god has a purpose for me

god has a purpose for me.

or at least he did.

i grew up believing that we were created by a loving god. that we were all god’s children. that he loved us equally. never in my life was anything more dear to me...more important.

during my teenage years, as my life got off track, i began to become increasingly saddened by the feeling that i’d lost touch with god--that the communion i had once enjoyed became compromised. drugs and alcohol had managed to push out of my life things like joy, love, security, faith.

my parents also became distressed. they saw their only son slipping away, becoming more and more depressed, angry, violent. they prayed for me and over me. they contacted other believers and launched a nation-wide campaign of prayer. they attempted to counsel me—to love me back to health.

my parents were never hateful. they never attempted to shame me. they didn’t yell or threaten. what did they do? they prayed. they employed every reasonable, legal, ethical, godly avenue in an attempt to bring their son back.

in march of 1983 their prayers (and the prayers of thousands of others)were answered.
my parents were out for the evening and i sat on the edge of my bed angry and depressed. i’d been expelled from the performing arts program that i’d entered as a college freshmen less than a year earlier. i was virtually unemployable, because i was too depressed and too insecure to get to work every day. my life’s dreams had been shattered, in that i saw no avenue to pursue my music. my father had sat and lovingly explained to me that he was unable to fix my life for me—that i would have to find a way to access the power to get well.

i could not access that power.

i knew that i did not possess the strength to turn my life around. i had tried time and time again. i was nothing. nobody.

enter god.

as i sat on the edge of my bed, considering the least painful way to end my life, i threw out one final challenge to god. “if my life has meaning, show me now or i will end it now.”

immediately, the telephone rang. “hello seeking, it’s mrs. k. you know john has been sick [alcoholic].”

“i know mrs. k. how is he?”

mrs. k. went on to explain that john had been out drinking for a couple days. he had come home out of control, yelling, threatening. now he was passed-out in the basement.

mrs. k. explained that john needed to go to an aa meeting. she had located a meeting which was scheduled to start within the hour and asked me if i would come over, awaken john and take him to the meeting.

i was never one to turn away a friend in need. i forgot about my despair, grabbed the key to my parents’ car, which i had secretly copied so i could drive when they weren’t around, lit a joint and headed over to pick up john. that’s how i ended up at my first aa meeting.

two days later i was in rehab.

the men at the meeting did not try to convince me to join aa. nor, did they try to convince me that i was an alcoholic or drug addict. they asked for no commitment of any kind. they simply recommended that i admit myself into a drug and alcohol treatment program.

when i sat down and told my father about this experience, mostly to distract him from the fact that i’d taken their car, he said, “i will do anything i can to help you.”

he never mentioned cost. he didn’t ask if i was really going to try. he never brought up my transgressions. my father was a man of faith. he knew an answer to prayer when he saw one.

in rehab, i was scared. the place was cold. locked metal doors blocked me from the outside world. the facility was surrounded by a tall chain link fence with razor wire. my suite-mate had tattoos and worshipped the devil. they brought a young man into my room who was high on crank and acutely psychotic. he was to be my new roommate.

i didn’t belong here.

someone had left a piece of paper on my night stand and on that paper was printed the “our father”. i was scared to death. i knew the prayer by heart, so i turned over the paper, pulled a pencil (no pens allowed) out of the nightstand drawer and rewrote the “our father” in my own words. next, i got down on my knees and said the prayer, fully expecting god’s intervention.

god immediately spoke to me. he didn’t use audible language, nor did the heaven’s open. instead i remembered some stories i had learned as a child. first, i remembered the story of the prodigal son. i imagined the father standing outside his house each day, scanning the horizon, awaiting his son’s return. like my own parents, like god, the father did not rebuke his son or ask him to make promises. he did not remind his son that he’d blown his father’s hard earned wealth on wine and whores. instead, he welcomed his son back, with open arms. the father rejoiced at the return of his son.

this was god’s grace, that my parents had modeled for me throughout my childhood.

the second story i remembered was that of moses. i thought of moses standing before the burning bush, before god. i imagined moses’ fear as god commanded him to throw down his staff, his only defense against the harsh desert. i imagined moses running as the staff became a snake, afraid that god was going to destroy him for his refusal to follow god’s orders and free the people, enslaved by the egyptians.

then, at god’s command, moses picked up the snake and it became a staff again...god’s staff.

i remembered the words to a song i’d learned. the song, by ken medema, a blind pianist and composer, was called moses. the words to “moses” were swimming through my mind.

oh, god
it’s a rod again
it’s a rod again
with rod of god, stirke the rock and the water will come
with the rod of god, part the water’s of the sea
with the rod of god you can strike pharaoh dead
with the rod of god you can set my people free.

then...

what do you hold in your hand today?
to what or to whom are you bound?
are you willing to give it to god right now?
give it up. let it go. throw it down.

there was no ambiguity in this message for me.

my staff, my experience with drugs and alcohol, was no longer to be my security. god was my security, my drug-abuse disorder, was now god’s and it would be used to help others find freedom--freedom which i was certain had been granted to me through a simple prayer.

everything changed from that point...and it was a sustained change.

both of the young men, my roommate and suitemate, were from broken homes. their parents had given up on them. they needed to be loved. there were others as well. the pain i’d experienced was easy to accept, because i knew that it served a purpose. it provided me with the empathy to help others. i was grateful.

no one told me to feel this way.

i decided to devote my life to helping druggies. after rehab, i drove my parents’ car, filled with other kids, to aa, na and pdap meetings. i volunteered for pdap, a non-profit organization, as a counselor’s assistant. i brought drug addicts home with me. sometimes they stole from me. there was nowhere i was unwilling to go to help someone.

over the years, junkies have kicked dope on my couch. i have stayed with them, encouraging them...”dude, this will be over soon...you can do this” while they went through withdrawals. i’ve begged for free medical care for sick dopers and alcoholics. i’ve given them jobs, money, love.

i never felt as though i was earning my salvation. nor did i feel any external pressure to help others. i wasn’t attempting to get anything, make money, or gain status. i never thought i should be applauded for this work. helping people was an end in and of itself.

i slept by a pager and was frequently awakened in the middle of the night. ministers, parents and counselors would call. sometimes it was a parent of a 15 or 16
year old that had run away and was on the streets. “do you think you can find him and convince him to come home?” they’d ask. other times it was someone who simply needed to talk. there were times when things got a little dicey. it was all good with me—fun.

when i was living with my parents, my mother would hear my pager at night and would quietly go to the kitchen and fix me a cup of coffee. she and my father saw to it that i had a car, gas, money, whatever i needed to attend to my “purpose”. there was never a single instance where they showed anything other than full support—not even when i dragged dopers back to their house.

i took the first opportunity available to enter a drug and alcohol counselor training school. i was well-trained at the school, which had an diverse faculty of highly respected therapists, counselors, certification board members, physicians, and psychologists.

for several years, i continued this course. when i reentered college my focus was split between human services and journalism. this would help me to reach others on a number of levels. i connected with people at school who needed help.

once, a guy from school, an awesome guitarist, called me from southwest missouri. he was suffering from dt’s. i knew that if he didn’t get some alcohol soon, he could seize and die. i sent him to a bar and told him to drink and wait, while i figured out a way to pick him up and get him to rehab. he had no money, but i was able to beg a treatment program to take him in exchange for his piece of crap car. he’s still sober today.

i never felt as though i had “all the answers”. i never felt compelled to convert others to my belief system. i didn’t see myself as “more spiritual” or more special. i didn’t think that my calling was necessarily the same as that of others. i didn’t have any special power or knowledge. my role was to be available—to “do my best and leave the rest to god” as they say.

i was also far from perfect. i counted on god to do his work despite my shortcomings, which were numerous.

mostly i was strengthened and inspired by my close relationship with a loving god who had a purpose for me.

four years after that fateful night when i found god, i met bob.

enter bob. exit god.

(more to come)

moses lyrics from the song moses by ken medema http://www.kenmedema.com/store/Scripts/prodList.asp