A Life Divided
I had come to a fork in the road in my journey, and I knew I had to make a decision if I wanted to find freedom from my addiction. To either go all-in with the world or to go all-in with the Lord and fully surrender my life to Christ. I had lived the majority of my life for the world and had been left empty-handed, so I thought, why not go all-in with Jesus?
I don’t have many memories of my parents while they were married to each other. And the ones I do have are of them fighting and arguing - to a point where my dad would throw all my mom’s clothes into the street. My mom finally had enough and divorced him when I was five years old. My dad left and started a new family with another lady, and my mom met my stepdad soon after. I’ve never had a bad relationship with my stepdad, but for some reason, he was always very passive in my life. I found out later in life that my stepfather and mother had an unwritten deal that “she would take care of her kids and he would take care of his kids.” With my dad not in the picture and raising another family, my mom was always working, and my stepdad passive in my life; this left me feeling very unloved and unworthy. Not only that, but another boy sexually abused me, which further led to not feeling protected and loved by my parents.
My father started to come back into my life during my early teenage years. But at this point, he was a full-blown alcoholic. I desired a relationship with him so drinking with him was the only way I knew how to relate. Alcohol became pretty much an everyday thing for me from my teenage years through my mid-twenties. I always had good grades and held a job, so everyone in my circle encouraged me to live it up while I was young and get it “out of my system.” There were many times where I am not sure how I drove myself home or nights where my drinking would lead to other bad decisions like getting into fights or inappropriate sexual relationships.
After finishing undergrad at UTEP, I moved to College Station for graduate school. This was my first time being away from family in a place where I didn’t fit in at all. I began to struggle immediately and remember times where I would cry on my way home from class because I wasn’t sure what I was doing there. A classmate of mine invited me to this thing called “breakaway.” I didn’t have any friends, so I accepted his offer. I remember calling my mom and telling her how excited I was that someone invited me to go to a bar with them. Yeah, I had no idea what “breakaway” was. I met Casey that night and learned quickly that this was not a bar but a college ministry where thousands of college kids gathered to worship God. I had never seen anything like it before in my life! My only exposure to church was Catholicism at a young age. Going to Breakaway on Tuesday nights turned into going with Casey to Church on Sundays as well. During this time when I heard the gospel for the first time – that Jesus Christ died for me, so that my sins would be forgiven and that He desired to have a relationship with me. Although I made the decision to trust in Christ at that time, I didn’t truly understand what it meant to have a relationship with Him. I thought I could move forward living the way I wanted to as long as I went to church.
After graduate school, I moved to Dallas for a job, and that same friend Casey told me to check out The Porch, Watermark’s Young Adult ministry. After attending a few times, I made Watermark my church home! I went through the membership process and was placed in a community group. As we began meeting, I made sure to keep it at surface level. Just give them enough to think I was being authentic without saying too much to tip them off on how I was truly living. Honestly, I think I even had myself convinced I didn’t have a problem. The truth was, I was living a double life. I had one foot in the world and one foot in the church. I thought I could have it both ways! Go to church, live in community, and get wasted and sleep around.
As time went on, these guys started to catch on that maybe I wasn’t being fully truthful with them about how I was living. They would lean in and ask me if I had a drinking problem. I would become defensive and tell them “no.” But the Lord was working in my heart because it got it a point where I no longer enjoyed partying since I was living in sin, and I no longer enjoyed church since I was living a double life.
The drinking and bad decisions that came with it began to leave me feeling depressed, lonely, and hopeless. I tried to quit drinking a couple of times under my own strength, but I was never able to. I felt stuck. The thing I thought I had control of really had control of me. I remember falling on my knees in my apartment and crying out to God that I was tired of living this double life. I had come to a fork in the road in my journey, and I knew I had to make a decision if I wanted to find freedom from my addiction. To either go all-in with the world or to go all-in with the Lord and fully surrender my life to Christ. I had lived the majority of my life for the world and had been left empty-handed, so I thought, why not go all-in with Jesus?
On May 4th, 2014, after one last night of drinking, I made that decision to quit relying on myself, go all in and depend wholeheartedly on Jesus by surrendering to Him! But this meant I had to make some changes in my life! Ephesians 4:22-24 says,
“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
This meant that if I wanted to find freedom, I was going to have to make some changes to my playground and playmates. That was almost seven years ago, and by the grace of God, I haven’t turned back to drinking since.
Currently, I am staff here at CityBridge. God has been revealing more and more just how good He is and how much I need Him every day. This growing self-awareness of my brokenness has opened my eyes to other struggles such as people-pleasing, perfectionism, pride, and unforgiveness, especially towards those that are closest to me – my family. I reached out to my mom and sister recently to ask them to forgive me for not loving them the way I should have and for harboring unforgiveness towards them. For the first time in my 33 years of life, we actually feel like a family. I allowed the enemy to rob me of years of joy by holding onto years of unforgiveness.
Because of how the Lord has used this church family to change my life, I want to see other experience the goodness of our King. When I am not here at CityBridge, you can catch me at 1418 Coffeeshop building relationships. I’ve meet met a guy from Brazil who grew up Catholic, and after more than a year, he finally accepted my invitation and came for Good Friday last week; I’ve gotten to witness to a couple of Jehovah Witnesses (I’ve always wanted to do that); and at the moment, I am building a relationship with a former Pastor who is struggling to find his identity. As much as I love the CityBridge family, I have a burning desire to return home to El Paso in the near future to plant a local church so that others can experience God’s grace and mercy through the local church. If you are new to this place, welcome! This is a safe place to confess and be known for who you really are, and I promise you your life will never be the same if you answer the high call to follow Jesus!
