addiction thing licked. I didn't follow any of their recommendations to join a twelve step program and get a sponsor. I went back to work for my dad and was quickly promoted to warehouse manager. This lasted for about three years. I stayed "sober" for the most part (I went out and had a few beers occasionally, but stayed away from the pain pills and cocaine). I bought a house, and a new truck and paid all of my bills on time or even early. Life was finally going my way.
In the spring of 2008 my dad sold the vending business, but I continued to work there. After about four months, the economy crashed and I was laid off. In my infinite wisdom, I took my severance check and called a dealer I knew. I spent the entire thing on OxyContin and signed up for unemployment. This was the beginning of the end for any chance I had for being "successful" in life. After I rode the unemployment train as far as it would take me, I went back to work at Harpoon Louie's. My friend who is the owner, still loved me even in my failures. I repaid him for looking out for me by staying high, showing up late, selling massive amounts of drugs out of the restaurant and stealing money to buy drugs. For some reason, he put up with me for over a year (maybe 2 years. This time in my life is kinda fuzzy). I didn't care about anything or anybody. I started smoking more crack and injecting the OxyContin directly into my bloodstream. I was the furthest from God I had ever been. It took me a long time to realize this, but what my friend did next was the start of a very long road toward recovery for me. My friend suspended me from this restaurant which had become my home and came very close to firing me. My eyes started to open just a little. I realized that I had become everything I hated.
Early Thirties: By this time I was almost 32 years old. I was living with my parents, working at the same place I worked when I was 21, doing the same job. I stayed out all night and slept all day. I was a grown man who lived life like a college kid. I did not like what I saw in the mirror. I started looking for ways to better myself. I quit selling drugs and started buying the same medication I had taken from the time I was in rehab to the time that I got laid off from my warehouse manager job. I was getting this medication off the street, so I wouldn't have to see a doctor and be accountable to anyone. I stayed "sober" for about a week and a half at a time. When payday would come around I would spend my entire check on drugs and spend a couple days shooting up and smoking as much pain medication, heroin, and cocaine as my paycheck would buy (this should have killed me). I repeated this cycle for about two years. During that time I became a model employee. I scheduled my days off around payday so I wouldn't have to work during my bi-weekly party. I was even promoted to Manager. In my mind I was doing awesome, but I was still feeling empty and dead inside. All of these years I was chasing this "peace" I had felt when I first started drinking in high school. Let me tell you, the definition of insanity is searching for "peace" in a crack pipe. The partying had ceased to be fun years before and I was just miserable.
Awakening: One night in early January of this year, I was out drinking with a good friend of mine when he started crying. This guy is pretty much a "roughneck" so I was pretty shocked by this. He told me that he had gone into my backpack earlier in the day while we were working and had found my syringes and other paraphernalia. I had somehow stayed clueless to the fact that what I was doing was hurting the people I love. This really shook me up. The next morning, I handed my dad my car keys and locked myself in the house until all of the drugs were out of my system. This was the first time my body had been completely drug free in over fifteen years. I thought for sure that everything was going to be perfect in my life from then on. Little did I know that as soon as all of that poison that I had been filling my body with was gone, there was a tidal wave of anxiety, depression, and shame coming right for me.
Once the wave hit, I couldn't justify in my mind how I was still alive and not in prison, so I decided maybe it was time to give church a try again. Maybe, just maybe God actually did exist and care enough about me to keep me alive and free. Maybe He had some plan for my life. I met with a man that my father knew from his church who had some personal experience with addiction and had worked with addicts before. I was anxious to get back to work because I thought if I stayed busy, I wouldn't have time to think about all of the craziness going on in my head. He told me that he had been praying and that he didn't see me going back to work right away. He said that he saw me going into some form of mission work. I think at this point I had been to two church services, so I thought this guy had to be even crazier than I was. I pushed the thought out of my head and went back to sitting around the house all of the time feeling sorry for myself. I think the longest I went in the next four and a half months, without using any drugs, was six weeks. I would white knuckle my way for a while until that anxiety, depression and shame became too much for me to bear and I would go get high for a day or so. This of course just kept adding to the level of shame I was already feeling.
During this time I had found a church where I at least felt somewhat comfortable. The pastor had been my YoungLife leader when I was in high school and the sanctuary was filled with young people (most of which had multiple tattoos like me). They even had a super loud, super good praise band (not just organ music and occasionally a couple acoustic guitars like the church I grew up in). If I was going to go to church, this was where I wanted to be. I went to church on Sunday morning and to a small group at the house of that crazy man who was friends with my dad. I even started seeing a Christian psychologist once a week. Because of all of that anxiety, I was miserable in all of these places. I didn't want to talk to anybody and I wanted to crawl out of my skin being around all of those people at church. I certainly didn't want to start going to the twelve step meetings my psychologist was trying to get me to go to.
In early May, I was still trying to keep up the charade that I wasn't buckling every few weeks and getting high. One night I was up real late (because I never slept) and I wrote a post on Facebook basically thanking my friends and family for sticking with me over the years and for their prayers and support (I was high when I wrote this). This post got an amazing response. I was contacted by people I hadn't talked to since I was a kid offering me their prayers and simply showing me love. One of the people who contacted me was able to get me to do what my shrink had been trying to get me to do for months. After a couple weeks of communicating with this friend, I finally let him drag me to an AA meeting. He offered to sponsor me and was somehow able to talk me into going to 90 meetings in 90 days. I gotta tell you, this was excruciating for me at first. For the first week and a half I would sit in the back of every meeting and stare at the floor trying to keep my next anxiety attack from coming on.
One Friday night in early June there was a worship and prayer service at my church. I went with an old friend of mine who I had recently connected with again at church. Toward the end of the service the pastor had people come up to the front of the church and had other people praying for them (this is something we do at the end of every service at my church). While people were being prayed for, the pastor asked if anybody had received immediate healing. People actually started raising their hands. I was sitting in the back of the church because with my anxiety, there was no way I was going to go up there and get prayed for by some stranger. The only thing that was going through my mind at this point was that these people were completely full of it. God was paying attention though and had to be laughing His butt off.
Two days later during the Sunday service, I was standing in the back of the church during the worship time trying to make myself sing the songs. The anxiety was coming on strong. I really didn't want to be that guy freaking out in the back of the church, so I said a simple prayer that God bring me some level of peace. Right that very second, like a shot of heroin, peace washed over my entire body. Since that moment, all of that debilitating anxiety and depression have just been gone. All of the things I was ashamed of turned into blessings because I knew that I would be able to use my story to help other people who are still out there suffering. All desire to use drugs or drink alcohol had disappeared. I had spent fifteen strait years thinking only of getting high and immediately that obsession was lifted. Every doubt I ever had that there actually was a God and that His Son Jesus Christ had actually died for my sins was gone. I asked God to use me in any way he saw fit.
All of these things happened in a split second. I never believed in miracles until that private moment between me and the Holy Spirit in the back row of my church. Since then, I have actually started enjoying the AA meetings (God has even given me a few opportunities to tell some of these other recovering alcoholics and addicts about what He has done for me). Next week I will hit that 90 days I committed to and I have no plans of stopping there. I volunteered for a week at my church's Vacation Bible School. My church is partnered with some project apartments here in Jacksonville. We put on our VBS there so that the kids who live there can come hear about Jesus. Pretty much any opportunity I have had to do anything at my church, I have taken. I have spent the last few months enjoying my newfound love for Christ. All of those fun times and all of that peace I was searching for in all the wrong places, have reentered my life by simple giving my will and my life over to the care of God.
Service To God: I even go up to the front of the church every Sunday and receive prayer now. On two separate occasions, the person who was praying for me (different people both times) have said that they saw me not going strait into a career, but going into mission work (I guess that man, who I thought was completely insane, wasn't crazy after all). I know now that God speaks through others. Luckily, my church offers me ample opportunities to serve God's Kingdom right here in my city. I don't think I could wait for next July to start repaying this huge debt I have to God. Every Saturday morning, there is a wonderful group of people from my church who go down to one of the poor areas of town and hand out food, prayers and love to the less fortunate. I have made this something that I really try hard not to miss.
I am excited about the opportunity that the World Race is giving me to fulfill my promise to God that He could use me however He sees fit. I am excited about the ways I know He is going to change me in the future for His Glory. I know that He has kept me alive and free for a reason. My only desire now is to serve Him and help others experience His Grace and Love.
In Closing: Thank you for bearing with me through this insanely long Blog post. I promise in the future I will try to say what I need to say with a lot less words. I do feel like it was important to go ahead and tell everybody my whole story so that you know who you would be partnering with if you decide to support me either a: financially, b: through prayer, or c: both. I personally like option c, but that is between you and God. I highly suggest prayerful consideration before making any decision. If you do chose option a or c, there is a support me tab you can click and it will tell you how you can give. God Bless all of you for taking the time to read my Blog. Love Y'all!!!!!
