Welcome, Pardon, Cleanse, Relieve

“Each time I’ve moved an inch toward God, He’s moved 10 feet toward me,” Dirk observes. But his journey hasn’t been easy. “My brothers were real party animals and I idolized them. I was the golden child who got great grades. I decided that wasn’t very cool. I wanted to get great grades and be a party animal, too.”

While in college, Dirk married and soon one of his brothers introduced the newlyweds to methamphetamine. College became a thing of the past. Dirk joined the Army Reserves and stayed clean for a while, but meth was hard to resist. “We were so young and vain. We thought we were bullet proof,” he admits. When meth began to dominate their lives, the marriage failed.

Dirk says joining Narcotics Anonymous was his first step toward God. “I went to NA a chest-thumping atheist, but I was amazed to see drug addicts who were clean and happy. When my sponsor told me I should pray, I started by praying, God if you’re there, and I don’t know if you are . . .”

Dirk met and married a recovering addict, but when hardship struck, temptation won again. “The bottom fell out. We were losing our house, selling our belongings, and stealing for drug money. I ended up spending some time in jail.” When the couple reunited, they repeated the old patterns. Soon Dirk’s wife went to jail and their 3-year-old daughter was taken away.

Ironically, Dirk’s brother was instrumental in his coming to Hope Ministries. “He had gotten sober in church,” Dirk explains. “He encouraged me to go to a faith-based recovery program. That was God.”

“My welcome to Hope Ministries’ Door of Faith was awesome. Cole (program director) took me where I was and talked to me where I was. God changed my life completely in three months. I take my sin personally now, because I’m hurting Someone I love—God.”

Dirk and his wife are excited about renewing their vows in church in 2007. “My wife got saved the first week she was in jail. We pray and share through the prison glass. I know now God’s plan is better than mine. He came to me on my own self-centered terms. First I believed in ‘god’ with a little ‘g,’ then a very distant God. Now I know He’s right here with me.”