We Finally Found Our New Home

If you have read or heard anything that I have written or my wife has had to say, we have gotten to a point where we do not feel comfortable in church. Because of that it had become a struggle every week to even make it to church. In fact, we would find excuses to not attend church. I would bet that over the past 6 months we have not attended more than we have attended church. I had forgotten just how much break ups can hurt, and was quickly reminded of it this year.

Since March we have tried various churches. We have visited some really good churches. Some of them were more appealing than others, but something was always missing. None of them felt like home. Maybe there was too much pop psychology for us and not enough Jesus.  Maybe the worship music was not what we needed: either too traditional or they played secular music. Maybe they did not have a recovery program or their children’s program was not what we needed. Something was missing, so my wife and I compiled a list of what we wanted in a home church.

It turns out there are a lot of things that my wife and I wanted to find in our church:

1.       A sermon that was Biblically sound with a lot of meat and little fluff

2.       A great kids program

3.       A worship team that played worship music

4.       A recovery program

5.       Sunday school

6.       An accessible pastor that tended his flock

My wife and I started exploring various churches, looking for ones that met our criteria. She sent me a link for Glendale Christian Church (GCC). I went to their site and read about it. Everything looked good. I then listened to a couple of the sermons they had posted, and the message sounded great. They even had their worship songs listed on the site, and the sets were amazing. So, we decided to give it a shot.

Two Sundays ago we went there for the first time. At most of the churches we had tried something had gone wrong or sounded wrong or simply did not fit our needs. Glendale hit on everything on our list, going above and beyond our expectations on almost all of them. It all began in the daycare when we first came inside.

We walked in and went to the daycare to drop off our daughter, Addison. She normally cries when we hand her over to the daycare workers. I sat her on the floor so I could fill out her sticker, and the door to the daycare opened up as someone else put their kids in and she just walked inside and started playing. We then asked a guy about classes for my son. He said that DJ would go up after worship to his class. He then found us 10 minutes later inside of the congregation and said that he was wrong, and DJ could go to his class now.

I took DJ up to his class and dropped him off. My son knew the song they were worshipping to and took off inside. I went back down and listened to the sermon. I enjoyed the sermon, and the worship music they played really primed me to receive the message it contained. Then we went to get DJ from class. Normally, when I pick DJ up from class and ask him what he learned he tells me he doesn’t remember. This time he was able to list several people from the Bible they had talked about as well as two of the songs they had sang in worship.

We did not stay for Sunday school the first week, as we already had other plans. So we picked up DJ and left. I figured that they would send us a form letter or give us a call during the week. I was wrong. Instead, the senior pastor showed up at the house with fresh baked bread and talked to Julie for a while. He left there headed to several other people’s houses. Not going to lie, that really impressed me a lot.  It might have made a bigger impression on me than anything.

Friday we attended the Celebrate Recovery (CR) group at Glendale. It was everything that a CR should be. Friendly, happy, safe and you feel that you can talk about the things that you need to share and no one will judge you or look at you differently. The Celebrate Recovery Missouri State representative goes to GCC. I was glad they  had a CR over any of the other recovery groups I have ever attended. I love CR in particular because of the change it has made in my life, so I was very happy to go to another one and can envision myself becoming a productive part of it in the future.

We came back and attended GCC again this past Sunday. I heard one of  the best worship services I have sat through (ever) and the sermon focused on fulfilling our Christian commission by going into jails and/or prisons if we felt called to do so as part of their prison ministry. This time we went to Sunday school and it was also really good. After Julie and I left we talked about our experience there. We had each encountered so many positives that we both had reached the same conclusion ……….we had found our new home!

My Life as a Bad Guy Part 3: Meth in Missouri

I decided that I was headed towards jail or expulsion so I moved to Missouri from Illinois. Once there, I tried methamphetamine. I liked it, a lot. Soon school was no longer important to me. It got in the way of my partying and I dropped out  the last semester of my senior year. I headed towards rock bottom. I went to jail multiple times. My probation officer sent me to Scared Straight at the prison in Jefferson City. I spent 120 days on house arrest and several years on probation, stacking up violations.

I had some things happen that should have changed me. I had a couple friends die in drinking and driving accidents. I was the first one on the scene and found one of my friends dead. I saw a friend get beat to death and another beat into a coma. I had alcohol poisoning and stopped breathing. They pumped my stomach and I was drinking again the next night. I saw someone I knew get shot during a drug deal.

I went on the run for a while. I was gone for almost a year. It is exhausting, being on the run. You always look over your shoulder in the party world, and it is three times as bad when you have warrants out for your arrest and all of the city and county police know what you look like. Finally, I needed some rest. I showed up at the probation office, and when my probation officer walked out I told him I was ready to go to prison. He said okay. I turned 21 in Booneville Correctional Center. I was drunk an hour after I was released and used intravenously later that night for the very first time.

I had found methamphetamine and learned that it could help with my pain. I was able to numb myself for periods of time with meth. When I started using intravenously, that was the end of me as a person. It gave me a feeling I had never experienced before. I became dead inside and only felt alive when I was high. After years of being an Agnostic, I had found my Higher Power. Meth became my God. Then it turned into Satan.

I hoped for death. I had alcohol poisoning and lived. Drunk, I flew a car 97 feet down a hill, clipping trees 32 feet in the air and lived. I attempted suicide and my sister found me unconscious in a pool of blood. The ambulance got there in time to save me. I lived. Are you noticing a pattern? That was the 5th time I had flatlined, and I kept coming back. I promised my sister I would never try to kill myself again after the attempted suicide. The truth is, I wanted to die. I no longer wanted to live and I was tired of feeling.

Meth gave me all I thought I needed. I had money, power, friends, women, excitement and so much more. I was the life of the party. But I was still dead inside. I could be at a party with 100 people and feel completely alone. I did not feel alive unless I was high. Meth was all I cared about. I would sit at home in a funk if I wasn't high, so I discovered a new lifestyle. I would stay up from Sunday when I woke up until Sunday morning when I would go to bed. I joked that if God got a Sabbath day, so should I.

I would wake up to a shot of dope on Sunday evening, then stay high through the week until early Sunday morning when I would take a handful of benzodiazepines to help me sleep. I found that I never hurt if I stayed high. No one ever got close enough to me to really hurt me as long as I was high. It got to the point that if I was awake, I was high.

I became heartless and used everyone I came in contact with. I knew if I didn't use them they would use me. Why not be first. Everyone in my life was there to serve me. I let people be my friend because they would allow me to be around a better class of people, they had money, they had dope, they cooked dope, they had friends who bought my dope, they were pretty and would sleep with me or I was trying to sleep with them, they would get high with me, they had things to loan me that I needed, they had a car I could use when I thought mine was hot or they had a house for me to party at so I didn't have to use mine.

Everyone and everything had a purpose. Some times I did nice things, but I even had ulterior motives for that. I remember one of my friends having a baby and being broke. I helped his family pay the bills for several months so that they could not work and  bond. I helped pay rent, utilities and even bought them food. I then would frequently bring up doing that any time people would talk trash about  me being a dope dealer. "Well, look at the good things I do with my money."

I would give people $100's just to remind them about it when I  needed to borrow their car or have a party at their house. I would justify my selling meth with this logic, "I use Super B to cut it. Other people use stuff that is really bad to cut theirs. My people get vitamins so I am doing them a favor by dealing." Life was a hustle, and I was good at being a hustler.

Somewhere along the way I became more suicidal. Some might call it an addiction to the rush of adrenaline. I would show up to a meth cooks house not knowing them to buy methamphetamine. I would hang out with the most sketched out people I knew. I would buy  meth at the  hottest houses I knew just to see if when I got pulled over they would find the dope. I was insane and no longer cared. I always had my sister to fall back on, and for the most part I could always argue that I was only hurting myself.

That is another thing I always did in my addiction. I downplayed the impact of everything that I did. I would justify my dealing with the law of supply and demand and my dope was better for them. I would never look at the money that I took from people. Maybe when they came down they beat their wife or kids. Not my problem. Maybe they gave me their families grocery money.  Not my fault. I would have tons of food stamps, at 30 cents on the dollar if I didn't like you and 50 cents if I did. Maybe they were robbing people for money to buy it. If it wasn't me getting robbed, I was fine with it. Maybe they would get high and rape people. As long as it wasn't my sister getting hurt, who cares? I know that I didn't!

The truth is that I saw and did things that give me nightmares 15 years later. I was insane, doing insane things and I associated with insane people. I have held people at gun point and made them strip because I thought they were wearing a wire. I have beat someone unconscious, waited for him to regain consciousness so that I could beat them some more. That was over $25, to set an example. I have done and seen much worse, sometimes for money, sometimes because they crossed lines and sometimes just because I was bored and angry.

I have ravaged people emotionally and psychologically, leaving them a shell of their former selves. I have built a shot for someone that they overdosed on. Quite a few people have overdosed on my drugs, I am quite sure. I have given many people their first shot of dope, because I knew that if I did that I would have control over them for life. I was evil, and I was okay with that. It was what I was good at, so I did it.

On the flip side of that, I have been robbed several times. I have been held at gun point. I have often been in situations I didn't know if I would live through. I have been beaten unconscious. I have been jumped by multiple people on several occasions. I have overdosed and been left for dead where I was. I have holes in me I was not born with put there by other people. I have been face down on the floor during a raid with a gun to the back of my head. I am certain that I deserved all of that and a whole lot more.

I was a bad guy. I look back on my life and I don't know how I am still alive. Scratch that, after dying more times than I can count on one hand and overamping multiple times, I am alive because there was some good EMTs and paramedics. I would tell you because of luck, as there were probably a dozen times I played Russian Roulette with a 38 revolver and a lone bullet. At the time I thought that nothing could kill me, and nothing or no one would ever get me to stop using drugs. I would have told you that only the good die young, and I was anything but good so I would probably live forever.

Are You In Recovery?

In my past I was many things. I was son and brother, friend and co-worker. I was drug addict and drug dealer, lover and fighter. I would say I cussed like a sailor, but I have never known a sailor to hear what they cuss like. Instead, let me just say that vulgarity was my verbiage of choice and I spoke loudly in public while waxing prose. My music contained a lot of vulgarity and was mostly about violence and drinking/drugging.  I liked to play it loud so everyone would hear it, also.

I did not have any respect for myself based on my choices, so why would I have respect for anyone else? My music and language in public proved that. My lifestyle also painted a picture of who I was. Was I really that person? I would say, deep down inside me, I was never the person that I presented to people. I had been severely hurt and was terrified of being hurt again. I found that numbing myself with chemicals, seeking thrills and conquests as well as putting up walls of testosterone kept me safe.

It created a persona. I adapted to the people that my persona attracted. For the most part, we were the dregs. We were truly anti-social in our behaviors, even though the behaviors were not who we really were. I adapted to my surroundings and friends so that I could survive. Any weakness would get you at the very least used and taken advantage of. In the worst case scenario it could get you killed.

I became someone that I was not. I like to see people happy and laughing, yet I hurt people physically and emotionally on a regular basis. I am an honest person, yet I told lies so frequently that it became second nature. I would lie just to lie, and sometimes I would tell the same lie so often I would begin to believe it myself.

I enjoy my freedom, yet I got to the point I would go to jail with the money in my wallet to bond out and would stay in there for a week just to rest and catch up on sleep because JAIL WAS LESS STRESSFUL THAN MY LIFE OUTSIDE. I was smart, yet I refused to use it. I love my sister and respect her more than anything, yet I used her repeatedly.

I was a walking anomaly. Even after I stopped using drugs, I still was vulgar, violent and whorish. I was incomplete and miserable. I would feel all alone at an after party with 50 people there. I was hopeless, because I was not who I really was. In order for me to improve my life, things had to change. Some people work long and hard for that change. I was blessed. After being an Agnostic for 20 plus years, I gave God a chance.

I was transformed. I have not used drugs/alcohol, smoked a cigarette, gotten into a fight outside of a ring or had premarital sex since that prayer over 4 years ago. Even though I was transformed, I still had things to prove to others if I expected them to believe that the new me was really changed and not just an act. So what to change? Everything!

I stopped listening to music that had vulgarity or extolled the virtues of sex, drugs, alcohol or violence. I switched to contemporary worship music. I actually found good rap and metal acts to listen to that only had positive messages (they are all Christian artists). I stopped watching and reading pornography. That was a struggle, because it was so accessible. I also became more aware of the impact my actions and words had on those around me.

I had been cussing most of my life. It was who I was, as was drinking, doing drugs and fighting. If I was going to quit one, I might as well quit them all. They all were part of my past criminal and addictive lifestyle. Why would I want to hold on to any piece of that? If you want to stay clean, you cannot dance in the mud.  It was a going out of business sale. My past life was bankrupt and everything had to go!

I gained humility. Even though I could argue that I did not care what other people thought or if I offended them so what, it was not true IF I were in recovery. Sobriety or abstinence yes, but never in recovery. A lot of the people that I have encountered failed to remember that although it starts out a selfish program, it does not stay that way.Addiction is egotistical, abstinence can be selfish but recovery is altruistic.

So, for those who feel that they are in recovery let me ask you a question: Do your actions and words show it? Or are you still holding onto your old, addictive, criminal lifestyle in one form or another? People can not judge our hearts or intentions, only our words and actions. We are to be beacons of recovery, shining a light into the world that accomplishes a couple of things.

1.       We should make people who are still in their active addiction want to be in recovery. Stop being such a “Negative Nancy” and buck up!

2.       Why so angry? It would appear that getting sober has sucked based on your attitude and language. Stop showing that you carry the addiction with you and let it ALL go, not just the using. New comers aren’t going to want what you have.

3.       Share sobriety and recovery with those coming to the meetings. When you are telling a 10 minute war story, it defeats the positive message. How did you get sober? What helped you stay sober?

4.       Stop using the rooms as a dating service. You are doing nothing more than taking advantage of emotionally vulnerable people and that could cause them to never come back to a meeting or trust a sober person again. Stop victimizing people!

5.       We should be vocal about where we once were outside of the meetings so that people can see that not only do we get sober, but we change and become morally upstanding members of society who give back TO SOCIETY! Is making coffee at a meeting a good thing? Yes, service work is important. But, do we represent recovery in our community and do COMMUNITY SERVICE?

Why the Police Pull Me Over and Why I Deserve It (I Want You to Do Your Job)

I know several things will happen when I see a police car behind me. I have learned that these things will happen because they have happened frequently to me. I also know that they will happen because I have friends who are police officers and I have asked them about it. When these things happen I have several choices of how to act, but I will get into those choices later. First, let us go over what will happen when I see a police officer behind me.

I can almost guarantee that I will get pulled over by the police when I see them behind me. If I do anything wrong, they are looking for it. The reason that a police officer will get behind me and look for any possible reason to pull me over is evident. I am a convicted felon, period. There is no other reason that they will try to pull me over. I know that pulling me over sounds like a no-brainer to some of you. To others it sounds like they are profiling me, or discriminating against me. We will settle that discussion later when I explain how I feel about it.

I also know that when they pull me over I will sit there for a long time while they run my license. This is not because they have slow computers in their car. The reason that they are taking so long to run my license and registration is because they are waiting for back-up to arrive. This is not because I am scary or dangerous, but because they want to search my car. That means they have one officer to keep an eye  on me and the other one to search.

I could probably get mad about knowing that these two things happening! I could, but I choose not to. I have come to realize that they are doing this for a reason. It is not because of profiling or discrimination that they have looked for  a reason to pull me over. It is because they are doing their job. If they did not try to pull me over, they would not be doing their job and I would want them fired. Let me give you an example of this in another manner.

 Imagine a fire truck loaded with fire fighters driving back from a school they have just visited. They see a house with smoke billowing out of it. Instead of doing their job and checking the house out, they simply drive right by it. How would you feel about that scenario? Would you want these men to keep their jobs? Are they even doing their jobs if they simply cruise by the apparent fire and not check it out? Of course not!

Some of you may argue that it has been 12 years since I have had any charges, so they are holding my past against me. I have earned that right. The studies have found that 87% of felons reoffend, so they are playing percentages. Imagine that you have a four year old son, and he goes missing. A block from you lives a convicted sex offender who got out of prison 12 years ago. Would you want the police to search his home? Would they be doing their job if they did not? Of course not, so they are not doing their job if they do not find a reason to search my car.

I could get mad about this, but I refuse to. The reason why I do not let this make me mad at the police is because I did it to myself. They did not invent the record that appears on their screen when they run my name. I made choices that led to charges that led to convictions. I was guilty from the word go. I am actually lucky that I only spent a year and a half in prison. I got away with a lot more than I got caught for.

I played a game for two decades of my life. If the police where better than me at the game, I got caught. If I was better than them at the game, I got away with it. I got away with a lot more than I got caught for. That said, I did get caught. I did things that I knew where illegal. At times I went to jail. When I did I played by Monopoly rules. I did not pass go, I did not collect two hundred dollars. I went directly to jail. Now, I have a career that is legal. There are still rules that I have to follow in order to keep my job. The police still have rules to follow also. When the pull me over and search my car, they are just playing their game by its rules. I have no right to get mad at them. If I should get mad at anyone, it should be at myself. I made the choices, not the police. Just wanted to share that!!!!