Henry Youngblood: Never Felt So Loved

CBN.com -“I just wanted the pain over with. Henry Youngblood recalls. “I wanted it to be gone all I had to do was just pull it, you know, and everything would be fine.”

Henry had a lifetime of heartbreak. It started when he was nine, when his father committed suicide.

“I don’t ever recall the family or any of us ever really talking about it. You just put it inside you and lock it away.” He says.

Henry felt abandoned. He thought he had nowhere to turn to for help or advice.

He admits, “I was always afraid to turn to my mother because she had enough to carry. She didn’t need anything else.”

As a teenager, he missed his dad.  It wasn’t long before he started drinking.

“I was turning to alcohol for the answers I was looking for. I liked it. It makes you feel better. Even though it’s just for a short while.” Henry decribes.

In his twenties, Henry married and started a family. He continued to drink but alcohol wasn’t the only thing he used to hide his pain.

He says, “I kept working, kept drinking, kept working.   I’ve always felt like there was an emptiness inside me. And when I did get into alcohol, the alcohol was the only thing that seemed to fill it. As long as I was drinking, the emptiness wasn’t so bad.”

Addiction took its toll on Henry’s marriage. He was rarely home and when he was, he was drunk. Then he met Rick, a man who soon became Henry’s best friend and confidant.

“He was kind of like a big brother, that’s the way I looked to him.” Henry says.  “He was the first person that I’d ever really confided in. That I ever really just opened up and talked to.”

As a result, Henry spent less time in the office and cut back on his drinking.   But their friendship came to a tragic end one night. Someone broke into Rick’s home, and murdered him and his wife.

Henry’s grief was unbeareable. “It took me back to being empty. Very empty on the inside.” Henry describes. Once again he threw himself back into work and alcohol. Finally his wife had enough and told him to leave. Then that same week, Henry lost his job.

“Everything that you’d ever worked for, your dreams, your hopes, plans, everything, everything you fought for, everything you worked for, is gone.” He recalls.  Like his dad, Henry decided to end his life.

“So I took a loaded .38. Pulled the hammer back and stuck it to my head. I just wanted the pain over with all I had to do was just pull it, you know, and everything would be fine. But there was a burning desire in here. To turn that TV on, there was a man on there. He said you, the one that just turned the TV on.”

That man was Pat Robertson. Henry was watching the 700 Club.

Henry continues, “He said, ‘You just lost your job, he said you just lost your wife, you lost your kids’. He said, ‘You’re sitting on the couch’ and he said, You’ve got a loaded gun. And you’re fixing to pull it.’ I laid the.38 next to me and I listened to him. For the first time, I actually could really believe in something that was really there, that wouldn’t leave, that wouldn’t go away.” After that, Henry gave his life to God.

“This feeling just engulfed me and I mean, it was –I felt so loved. So—so at peace, so peaceful.”

Henry has never been the same and he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol since.  Now his life is filled with his relationship with God and good friends from his local church. He also found a new passion - riding motorcycles with a group of Christians called Faithriders.

Henry concludes, “He doesn’t just change part of you, he changes all of you. He’s made me do a 360 turnaround. Everything about me is different.”