TESTIMONY

I was born in 1973 into a loving home, with my grandparents, my brother, sister, and mother. Then when I was five, my mother left me and my brother and sister with my grandparents. Even though I was only five, I can remember the day she left very vividly. She had left a few times before that, but it was only for a few days, then a week, and then a few weeks. When she left the last time, I knew she was going to be gone for a long time because I can remember being that little boy sitting the window sill crying and begging her not to leave, but she left anyway.

My grandparents still loved us and provided us with the things that children need. We had a normal childhood for the most part. We went to church, celebrated Christmas and birthdays, and didn’t do without anything.

The last day of school when I was in the second grade, my mother came to the school and picked me up and told me that my brother and I were coming to live with her and my stepfather. I can remember being very confused. It had been three years since I had seen or even heard from her. That was a lifetime, it felt like, at eight years of age.

So my brother and I went to live with my mother and stepfather, and that whole summer was when a long road began for me. I was introduced to alcohol and drugs, and I had to grow up quickly. I had to get myself ready for school, and fix my own lunch and breakfast. My mother and stepfather used to have numerous parties, and people I didn’t even know were over at the house all the time. Furthermore, my stepfather was a very jealous person, and he didn’t want my mother to have anything to do with me. So I stayed on restriction all the time, living in a little bedroom with nothing to do but stare at the walls. During the summers, I could leave for the weekend and not tell anyone and come back on Sunday, and no one would ask me where I had been or even notice that I was gone.

At the age of eleven, I had sex for the first time with a woman that was between the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five. I thought that I was just becoming more of a man, but now I look at it as child molestation.

At the age of twelve, I met my father, and shortly after that, I moved in with him and my stepmother, who was very jealous also. But I was already too old to be raised again or live the way they wanted me to, so that situation didn’t work out. I then went to live with my grandmother. I quit school at sixteen and started on the road to drug addiction, but I was already an active drunk by this time. I did go to work every day, however.

I got married for the first time when I was twenty. It lasted about six years. My life was full of sin, alcohol, and some drugs. There was still no God in my life. I got a divorce at twenty-six and married my second wife, who is a good Christian person. So I played around with God at this point, sitting on the front row at church, but living in the back row of sin. God blessed us with a baby boy, who is my heart, but my life without God was getting worse. I truly was not happy, still drinking, living in sin, and gambling now and then. Then my best friend in this world died of cancer; God took him home. Well, I got really mad, and I made one of the worst mistakes of my life; I challenged Satan, and he brought it on, too. I had all kinds of things happen to me during this time while I was still living in sin and drinking.

I went to Penfield for the first time in 2005, just to please other people. There was still no God in my life. I learned a lot about addiction at Penfield, but nothing else. I stayed sober, or was a dry drunk, for about fourteen months, then went back to sin and drinking, but even worse: never coming home and treating the people I loved and those who loved me (my wife, son, in-laws, and many others) like they were nothing. The bad just got worse. I got another divorce, and I was still drinking and living in sin.

In May 2008, I was sober one night in my apartment. It was late, about midnight, and it felt really dark in my apartment, really hollow or empty feeling. I turned the TV off and turned over to go to sleep, and I could feel a presence in the room. I was lying on my side, and something put its hands on me and held me down. I felt like with my physical strength, I could move it, but I couldn’t move at all. I was helpless, so I was getting really scared for the first time in a long time. All I could think of was what my grandmother told me when I was a little boy, "If you are ever scared, call on Jesus, and He will save you." So I did, and whatever it was left when I called out to Jesus to save me. The next night the same thing happened, but was different; instead of two hands holding me down, it was two fingers. I can remember so vividly about the two fingers I could not move. It had so much power over me, but when I called on Jesus, it went away. Well, the third night was different, but with the same feeling of emptiness in the house, yet stronger than before. I lay down, and about the time I closed my eyes, something hollered in my ear like nothing I had ever heard before. It wasn’t that it was loud, but I could feel the anger in it.

I had tried for many years to take on the devil, but I couldn’t do it alone. However, with Jesus Christ, I learned I could. The devil was showing me on two of those nights what kind of power he had, and on the third night, that he was mad because I was with my Jesus. I beat him finally. Very soon after that, I went to Penfield for the second time, and I got the spiritual side of the program. I have been walking with God, and I have had blessing upon blessing. I have had some bad times, but since I have been walking with God, I have had peace in my heart. As long as I have Jesus in my life, I can do anything and go through anything.

They call it a walk, not a run. Thanks. Jody B.

"If you really believe

WHAT GOD CAN DO

I was born in Macon, Georgia, on January 31, 1964, raised in a middle class family, raised in a church, and baptized at a young age. I got almost everything I wanted and got everything I needed. I started smoking cigarettes at a young age and smoked my first joint at age fourteen. I liked it, and things took off from there.

I figured out that I could sell dope and get more for free and make a little money at the same time. In 1981, I got busted in school for a large amount of pot and speed and was arrested, but because of who I was and who my family was, I got off very light. I had to go to a rehab for four weeks. I was discharged from the Air Force because of that, then the Navy talked to me, and I joined the Navy. I almost didn’t graduate from high school because I missed too many days, skipping to do drugs. I worked at Day’s Inn in high school and was caught with a large amount of pot. I was selling it at work in a room at lunch break. I then got a job at McDonald’s and got high at work. I drank after work, buying my booze at an area store at age sixteen.

In 1982, I quit doing drugs for six months while I was in boot camp and school in the Navy, but after that I started smoking pot, free-basing coke, doing acid, and selling again. I almost went to the brig in 1985 but got off light. After my discharge, I came back home and went into an apprenticeship and got a job as an electrician. At that point I stopped selling drugs and used only.

I then had to have an operation on my knee because I twisted my knee at work while doing drugs. After graduating apprenticeship, I went on the road as a traveling electrician. In 1992 I went to Washington State looking for a new life. I was still using and making good money, spending it on drugs, wild women, and parties. Then I started selling meth, shot someone, and did six months jail time. I got out again and started cooking meth, a form of speed called lithium. One of my guys got busted and I broke up with my girlfriend and came back home in 2002.

Depressed and jobless, I started using crack, got a job, and started meth again. I made $30,000 in five months and blew it all. I couldn’t keep a job. I was pawning things or selling things for dope. I finally went to a two-week rehab. I lasted four hours once I got out because I went for everyone else, not for me. I next got a job driving big rigs, which lasted six months. I wanted to drive all the time so I wouldn’t go home and do drugs. I got another job driving for a moving company cross-country to stay away from home so I wouldn’t do drugs. I started doing them when I was home sometimes and when I was stuck in a truck stop on the weekend. I lost my job for getting too many tickets and failing a drug test.

I made really good money but I blew it. I went back to union work some, got laid off, and blew it all on drugs, especially crack. I hated life. I was ready to kill myself. I pleaded with God; life was not worth living like this. I couldn’t function without drugs, and couldn’t function with them. God did not intend me to be a drug addict, but I couldn’t see a way out. Life wasn’t worth living.

On the night of June 13, 2008, at 4:30 A.M., I was leaving a crack house. I looked up at God asked Him what to do. I was tired of being sick and tired. God told me to go to the hospital. I went to the emergency room, walking, and told them I was a drug addict and wanted help. I wasn’t leaving until I got it. I was sent to Central State for detox and afterwards to Penfield Christian Homes North Campus. After graduating from Penfield, I came to Open Door Christians Homes, a halfway house. I am now continuing in my recovery by the help of God, Open Door Christian Homes, and Open Door Baptist Church. RCM