Mike Wheatley finds Amazing Grace
CBN.com -Michael Wheatley has vivid memories of the Vietnam War. “We lived in the bush. I think I remember two times we got back to a main camp. But we just ate c-rations and drank water out of ponds and mud puddles and just lived like animals. There was many days when I didn’t even think about Charlie or the enemy, I just thought about surviving through the day, making it, you know?”
The fighting was fierce. “We were pinned down, it was after the offensive and it was horrible. I was so scared and I remember digging down in the mud and bullets were hitting all over and I remember praying to God. And I said, ‘Lord, if you get me through this, I will do whatever you want for the rest of my life.’”
“And, you know, I didn’t.”
After his tours in Vietnam, Mike made it home. But he suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and faced a different America. “I remember I landed in Travis Air Force base in California, and we had all those protestors and stuff there. And I had no idea that was even going on back here. But I ended up going, instead of coming home, I went to Chinatown and found a little hotel room above a liquor store and got me a bottle of whiskey and went up there and sat on the floor and just drank for like two days.”
“My friends--nobody wanted anything to do with me. It was really strange, because, not that I was going to be a hero or anything, but I really didn’t understand why things were the way they were.”
“The way I kept the effects of PTSD off of my mind was I worked seven days a week and just immersed myself in my work.”
The next twenty years were filled with alcohol and broken relationships. “I would mask my feelings and always rely on alcohol just to get through everyday living.”
“It cost me two marriages, several relationships. It sort of estranged me from my children.”
Mike’s mother was a Native American Indian and he moved to the reservation in Montana. That’s where his life started turning around. He was helping build a little log cabin church there and met the pastor. “That’s where I was baptized and asked the Lord into my life in 1995.”
For the next five years he lived on the reservation, and quit drinking. Later, he moved back to Washington State.
“I was still-still hurting, still trying to medicate myself and went back to drinking. It was just a short period of time before I remember coming out of a bar and I just felt so bad. I remember praying as I left and I said, ‘You know, Lord, I’m so tired of this. I’m just not strong enough to do this on my own.’”
He got in his truck and headed home. “It was ten minutes later or so and my truck turned and went right in the ditch. And as soon as that happened, I knew it was over. It was done. I’ve never touched another drop in my life.”
“I tried to fill that void I had with alcohol and with women. It’s like a huge void and I tried to fill it with everything, and the only thing that fills that is the Lord.”
Mike admits that rebuilding his life was a step-by-step process. He now goes around the world on assignment as a professional body guard.
“Now I have direction. The song Amazing Grace. I know exactly how that man felt when he wrote that song. I was lost, but now I’m found.”
