Jake’s Story

Before coming here, I was basically working on jobs where I lowered my standards to get the drugs I wanted. I was living with my mom and my sister, sleeping on the floor. I was living every day for pills and alcohol. Waking up drinking and popping pills every day! It felt as if I wasn’t normal without them.

I would always find myself trying to blame my circumstances on anyone I could. The truth is I can finally look in the mirror and point fingers at myself. I really lacked motivation in my life although I have a four year old daughter that means the world to me, but my addiction didn’t care at all. Johanna is my daughter and I haven’t seen her in about a year. It’s been plenty of nights I’ve gotten to the bottom of both bottles and cried myself to sleep thinking about her. The truth is it’s time for me to “man-up” to my circumstances and stop running from them by blaming them on past situations in my life. At the time it seemed like the only way to deal with them. Facing your problems can be one of the hardest things to do, but it is the only way to heal.

I decided to come to the Mission because I’m not getting any younger and why not change my life now. Some people are here because they have to be, I’m here because I want to be here. To this day I don’t know how, considering that I never thought it was possible to change. That’s how deep I was in my addiction. I wasn’t forced, but a force greater than me opened that door just a little, because He knew I wanted change. God brought me here. If it wasn’t for Him I am highly convinced I would be out there doing the same things. I saw what this program did for a good friend and I wanted a piece of it. On top of it, three women were praying for me the whole time; my beautiful mother, big sister, and my twin sister, brought me to Macon. They saw more in me than I saw in myself, and I thank God for them. It took a while but their prayers truly paid off.

It makes me happy in a way that I’ve never felt before, to see my family proud of the accomplishments I’ve made since being here. The work, meetings and activities, we do here at times seem to be stressful and overwhelming. But it teaches you that if you stay busy doing something you give your mind no chance to wander back into old habits. My life is much more humble now, knowing how far I’ve come.

Out of every chapel service I attend here at the Mission, the ones I didn’t want to attend are the ones that I’ve gotten the most out of. It never fails, which proves that God is always present even when you think He’s not. He wants to use me for something and if I keep walking this way I’m destined to find out. If I just continue letting God guide me instead of trying to guide myself I will find out what He wants me to be.

I look forward to building a relationship with God because I’m pretty sure that all of my future plans will fall in place. One thing I have learned is that it’s good to have an idea of how you want your future to play out. The idea I have is to continue living a sober life and to teach kids to do the same. I want to teach them that it’s best to deal with your problems rather than run from them, and that life is more rewarding when you face reality, and that it’s best to depend on God and yourself instead of other things such as drugs, alcohol and people to make you feel a certain way. I also plan on gaining a better relationship with my daughter, and teaching her the same things. Last but not least, learning more about addiction and how not to get caught back into that trap that I know the devil has waiting for me. I plan on living my life sober, one day at a time.