The Restoration of Salvation Or (My Story)

The Restoration of Salvation Or (My Story)

“The Lord will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten…” –Joel 2:25


In the second book of Joel it speaks about how if God’s people will turn back to Him He will restore them. Locusts had come and destroyed their land, and He promises to restore what they had devoured up in their destroying the land.

Now, I know you may be wondering where I am going with this talk about locusts and promises of restoration. In a metaphorical sense locusts had destroyed my life. I come from a broken home.

I have an older sister, Amanda, who is 29 with a family of her own now. I am the second oldest. Then I have a little brother and sister who are twins, and they are 18. Our parents were good parents, but in 1992 things went downhill. In October of ’92 my dad was covered up by a rock in the coal mines. He survived but by the grace of God. He was in and out of hospitals and had multiple surgeries. It was there that he developed an addiction to the pain medication. Now before this my parents were never addicts. They smoked pot and drank while in high school and occasionally afterwards. But while my dad was recovering from his accident he became addicted and thus got my mom into his addiction too. Then in 1995 he got busted for selling pot. So for the next 8 to 10 years he was in and out of jail for various things; He was an alcoholic and spent time in jail for various DUIs being one.

While he was in jail we were left with our mom, who was always gone. My older sister had already left home and had a baby when she was 17 and a senior in high school. My mom was always out late getting drugs and would stay gone for hours while it was just me and the twins at home. So you can see that at a very early age I was forced to grow up and become the man of the house. I raised my little brother and sister.

When my dad was out of jail, the various times that he was out of jail, he and my mom would fight. And with them it got physical. My younger siblings and I would just shut ourselves in a room and cry while they fought it out sometimes even on school nights. There were times when there was not a lot of food in the house because our parents wasted it on their addictions to drugs and alcohol. In 1998 we lost our house because my mom had not been paying the payments so we moved into a trailer park.

Now this all went on for years. The same old cycle over and over. My younger siblings and I just looked out for one another. But I tell you this because it is just the introduction to how things got worse and my spiritual journey has come about due to all of this.

February 8, 2001 I can remember that day like it was yesterday. I had in-school suspension that day for cutting up in class, and I had gotten sick. I checked out of school early that day and spent the rest of the day at home. My dad was out of jail at this time. Later that night my younger siblings and I were at home with our dad passed out in the living room. Our mom was at some neighbors. Then came a knock at the door, it was our friend Jesse. We answered it and he said, “Your mom is lying dead in Dee’s kitchen floor.” We woke up our dad and rushed to find her overdosed from an 80 milligram OxyContin. She had stopped breathing multiple times but the people there had brought her back. I just got my little brother and sister out of there because they were crying and really scared. The EMTs arrived and took her to the ER. Meanwhile, I called my older sister and she came and picked us up. The next day we went to visit our mom at the Detox Center. Then my sister petitioned the court to let us stay with her. And the court granted her a month I think, and then we returned to live with our parents.

One day my younger siblings and I were out playing. Our parents were not home. My little brother had falling into a creek and had gotten a little wet. So I sent him home to change. But when he got to the house there was a police officer looking for my dad to serve him some papers. He noticed my brother was wet and that we were without supervision. He rounded us all up and took us to social services. That night we spent the night in a foster home. It was the worst night of my life. I laid awake worried about my little brother and sister and our futures as my little brother cried himself to sleep beside me. Thankfully, my older sister had been reached and the next day we were given over to her in a custody hearing in court.

Things started to be better when we started living with our sister who had two kids of her own. But it was not too long before things between she and her husband started getting out of hand. The fighting physically had started between them. My sister was stressed out and put on Klonopin. She, too, became an alcoholic. She and her husband went out on each other just as my parents had. In October of 2001 my brother-in-law found out that she had been cheating on him with her high school boyfriend. The fight was so bad that the law was called. My dad was in jail again during this time. We had to go to court again and the court gave us time to find somewhere else to live because my sister was to lose physical custody. At first it looked like we were going to a foster home, but a couple in my church told us about a place called Mountain Mission School. So we applied to get into Mt. Mission which is a home, school, and church for children in situations like the one we found ourselves. So we went and took a tour of Mt. Mission and applied. We got accepted due to our dire situation. So on December 21, 2001 we left home and moved into Mt. Mission.

I had been saved when I was a little boy. But I had never been baptized. About two months into being at Mt. Mission my younger siblings and I got baptized. It was February 6, 2002 two days before a year of my mom’s overdose that my younger siblings and I accepted Christ and were baptized.

Now that would you expect to be the end of the paper. But I have found that spiritual journeys are lifelong and there is more to say.

I was in 8th grade going into Mt. Mission, but due to my own stubbornness and refusal to do my homework I failed the 8th grade that year. I passed the next year and went on to 9th grade. Then I did the same thing again and failed the 9th grade.

While at Mt. Mission I fought and fought the staff. I was disrespectful and caused problems. I had a chip on my shoulder. I was a very, very angry and bitter young boy. I felt wronged. I was hurting. I hated Mt. Mission and wanted nothing more to leave. But things at home were still the same and even worse. My older sister had gotten drunk and wrecked her car with her kids in it. She was then enrolled in Teen Challenge of Chattanooga. My brother-in-law got the kids and was still into drinking and doping too. My parents were still the same. So I had no way out but to tough it out at Mt. Mission.

I do remember a few years after being there one Sunday one staff member spoke about being broken by God. And he had us pray at the end that if we really wanted to be broken by God to pray along with him, to pray that God would take over our lives and break us. He warned that if one prayers this prayer that God would follow through. He was right. It was there that God began to slowly get my attention.

My sophomore year I was 18 which is about the time I said that prayer. That year was a tough year for me. But 19 came and it was tougher. I had been dating a girl I really loved for about 7 months. I turned 19 on May 11 of 2006 and a few weeks later on June 3 I had to have surgery for a ruptured appendix. I was still at Mt. Mission but home for summer break. So I stayed with my mom. Now she had an apartment that my dad and she had gotten together. But in April of 2006 he left her for another woman and divorced her. He had gotten out of jail that prior December. He had been somber and was doing right. But my mom was just fighting him. She stayed messed up and drunk all the time. He wanted out of that. So he left. And he has been somber now for 3 years. So when I was sick I stayed with her. She would get so messed up and just make me so mad. I was still bitter and angry. My girlfriend Maranda had broken up with me. And that had just made things worse. So I headed back to Mt. Mission that year for my junior year very angry and bitter. I goofed off more in school that year. But later on in the year I began to realize, because of Maranda, that my anger and bitterness was pushing those I love the most away from me. God had used her to show me that. She and I got back together for a little while longer. And she helped me a lot in those months. I learned a lot from her that is for sure. I ended up being in jeopardy over becoming a senior. But due to the president’s grace they let me be a senior with certain requirements. While I was 19 God got a hold of me. He showed me that I was pushing people away, that I was copping out, and that I was throwing my life away. Thankfully, he sent me people like Maranda and the staff at Mt. Mission to love me and show me what I truly looked like. And they loved me through it all.

My senior year of Mt. Mission came, and I worked hard all year. And as of May 30, 2008 I am a very proud graduate of Mt. Mission School. I guess one could say I have come a long way. But God had to kick me along at times. Now I am a freshman at Johnson Bible College and loving it!
God has restored, is restoring, and will continue to restore my life to me. Joel 2:25 means so much to me because God has followed through with that promise in my life. Metaphorically, the locusts came and robbed me of a childhood, but with my willingness to let Him work God is restoring that. I had to let go of that attitude of always wanting to be in charge and be the authority where I grew up being the authority with my younger siblings. And it is a daily battle. God is still breaking me. In love there must be a death, the death to one’s self. And that is a daily thing. I have been through a lot in my young life. I have seen things that others my age have not. But even though I had a bad childhood for the most part, I am glad I went through it all. God has brought me though it all. He used it to make me who I am today. Everything happens for a reason. God is in the business of restoration. My older sister and her husband are now happily back together with their kids doing very well in Chattanooga. My dad is living with another woman and is not married, but has been somber from pills and beer for 3 years now. The only one who has not allowed God’s work to be done in her is my mom. She is in very bad shape. She lives in a motel room. She drinks all the time and still gets messed up on various types of pills. But we pray that she will let God in and free her from those addictions! It is so hard to deal with her. None of us want anything to do with her because she is messed up more than she is straight. It is hard to deal with that, to want to shun your own mother. It just angers me that she and my dad messed things up with us and she wants to continue to do that even now that her kids are all grown. But I have learned that you cannot help people like that until they first want to help themselves.

With God’s restoration you must be willing to work with Him. He is not going to come in and take care of everything. It is going to cost you something. He expects you to do your part. With me I had to let that hurt, anger, and bitterness go and let God come and heal me. I had to forgive and go on with my life. And that is where I am now. I pray that God will continue to break me and show ways to surrender to Him. My number one goal in life is to cultivate a relationship with Christ. This paper does not tell it all for me. I could tell more and get in detail about all that has happened to me. And I would need a book to tell how God has be so good to me. Yes, the Enemy comes and steals from us sometimes, but God is faithful to repay and restore. In His salvation we find restoration of our lives, our hearts, our minds, and our souls.


“…He restores my soul…” –Psalms 23:3