My name is Mike, I am a truly grateful believer in Jesus Christ and I celebrate recovery from alcohol addiction, alcohol abuse, and co-dependency. It is my sincere prayer that as I give this testimony your faith in Christ will be strengthened and your hope in recovery will be renewed. I urge you to listen to the Holy Spirit as I give a brief synopsis of my life. Looking back now I can now see many Divine interventions throughout my life. I was born August 15, 1973 in San Diego, California as a Navy brat. As most Navy families, we moved a lot and in 1985 my family finally settled down in Jacksonville. My dad was raised Catholic, and my mom Baptist; my earliest memories of church would be one week going to mass and the next week Protestant service at the base Chapel. I was never really around alcohol all that much growing up, I remember my dad drinking a couple of times and he finally quit in his early 30’s so I grew up knowing that drinking is not the thing to do. As I mentioned my dad was Navy and in 1986 he went out for his last 6 month deployment before he would retire. While he was away things changed for the better in our family. My mom had been invited by a neighbor to attend the church they attended, Evangel Temple. My mom loved the church and it didn’t take long before she surrendered her life to Jesus. The summer of 1987 my mom was pregnant with twins, and at 7 ½ months she was told that they had died in the womb. Thinking back on it, I was never really given a time to grieve after their death. My parents tried to hide as much of it from me as possible, I remember shedding a tear at the funeral but I feel I was forced to put it behind me. A year later while at a presentation of Heavens Gates Hells Flames at Evangel Temple I surrendered my heart to Jesus at the age of 15 and from that point I was on fire for God. I was a new person, I was reading my bible, praying and seeking God. Things turned around for me and it was awesome to have a relationship with Jesus as I went through high school. I remember one night during my senior year, my best friend decided instead of going to the mall like we would normally do, to go check out a party. The very thought made me feel uncomfortable but I agreed. We showed up to this party and I was quickly handed a beer. I wanted nothing to do with it but instead of saying no I took it. I just popped it open and acted like I was drinking it and thankfully my best friend decided to leave the party so off we went. Although I wanted nothing to do with alcohol that day, little did I realize that we would meet again accept this time I would become a prisoner to it.
I graduated high school in 1991 and not long after that decided to join the Navy. I grew closer to God while in boot camp and I actually led a few of my shipmates to the Lord, which was an awesome feeling for me. After graduating from boot camp I received orders to Brunswick, Maine. I reported up there November 1992 and there I was, on my own for the first time. I met a girl while up there through some people that my Uncle knew. This ultimately turned into a serious relationship that lasted 3 of the 4 years I was up there. I was a skinny kid in high school with a face full of acne so I didn’t date much in high school. I was now with someone that said they loved me, made me feel loved, and because of that I would do anything to keep her around. Eventually I was approached by her to see if I would ask my “of age” Navy buddies to buy her and her friends alcohol. Without hesitating I did it, and if I couldn’t find anyone I would try to buy it myself underage. It was around this point I started drinking. Looking back, I know today that I was an instant alcoholic from that first drink. As soon as that alcohol entered my body, I felt different and loved the fact that I was the funny guy, the center of attention. It was an instant coping mechanism! Unlike non-alcoholics who feel out of control once they have a few drinks, I felt in control. Once I started drinking I would often wake up the next day thinking about and planning my next drink. I had completely turned my back on God and quickly turned into a different person that was full of arrogance and hate. Alcohol was way more important to me and consumed my thoughts and plans much more than the average person my age. Again, knowing what I know today about addiction, this was a clear sign of an alcoholic. From that day forward, I drank as much and as often as I could. My tolerance for the drug alcohol increased rapidly and I could “hold my liquor” as they say, much better than the average drinker – another clear sign of addiction. After 3 years of dating this girl, she graduated high school and went off to college and the relationship ended. I finished up my final year up there and in 1996 I decided to get out of the Navy and come back home to Jacksonville. I moved back in with mom and dad and I would drink when they weren’t home; I got really good at being deceitful. Roughly 2 weeks after being home I decided to go with my mom to K-mart, it was there where I would meet my beautiful wife Melissa. We fell in love instantly, and for me it was a love from someone like I never experienced. We got engaged about a month after we met, August 9th, 1996 and married exactly a year later. She knew that I drank, but she didn’t realize that I had a problem. I didn’t have a steady job; I would actually go from job to job being very immature. Then came the moment when my wife came to me and told me she was pregnant. It was very exciting news, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to support a family going from job to job so I decided to see if I could reenlist in the Navy. I went to the recruiter and at the time the Navy had a policy that if a person was out for more than 2 years they could not come back in, I made that cutoff by less than 2 weeks. So 1998 I am back in the Navy and went to Pensacola for “A” school and upon graduation received orders back to NAS Brunswick Maine. My wife and I had a wonderful time up there, yet drinking was still very much part of me. I continued to use it as my way to break out of my shell and be sociable; I was dependent on it and a prisoner to it. From Brunswick we moved to Pensacola for 3 years and then in 2006 I received orders back home here in Jacksonville. In December 2006 the squadron I was with deployed for 6 months, I was sent to Djibouti Africa. This was a hostile placed where we lived in tents on the hot desert sand. The only place to drink alcohol was a Cantina on base where you were only allowed 3 beers a night. I didn’t like the atmosphere there so I decided not to hang out and instead you could find me on the computers in the library or in the gym. Before I knew it a month had went by without me having a drink, I developed a streak and I didn’t want to break it. I had stopped drinking but for the wrong reasons. I came home from that deployment May of 2007 30 pounds lighter and 5 months sober and everyone was proud of my accomplishments. Melissa and I were attending the church where we were married and things were going well until the Pastor was forced out of the church. I managed to not drink for 2 more months before Satan started whispering lies and putting thoughts into my head. I ended up losing my grip on something that I thought I had control of and started drinking again, trying to be as sneaky as possible around my wife, but I wasn’t fooling anyone-she knew. From there it didn’t take long to get back into my old routine. Anytime there was a social gathering to go to, I had to make sure to get in as many drinks as I could to loosen me up. I knew I had a problem, and I wanted to stop but I couldn’t – I was dependent on it and it controlled me. By this time I couldn’t tell you how many fights my wife and I had, tons of broken promises, tons of lies. I now fast forward to 2011, my 4 kids were older and my oldest child, my son was 13. Like his 3 sisters he was very bothered by my drinking, so much so that if he saw my beer in the garage he would hide it from me so that I couldn’t drink. At first even though my heart was broken I didn’t say anything about it I would just take the time to find it, completely ignoring the fact that my son was hurting for his dad. Finally one day I had enough and said something to him about it and he stopped hiding it and I went about my selfish ways. That takes us to February 2012 and we had just moved into a new house in a new county. There might have been new surroundings but that’s all that changed. By this time I would almost daily have a couple of beers on my way home from work. If the wife would send me to the store I would buy beer even though I had some at home, I always wanted to make sure I had plenty on hand, I could never have enough. It got to the point that after a night of drinking I would drive to work the next morning full of guilt pleading with God to help me stop. I had the desire to stop, but I lacked the ability. June 18th 2012, just after Father’s day, I was out in the garage working on my vehicle drinking and trying to hide it. My wife came out to check on me and see what I was up to; she saw the beer I was drinking sitting next to the vehicle and she walked back inside quietly. A little time past and the door opens back up and my wife is handing me a ringing phone. I answered the phone and it was my mom sobbing over the news my wife had told her of my drinking that I had managed to keep a secret from her the whole time. As soon as I heard my mom’s voice on the phone and realized that she knew my secret and that I had pushed my wife so far to make a hard phone call like that, I knew it was over and I surrendered my addiction right then and there to God and I felt so free. After a month of sobriety we started attending Journey Church and fell in love with it. We heard about Celebrate Recovery and decided to go - not really knowing what it was all about. I have to say my first time there I was uncomfortable, especially when I went to the men’s chemical group and saw the circle of chairs, I told myself “you got to be kidding”. I didn’t want to share my secret with men I didn’t know. But I decided to be obedient to God and openly shared. I walked out that night feeling like a weight was removed from me, you see this was the first time I had referred to myself as an alcoholic. Today alcoholic is no longer my identity; my identity is in Jesus Christ. My marriage of 16 years has been restored; my children no longer have to hurt for their dad and God is number one in my life. I currently serve as the Large Group Facilitator for our CR, and I am leading a group of men through a step study group. If you are hearing this testimony and can relate to it, or if you have some type of hurt, habit, or hang-up, then Celebrate Recovery is the place for you. Give God complete control, desire to surrender to His will on a daily basis, be obedient to Him and His word. I leave you with a verse out of Romans 12:2 “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know Gods will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. Thanks for letting me share.
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