A letter to my friends

Hello!

I just had some good news that I wanted to tell you... sorry its taken me so long to get this to you!

It's hard to decide where to start... I'll summarize as much as I can... a little over a year ago I was living at home with my parents because my relationship with JC went belly-up for the final time. We were living in a house on NE Prescott, not far from my parents'. I had a really good job but since my relationship was failing, I started drinking a lot and lost it. So I lost everything again and went back to Moms. Story of my life.

Then I met a guy that I had gone to church with when I was 15 named Jamall, he was my age and wonderful and we got along great and he inspired me to be a better person. So that was a year ago... Well from August to December I had a rough time staying on the sober road, but on New Years I made the decision that if I got the job I had an interview for a few days from then, I would stop drinking at all cost, devote my life to working hard and staying devoted to Jamall and see if life got better. It did. I got the job at an architecture firm as an interior designer on K-12 schools and was working 14 hour days and making a lot of money. So Jamall and I decided to officially move in together around March 1st 2007. We moved into the Envoy Condos above Zupans on 23rd, the big pink building with the green neon sign. I always wanted to live there and it was a dream come true when we got a huge two bedroom condo. The rent was high but we were really happy.

Ok so in mid April I lost my job, not due to any sort of drinking, (I actually stayed sober for that whole job) but because I was working on a cruise-ship size project when I was used to yacht sized. It sucked, but since I wasn't fired I was able to get about $700 a month in unemployment. Then an old friend asked me to partner with her in residential design business. I was making more and working less and I loved it. But because some days I had no work to do, drinking became a problem again. After about a month it became a big problem and I missed a week of working with her and she opted to work alone. That set it off. In the month of June I was probably sober 4 or 5 days. It was bad. I would wait till Jamall went to work in the morning and then go get three bottles of wine. I could pass out the whole day. That was my life. I was lower than low. On the morning of July 1st at 2am I was shaking so badly I went to my mom's house, just like I've done a million times.

That next morning I sat there thinking thoughts I'd never had before. I felt completely hollow, like an empty pumpkin just sitting there decaying. I was totally hopeless and dead inside, my body was shutting down and I was virtually unrecognizable. I asked God for just one day of joy. I knew I hadn't felt it since I was doing missions in Mexico City more than a decade ago. I looked back and realized every single year for the past 7 years was the same. Get a good job, get a good boyfriend, get a good apartment. Drink. Lose good job, lose good boyfriend, lose apartment. Year after year. And I had exhausted every means of getting better. I had tried everything man had to offer (rehabs, AA, pills and vitamins, so many books, even hypnotherapy and thousands of dollars of therapy) and nothing was working. I couldn't stop destroying myself with alcohol. I hated who I was, what I had become and who I was doomed to be. Hearing my mom tell me to turn to Jesus was so pointless, I knew I was going to be gay the rest of my life and couldn't do anything about it. Knowing what the Bible said about homosexuality kept me from God and I felt chained to my sin. I drank because of the guilt and hopelessness, I was running from God and knew I had hit a dead-end. Knowing I had nowhere else to turn I finally picked up the book she'd put in front of my face a million times and read it cover to cover. It was the autobiography of a man who was gay and was delivered by Jesus, and now was serving the Lord and so happy*. It was the first and only time I heard of anything like that happening. The book could have been my autobiography.

I immediately felt the joy I'd been looking for! I laid there in my sweat and shakes and asked Jesus back into my heart and rededicated my life to Him. It was though a dam had broken and the cess pool I'd been lying in was immediately flooded with pure crystal clear water pouring over me and washing all the grime away. I gave thirty days notice on my apartment and told Jamall. Being the amazing man he is he was overjoyed for me because he couldn't watch someone he loved waste away like I was anymore. I prayed and read the Bible like it was the first time; reading about Jesus was like reading about a celebrity I knew nothing about. I wanted to be exactly like Him. I went back to the little downtown church I'd gone to before I moved to Los Angeles and was welcomed back with open arms**.

So I just wanted to update you!! I stopped drinking on July 1st, but hit a bump in the road the week before I was supposed to move, the reality of it scared me. I'm happy to say though, with God's help I haven't even had a craving since August 1st. I'm back now serving the Lord and living at my parents' in NE (for the time being) There is no way I could have gone through what I have for the past decade without using my testimony to show others the love and grace that comes from a relationship with Jesus. From being the town drunk to how I feel today... I'm a living example that ANYTHING is possible through Christ! So I'm saving up and going to Multnomah Biblical Seminary in January to get my graduate degree and do what I was called to do when I was 14. I'm excited for the first time in a decade about my future and hopeful that I'll make a difference in this life. Knowing I'll have a family of my own someday couldn't make me happier!! I never thought it a possibility.

OK this is a long letter but thats whats going on with me!! YOU!? I wanna know everything! Sorry if it sounded like I've written this a few times, I have, I'm excited to let people know the changes I've made!

Love,
Colin

* "That Kind Can Never Change! Or Can They...?" by Victor J. Adamson
www.victorjadamson.com
** Father's House Church
www.fathershouseportland.org