Soulfires: The Make Good

Even though he loved his mom, he knew he was the source of all her emotional anguish and very tough life. She labored long hours on the job, worked herself to the bone trying to keep him at home, cried all the time, rarely smiled, and pleaded with her son daily—but could not keep him off the streets. And it was killing her.

Desperate, she accepted an invitation to go to the church of a friend who told her that God would help her with her son. At the service, she heard about a God that loved her unconditionally, who finished the work of salvation on the cross, and was eager to help the helpless. She gave her life to Jesus that night. She came home and told Joseph that Jesus was his only hope, but he scoffed at the idea. “What would God want with a useless drug addict like me?” he said.

Still, she trusted that the God she gave her heart to on that day was going to make good on his promises and save her son. So she prayed relentlessly. Deep into the night she pressed God for action, even giving up sleep to pray—the toll of which began to show up in her body. She began to wear the face of someone at war. Many nights Joseph would see her face down on the floor crying aloud to God. He would walk past her, then out the door to take to the streets for another deal, another line, another crime.

At the end of her rope, she gathered the life-savings that she had accumulated over decades of work—$30,000, and bought Joseph 30 days at a rehab center in California. Joseph completed the program, but was clean for 30 days and not a day more. Within the hour after leaving the rehab center, he was on his way into the streets to get high. He essentially snorted his mother’s life-savings up his nose in one fell swoop.

Again she pleaded with him to turn his life to Jesus. “Mom, you don’t seem to get it,” Joseph said. “I have nothing to offer him.”

“When God sees you,” she cried, “He doesn’t see someone who is worthless. He sees the apple of his eye.”

No matter. Joseph was not just doing the drug life. The drug life was doing him. He knew one thing clearly. He was as helpless as a slave could ever be. And under cocaine’s influence, which would be a permanent fixture for the rest of his life, he could only do one thing—and that was to kick his beloved mother to the curb every day. When she bled, she bled for him and because of him.

And that is why he had to be stopped.

With his mom at work, he put together a lethal dose of cocaine, and, alone in the kitchen, the boy who couldn’t keep his dad and couldn’t keep from hurting his mom said goodbye to all the pain and fired the chemicals into his body.

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