Caleb: My Story

This, our story, is not easy to write.  My name is Caleb.  I am a redeemed (most would call it, recovering) eleven year heroin junkie.  I have the most beautiful wife, Lindsay, who I now consider a wonderful gift from God and my best friend.  We have been blessed with four very beautiful children.  They make us smile almost continually with the way they think, the words they use, and the things they create.  They can do anything with a roll of tape and some paper.  Usually, you have to ask what it is, but it is always something unique!
I am semi-retired from a very successful electrical contracting company.  I acquired my state license to be a contractor because of my wife forcing me to study at the end of each work day (and those work days were always too long for a family man).  It was a dream of mine to have my license, but I lacked the drive to sit and study.  She would sit me down, hand me the lesson she had prepared for that day, and say "Thirty minutes, GO!"  As much as I felt that owning and operating my business was God's plan for my life, it now seems that it was an idol and it was more my plan than God's.  As hard as it has been, due to the decisions that I made, it now appears that God is taking me down a different path.
Two years ago, my addictions took me to a place called "The Good Samaritan's Inn" in Hamilton, Ohio.  This was my first attempt to get inpatient help.  I only agreed to it because of a family intervention.  (I have a very large family, but that is for another day).  My wife and children dropped me off on Tuesday, December 18, 2012.  My wife was due to have our fourth baby December 28.  I made it one week in there before failing a drug test, due to sneaking in some Suboxone in an attempt to prevent myself from having extreme withdrawals.  But I wasn't there to get clean, I was there to subdue my worried family.
A year later, unknown to my wife, I had been using again.  She found out a little after Thanksgiving.  She knew that I needed an inpatient program if this was ever going to work for me.  I had gone through the outpatient programs twice, just to fall flat on my face every time... I was always just going through the motions to appease family and friends.  Sneaking, lying, hiding, it came so naturally I had forgotten there was any other way to live.
Finally, my wife gave me the ultimatum: go or divorce.  I didn't believe her about divorce, she had threatened before, but I knew I was in deep, spending on average $1,000 a week just to keep from being sick.  I had ruined every holiday for years.  I was tired of all of it.
I consented to go to Teen Challenge in Youngstown, Ohio.  A good friend had been through their program and I was able to witness the amazing changes God had done in his life.  He and another friend assisted my wife in delivering me there on December 27, 2013.  It was the day before our youngest daughter's first birthday, but I hadn't made it home to her celebration the night before, that is how crazy things had become. I had rationalized everything very well.  The evening of the 26th, her party, I had been more concerned with keeping a final customer happy than celebrating my daughter's first birthday.  I had convinced myself it wasn't a big deal, I figured I could manipulate my wife to let me stay home a few more days so that we could celebrate the baby's birthday.  For once, it didn't work.
I lasted 28 days in Teen Challenge.  I will tell that story another day, but once again I was asked to leave.  It wasn't Suboxone this time, it was because I got high.
I spent three days in Youngstown before I finally called home and asked my dad to pick me up, I knew not to ask my wife for a ride at that point.  To my surprise, even he was not overly anxious to help me find my way home.  Thankfully for me, my brother Josh was in the area doing some work.  He came to the homeless shelter and took me home.  That was the first time I realized the affect my decisions were really having on the people I cared about. Due to my inconsiderate actions, when I chose not to communicate with my wife for those three days in Youngstown, I put her in the position to go through with a divorce for the safety of our children and herself.  She told me she had met with a divorce attorney and was in the process of getting papers drawn up.  In that moment, it came as a surprise and shock to me, although I don't blame her.  I'm not sure what I thought she was trying to hold onto and I now feel she was making the right decision.  I still hadn't realized the half of what I had put her through.
For the first time in my life, I started praying with purpose.  I was begging God to help me figure out what I needed to do in order to not lose my wife and children.  I always had loved them, and never wanted to lose them, but was living in a foggy cloud that affected my actions and thoughts, causing me to make the wrong decision most of the time.
For a few days, I was living with my mom and dad.  By the Grace of God, and after several phone conversations with my wife,  I started to come to my senses and realized that living back at home was not the life I wanted.  I knew it would be some time before I could live as a family with my wife and children, but I was finally willing to do whatever it took to begin the journey all the way home.
I called Teen Challenge, they wouldn't take me back for thirty days.  I knew that wouldn't be soon enough. I couldn't maintain my sobriety that long without a safe environment, not yet.
At 9:00pm on Friday, January 31, 2014, I found myself online looking up "The Refuge" in Columbus, Ohio.  It was local, it was free, and it was all about Christ.
The hardest thing I have ever done in my life was to volunteer to get locked away from everything I had ever known.  I had to pass an interview to enter "The Refuge" the following Tuesday. I had to want to go to "The Refuge" or they wouldn't take me.  I knew it would cost me my business.  I knew it would cost me everything.  But I was finally ready to be free.
It has been very difficult letting go, but as part of my redeemed life apart from drugs, I am learning to let go, and trust God.  I am trying to walk in His perfect peace each and every day.
I now try to live each day by prayer and faith, my hands outstretched to God, letting Him fill them moment by moment.  This is much more difficult than I ever thought.  I am now excited about living my life for Christ and being a disciple of His, it IS a much better life waking up every morning and not dry heaving or feeling like I have the flu...
Instead of a daily fix, I have daily devotions.  Instead of rushing off to get my next fix, while telling my family I needed to get to "work," I get to peacefully enjoy my mornings surrounded by giggling children.  I make breakfast and get the kids off to school, every day is different now. 
Instead of doing the jobs I want that make me the most money, I have been able to reach into the lives of others and do things like build shelves, clean gutters, fix a broken door for people who were not able to do these things for themselves.  I feel so blessed that I can leisurely live.  I discovered I do have spiritual gifts, even though I'm not an ordained minister.
It is amazing how relaxed I am, and how free I feel, knowing I don't have to commit myself to every customer who needed work done yesterday but decided to call tomorrow.  God has blessed us above and beyond and I am no longer as concerned with chasing a dollar than I am with living life and doing the next right thing.
Hopefully as we journey together, we can all make the commitment each day to take it one day at a time and focus on just doing the next right thing.