Austin, The Conclusion

“Austin” (not his real name) was the first person I interviewed for this series. I couldn’t have found a better person to write about.

I began working on this series two months ago, searching for people whose stories would inspire regardless of how I made them sound. I searched for people who’d experienced hell on earth. I never even thought that some of these people would have at some point created that hell on earth for others.

Austin was a hell-bringer. He was one of those people that my mom worried I’d run into when I started hanging out in downtown Greenville, North Carolina. Sometimes he’d get robbed, yeah, but other times he was the one with the gun. In this world revolving around drugs, guns were like ATM cards and their victims the ATM.

Austin put it this way: “If I had no money, you had money in your pocket and I had a gun in my pocket, and we met, when we went our separate ways, I’d have your money and my gun in my pocket.”

Today, Austin’s been clean and sober for over a year. He loves Jesus Christ. And he’s helping other addicts and alcoholics recover along with him. Twice our interviews were postponed. The first time, he had to meet with someone he was sponsoring. The second, he was driving a guy to Greenville to check him into rehab.

This is the conclusion to his story.

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Chapter VII

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For the longest time, whenever Austin looked at Christians and saw them act like how he was acting now, he’d dismissed it. “Christians would do their thing over there, I’d do my thing over here,” Austin says. The stuff about the Holy Spirit – “That was the stuff that discouraged me in the beginning,” Austin says. “I was like, Ooohhh, I don’t know if I felt it or not, what’s it feel like? People can’t really tell you. But it’s kind of a belief, that you felt it. If you have the belief, then you did…There’s no defined thing. I believe if you think you’ve had that feeling and you think it was the Holy Spirit, then it was. Who’s to tell you it wasn’t?”

Austin’s been sober for over a year now, since that morning Mark called him out. He’s gained fifty pounds and with it a new sense about life. It wasn’t magical. There was no divinely inspired overnight turning from old ways. Humans are human.

To stay sober, Austin went to up to fourteen Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings a week.

But today Austin still feels, for the first time he can remember, hope, and not just for himself anymore – for others. For his brother. For his fellow alcoholics and addicts.

“That keeps me sober,” Austin says. “I’m not thinking about myself all the time. Not worrying about what’s wrong with me, what my problems are. I can help somebody else with their problems, and mine don’t seem too bad.”

Not too bad. He was mugged regularly. He’d overdosed multiple times, and multiple times should have died as a result. He’d been shot. Stabbed. He’d been arrested, faced decades in prison. But his inexplicable escaping of all those are, to Austin, evidence of God’s interacting in his life.

“I see how He was in my life my whole life,” Austin says. “So many times when I should have died, overdosed. Getting shot at. I could see where He’d been there the whole time. That’s how I chose Jesus as my savior. Every time I went to court and was supposed to go to jail for ten years at a time…I clearly remember overdosing, and not going to the hospital, then coming too.” He makes a face when he says that like, “What do you make of that?” “And I’m still here…So many times I should have not been here, or been places I shouldn’t have been, and something would happen. It was God looking out for me.”

And through Austin God’s been able to meet Austin’s brother. Yes, that older brother, the one who’d introduced Austin to many of the drugs and the lifestyle in the first place. “I told him that it was God that changed my life,” Austin says. “So he believes in God now.”

That brother was baptized before Austin.

Austin’s parents are still working through some things spiritually, but their relationship with Austin is – miraculously – completely restored. Sometimes his mother has some darker days, but she tells Austin, “Sometimes you’re the only thing that keeps me going.” That, the woman says to the boy she once told, “I wish you weren’t my son.” And they’ve begun trying church, too.

Of course, contrary to what many believe, church doesn’t equal salvation and isn’t even a requirement for it. All God cares about is that we care about him. But church is a nice step sometimes. It’s a place to learn (or at least, it should be).

“I don’t have to be perfect,” Austin says. “I don’t have to worship him perfectly. But if I’m striving at all to make him a part of my life…I have not missed a day of prayer in the morning and prayer at night.”

C.S. Lewis once wrote that prayer was less about getting something from God and more about completing our relationship with God. It’s like talking to your lover. You don’t call them on the phone when you’re away just to tell them to send you a package. You call them because you love them and they love you and it means something to both of you just to talk, even if it’s about nothing. That’s prayer.

“In the mornings I pray, thanks for waking me up this morning,” Austin says. “I ask him to help me in making the right decisions that day to stay sober, and not take a drink or a drug. I ask him to put somebody in my life that day I can help. I ask him to make me a little bit better of a man than I was yesterday. Then I pray for others. People in my life. People that I’m worried about, people that I need to pray for. That’s my morning prayer, every morning…At night, I thank him for keeping me sober that day…I just reflect on the day.”

I asked Austin what kept him in it; how did this become real?

“I’m not trying to do this for anybody else anymore,” Austin says. “I pray and I talk to God and I help other people because it makes me feel good inside. I know I’ve found God, which fills that God-sized hole. And that’s it.”

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Final Notes

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Austin was the first person I had the chance to interview for this project. He was a great sport through all of this, and authentic and free in telling his story.

One of my greatest concerns heading into this project was that the people I interviewed would feel like I looked down on them for how they’d once been. Growing up as a relatively boring Christian whose biggest problem was exactly that – judging others – I’m getting more conscious of this in my life.

At the start of our first interview, I told Austin, “I want you to be comfortable with me, and you need to know that in absolutely no way will I judge you or anything for what you tell me.”

“To be really honest,” Austin replied, “if you did, I wouldn’t care. Because that’s you…I know I’m not a horrible person. I’ve just gone through some stuff, you know? Made some bad decisions. Gone through addictions. If I hadn’t been who I was, I wouldn’t be who I am.”

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Later, Austin and I got to talking about his family and how they’d started getting to know God and Jesus and everything. Then we compared what he was doing to what a lot of other Christians do.

“I don’t push anything,” Austin said. “I just – it’s like the AA program. You lead by example. AA is an attraction program, and I think that Christianity should be the same way. You know? If somebody likes the way somebody is as a person, then they’re attracted to it. And people will want to know, well, how’s he living? What makes him so happy? What makes him so attractive? It’s when opinions get involved is when, I believe, that God and Jesus aren’t the point anymore. Keep your opinion out of it. It’s not ours. It’s God’s opinion – he loves all of us.

“I have no right to judge anyone. Just because I have done some really bad things in my life – I turned all that over to God. He saw me when I was doing it, and we’ve had talks, and I’ve let that go to where I can grow now. And just because you haven’t been there or you’ve been fortunate enough not to go there, you have no right to judge. Because you’ll never know what somebody’s life’s been like. It’s all relative. It’s what somebody’s trying to do today. And giving up on people sucks.”

Austin’s 29 years young now, and he’s met God. It started with a breakdown in the back of a barbershop. It grew as he wept in church. But it eventually transcended emotion. A choice had to be made. Austin said that based on what he learned, he picked Jesus. When I asked him what he’d learned, exactly, he said, “It’s that He loves me. And that’s all I really need to know right now: is that God loves me, and I don’t have to be perfect…I’m just trying. I do the same thing I do every day. It’s worked so far, and who knows what’s to come. But I know I’ve gotta keep God in my life.”

When Austin woke up back in the day, he’d hit a needle or bottle first. Now his hits his knees, praying, asking God to make him just a bit better of a man, so he can make others a bit better, too.

One of my final questions was, “What’s it like, looking back on your routine now, compared to what it used to be?”

All Austin could say was, “It’s a miracle.”

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