The Weak Fool

*Beginning Note – At church, my wife and I are taking a discipleship class. As a part of this class, we were required to write out our life story and to share it in our groups. We were supposed to write our life story with an emphasis on the different “false stories” or beliefs that we have lived in, and how that compares to and has brought us to the real story, which is the Gospel. That is to say, that this life story here has a unique emphasis, perhaps different than what I would write if I were just crafting a normal testimony of my life and conversion. Perhaps someday I will write and post a more detailed testimony. But I thought that this assignment was interesting, and perhaps the Lord might use it to bless others. Who knows?

Well… Here it is.

I grew up in a single parent household. It was me, my brother and my Mom. I remember my Mom working hard, struggling to make ends meet, and being stressed out a lot. My Dad struggled with addiction, and his presence in my life was very inconsistent. My story in early childhood was at least in part shaped by instability, uncertainty, and difficulty.

I grew up being very insecure. This was, and continues to be a struggle for me, as I tend to care too much about what people think.

Growing up without a Dad has affected me in ways that I recognize, and I’m sure in ways that I don’t even know. One clear repercussion of this was my lack of a solid male role-model. I think this plays into my story in various ways.

For one, it left me with a void of identity. I didn’t really know who I was or who I was supposed to be. Along with that, it naturally led me to seek out my own role-models, which I mostly did through media. If you look at my childhood story, it is clear to see how it was shaped in many ways by books and by music.

My Dad passed away when I was in 5th grade. If you looked at my story from 4th grade to 8th grade, you would see a kid trying to escape through books and music, and a kid who had an unwise taste in both. I liked dark books, and dark music, probably because my heart was dark and I related to those things the most. I was often immersed in a story, or immersed in a song with both headphones in, trying to drown everything out. I guess this was twofold; a desire for the pleasure that stories and music brought me, and also a form of escapism. I was depressed, and I didn’t want to think.

The pursuit of pleasure, and the attempt to escape pain are two driving forces that shaped my childhood and teen years. One of my biggest struggles in life was depression, and so I think that I believed if I could just hide in something immersive, and run after what felt good, then I would be happy.

From 7th to 8th grade I faced great struggles with depression. Up to this point I had tested and investigated various things to make me feel good, and to hide the pain. Some were at least outwardly healthy, others were less so. I tried fitness and running. I got a girlfriend and tried that. I got into spiritual things, even mystical things. I tried minimalism. All the while, music, books, and television remained a constant reprieve. But I still struggled. Though some of these attempts to feel better worked for a time, I ended up in a worse state.

The desire to feel good and hide the pain unfortunately put me in a very vulnerable position in regards to drugs and alcohol. In 8th grade I smoked marijuana for the first time, and my story changed overnight. I still wanted pleasure and to escape from pain, and now I thought I had found the most perfect solution for both. My story quickly became all about drugs and alcohol.

Drugs and alcohol were the driving force behind almost all that I did from 8th grade until 6 months after high school. I thought that as long as I could get high, and feel good, and have fun, and mask any hurt or insecurity, then my life was what it should be. As long as I could get high, life was good, and I was going to be alright.

Unfortunately, addiction is a very cruel master. As my dependency upon drugs increased, which it did rapidly, the qualtity of my life and my character declined horribly. I was still living in the story that drugs and alcohol were my solution to life’s problems, so I didn’t really understand how they could be causing so much turmoil. I thought it had to be everybody else’s fault.

During this time there were some other things I pursued, like girls, playing music and art. Things I thought would add to my life, but my main love continued to be drugs, and by 10th or 11th grade, it was spcecifically crystal meth.

There were short seasons where the dysfunction and chaos of my life brought me to the reality that getting high was ruining everything. Then my story would become about recovery, and AA, and sobriety. But these seasons would be short, and quickly gave way to the power and sway of my addiction. Addiction demanded to be my story, and because of sin and a lack of conviction, I allowed it to be.

It’s amazing how blind I was to the destructiveness of my lifestyle, but I just kept chasing that promised peace and happiness of drugs, as I was thrust deeper and deeper into hopelessness.

My story of drug addiction ended up where I suppose many addiction stories end up; at a homeless shelter. I found myself at the Open Door Mission, a shelter in Omaha, and this is where my story was forever changed by the amazing grace of God.

I entered their recovery program, with the desperate hope that I might be able to get sober. Not many days into my time there, a man named David changed my story forever by telling me the real story.

The real story is that there is a God, who is all powerful, and who created everything. I had always believed in God. I had even prayed many times. I think I even believed that God could help me. But I did not believe that God would help me. I didn’t think that God cared about me, and I was angry at Him.

The real story also includes sin. Because of man’s rebellion against God, we are all slaves of sin with a nature that is bent towards it. By the time I heard the gospel, this is something that made sense to me. I knew I was a sinner. I think in my heart I knew I was under the judgment of God. Because God is perfectly good, he must judge sin. And because I was so wretched and awful, my only expectation was the terrifying wrath of God.

One thing that I didn’t understand was God’s love. That’s where Jesus comes in. God has to judge sin, and since we are all in sin, we must be judged. But God in His mercy, gave us the opportunity to escape His judgment. God Himself came to earth, clothed in the flesh of a man. His name was Jesus Christ. A real man, and yet fully God. The Eternal Son of God. He lived the perfect, sinless life that we never could, making Him an acceptable substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf. And then He died a brutal death and took upon Himself the wrath of God that was rightfully meant for us.

His death accomplished the opportunity for our forgiveness. It gave us a chance to be reconciled to God. To prove this accomplishment, and also Jesus’ identity, he rose from the dead, appeared to many, and then ascended back to heaven where He rules and reigns until the day He will return to gather His own, and to judge those who have rejected Him.

Up to this point, I never understood Jesus. I did think that he had existed, but in my heart I believed that he was some sort of a deceiver, or just a crazy person, or something like that. When I heard who he really was though, and what He had done, I understood why this was good news.

How could I accept this gift of God that I was hearing about? David explained that it was all by faith. If I believed in this story, and actually put my trust in the person and work of Jesus, I would be saved. He also drew a picture of a heart with a throne in it. He explained that when a person truly has faith in Christ, they will dethrone whatever is ruling in their heart and they will put Christ there instead.

When David told me this story, I knew that it was the one I wanted to be living in. By God’s grace, I believed what he said, and my story was changed forever. It didn’t feel like just a new chapter. It felt like a brand new story in a brand new book.

My story after coming to faith in Christ is so much less dramatic and chaotic than what it was before God saved me. I went through the Open Door Mission’s “New Life Recovery Program” and in agreement with the name, I did leave that program with a new life.

So what became of my pursuit for pleasure and my desire to hide from pain? Well, I wouldn’t say I have completely overcome these issues, and I probably never will. One pleasurable thing I held onto for awhile after conversion was tobacco. By God’s grace, He showed me that freedom from addictions, even smaller ones, is much better than momentary pleasures.

As far as hiding from pain? Even in my Christian life there have been times where I have wanted to run away from hard things. By God’s grace, He helps me to stand in the midst of difficulty, and firmly commit to seeing things through, even if they are hard and painful.

Ironically, I still hide in times of difficulty and pain. Actually I hide all the time, and it’s a good thing because I hide in the only place that offers real safety and comfort. I hide in Christ, and He comforts me while simultaneously helping me to continue in whatever circumstances I’m in.

Funny enough, even as a Christian I have bought into lies about what is really right and good. Because my life is so much different, these lies tend to be more manageable and appear much more acceptable, but I admit that they can still be very damaging and take me off course from where God wants me to be.

Two lies that I struggle with now as a Christian are pragmatism and perfectionism. I often over prioritize getting things done, even at the expense of relationships or other valuable things. I also overvalue quality in my own work to the point where it brings me anxiety and I beat myself up if I fall short.

It’s silly that these have cropped up in my Christian life, since both are actually antithetical to the heart of the gospel. But I pray that with God’s help, he can bring me back again and again to the true story, which is the gospel.

Before Christ, my story was loss and lack. Stress, anxiety and deep depression. Slavery to the harsh and cruel master of drug addiction. I did what I did then because I blindly and ignorantly believed that I was seeking what was best, but those lies were killing me inside and out.

Now that I have Christ, the Lord has been writing a new story with my life. He’s put me into the story of marriage. He’s using my life to write a story of fatherhood. He’s writing a story that consists of failures and struggles, which always bring me closer to Him in the end because of His love and through the work of His Spirit in my life.

Most importantly though, He has invited me into His story, which is the story of redemption and salvation. A story that only finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ, and can only be lived in through faith in the gospel.

I humbly admit that now my story is not my own, but rather one small piece of the Christian story that God is writing through all of those who believe. I hope many more will become a part of that story.