Growing up, I was a proud mama’s boy. My mom did everything she could to raise me right; she had me in church four times a week, always teaching me about God and doing her best to keep me on the right path. My dad, on the other hand, was in prison for the first ten years of my life. When I got to spend weekends with him, it was like stepping into a whole different world - a world without rules. That is when I started learning about things I was not ready for: sex, smoking, and drinking. I loved those weekends, not realizing how much damage they were planting in my young heart.
I lost my hair due to a diagnosis of alopecia when I was about 10 or 11, making me feel like an outsider. People stared, made fun of me, and I carried a deep sense of emptiness. I started smoking weed young - hiding it from my mom - thinking it helped fill that hole. Then I started chasing money, but in all the wrong ways. I got involved in selling drugs, robbing people, and looked up to people I had no business admiring, friends, cousins, my dad, even my uncle, who was a big-time kingpin in Milwaukee. He is now serving a double life sentence plus 40 years. He has given his life to Christ, giving him hope of being released someday.
My addiction took root in 7th grade when I started smoking weed. By high school, I was hooked on Percocet. For the next 12 to 13 years, I lived in a fog of drugs, frauds, guns, shootouts, jail time, and near-death experiences, including accidentally shooting myself and surviving multiple car wrecks. I dropped out of school, joined a gang, and became a person I did not even recognize. I lost trust with my family, wrecked relationships, and felt like I had no purpose. I forgot that I was a child of God.
Since joining the program,
“Now, I have peace. I have joy. I have purpose...And I have a future.”
Everything changed when I found out I had a baby on the way, and it hit me hard. I didn’t want my daughter to grow up without a father like I did. I saw how much pain I was putting my fiancée and family through, and I knew if I kept living the way I was, I would end up dead or in prison for a long time. That's when I cried out to God and said, “Not my will, Lord, but Yours be done.”
I came to Adult & Teen Challenge Northeastern Wisconsin because I needed real change. I needed hope, purpose, and the kind of peace that only Jesus can give. I remembered the seeds my mom had planted in me all those years ago in church, and I came back to God. Since being at ATCNEW, everything has changed. I have surrendered my life to God, and now I walk in the light of who I truly am, a child of the King. My relationship with my family is being restored. I’m in my daughter’s life. I got to see her be born and dedicate her to the Lord. My credit is improving, I have goals for the future, and most importantly, I have a sound mind, and a heart filled with hope.
I want to finish my GED, go to college for leadership, buy a car and a house, and marry my fiancée. I want to raise my daughter to know God and give back to ATCNEW and others who are where I once was. I want to be a man after God’s own heart—a good father, son, friend, and leader.
I’ve been to treatment before—once in Milwaukee’s Adult & Teen Challenge—but I wasn’t ready. This time, I’m all in. God used a man named Anthony to point me to ATCNEW, but it was really the Lord who brought me here. Now, I have peace. I have joy. I have purpose. And I have a future.