Why I Believe Part I

Why do I believe what I believe? This seems like it will be the much more difficult of the two to write. I have decided to break this into three sections, more for my self than any other reason. First, I will share my experience. Second, I will share, what I am calling, “my hope.” Third will be “my rock.” These sections will compliment each other and overlap some I am sure, but each is rather distinct I think.
First, my experience. I will try to stay away from all the details as they are less than important and stick to the general outline of how I first came to faith.
I was a drug addict; by that I mean, I found my purpose and identity in drugs. Didn’t matter what drug just so long as I was using something. I truly thought that using drugs gave me purpose, friends, identity, value and reputation. Drugs were everything to me, they were my god, my idol to whom I surrendered myself and to whom I worshipped. I sacrificed everything for drugs: education, friends, jobs, money, time, health, possessions, family, I’m sure the list could go on. Simply put, I worshipped drugs, they gave me life and really, the first time I felt like somebody was when I was high. I was told once not to glorify drugs or I would be a junkie, that is what I did, I glorified drugs. In 1999/2000 my drugs “turned” on me. They were all I really had and I could no longer use anything. I was faced with a very simple dilemma, keep using drugs and slowly die from it or turn my life around. I could either continue on the same path I was on and end up dead or I could go back to school, get a degree, find a wife, have a family, get a dog, 2.5 kids, a 3 bedroom 2 bath all brick house with a picket fence and still die.
Neither option appealed to me. Either way I was going to die and I didn’t have the desire to do either. They both were hopeless. I don’t think that I was depressed, I didn’t have depression symptoms, I was working and hanging with my friends and in a band and having fun, I think that the reality of life just set in. No matter what happens, no matter what you do, you die. In the end, death wins 100% of the time. The rules to life didn’t seem fair and I didn’t want to play anymore.
I decided to commit suicide. I stole a bottle of heart medication and got a six pack of beer and decided to drink and take pills till I died. I was tired, the alcohol kicked in first and I fell asleep. I remember crying when I was going to kill myself, not because I was sad but because this terror settled on me, a terror I had never really considered before: what if there was something on the other side of death? I was never a spiritual person or religious person, I really didn’t have a religious upbringing, God had never really been a thought in my head. I had spent much more time thinking of Satan, not that he was necessarily real just that the thought of him was appealing to me. But suddenly as I wanted to kill myself I became terribly aware of my lack of knowledge of what was to come, after all, I really never considered what was after life.
I began hearing God “talk” to me. At first, I didn’t think that it was God, more that it was just my own mind or conscience, but the thoughts weren’t my thoughts or at least not thoughts that I had ever had before. The music that I listened to began speaking to me about life, love, reality, purpose. Even my friends when they would speak would sound like somebody other than themselves, their voices weren’t different but the impact of their words upon me were different, it was like they were speaking to the thoughts of my heart or mind. It seemed as if music and my friends could read my mind and then answer what I was going through.
I know that this all sounds crazy, I would think the same thing but it happened to me and I am in good company (but I will get to that in the section: “my rock.”)
One night I very much now felt like God, whoever that was, was speaking to me about drugs and I vowed never to use drugs again. I don’t know why. I just did. The next day I sat with some friends and somebody passed a pipe around the room and as soon as I used it something bad happened. Things got dark and scary and uncomfortable, a couple people left the room (I think because of what was happening) and I left too, I was scared, something was wrong, very wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. I stepped outside on the balcony of the apartment and asked two of my friends what was going on, as if they would know, and one of them looked at me and said, “you aren’t suppose to forget that easily.” What? Oh my gosh, I knew what I had forgotten, I had vowed never to use again and I had. (You know, I have since asked that friend why he said that and he has no idea.)
I left there as fast as I could and started driving for home, which happened to be with a friend in Billings. I have no idea why I was going home but I was. The drive home was terrible, I can only describe it as if I was coming undone, like I was having a complete and total physical and mental break down. By the time I got home I felt as if I was dying, I could barely walk and was tearing my shirt off, my room mate helped me inside to a sofa and laid me down.
Now this room mate was certainly not a spiritual or religious person either, but they seemed to know exactly what to do. They brought me a glass of water and as I drank it it was the best thing I had ever drank, it was as if the Lord was saying to me as I drank it, “I made this for you that’s why its good for you.” Suddenly, consciously, I was aware of God, I knew that God was the only thing that could help me so I asked Carmen for a Bible. Why a Bible, I have no idea, but that is what I asked for and she found my bible that had been given to me when I was a little boy. As I grasped the bible it was as if light radiated up my arms and through my body. Still reading? It sounds crazy to me too.
Now I still have no idea what is going on, though I think that at this point I am realizing that God is real, really real. I’m going to skip some details as they are still obscure and confusing to me and I am not sure how to relay them without lots of explanation and history. At any rate, when the ordeal was done, which included something leaving me, I was rolling around on the floor clutching a bible to my chest and all I could say was, “God is real! God is real!”
I was sent home from work the next day because all I could say was “God is real, God is real.” The world suddenly made sense. Everything made sense. I understood who I was, what I was here for, what I was suppose to be doing and all of reality looked physically brighter. I was in love with life for the first time because for the first time life made sense. No one had told me about God, no one had coached me or explained anything to me, God had just revealed Himself to me and not just to my understanding but to my being. I knew what I knew more certainly then I knew anything else and suddenly nothing else mattered. I began to tell my friends that God was real and I expected only warmth and embrace from them, but instead I was met only with disapproval and indifference. That was hard, I had been brought to know the greatest thing imaginable and I was deeply happy.
I think that is about the whole of the “why: my experience.” I will start the next two soon.