I'm curious about the story behind what made you turn back to religion.
Ha. Most of you will probably laugh at this.
It was however a combination of things. It's probably worth noting how it started about 4 years ago. Martin Luther King weekend 2009 I began having a nasty case of sciatica and couldn't sit still. The only thing that took the pain away besides pain killers was alcohol. I started flipping beers in the parking lot before work. A couple turned into six, six turned into a few shots of Jack, a few shots turned into buy the bottle at 1pm, go to work at 2, finish the bottle on the way home at 11. Well the pain went away but I didn't stop drinking. Plus my step-father's death had finally sunk in after two years (another long story I won't get into here except to say it added to the depression). Eventually the drinking cost me my job because of a fight I had with another employee outside of work.
I found another job, but kept drinking. It started taking a huge toll on my relationship with my wife and she'd been drinking a lot too. We'd always been social drinkers but now it was multiplying. I got a new job and switched from part time to full time which eased everything for awhile, but in 2010, I found myself so angry/depressed I'm not sure which, that I couldn't even drive myself to work much less motivate myself to get out of the car and go in. Needless to say I lost that job. We moved to Raleigh and everything should have been different. I had a decent if unstable job lined up in sales and my wife would be able to pass the bar in two states. Plus I'd have my own business with my cousin who would help us get a building and the financing as well as he has more automotive connections than I do. Everything went to shit in a matter of months for reasons I won't go into, and by January 2011 we were back in Rochester (thankfully I own the house my grandparents left me) with no money, nothing.
I was going on job interviews at least two or three times a month, nobody wanted to hire me. I kept drinking, my wife started slowing down a bit with it. Then last year during the Arizona Miami game I completely lost it. I told God to go fuck himself, I was tired of his "plan" (I was raised about as Catholic as one can be) because it meant me being broke and us not having any money to so much as go out with as we were barely able to buy groceries after the bills were paid.
I was still bombed on a routine basis. I was putting down a liter of whiskey a day and running up our credit cards. She said if you don't want to go back to church (like she did, she's pretty big on being catholic) that's fine but something has to change around here or we won't make it. She wasn't talking about finances, she was talking about me and her. So I said fine but be patient I can't do everything at once.
This is the part people will laugh at. I started as just a random chance flipping on Jimmy Swaggart (I liked the music instead of the same 5 songs we always sing at the church here). Things started to get better with her and I started watching his preaching (and his sons') more and more. New years eve they had a recording of one of his sermons where he said "My church is not a referral service. I don't send an alcoholic to AA. I won't send my mentally ill to the psychiatrist. I stick them in the front row." For some reason that stuck with me. About two weeks went by and I've been bouncing around some churches since, but I went in to an alter call and got saved. I was still drinking pretty hard but I got myself to where if I drank a liter on Monday, I'd last until about dinner on Tuesday. Then on February 19th, I woke up with a hangover. I said what the fuck (literally) because I'd been drinking stronger stuff than what I had the night before and something in me said ok that's enough. I've lost or strained all the relationships with my family, I'm broke, I have a wife with one foot out the door. I have no job and no way of making income at the moment. NOW I'M FUCKING HUNG OVER. Smashed the shit out of the phone. Got sick (I'd gone three years since I got sick on it) and I called her and said "ok baby... you win... I'm putting it down." I haven't had a drink since, and I kept watching Swaggart because he's on late at night and I haven't had a full night's sleep since I lost that job back in 2009.
I started studying the bible a little but mostly I spent time thinking about God and Jesus and how he saved me when he shed his blood on the cross. About a month ago I took the next step and got baptized with the holy spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues which was actually far less dramatic than a lot of people make it out to be. I still haven't found work and money's still tight but our relationship is back to where it was, I still don't speak to my family (we never had much of a relationship to begin with and I really don't care about that too much) but things have gotten steadily better since then. I have a couple churches I go to I haven't found a really good Pentecostal one up here that preaches the way I like, so I watch the Swaggarts on Sunday too.
That's pretty much all of it. Start to finish.
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