Good evening!  My name is Royce, and I am a former guest of Crossroads.

When I was asked to give my testimony, I thought ‘Alright, yeah I can do this’.  Then I realized I’ve never done this before!  I don’t have a clue where to begin.  What do I do? 

So I looked up the word testimony in the dictionary and this is what it said, “A firsthand account of proof of religious experience.”  So I got a little freaked out…  How could I stand in front of hundreds of strangers and explain the proof in my life that shows I’ve experienced God?   But once I started working on it, it wasn’t that hard.

My life has been a series of experiences, tragedies, and a lot of bad choices, and then God redeeming me and making me new.  So here I go, here it is laid out before you, an account of my life and how God has made me new.

I had a seemingly normal childhood…two brothers, a sister and a mom and dad that worked hard.  I studied hard in school and got good grades and was in the top of my class most of the time.

When I started high school though, I met some new friends and things changed.  I started doing drugs and I started drinking on a regular basis.  Eventually I decided to quit school because I just had better things to do than that.  My plan was to join the Army; but I was rejected due to a high frequency hearing loss, so I went to work.  I worked construction.  I washed dishes. I worked at a tire store, and I partied a lot!

When I was 19, I got a job in Lincoln, NE working for a meat products manufacturer as Production Supervisor.  I was making good money, and a lot of bad decisions.  It wasn’t that I’d never used hard drugs before, but now I could afford them.  I also got married, and within 9 months I was divorced, unemployed and addicted to drugs and alcohol.

I continued to drink and use and moved around from job to job.   I went to treatment a couple of times, but would always go back to drinking and using.  I went through short periods of sobriety, but nothing seemed to keep me away from my addictions!

Eventually my mom felt sorry for me and let me move back home with her.  She was sick with cancer and I was tired of my life, so I just sat in her basement and drank…and I drank a lot!  I knew I needed to make a change; and I’d sometimes go to AA meetings.  The guys at AA would suggest treatment, but I didn’t have the money.  Besides it hadn’t worked the other times I went, so why did they seem to think it was going to work this time?

When my mother died in 2005, my brothers and my sister came over to my mom’s house to tell me I had one week to find a different place to stay.  Of course I didn’t do anything; so they took desperate measures.  Finally, I left my mom’s with just a blanket, a pillow and a change of clothes.  I ended up staying with a buddy who lived in an abandoned barber shop with no water, heat or any of the basic necessities I was used to; plus it was the middle of October and it was cold!  During that time I’d try to get sober, but my living conditions and the withdrawal symptoms were too much, and I just couldn’t do it.

It had been over a month since I had showered, so I decided to go to my sister’s house to take a shower.  After I showered, I called the police department and told them I was going to go down to the grocery store, steal 2 gallons of milk, and I wanted them to come and arrest me and put me in jail.  I figured living in a jail cell was better than what I was doing, at least it was warm, and after all I’d have to stay sober in jail.

That police officer understood my cry for help and talked me into coming to the Crossroads Center.  I had been to homeless shelters in Lincoln & Omaha, so I expected the worst.  But when we got to Crossroads, I couldn’t believe how nice it was!  I remember thinking, ‘Okay, well here are the nice offices, where do they house the idiots?’  After they explained the program to me, I thought, ‘well I really have no choice… my mom is dead, my family won’t help me, I have nowhere else to go.’  My plan was to stick it out for 30 days, get sober, find a job and get out of there.

But, ya know, after a couple of weeks of nutritious meals, good sleep, and detox time, my thinking changed.  I don’t really know what it was, whether it was God, the security I felt being at Crossroads, or the friends I was making, all I know is that something was different here.  My brain started working again and I started to hear people tell me that I mattered!  They made me feel like I was somebody, and that God truly did love me!  They made me feel like my life wasn’t over and I did have a bright future.

This wasn’t like any treatment center where after 30 days they kick you back out into reality and expect you to be well.  They slowly eased me back to a state of reality.  I was given responsibilities, but not so many that it overwhelmed me and lead me to relapse.

I was also given the opportunity to complete my GED and I am proud to say that I was the first Crossroads guest to accomplish this.

I think the 2 hours of community service that was required of me daily helped EASE me back into society the most.  I started helping at the First United Methodist Church, then moved on to The Opportunity House Thrift Store, and eventually moved on to The Salvation Army answering phones.
 
Just before I entered the employment phase of the program, I had a heart attack and ended up having to have quadruple bypass surgery.  I couldn’t work due to my surgery, so I continued volunteering at The Salvation Army more and more, which in time turned into a full-time, paid office position.

Well, after 15 months at Crossroads, the time had come when I was physically, mentally and spiritually ready to move out on my own.  I’ve been out on my own for quite some time now and am proud to say that in 13 days (November 28), I will be celebrating 2 years of sobriety.  I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than to be standing up here sharing my testimony with you, and expressing my utmost gratitude to you for helping God get me to the place I am today; here, sober, happy, with a full-time job and a future that seems bright again.

Thank you for caring enough to give, so that I could have a second chance.  The 15 months of living at Crossroads wasn’t a quick fix; it was a life fix.  The things I learned during my stay at Crossroads are things I still use daily to live a full and satisfying life.  I’ve seen a lot of people come through the doors of Crossroads during the time that I lived there.  Some of these people I still see on a daily basis and I can assure you that there is something about Crossroads that touches people.  No one who walks through the front doors of Crossroads leaves unchanged…

In Psalm 18: verses 18 & 19 it says, “They confronted me in my day of disaster, but the Lord was my support.  He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because he delighted in me.”

Thank you!  Thank you for providing that spacious place for Him to rescue me.  But let’s not forget; tonight isn’t about me; it’s about them, the people out there in our community like me, the people who have just plain run out of options.  Tonight I pray; I pray that they get to that spacious place they need to be rescued.  I believe, that’s what God wants and I believe that’s why Crossroads exists.  I pray that God will bless all of you, for caring for people like me; for all those who still need rescuing.

Thank you.