AMAZING STORY
Depression Pushes Man Into the Arms of the Savior
By Rod Thomas
The 700 Club
CBN.com- “All of a sudden I was in this room. It resembled a medieval dungeon.”
The drug overdose was supposed to free Charlie from his pain, once and for all -- instead, it showed him a sobering truth. “This is that part where you see your life and then you realize, ‘okay, you're going to hell’ cause, you know, it's too late.
I grew up in a Christian home. Both of my parents are professional musicians, and so whatever church we were in we were involved in the music ministry there. It just felt very like happy; very positive.”
Then, against everyone’s wishes, his father accepted a job in Michigan and uprooted the family. I remember then began a lot of yelling between my parents and then all of a sudden, it just kinda went from ‘everything is good’ to all of a sudden, like, ‘whoa, what's going on?’”
Charlie also started going to public school. The former homeschooler felt like an outcast. “You don't know anybody. You're not involved in anything. There's no connection. So I was very angry about that in general.”
At home, things were getting worse, until his parents divorced. “My family's just falling apart. I don’t have a home. I don't have anyone that I can connect with and understand. You’re like, ‘I don't even care anymore.’
I remember at that time I started cutting my wrists. I just remember just starting to feel numb so when you would cut your arm or cut your wrist, it would open your skin, which would open like the opportunity to feel.”
Charlie started connecting with kids at school, who also felt out of place. “I smoked pot for the first time and I’ll never forget the feeling of escape from everything that I hated about my life.”
In time, he changed his appearance, and started having angry outbursts at home. “It was like, ‘hey, this is what I’m doing. I'm doing my own thing, which is the way I’m dealing with this, which is your fault by the way.’"
Soon, Charlie moved into harder drugs. “Anybody who was not internally connected with me and currently using was a hostile relationship. Things with my dad were not good. Things with my mom were worse.”
Charlie says he had thought about suicide, but when his mother kicked him out of the house – he went to a friend’s house and decided to act on it. He took several drugs and waited to die. “I remember being in a bathtub in his house and just feeling like I was on the frying pan. Just knowing it was the end, knowing I finally did it. And that it was over.”
Meanwhile, Charlie’s mom and some friends had been praying and fasting for him. They knew only God could save him. “I would either consider this a vision or an out of body experience. But I heard the voice of the Lord tell me, ‘this is your life. This is what you've created around yourself. You are bound and there's no way out.’
“I lift my head up and there's a mirror on the wall in front of me, I feel like I’m six years old again and I’m looking at the person that I am right now. And the little boy, the child inside of me is terrified of the person that he sees.
“And I looked to my left and I saw my family. I just felt like this was the family that I could have been a part of. I remember just collapsing in that room and with my eyes closed. I remembered every chance that I had to have a heart relationship with Jesus; all the times that I had rejected Him. And all of a sudden I knew that it was real. In that moment I opened my eyes, and He's standing right in front of me. Tears were coming down His face but He was smiling. And He held out His hand, and He said, ‘I can get you out of this right now and all you've got to do is take My hand.’
“I remember feeling like ‘I’m going to give You my whole life.’ I touch his hand and the chains just, I mean, just disintegrated off of my body.”
He immediately woke up, completely sober. He ran home to see his mother. “She looked at me like where she was at and started crying because she could see in my face that it was just different. I hadn't felt my head feel clear in however many months or years and all of a sudden it was just like, ‘stop!’ and you wake up and like it's gone.”
Charlie never touched drugs again. He started mending the relationship with his family. He also accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. “Once you feel the Presence of Jesus, the Presence of the Holy Spirit and He fills you up, it's complete.”
Charlie is grateful to God for another chance at life. Today, he has a family of his own.
“The faithfulness of God is just is just so relentless that even when I didn't want it to be there, He was still protecting me. It's every second of every day. It doesn't press pause. It doesn't stop. It doesn't run out. It doesn't get fatigued. It doesn't slow down. It doesn't need a break. He's just right there.”
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