The day God showed up for my son's birthday

As far as anniversaries and special days go, today is up pretty high on my list. For one thing, it's a very special day in my family because it is the day that my youngest son Edwin was born. As if that wasn't enough, he shares his birthday with a cousin, and with my Grandpa too. Besides the beautiful celebration of life in my family on this date, it also marks a very important date in my personal journey of faith, as it intersects with my sobriety story, marking 14 years since I gave up drinking alcohol permanently. Although I would like to be able to say that was the beginning of completely sober living for me, really it was just the start of recognizing a pattern of addiction that would take me many years to overcome with the Lord's help. I believe this moment was a "fork in the road" moment for me, as far as which way my life could have gone based on my own decisions. It was also a defining moment in my faith in God, because he showed up in a very big way to help me make the best decision on this issue, and I realized that I couldn't do it without Him.

In order to fully understand the significance of this anniversary date and what it means to me, I'd like to show you how it fits into the larger story of my life and my walk with the Lord. In order to do that properly, I have to start at the beginning. Having grown up without religion, and around various addictions, it is not surprising that I began to use drugs by the time I was in middle school. I initially tried various drugs as a way to fit in the with group of kids I was hanging out with at the time, and I found that I enjoyed the escapism and alternate realities that those substances offered to me. After some conflict in school that happened with those same friends I was hanging out with, and a few other life events that happened, I quit using drugs for the time being, and hoped it would be a permanent change.

During the summer that followed that school year, my siblings and I went to visit my dad and stepmom in Tennessee, as we had done for several years before, but this time was different: they had recently become Christians. After observing their different behavior and change in lifestyles, I could not deny that something happened that was real, because the changes were obvious. This provided evidence of God that I had never seen in a personal way like this before, so I was intrigued about it. As time went on, we attended church with my parents, and I saw changes in some cousins that also were living in the area at the time, and had also given their lives to Christ. It seemed to me like God was doing something right in front of my eyes, but it was so new to me, I wasn't sure how this could be possible...was God actually real? The wheels of thought in my mind were turning as I tried to make sense of everything that had happened and changed within my family, and eventually I found myself confronting the very question of God's existence in my own life.

One Saturday evening, we had some of our cousins over to spend the night, as we were all going to go to church together in the morning. My cousin Richie, who I really looked up to at the time and is still like a brother to me to this day, challenged me and said that I should "go up to the altar" at church tomorrow and give my heart to Jesus. Was that really something I could do? I wasn't even sure if I believed in this yet. Sure, I could see the evidence all around me, but how could I know that it was real? As I tried to go to bed that night, I couldn't get this idea out of my head, and with no other options that I could think of, I decided to pray the first real prayer of my life. I talked to God out of the sincerity of my heart, and I told him that if he would show me that he was real, that I would give my life to him, and I meant every word of it. The very moment that I prayed that prayer, I felt a warmth, peace, and joy come over me that was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Having done quite a few drugs the year before, this was different, this was unlike any of those experiences. I don't know how long the experience lasted in terms of actual time, but I knew that my prayer was just answered in a very personal and powerful way, so my mind was made up. The next day at church, I went with my cousin up to the altar and told the Lord Jesus that I knew I needed him, and that I wanted to give my life to him. At the age of 14, I don't think I fully understood much about what that really meant, but I knew that God was real, and I knew that I wanted to live for him. For the first time in my life, I was a professed Christian who loved Jesus.

When that summer came to a close, we went back to Wisconsin and moved to another city due to a job change for my stepdad. This felt like a blessing at the time because I had lots of fear about having to tell my old friends that I was a Christian. Although I didn't fully recognize it for what it was at the time, I know looking back now that I had massive insecurity issues, which is why I was frequently willing to compromise on beliefs and engage in activities I may not have done otherwise, in order to fit in with a certain group of people. This move offered a chance to start with a clean slate with my new faith, and to try and get a firm foundation underneath me. Things started off well, but the job changed turned out to not be great, and after a semester we moved back to the city we just left, back to my old group of friends. Initially things kept a similar rhythm for me, as I got involved with a youth group, and made new friends at the same high school. My old friends were still there though, and I slowly started hanging out with them more and more. By the time I was in my junior year of high school, I had stopped attending youth group and had started doing drugs here and there again. By my senior year of high school, I was dealing with some childhood events that put me into a deep depression and for the first time in my life, I was using drugs to numb emotional pain, often just to get to sleep at night so I could stop hearing the suicidal thoughts that kept going through my head. Smoking weed became the way that I got through tough times, because I just didn't have any other healthy coping skills yet. Numbing out was really all I knew how to do if things got hard in life, and although my faith in God was still very real, I continued to really struggle with my depression for some time.

Eventually after talking about suicide with a friend, he notified my parents out of concern for me, which set off a chain of events that became a journey for me where I learned a lot about mental health and counseling. I tried a traditional method of counseling for the first time and gained enough tools to pull out of the depression and move on with my life. Within a couple years, I met my future wife, moved to Madison, and we got married within a year of dating. We started our life together, and I made new friends, many of which I still have today. Although life was going very well, I continued on what I eventually observed to be a roller coaster effect in my life of leaning heavily into my Christian faith, and eventually falling heavily back into partying, using drugs and drinking a lot of alcohol. I did this for years, and my faith in God was genuine and never faltered, yet my struggle with substances was rooted in some stuff that I wouldn't begin to understand until many years later, so I kept on with this vacillation between a party lifestyle, and eventually trying harder to leave that behind out of conviction that it was wrong. As time went on, the substances began to feel more and more like a burden, although I wouldn't admit it yet. I began to hear from family members that I wasn't as fun as I used to when I drank, and in fact there were times when I was just outright mean.  This was a pattern that continued for years, and in the last few years of my drinking, there were several incidents that happened that increased in severity, and I could no longer ignore the reality that was right in front of me, although I tried to ignore it.

Things finally came to a head one night when we were at a friend's birthday party when Steph was pregnant with Edwin. I got wasted and didn't want to leave to go home, I wanted to stay and keep drinking with my friends. I was extremely rude to her, and said extremely condescending things to her that I would never say in a sober state. I was confronted by my actions the next day when she told me how I had treated her the night before. I was ashamed of myself. This was not the first time I had been ashamed of my behavior from drinking though, that was nothing new. Stephanie did something she hadn't done before this time, she challenged me to go without drinking for the remainder of her pregnancy, and she told me she didn't think I could do it. Initially, I agreed with her and said that I didn't think I could do it either, and in making that confession something got angry inside of me, and I couldn't believe what I had just said. Can I really not control my drinking? Am I really so controlled by this substance, that I am not willing or able to put it aside, when I can clearly see the damage that it is doing to my life? That was enough for me, and I decided to accept her challenge and prove to her that I was the one who was in control of my behaviors. From that day on, I planned on not drinking any alcohol until my son was born. Challenge accepted!

At this point in my story, you can pretty much fast forward at least six months or so, I quit drinking without issue, as I was only looking at it from a short-term perspective and had plans to go back to drinking again after our son was born. As it turns out though, God had something different in mind for our family. Within the last month or two before Edwin was to be born, I began to feel that God was putting this issue of drinking on my heart again, and I felt him calling me to think about the future of my family and to make a long term decision. Truthfully, I think that I knew I had to quit drinking for good, as I knew any return to it would end up with the same behavior patterns. In my stubbornness though, I didn't want to accept that. In God's patience and mercy though, he put several people in my life at just the right time and in those moments, I knew they were there to speak wisdom into my life and provide confirmation that the best decision for me to make, was to leave alcohol in my past. And yet, I couldn't get myself to make that commitment, there was something that felt risky and scary about giving that up, so I kicked the can down the road a little longer.

At this point I need to tell you some additional information about our son that was going to be born soon: we did not have a name picked out for him yet. We had almost no difficulty in naming our first two children, but to date, we could not agree on a name combination for our second son. It was not for lack of effort either! We had tried so many name combinations, there were ones I liked and she didn't like, and vice versa. We had gone around and around on the baby name websites, and we just couldn't come to an agreement, and we were both very bothered by this. A name is something serious though, you can't just pick a name out of a hat, it has to mean something! As the father to another son about to be born, I began to feel a degree of shame, and feeling like a failure, because I couldn't come through and figure this situation out for my family, but I didn't know what to do.

We came to the day that Edwin was to be born via planned C-section, and I eventually found myself alone in a surgical prep room as they prepared Stephanie for surgery, so we could welcome our new baby boy into the world. As I waited for them to call me into the operating room, the sound of silence in the room was deafening, and all I could think about was that my son was about to be born, and I did not know what to name him. I was completely devastated. I didn't know what else to do but to pray. I called out to God in a completely humble and honest prayer as tears ran down my cheeks. I asked the Lord to tell me what the name of my son was supposed to be, and in return all I could think about was that I had not yet made a decision about my drinking. I had not made my decision yet because of fear: fear of the unknown. What would my friends think? Drinking was a part of so many things for me, and it was intimidating to think of losing that ritual. But I was more terrified to not do what I knew God wanted me to do, and what my family needed me to do. At that moment, I made the commitment to never drink alcohol again. I told God that I really needed a name for my son, but even if He didn't provide that, I would still hold up to my end of the bargain and I was done drinking forever. I kid you not, the moment I made that commitment, I received the name Gabriel in my head. I was honestly shocked and at first I did not know what to do with that information. It wasn't until a couple days later when Stephanie was recovered enough from the surgery and I was able to share my experience with her, that we figured out that the name Gabriel was the puzzle piece we needed to finally name our newly born son. For the first time, we agreed on his name, and that was Edwin Gabriel.

To this date, I never drank alcohol again. As it turns out though, this was really just the first stage of what would take many years to recognize as not just an alcohol problem, but an addiction problem that was coupled with poor conflict and emotion management skills. The reality is that I went from alcohol to an Adderall addiction in a very short period of time. Eventually, more negative behaviors resulted from that and I again saw God's guiding hand as he gave me clarity about the potential destruction I was bringing into my life by continuing to use these drugs, and I eventually quit using that. In time, I switched back to weed, which I had used on and off over the years, and I continued to struggle with regular usage on that same roller coaster that I had been dealing with for a long time. Each one of these phases is another story, with many things learned along the way, and if I typed it all out I'd probably have a novel. Perhaps for another time. 😁

This experience is still as real to me as it was when it happened. If you aren't aware, Gabriel is the name of God's messenger angel (Luke 1:19). When I recall this story, or when I read in the bible about Gabriel, it gives me goosebumps to think of how God has met me in my requests of him throughout the years. In the case of my son Edwin's name, it wasn't until I stepped out in faith and did what I knew He was asking of me first. What is truly amazing to me, is that as time has gone on since I made my decision to give up alcohol, I have received so many confirmations that it was the right decision for my family, and in my heart, I know that if I hadn't listened, my family life would have probably gone in a very different direction than I wanted. God's plans are always the best plans, even when we don't fully understand why he may be asking us to do something, or if things are not happening the way we thought they would. We can trust in him even during those times when we are uncertain, because we know what kind of God he is by what he has revealed in scripture, and also through experience, if we are properly rooted in community with other believers, and by reflecting on things he has already done in our own lives. What I have often found to be true is that sometimes a situation may require a lot of faith on my part when I feel God's leading a certain way, but years later when I look back, I have an extremely high level of confidence at that point due to other things that happened along the way, that God's way was better, and my way would have been a disaster.

God is real. He is a personal God who cares very much about us. He cares about you. He loves you, and he cares about your life. You matter to him, in the big things, and in the small things. Whether you're facing a big decision like a drinking or drug problem, or whether it's because you can't figure out what to name your child, God cares, and you can take all of those things to him and ask him to help you find the right path or decision. Sometimes his answers come from reading the bible. Sometimes his answers come from a friend or a family member. Sometimes you hear a word of wisdom on a podcast you're listening to, or from the preacher's sermon that Sunday. Sometimes, you may hear him in your spirit. God interacts with us all in different ways, and I can't speak to why he does things the way he does, but I do know he's real, and he answers our prayers when we believe in him and talk to him sincerely. He's done it for me, and he'll do it for you too.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus," -Philippians 4:6-7 NIV.