Finding
Real Hope
While working to keep up my religious professions and church
attendance, I struggled unsuccessfully to permanently stop using pornography
which, in my case, promoted the use of alcohol and other drugs. In addition to
alcohol, the drugs I used were cocaine and heroin, and I dabbled in
methamphetamine on occasion. Finally, as is so often the case with those who
use illegal drugs, I was arrested for my drug use and as an alternative to a
prison sentence I was sent, fortunately, to a no-nonsense drug rehabilitation
program. In this program I was monitored by urinalysis to make sure I was
staying away from drugs, and I participated in group and individual counseling
several times per week as required by the program. After about six weeks in the
program, I was called into my counselor’s office, a gentleman by the name of
Bobby O.
Face to face, he
sat right across from me and said, “David, you profess to be a Christian, right?”
“Yeah,” I
replied.
He then asked,
“Would you please tell me about your Jesus; tell me about your God?”
So I went on to
tell him everything I knew about Jesus and God. This amounted to a two, maybe
three-minute historical accounting of what I had learned growing up in my
church and Sunday School, the best I could remember it.
After a few
minutes of patient listening, Bobby raised his hand to interrupt me and said,
“Stop!” Then, looking me straight in the eye, he said, “David, I suggest that
you find a new Jesus and a new God.”
Feeling confused
and quite offended, I asked him why.
And then, softly
but very much to the point and once again looking me dead in the eye, Bobby
said, “Well David, what you claim to know now hasn’t done you much good, has
it?”
Shocked and
speechless, I was unable to respond to Bobby in any way that seemed to make
sense. The words he said to me made me feel as if I was left without a body,
like I was the hole in a donut, like my whole life had just been swept off the
table and crashed to the floor in pieces. I had no defense. The truth Bobby O
spoke to me was so utterly true that I could not attack it or even get mad at
it or him for saying it. What he said made my religious pride and arrogance
evaporate into the nothing it had always been. With my ball of religious yarn
unraveled, it was painfully obvious that the impersonal religious instruction I
had grown up with had actually blocked me from knowing The True God. And this is where my personal miracle began.
The anguish of
that moment, and seeing my folly of misguided beliefs, opened my heart and my
mind to know The Source of Power which
had given me life — The Source of Power
that had protected me patiently as I squandered my life — The Power that was now offering me the
possibility of a life worth living. Seeking God starts with admitting how little
we know about God.
As
absurd as it may sound, I believe that my addictions — the most core being my
addiction to sex — are the second best thing that has ever happened to me.
Somehow, while suffering the indignities that came from my addictions, a humble
pliability took hold inside me. I was defeated inside and out. I’d had enough.
I became desperate enough so that I was willing to try something new. I was
ready to call on and trust something, Someone
bigger than me.
from When Lost Men Come Home - not for men only
copyright 2012, David Zailer
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