AMAZING STORY
Mom's Prayer Saves Son from Crack Addiction
By Rod Thomas
The 700 Club
CBN.com-“I came to the point where I just didn't care about anything. I’m just like, ‘you know what? I’m just going to do whatever I want to do.’”
Pete Cabrera lived by his own rules, and it nearly cost him his life. “I was robbing people. I was in the hole. People wanted to kill me; at some point that would have happened.”
Pete had lived in uncertainty since he was seven – the year his father died. “When he was gone it was a big void in my life and so, my memories after that were very empty,” he remembers.
As he got older, he became violent and got into trouble. He dropped out of high school and started running with other troubled youth also living in the streets. “I really didn't have a gauge for right or wrong in my mind. We were robbing people, trying to find a place to live, and trying to find a place to stay.”
Later in his 20’s, Pete moved to another city and married the girl he had been dating. He took a job at a sheet metal plant. There, he made friends with one of his co-workers, who was a drug addict. “He says, ‘Hey, have you ever smoked crack before?’ I was always wondering why he did that. And I ended up smoking crack with him and loved it immediately. It shut my mind down. It shut it down. It blocked everything out. That’s the first time I really felt some sort of peace.”
But, that peace came at a cost when he too, became addicted. All of his money went to his new habit, and he would disappear for weeks at a time.
“The guilt started coming in; the guilt of, ‘ah man, you know, you're messing up again.’ Then that would just drive me to get more crack. And then it'd come down and the guilt would come in again; and (I would say) ‘ah, I need more crack.’ and so it was this constant circle of avoid what's happening. Avoid the reality that you are now a mess.”
He also started sleeping with other women. Stuck in a vicious cycle, he saw no way out. “I got to the point to where I just knew I couldn't quit and I would say, ‘this is the reality of it.’ And if it wasn't the crack, it'd be the women. And if it wasn't the women, it'd be the crack.”
He and his wife divorced, and Pete moved in with another woman, and they had a child. He also fell behind on paying drug dealers – so he started robbing them, and he knew his days were numbered. “I was in the hole. People wanted to kill me. I just didn't care. I was at the point now where I just wanted to just die.”
He was at a crack house one night, when a young woman overdosed. “She starts having a seizure and she falls over. They're trying to wake her up. They're slapping her in the face. They're like shaking her, trying to stand her up and she's not responding at all. And the guy says, ‘we've got to get her out of here.’ They found her in a dumpster, two blocks down (dead) of an overdose. I still see her face. It'll never go away, until the day I die.”
Finally, Pete saw the futility of a drug-addicted life. “I start thinking, ‘What am I going to do? I’m just going to end up dead.’ That's when I started having these thoughts of, you know, ‘why not just kill yourself, man?’ All I could think about was that girl.”
Pete reached out to his mother, who had become a Christian. “She's like ‘what's going on?’ I told her, ‘I’m a real bad crack addict.’ She said, ‘Are you done?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m done.’ She said, ‘Are you really done?’ I said, ‘yeah.’ She said, ‘it's time to give your life to the Lord if you're really done.’ I said, ‘you know what? I want to do that.’”
Pete prayed with his mom, and accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. “I’m like, ‘God, I’m done. I’m done. I’ll serve You the rest of my life. I’ll serve You! I’ll serve You the rest of my life. Right now. Right now.’ I heard of this God that can take nothing and make something beautiful out of it, right? So I’m like, ‘I give you my nothing.’
He checked into rehab, and began studying the Word of God. “When I got out of rehab and I didn't have the urges anymore. It was like I had this new addiction; and it was like to serve God and chase God and to find God and to love God.”
He married Katie, the woman he had been living with. She also accepted Christ. Today, they have a family and are focused on living for God.
“For the first time in my life, I understood what was missing; and what was missing was love. It's a love that it makes you feel complete, and He completed me. It was like this is what's been missing. It's the reality of God in my life.”
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