EVEN IN MY LONELINESS L. Nunez
I WAS NEVER ALONE (2) Servant of the Lord
Another five years would go by before I would again try to get it right. By now I was living in a makeshift shelter beside a polluted canal, I had been locked up in jail 5 times, lost everything I had ever owned in my entire life and had become addicted to heroin. I have had guns pointed at me, knives placed at my throat and beaten to the edge of unconsciousness more than once. I had also done these same things to others all in the name of drugs, money and gangs. But in the end I was alone.
Each night I would go through the ritual of preparing my drugs and cry as I injected them into my veins. Sometimes the tears would cloud my vision and I would have to wipe them away so I could see what I was doing. After many months of stealing and searching for drugs I began to give up on ever being happy again. The memory of my son standing in that room would be the last thing on my mind night after night. I began to pray that God would just allow me to die in my sleep and end my misery. But each morning I would wake and face having to do it all over again. This went on for weeks and I know that God was listening because as the days past my desire for death lessened and my desire to live again with Him grew. One night I prayed a new prayer. I still went through the same ritual and still cried but this time I prayed for life and not death.
13 years after praying with my brother in my mother¡¯s apartment for God to come into my life, He was still there. By looking at me one would never believe that I had at one time lived for the King of Glory. I was a pitiful drug addict and petty thief. I was wasted away and emaciated, unclean and unkept, but God still called me son. My brother spoke words to me on that day in my mother¡¯s apartment that were true back then, true that day and remain true still today, ¡°No matter what I had done, no matter what I had become and no matter what I believed about myself, Jesus still loved me and He still wanted to have a relationship with me.¡±
The next day I made my way to a rehab center and was able to get a bed. I kicked heroin and began to attend Narcotics Anonymous meetings and group sessions with other drug addicts. But after knowing the true Liberator nothing else would ever compare. What concerned me was no matter how long you were free from addiction 1 day or 10 years you were still considered an addict according to their teachings. I just could not go through life an addict. I knew that with Jesus once you were set free you were free indeed. So I did the only thing that made sense to me during that whole time. I gave my life to Jesus, and got saved. Another six months would go by and again I would find myself struggling with reaching that point where God is your one true love. I was soon homeless and addicted to heroin again.
By then my son was 10 years old and he may have been able to forgive me leaving him the first time but not over and over again. He resented me for leaving and not contacting him for years. By now I had caused too much damage to our relationship. Every time I saw him or talked to him he would seek reassurance that I was there for good this time. I promised him that I was and knew that it was only a matter of time before I left again.
It wasn¡¯t that I no longer loved my son; I loved him just as much as I ever had. But guilt weighed heavily on my heart. What I saw in my abandonment of my son with my eyes I knew in my spirit I also did to God. How could it ever be the same again? How could either of them ever love me again? Why would they want me back? I had become an embarrassment and a disgrace. It was what I wanted but I believed it was also what I didn¡¯t deserve. But just as before God would make a way for me to be found when the time was right.
In the short time I spent in the rehab center I made a friend named Mike. After trusting my life to Christ I began to witness to him. Each Sunday I would invite him to church with me. And each week he would politely refuse. But one day he agreed to go with his wife who was a Christian. By then I had left the program and was living with some single men from the church in an apartment run by the ministry. I wouldn¡¯t see Mike again after that for 2 years.
My son was now 12, I was now homeless for 7 years and I had known God as my Savior for 14 years. I was 39 years old. For the last 2 years after leaving yet again, I was now at the lowest point of my life. How can someone get any lower than I already had one might ask? Hard to figure out but it did happen. I could no longer support my habit on the streets selling drugs because of all the people I burned and I was now considered a gang dropout. It just became too dangerous for me to be out there. I didn¡¯t want to steal any more for my drug money because I had too many prior convictions that by now the time didn¡¯t fit the crime, my next stop was prison for even the smallest item taken. So I was reduced to beg for my money or to dig in the trash for recyclables. I spent my days pushing around a shopping cart, panhandling and dumpster diving. I lived in a small area behind a dumpster in a shopping center on the south side of Salinas California.
For 2 years I was able to hide from everyone that might recognize me by letting my hair and beard grow out. I would live like an animal and no doubt smelled like one too. I was unclean, stooped over by shame and was shunned by most people I encountered in my day. But God always knew where I was at all times. And when my heart began to break He was there to remind me of His love for me. The first to find me was my niece. She caught up to me when I was head and shoulders deep in a garbage can in front of Starbucks trying to reach an elusive can at the bottom. Once I was found God began His work on my heart. My other nieces and nephews would seek me out and call out to me. They would tell me that they loved me and missed me. They would remind me of the times when I was in church, they would say, ¡°God still has a plan for your life Uncle Cy¡±. And did I mention that they are all Christians? At night I felt their prayers reach my heart and I would ache for Jesus. Every night I would think of my son and it hurt. Alcohol and drugs would mask the pain for a while but it always came back.
I began to pray again. When I would think of my son who was now growing up without me I would pray for my life back. ¡°Just make things like they used to be,¡± I would ask. Of course that was impossible, time had past and you can¡¯t get back time. But He could make them good again, and in some ways even better. It was time! God was going to call me once again for His purposes.
One day I was panhandling in front of a supermarket and Mike came up to me and thanked me for all the times I witnessed to him. During these last 2 years since that day in church when I saw him last, many things had been going on in his life as well. He left the rehab after I had and eventually ended up in jail. While he was there he would think of all the things we talked about and he began to read the Bible. His wife began to attend church regularly and when he was released from jail he went with her and accepted Jesus as his Savior. That was eight months prior. He began to witness to me about God¡¯s forgiveness and love and invite me to his church. I remembered how I felt when he would turn down my invitations so I would say yes to him not wanting to cause him the same grief. I was also ripe for the picking. God had been working on my heart for a few weeks now. He would send people to me over and over again. Strangers would share the Gospel with me and even my old Pastors would find me and witness to me but they were all just the warm-up team before the real player arrived.
Mike showed me that God really was involved in my life. The fact that Mike was someone I witnessed to in the past and had spent many hours praying for was not lost on me. Even though I had not always lived for Jesus in the last 14 years since meeting Him, I never felt apart from Him. In my loneliness I knew of His presence but refused His companionship. It wasn¡¯t that he left me or even that I left Him. That just could not happen even if I wanted it to. I began to realize that God had set this up long before. That He really hadn¡¯t left me or forsaken me.
Just because I wanted to once again be with my son or because I just wanted to be clean, or just because I again wanted to be in the presence of God¡¯s love didn¡¯t mean that I was ready to just jump into Mike¡¯s car and speed of to church. I agreed to go with him every time he asked but never went. Mike showed me something that in the end saved my life; he was faithful.
For weeks he would come to where I camped and find me to take me to church and every time I would apologize and refuse. Either I was too high, looking to get high or sick because I wasn¡¯t high. And each time he would pray for me and invite me again for the next service. Again I would say OK and again he would show up only to be stood up again. Finally I felt that to continue to lead him on was wrong and asked him to give me his number. I would call him when I needed him. Soon after he gave me the number I lost it after only having looked at it once.
Weeks would pass and my heart would grow heavy with the guilt of my son. Every time I would hear someone tell me of Jesus the pain would go deeper and deeper in my heart. I had to do something to make it right. I tried to kick heroin on my own, to do it my way. I didn¡¯t want to go to another Christian drug program I didn¡¯t want to again be guilty of backsliding.
I got very sick and began to have seizures and internal bleeding. As the days past I got weaker until I was no longer able to stand or even to see clearly. I knew I was dying. As I lie there fighting for every breath, I began to pray a prayer of desperation. ¡°God I call upon your promise that who so ever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, so I call on the name of Jesus now. Save me, give me life again or forgive me let me die and take me to Heaven¡±! At that moment Mike¡¯s phone number came back to me and I remembered it! I struggled to my feet and literally crawled along the wall to the phone across the shopping center and called him. It was only minutes later that I was in my sister house clean, warm and healed. Not fully recovered, but getting stronger every minute.
Three weeks later I was in San Francisco enrolled in Teen Challenge and getting rooted in my relationship with God. During all those years outside of God¡¯s will I learned something that will always be the strength of my heart. It didn¡¯t matter how far from God I tried to get He was always there. The day I asked Him to come into my heart He came to stay. And my life has never been the same. I could have lived the same life never knowing God and it would have meant nothing to me. But knowing Jesus and living as I did I learn that you could never be happy living the lie while having knowledge of the Truth.
Today God has me traveling the road of renewal and restoration. By restoring the lost relationship I once had with Him He has enabled me, through San Francisco Teen Challenge, to get back the drive and willingness to succeed in life. I am enrolled in Global University now, studying online Bible courses working towards the goal of being a Minister of the Gospel. It is my wish to work with others who also find themselves lost and without hope, to reach out to all who are ¡°homeless¡± or ¡°helpless¡±. I know that there is nothing He cannot do for the countless others out there who go through their daily lives searching for that elusive ingredient that will make all the pain go away because God was able to bring me from almost total ruin, a time in my life where I had nothing to look forward to except misery and loneliness.
I am now working full-time here at Teen Challenge in San Francisco as the Center¡¯s Intake Coordinator and Development Supervisor. God is equipping me to become an effective witness to the lost by teaching me every day how to better reach those who are caught in a life of drug addiction and alcoholism through the message of His Gospel. As God opened new doors into the jails and juvenile halls we can now reach the ones who are locked into a system that keeps them on a never-ending cycle of failure, defeat and bondage.
The truth is, drugs, alcohol, or secluding oneself from others, is only a temporary solution to a permanent problem. I have found that allowing my problems to be exposed enables me to deal with them in a way that is in line with the teachings in God¡¯s Word. Through the personal guidance I receive from my relationship with Christ I am now more able to face the challenges of life, and am hopeful of a promising and rewarding future.
I spent so much time just allowing life to slip on by that many years have been lost, or so it would seem. But I believe that even in all that time spent on the streets, homeless and drug addicted, in all of the time spent outside of the will of God, I have learned one solid truth, ¡°God never will leave you or forsake you,¡±
I am one of the richest men I know, because when I begged for something as empty and absent of value such as death, He granted me the richness of an abundant life in Christ instead! He found me in the mess I was in and redeemed my soul to Himself, and for this I am so very thankful.
Servant of the Lord