Tad's Story  -  Part 2     The Choices I Made Led to Death

                   
 song lyrics

I remember getting one more DJ job.  After work, I got a cab, bought a small rock, and the only motel open on the Friday night was in Bacliff, right across from the ocean.  I smoked that thing and nothing happened.  When I woke up around 12, I walked outside with nothing – no money – and no where to go.  I looked up into the sky, and I said, “Ok, God, you got me where you want me.  I’ve got to ask you for help”.  Instantly, I had a clear knowing of what I was supposed to do.  I was to get a ride from the people leaving the hotel, stay at an acquaintance’ home in Pasadena that night, and then go into a Christian-based recovery place called “The Shoulders”. 

I found out that I was more concerned about what other people thought than I did about my own security.  Two paroled alcoholics wanted me to sneak in some liquor on my day off after being there for two months.  Well, I did.  And I got kicked out.  But seeing this revealed, I was handed a book I recommend to anyone, “Search for Significance”, by Robert McGee.  I opened that book up the night before I had to leave, and I read it all night long into the morning.  I lived a life of lies, and that book blew me away!

Sugarcreek Baptist Church paid for my part to continue recovery at “The Friendship Ranch”.  This place was out in the range; barns, horse stables, a lake, a little old-fashioned church on the premises, like going back 100 years. I was beginning to become a little more humble, just
  Within the final week before leaving, I saved some money and  in my dreams, my mind, the heavy compulsion, the adrenaline flowing – I could not change what had started and continued.  I was planning to buy some more crack and smoke it up big time.  I missed my ride back and had to hitchhike back.  Here I was – cocaine in my system big time.  I didn’t get in any trouble, and no one suspected that I relapsed. 

There were a bunch of guys that were going to The Star of Hope Living Quarters to apply for living there.  I thought I ought to go too.  I did, and when I got there, I found out that everyone would get tested as part of the conditions of applying.  Can you picture that?  I didn’t have to go, but I guess God didn’t want me to get by with it. 

I got kicked out the next day with a month still left to go.  My cousin helped and got me to the Veteran’s Hospital, and I told them that I could not leave there, that I had to get into their recovery program or I would end up using.  So I spent the night without any money on a chair in the lobby of the hospital.  The next day, they let me in on the 6th floor.  I made it that month and went into another halfway house.  Relapsed after three months.  Two more places – relapsing between both and after, I moved back into society and into a Christian friend’s apartment through the help of  Houston Church.  That apartment complex was full of crack sellers and I ended running off some new friends I made and moved into my own apartment

Two years in recovery places, each time I messed up, I felt Jesus saying to me, “Don’t worry, Tad, I’m here.  I love you, and we’re going to make it.  Don’t give on me and I won’t give up on you.  Just take a shower and turn away from it.”  I had a mentor, and every time I relapsed, I told him.  And every time, he would turn around and say, “Well, did you repent and turn away from it, on gone forward? Well, then it’s gone.  I got to experience no judging and a freedom to confess my sins, and go forward – just when I really needed that.  I was led to these small apartments and met my best friend, Florence Doss.  She is about 83 years old now.  She was 71, and learned pro basketball during the 1994-95 Houston Rockets championships and beyond.  She was the greatest.  I always saw God through her.  Whenever she would mention Jesus’ name, tears would start welling up in her eyes.  She had an east Texas drawl that could peel paint off a wall!  She helped me out so much.  I love her.

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I messed up in that apartment too, but it started really becoming not fun.  I could feel presences around when I did it, and I really knew I was not alone.  I discovered that when I illicitly use drugs to change my feelings in the wrong way, I am practicing “Pharmacia”. This is a Greek term where we get the word, “Pharmacy”.  Its definition is “conjuring up spirits”.
                                                           
I felt that I was supposed to get rid of my TV, so I did.  I was led to the Christian bookstore and told the lady there that I felt like there still were things I needed to work on in recovery.  She pointed another excellent book called, “Getting Unstuck in Recovery”, by McGee again.  This book was God’s book.  God was i

                    Tad's Story Part 3


Tad Donley
tad@iamawarrior.com
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