Building solid foundations

Read about how God has rebuilt Adam’s life through the Living Free program.

I had a childhood of domestic violence and I was beaten by my stepmother. Both my parents played loosely with the law, so drugs and criminal activity became normalised. Lots of my family members grew marijuana, and at 15 I moved out of home and followed suit by professionally growing marijuana until I was 19.

About 12 years ago I did a program and I remained ten years clean. However, during the last three years I slipped back into using drugs. That was due to a relationship breakdown. My partner and I just had a new child on the scene and I was working excessively. I started using drugs again as an escape. I left the family home and had no structure anymore. Drug taking crept into my work life, and I started letting people down in a career I had built up over 20 years.

It pained me more than anything when I would hear the stories of people who hadn’t seen their kids in four, five, ten years. More than anything I just wanted to be the best father in the world but I was definitely not going in that direction.

I knew I needed to seek the help that I had once sought before. I got into contact with a program I had done 12 years earlier. I spent five months working on my issues, but I wasn’t having the same success.

I was extra hard on myself because I had become distant from a beautiful little girl who didn’t know any better. During one of my counselling sessions, my counsellor said they wouldn’t be recommending me for the next stage and that I should try Teen Challenge.

I tried to process that because it wasn’t my plan. Little did I know God had His own plan. On faith I stepped out and called Teen Challenge and I felt like this it was actually meant to happen.

Before coming here I wasn’t really aware that God had promises in His word. Even having called myself a Christian, I didn’t know the realness of it or how to walk out the spiritual principles with the type of Godly resolve that is lovingly promoted here.

I have really learnt to love and trust myself again. The challenges have been continuing to assess and analyse my behaviours. The parameter I set myself is that everything that happens in here – my thoughts, my interactions with people and counsellors – is a practice ground for being better in my relationships outside of here.

I see myself as a child of God again. I’m done with the pain of being so hard on myself – which is what led me to self-medicating with drugs. It’s now enough to know that I’m being the best me I can be with God. I’ve set some real solid foundations and I’m continuing to work on them through my new Christian walk.

My hopes and dreams for the future are to build homes for people and to support the growth of those foundations. I long to see myself on a hobby farm with my two-year-old daughter. I want my help her learn and understand herself so she can be who God has designed her to be.