EVEN IN MY LONELINESS                    Cy L. Nunez

I WAS NEVER ALONE   (1)                 Servant of the Lord

I was 39 years old when I sat down in front of Hollywood Video; setting up for a few hours of panhandling. I started reading the latest crime novel that I stole from the store just down the street. A group of teenagers came up to me and with smiles and genuine looks of concern they began to tell me about the Love of Jesus. They couldn’t have known that long before I was a young man at a church altar professing my undying love and devotion to God, (just another broken promise made in a long line of broken promises). They took the time to read the sign I attached to my shopping cart. The sign read, “Homeless and Helpless, God Bless You.” My cart held most of what I owned at the time, things too valuable for me to leave behind at camp and risk someone taking them, and tied to the sides were bags that held recyclables, backpacks filled with my clothes and plastic shopping bags carrying food found in a grocery store dumpster. They asked me many questions, all of which were too embarrassing to answer with any real honesty. One young girl who must have been no older than 16, but who seemed to be the boldest of the bunch, made me promise that if she gave me money I was not to buy booze or drugs with it and I was to allow her to pray for me. I agreed and she laid her hand on my shoulder and prayed. I don’t remember the words or the theme of her prayer but what I do remember is that when I went to spend that money on drugs and booze I didn’t feel good about breaking my promise to her. That feeling never left me. Many times afterward Christians would come up to me and share with me the love of Jesus. And like every time before I wouldn’t tell them I was a backslidden Christian. I guess because I was ashamed. They would give me money and pray for me, I always bought drugs with the money and I never felt good about it. But I couldn’t help myself, I was controlled by my addiction and bound to it by guilt.

Growing up without a father was just the start in life that I had been given.  Not that I was unhappy, I have many fond memories of my childhood. But there were times when I needed someone around to help me make the right choices and teach me when I made the wrong ones. Though I had never known my father my four older siblings had, and they believed we were better off without him.

My mother on the other hand is a wonderful woman, our house was always filled with love and even to this day we are all very close because of that love. But Mom had to work to keep us all fed and housed and again there were times when I needed advice or guidance. My life wasn’t without hardship but even in those times she was able to provide for our needs. I remember going to the fields and orchards to work with her and my brothers and sisters, we would all either pick fruit and nuts or work in the sheds together. But raising five kids alone in the nineteen-sixties and seventies was not easy for her. Going to adult school for a High School Diploma and having to work multiple jobs made it that much harder and kept her from being able to raise us as she would have if circumstances were different. Mom was, and still is, the one person I admire most of all, it was she who first showed me what love really is, you make sacrifices for those you love.

I grew up fast and without any real supervision. You might say I was an independent child from the very beginning of my school life. I often took care of myself. I would get myself up, make my own breakfast and walk myself to school. I liked being independent it made me feel older and smarter. However it was this attitude of self-reliance that kept me from God for so long.

My brother Philip accepted Jesus as his Savior while I was still a young teenager. When we would see each other on the street he would witness to me and tell me of the Love of God. At that time we were not living together, he was already married and living away from home. He would tell me that I needed to change and allow God to save my soul. My response would be one of self-righteous denial or indignation. I would tell him I didn’t need Jesus because there was nothing wrong with me. I would say, “My life isn’t hurting anyone!” Finally I would just tell him to take his brainwashed, stupid ideas and leave me alone. But being the true disciple then, just as he is today, he never did let up.

Even though I managed to stay out of any real trouble up till then I was still already deep into drug addiction and alcoholism. I practiced a form of idolatry by worshipping heavy-metal rock artists and the messages in their music. This eventually led to open satanic worship.

Ten years went by, and in that time I had made the same mistakes over and over again, I was kicked off the track team, then the football team and finally I was kicked out of High School. By then I was heavily addicted to cocaine. After getting my High School Equivalency I joined the Army. I believed that in the Army I would develop the disciplines that would allow me to stay clean from drugs. It didn’t take long, just two short years, to be kicked out of the Army for smoking pot. While there I did learned some things, like how to be a functioning alcoholic or what kind of immoral life I can have without any boundaries as long as I didn’t break any of man’s laws. But I had no regard for God’s law.

The night my brother led me to Jesus I was 25 years old and I had no future. I was living with my mother in a small one-bedroom apartment, still using the same drugs, still drinking every night and still without a job. I had been kicked out of my step-father’s home at 15, high school at the age of 16, at 22 kicked out of the Army and fired or quit every job I had after that. I was hurting, hopeless and alone.

I had done many things in my life that I was not proud of, but at that time, in that hour, all the wrong in my life came to a head. As I was getting ready to go out to the bars to hustle beers on the pool table my brother was witnessing to me about how Jesus can fill the emptiness in my life. I got angry at him and said many mean and hurtful things to him to shut him up, at the time he too was staying at my mother’s house because his marriage was in trouble because of his bad choices, I was sure to point them all out too. But he never denied his wrongdoing he just kept talking about the forgiveness and grace of God. Maybe by saying it to me he was also reminding himself of God’s unconditional (Agape) Love. 

When I walked in the door of my mother’s apartment after a night in the bars where I had gotten so drunk and high on drugs and made such unforgettable mistakes that all self esteem and self worth had left me, my brother was there to greet me. He told me that no matter what I had done, no matter what I had become and no matter what I believed about myself, Jesus still loved me was willing to forgive me and He still wanted to have a relationship with me. And what I wanted more than anything else I had ever wanted before was for it to be true. So I allowed myself to believe and ask God into my life. That night we went around the apartment and found every cigarette butt, every dirty magazine and anything else we could find that represented who I used to be and flushed them down the toilet or threw them into the dumpster outside. I was a new man and from that day on my life was never the same again!

Each day I grew in the Lord. For over a year I would go to church, read my Bible and pray. God had done so much in my life in such a short time that there was nothing I would not do for Him and His kingdom. But there was one thing I asked for that He did not give me. For many months I prayed. Each day I was faithful to God in my life and in this prayer. I lived in the deliverance from my past and enjoyed the gifts of each new day always hopeful for the day when God would answer my prayer and grant me a particular woman to be my wife.

When the day came that I learned His answer was “No” I forsook all that He had already given me and like the spoiled child I had become, I rebelled. I no longer prayed, I stopped fasting and even stopped believing that God was real. And if He was real then He was unconcerned with mere mortals. And so I asked the question, does He really love us like He claims He does?

One week later I was in a bar drinking and looking to find someone to love. I had turned my back on God and decided that if I can’t pick my wife with Him, then I’ll have to leave God and find my own wife. That night I did meet someone, she was someone from my past, and it would be 7 years before I would come back to the Lord.

After a brief affair we had my son Robert. It’s hard to see this event as part of my backslidden life, because aside from Jesus, he is the best person that has ever come into my life. Being a father and having this little boy love me and want to be with me were the greatest gifts God had ever given me. It was time to do the right thing so I tried to make it work with his mother. The next few years were hard to deal with. I was so totally in love with my son but yet struggled with the relationship with his mother. My drug use only got worse as the years passed. If not for her family things would have fallen apart long before. The day did come though when drugs would again win out over what is right and what is good. And I would lose it all.

My son Robert stood there in the middle of the room, 5 years old and scared. He cried and screamed for me not to leave, he begged me to stay. His mother had given me an ultimatum, flush the drugs or leave. The look on his face when I turned away and left will always be in my heart. The feeling of abandonment, I prayed, would one day leave his.

That single act and the guilt I carried because of it are what led me down a path of destruction that would claim everything. From my precious son to my dignity, all would be sacrificed upon the altar of addiction and the remorse that comes after. I was now homeless. I might have been able to find help or at the very least shelter with a family member but I knew that would mean that I would have to change. The guilt of what I had done to my son would not allow me to help myself. I didn’t want to change.

Another 2 years would pass before I would finally reach out to God, and like the prodigal son, come back a broken man. By then I was being hunted by drug dealers and running scared. All I had left was my truck and my Bible. One night after a day of selling drugs on the streets of Salinas California some men were after me to remind me who really ran the streets. I was afraid for my life and tired of running so I reached out to God. I remember thinking of whom to call, my brothers, my sister, maybe some friends, someone to help me to get my life back in order. No. None of them could help me. I knew only Jesus was able to save me from myself. So I called my Pastor.

I went back to my hometown of Hollister to stay in a friend’s motor home until the next day when I was to meet my Pastor. After I finished the drugs I had with me I wanted to go right back to Salinas and start all over again. The devil spoke lie after lie to me to try and get me to return to my sin. But the prayers of a righteous man did much to keep me and lead me.

As I sat there in that motor home struggling with the desire to get clean and the equally powerful desire to get high, I decided to go to the church and wait for my Pastor to show. As I parked my truck in the parking lot I saw that my Pastor’s car was already there. It was about 5:30 Easter Sunday morning. The door to the church was open and I walked into the sanctuary to find him there praying loudly to God. He was pacing in front of the altar and as he turned I could see that his face was wet with tears. When I asked what he was doing there so early he said that he had been praying for me since our phone call hours earlier. It was at that moment that I learned what prayer really was, it came from the heart and it turned drug addicts into repentant souls.

That Easter Pastor Manuel made room for me in his family. We all went to church that morning and a picnic at the park with the rest of the congregation later that day. My mind was at rest but my heart was still in the street. For some reason that until this day I cannot understand why, I wished I could go back and continue to live the life I hated. Perhaps I didn’t want to be forgiven or forgive myself for what I had done to my son. Or maybe I was just afraid that once God began to restore our relationship I would run out on him again. Maybe it is all of the above. All I do know is that it didn’t last long. Only 8 months would pass before I would leave again.

That evening my Pastor took me to Stockton and placed me into a Christian men’s home that was run by the church fellowship. While there I spent most of my time in God’s Word, in prayer and in the kitchen as the cook. It was during these months that I learned that though I knew more about God now and even though I desired to get closer to Him, as a backslider it wasn’t going to be easy. I struggled with regaining that level of devotion one only finds in a first love relationship. After six months I graduated and went back home only to continue to struggle with submission and devotion issues.

Even so God immediately began a work in my life. He did what can only be considered a miracle and granted me joint legal custody of my son who was now 7. In court I faced a battle that I was just not equipped to win. All opposition was stacked against me. As the defendant in a family court case I had to prove that I was not a danger to my son and that I was a fit parent. I also had to disprove the many lies that were said against me. When it was all over God had been faithful and made it so that the door was open to begin to build on the shattered relationship between my son and me. Even now the decision made on that day in court enables us to have time together to stay close and grow even closer.

I was free from drugs and my life was coming together but the street life haunted my every night. I loved God but I had also fallen in love with the street life. The thing I feared most had happened. I again abandoned God and the new relationship I was having with my son. I went right back to the streets I left just months before. Only this time it got worse.