John S - God Put Me Back Together

Financial success came early for John. In his early 20s, he was running a business and earning a six-figure annual income. He had attended college near his Boston area hometown, but he dropped out short of earning a degree. Business had captured his interest– and so had the lure of cocaine.

He worked for a time in the food service industry then moved on to a more profitable career in advertising. But with bigger paychecks, John’s “casual” drug use soon became a habit. “Somehow I was still able to function in my work,” he recalls.

John moved to Chicago and for several years managed an advertising business that had offices in four states. Twelve years ago he arrived in Kansas City and started his own marketing company. “It was a good and growing business,” he says, “but it turned out that one of my employees was a drug dealer.”

Soon John was smoking crack cocaine every day. “I convinced myself that drugs made it easier for me to deal with my fears and desires.” This was not the case. Drugs had taken over John’s life and cost him his career. A year ago he was evicted from his apartment. He found temporary refuge in a downtown church where the pastor told him he needed accountability in his life and suggested the Kansas City Rescue Mission.

“I knew I needed to cure this insanity in my life and that I couldn’t repair almost 23 years of drug addiction in just 28 days. I needed a longer program, that’s why I came to the Mission.”

At the Mission he found both accountability and recovery in our Christian Development Program. “I made a commitment to surrender my will to God,” he says. “Now I know that anytime I face a situation or a decision, I can give it up to God and he will help me find the answer.”

John graduated the Program in 2006 and now resides in the Mission’s Transitional Living Center. He’s completed his associate’s degree at Penn Valley Community College while working nights as a dispatcher for a local transportation company, which he continues to do. Currently, John is a full-time student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is on target to complete his bachelor’s degree next year. Then he plans to enter the university’s MBA program.

“I used to believe that I didn’t deserve to be happy because I’d made such a mess of my life,” John says. “Now I realize that God wants me to enjoy my time here. I was truly broken and empty when I came to the Mission. God has put me back together and is filling me up.”