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Real Change - Michael |
Not long ago, Michael was walking on the 16th Street mall when a group of street people called him over. Some of them he knew. A man named Art was drinking whiskey from a paper cup, and he offered a drink to Michael. When Michael refused, one of the others told Art, "You don't know? He's been clean for over a year!" In that moment, police arrived on the scene on motorcycles and in squad cars—but Michael, no stranger to run-ins with the authorities, knew they had not come for him. Michael walked away, although he expected that he would be ordered to stop and come back. He paused a few blocks away, beside a shoeshine stand where old Clyde was polishing the boots of another motorcycle policeman. Michael said, "I can't believe it, Clyde, but they just let me walk away." Clyde replied, "Because you're not one of them no more." Clyde introduced Michael to his client, a police sergeant, who said, "We know who you are." He then recited Michael's full name and added, "They call you Indio. You came from California. You've been to prison. But you have to understand, you're not one of them any more, and I want to shake your hand." Michael had a reputation. Known as "Indio" on the streets where he roamed, he was the violently drunk drug dealer who had served time in California prisons before returning to his Denver roots after 12 years. He was the man who traded his apartment and livelihood for a homeless life devoted to alcohol. "My bedroom was the alley just the next block over." He was the man who was knifed as he fought to hold on to a bottle of booze. A terrible infection in the wound gripped him, and he reached the point where he could no longer drink the pain away. "When I pass out," he told his buddy as they sipped liquor, "call an ambulance." The injury almost cost him his life, yet it also indirectly led him to the Mission, and into the New Life program. A referral from an outside agency placed him in a "respite care bed" (reserved for medical emergencies among the homeless) in the Lawrence Street facility's emergency shelter. As he recovered, his eyes were opened to miracles happening inside that building—lives like his, changed in profound and positive ways. "I finally crawled out of that alley, and I came here." The Mission was not new to Michael—he had come for free meals in the dining room before. Nor was he unfamiliar with Biblical teaching, having grown up going to church; but he decided at age 15 that he wanted nothing to do with God. "God was something you believed in because you didn't believe in yourself," he explains. "I knew of God, I just didn't know him." At 18 he began to drink, and five years later he left Denver in the wake of a broken relationship, determined to drink himself to death somewhere in California. There he spent half his years in prison for alcohol-related violent offenses, and the other half on the streets selling and using drugs. He used crystal meth (methamphetamine) because it helped him drink more alcohol. He recalls his attitude in those days, "I told my [parole officer], 'I'm not going to get a job, I'm not going to do any of that.' The only time I got off the streets was when I got a violation." Michael says that the difference between the old Indio, a name he no longer uses, and the new Michael is: "God. It was all God." While Indio's strength came from being number one in a violent and empty life, Michael has found a real source of strength. "I'm confident," he says, "because God gives me that." Nearly finished with New Life graduation requirements, he expects to mark the milestone in April. He works part-time while pursuing a 4-year degree toward a career as an addiction counselor, and has already finished coursework for the first year. Eager to give back to the community, he has spent time with juvenile offenders and with people on the street, offering encouragement and personal testimony to those who want to turn their lives around. "The best thing about being me now, is that nobody can take it from me." As he looks forward to living in his own place, and a life of stability and growth, Michael realizes that without the program, he would not hold these aspirations. "Bottom line: it has got to be built with God. That's one of the things I've learned here." "Without God's love I can't make it." Click to donate and help others like Michael change their lives in the name of Christ. |
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