I believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity

Try to imagine a life where none of those needs were being met in a healthy way.  That was me just four years ago. I lived only to please myself; and alcohol, sex, and drugs were the primary ways in which I did that. The only things that I was willing to learn were those things that served my own self-seeking motives. I had  no capacity to love anyone or anything except a bottle of booze. My life’s purpose was to work to earn money in order to buy more booze. That lifestyle eventually lead to my becoming homeless.

I’m an educated, relatively intelligent guy, but still, I found myself living in abandoned buildings, earning enough money doing odd jobs so that I could stay drunk.   I’ll never forget the day that a very kind police officer caught me in one of those buildings. After doing a criminal background check, he told me, “You’re not a bad guy, you’re not a criminal. Why are you living like this? This isn’t living, it’s just existing.” His words were burned into my mind, but still I continued to get drunk every day. I found another abandoned house and settled into what I thought was freedom. Then finally, after the odd jobs ran out (I was a drunk; no one in their right mind would hire me), I surrendered. I cried out for help.

Two days later I found myself lying in bed at a rehab. After the second day there, suffering from the effects of withdrawal, I sent a prayer up to a God that I didn’t even believe in. “If you are up there and if you are who you say that you are, something’s got to change. No human being should have to live like this.” The next morning, I was kicked out of the rehab, not released, but kicked out because of something that I said to another resident. He felt threatened by what I had said, probably with good reason.

So, with six dollars in my pocket and a bus ticket to Pittsburgh, I wandered off into that bright August day with no plan, not knowing where my next meal was coming from, not knowing where I was going to stay. I had no fear, no anxiety. A strange sense of calm and serenity had come over me.     
                                                

The next day, I ended up at the Washington City Mission, thinking that I was going to be eating cold soup and sleeping on the floor. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Those kind and gentle people welcomed me with open arms. They showed me love. They taught me how to discipline myself. They fed me (not cold soup). But most importantly, they showed me how to open that door to God. They said that if I was willing to die to that old way of life, I could have a new one with Christ at the center of my recovery. I’ve been sober ever since.

That was four years ago and I’m now employed at the Mission. I’m happy, healthy, and profoundly grateful to the staff at the Washington City Mission and to my God for giving me a new life!

I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.       

    

In Christ,             Mark Schneider