ROOTED RENEGADE

My entire life people always said “Don’t do drugs”! Sure okay. Practice what you preach was what I always thought. It was a “do as I say not as I do” world that I grew up in. Born to addict parents, raised in a home where it was normal, and well it was what it was. I couldn’t really tell you the very first drug I was ever around because I was too young to remember. My parents were not stellar parents, and I can no longer fault them for that. I forgave them a long time ago. It is still part of my story, however, I wish I could change it but I can’t. Growing up in a volatile home life with parents who used drugs and cannot take care of you any better than they can take care of a house plant, well hey, not much a person can say about that now is there?

But there is…you see addiction changes a person. It changes the way they think, they way they act, it changes literally every thing about them. It changes how God created them in the first place. The biggest problem is that NO ONE tells you that growing up. The more I thought about it writing this post is that the only thing I was told growing up, was simply “Don’t Do Drugs”. I am at fault for that too because I didn’t know exactly how drugs as well as alcohol really change a person until I experienced it for myself…the consequences of following in my parents footsteps. You would think a child would want to steer clear of such things but there is an old saying “If you can’t beat them join them”. Sometimes we grow up masking the pain with the very same things our parents taught us to use to hide their own.

Psalm 139 talks about God forming us in our mother’s womb. How He, and He alone “fearfully and wonderfully made us” in verse 14. I have read this passage countless times and countless times I never fully grasped the true concept of its meaning until the other day when I got some test results back from my doctor. God truly knitted each one of us, uniquely together, each quite different from another, rarities in this world. He made sure our chemical makeups were perfect to His design for each one of us. That we were a flawless creation (yes I said flawless – because to Him we are flawless despite how the world may see us or how we may see ourselves). He did not rush on his blueprint of us, oh no, even if we think He did, He is sovereign, He alone knows the plans better than we do.

“So, God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God, he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Psalm 139:14

Sadly, we tend to change the blueprints as we get older. We think we know better than our Creator and we put things in our bodies that were never meant to be there in the first place. Chemicals. I wish when I was a child I would have known what was in the drugs I was putting in my body and when people told me “DON’T DO DRUGS” they told me what was in them. They explained to me beyond those three words and helped me deal with my pain. Instead, I lived years of my life destroying what God so beautifully created and changed his design with meth, alcohol, molly, cocaine, pills, ecstasy, hash, heroin (non IV), etc.

People don’t talk about what’s in the drugs they shove in their bodies when they are using. They don’t talk about it once they get clean usually because it is embarrassing. Well, I am coming up on 3 years clean and sober and I am beyond the embarrassment. If I am going to uphold to living an unashamed life then I am going to spread the word. I am going to shout it out and save another’s life if it will do so by choosing to not remain silent. Those drugs almost killed me. GOD SAVED ME! I WILL SHOUT ALL DAY LONG IF I HAVE TOO!

If you want to save someone, tell them the next time you talk to them about using drugs, that they are putting lighter fluid, battery acid, Drano, rat poison, fentanyl, etc into their bodies and that it causes things like Raynaud’s Syndrome (vascular condition), Pancreatic Cancer, GI Cancer, completely changing all the foods you eat because you develop food allergies, it causes your stomach lining to be eaten by ulcers and all kinds of stuff that you can’t see or you won’t notice until you get good and sober. It takes 24 months for your body to detox once you start getting clean off drugs and alcohol. It takes 24 -36 months for your mind to start working right again and new neuro-paths to start forming. You have to retrain your brain to act right essentially because it is used to acting “stuck on stupid”.

Don’t just say “DON’T DO DRUGS” to your kids! Explain what that means so they have a better understanding. Show them what it is made of and what it can do to their bodies, their skin, their organs so they at least can see the lasting effects. Don’t be shy about it, be real! Kids aren’t stupid these days. They don’t need to be treated like sheltered toddlers who need bumper guards on all the furniture. They have more internet access than most businesses! Just be 100! You just might save their lives as they get older!

It is time for all of us to take a stand in what is right. What we believe in and teach the truth about life. Not hide it. Jesus did not shy away from the truth instead He embraced it. He preached it. He went out to the masses and spread the Gospel because that was what He was sent here to do before His life was taken in place of ours. Should we not take a lesson from His life and each one teach one? I think we should!

So believe someone when they say addiction changes you! Some of them you can see on the surface. Some you cannot. Share you knowledge with others. Don’t harbor it inside like a secret. Get the word out because you could be saving someone’s life! People don’t know what they don’t know and sometimes it is up to us to help them.

Be the key and save a life!