I was born in Baltimore, MD. in the late 50's, and brought up in the city all through the 60's and 70's.
My father and mother divorced when I was three, after my father's blatant affair. My father, I would not know until just before he died. My mother remarried when I was about five or six. Much of my childhood I was brought up in an alcoholic, physically and emotional abusive home with a step-father. I grew up thinking I was a nobody who would amount to nothing. As a young boy, I begged my mother not to return to my step-father after we had left for a time. She went back anyway. Thus, my own drinking career began at the tender young age of 8. As an altar boy at that time, I quickly developed a taste for the grape.
I floundered through adolescense and never quite finished school, then got a job in an auto assembly plant in the late 70's. With the changing times in the auto industry in the early 80's it was pretty clear that I would need to do something else with my life. I did manage to get myself into college, but unable to stay there and become the person I wanted so much to be.
I wound up in the D.C. area working in a night club. Riding high for a few years I felt as If I had more than anyone could want.
By the mid 80's my alcholism & now drug abuse were starting to get pretty ugly. The whole ball of wax was melting. Totaled automobiles (around 11 in all), lost jobs, destroyed relationships, (family, friends etc...)
Somehow I managed to get back on my feet in Baltimore in 1985 (so I thought!) with a new job as a bartender, in a new apartment in my old neighborhood. I thought it was time to reward myself.
Labor day weekend of 1985 I was somehwere in north Baltimore. I don't remember driving through the four way stop intersection at 1:00am in the morning doing 70 mph. I don't remember hitting any of the four parked cars while just missing a woman out walking her dog. I don't remember being dead at the scene where the car had finally come to a stop on the front lawn of the neighborhood church. ( I still don't remember!)
I was sentenced by the state court of Maryland to 2 years of a monitored recovery program. No one ever monitored me. I knew I had a problem by now but couldn't seem to gather enough of anything to keep it straight. I wanted to quit & start doing the right thing in my life, some times I gave in easy, sometimes hard. I was in and out of AA programs like many do. Knowing I must stop, not having the fortitude to do it.
I kept working in restaurants and hotel kitchens and gradually worked my way up to being offered a hotel's Chef's position in another state.
I moved in the spring of 1990 to become an executive Chef. By this time I had seven months sober and which was about the 7th time around. I was starting to feel pretty antsy again. Lots of stress, struggles with my feelings for my old friend Mr. Alcohol, I was about off the rail for another trip.
I was walking from my house to a pizza place across a busy four lane highway to buy a couple of six packs. I got out into the middle of the four lanes and noticed that I was between two lanes of heavy on-coming traffic and from the other way two tractor-trailers were approaching.
It was at that point in time I realized that I had no place to go and no where to look for help but up!
After all of the traffic had past, I walked back into my house, fell on my knees, cried like a baby and prayed for God to help me! I had never been more sincere in my life. Somehow I lost the compulsion to drink right there. I have honestly never ever once craved for alcohol since that day!
At work the next day at around lunch, the hotel staff were moving around the kitchen and there was a man that worked in the maintenance area that I had seen a few times before. I overheard one of the employees call him Preacher. That day I walked over and put my arm around his shoulder and said "okay Preacher, what do you say?" "How about you and I talk a minute?" (He later told me he did not know what to think of me!!)
That day I gave him a brief description of what I was facing and asked if he knew of anything I might be able to do to get better? He said he would come to my house and we would talk.
A few days later he came to my house and I had never felt the peace that I felt on that day before in my life!! When he asked me to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I couldn't think of anything that I wanted to do more.
This man, my dearest friend today, Pastor Joseph Miller, has been my mentor from that day on. He taught me how to read and understand the Bible. He involved me in a couple different ministries: Juvenile detention for boys, Prison Ministry, personal care homes for the Mentally and Physically Challenged and sometimes sitting with another drug addict and bitting our finger nails. (God is Good!)
As my mind became more clear, so did my life. A few years later I met my wife who was working for the same hotel as I did at that time. One day I saw a "dove of peace" on the back of her car I was truly touched! I knocked on her office door a few days later and asked her if she was a Christian? She said YES......I knew we had something wonderful in common that would be the basis for our friendship and what has later turned out to be our lifetime together! We talked alot over the next few weeks, including one night out for coffee. (our first official date!) Somewhere over the course of that evening I fell deeply in love!
It turned out it had been a long road for both of us. We believe God has been good to us both for our patience and faithfulness. We married, both for the first time, thirty something! This was something we both thought God had not planned in our lives. HE had other plans though!
I thank God everyday for my wife and my child and for the life He has given these once very broken people. God's marvelous Grace has brought me to where I am today and there is no turning back! Jesus is the only person to turn to when you want a new life. He will provide in ways you could never imagine. Trust in Him always!
My mother did eventually divorce my stepfather and married again when I was 18. This time she married a decent man who has become in many ways the father that I never had. Thankfully her life also turned around many years ago. It took me over twelve years after that to finally see God's light in my life.
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