Don B - Looking for Love

Don spends his early mornings in the laundry room at the Kansas City
Rescue Mission. In his past he’s had jobs that paid good money, but he’ll tell you that he’s never had benefits like he has here at the Mission. The best retirement plan can’t beat the benefit of beginning each day with a mind filled with peace and a heart filled with joy. And after the last towels are folded and put away, Don will pour another cup of coffee and share a bit of the journey that led him to KCRM…

The time came for Don when he felt completely alone, without a friend. He had plenty of friends when there was money for drugs, when he was buying. It seemed like Don could always find someone who wanted to party with him, but on that lonely night last fall, when the Chicago winds were blowing colder, no one had time for him.

No one had time for Don because this time he wasn’t looking for a party; instead he was looking for help. Something happened that had shaken him awake to the reality that he needed help for his drug addiction: Don left his daughter waiting to be picked up from an after-school activity while he smoked crack in his room. Until that point he always felt in control of his drug use. It began as some fun, once a month with a work buddy only after the company they worked for had completed its two monthly random drug screenings. After he was laid off, Don did drugs more frequently, but still recreationally. Eventually, the coke gave way to harder and more addictive crack…and he found himself spending most of his money and much of his time alone getting high. Still he convinced himself that he could handle it.

Living back home with his parents at age 37, and trying to raise his teenage daughter, Don tried to get by. It became crystal clear both to him and to his family, however, that he was truly addicted to drugs the day he left his daughter waiting at school. His mother had warned him of his drug use before; this time she told him to get out. Saying goodbye to his daughter, he decided to spend the night at a Chicago-area rescue mission. One by one, he called his friends, needing a 20-minute ride to the shelter.

One by one, they offered excuses, turning him down. Finally his daughter’s mother, a woman he could no longer call his friend, consented to drive Don to the shelter. “I have no real friend.” Don’s thoughts pressed against him like fog as he sat in the rescue mission chapel. He reflected on each of his buddies who had let him down when he needed them. “I’ve always been there for them, but not one of them would help me. I have no real friend.” As those words repeated in his mind, Don’s eyes fell upon the worn hymnal lying open on his lap. The words on the dingy white page rebutted his cheerless thought with quiet encouragement: What a Friend We Have in Jesus.

Days later, Don jumped a freight train headed south, traveling with a man who claimed to know where to get work. Depressed and exhausted, Don went his own way after they hit Kansas City. Walking alone through the city streets, he thought of dying, of escaping his pain. Maybe he could just fall asleep under a bridge somewhere until he froze to death. He never dreamed his life would come to this. Don stopped and looked up into the late October sky. “If you are going to help me,” he prayed, “I need help now.”

Soon, God answered Don’s prayer. During a conversation with someone out on the street Don wished aloud he could find some place safe to spend the night, a place where he felt more secure than where he had been the last couple nights. The place to go, he was told, was the Kansas City Rescue Mission. Walking in the door, he felt something different. Some men, residents of the Mission and participants in the Christian Development Program, were telling other men about the Mission and the CDP rehabilitation process. “I still felt beat down at that time, and had questions I wanted to ask, but I was too intimidated to ask them,” Don remembers. “But each time a question would pop into my head, someone else would ask the exact question. It seemed like a sign that I was supposed to be here.” Within a few days, Don joined the Christian Development Program.

It didn’t take long for Don’s heart to soften to the love and acceptance he found at KCRM. He had been looking for love all along, he realized, and it became an easy, but important decision to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

The change in Don’s life is profound. Clean and sober for several months, Don also quit smoking at the same time. “I recognized that I have an addictive personality,” he admits, “so I needed to quit everything at once.” Don is working hard to mend bridges with his family, and soon hopes to begin trade school. The contentment he’s learned at the Mission and in his relationship with Jesus keeps things in perspective. “It’s the only way I’m gonna make it in this world,” Don says. “Without Him, I’m dead.”

Don puts his energy into his classes at the Mission, Bible study, his work detail and serving at a local church. He lives his life one day at a time, walking closely with the Friend he sang about in that cold Chicago night last fall. What does the future hold? Don smiles at the question. “I put no limits on God, so that puts no limits on me.”