Grateful for a Second Chance

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As Don gets ready to return to work—clean and sober at last—he says, “I’m blessed!”

Like so many men and women who come to Open Door Mission, Don isn’t sure exactly where he took a wrong turn. When he was 14, he got into trouble just by being “in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong kids.” He spent about a year in a boys’ home in Kansas, but he believes that was a blessing in disguise. “It helped me to graduate,” he explains. “My mother and dad didn’t think I was going to make it through school.” After high school, Don’s life pretty much followed a normal course. He found a job in a packing house, got married, became a father. Life happened. But Don wasn’t really living.

To work or to party?

As time passed, Don’s casual use of drugs turned into more and more using, then selling. “It was easy money,” he explains. “I could go get an ounce of dope and break it down and sell it and make some quick money.” He did more than a normal share of drinking, too. Eventually the packing house he worked for shut down. Don joined a union and began working as a journeyman steampipe fitter and certified welder, which has been his career for 30 years. To do this  specialized (and risky) work, he had to be focused and alert. Don became a “functional addict.” As he says, “When I worked, I worked. When I partied, I partied.”

After his marriage broke up and his wife got custody of his little girl, Don moved to Montana. He was making good money, but slipped behind on his child support and spent a summer in jail. He met a prison pastor who became his friend and a spiritual leader in his life. In fact, when Don finally got “fed up with everything,” it was this pastor and his wife who drove him to Open Door Mission.

Living at last

Don remembers that day vividly. “That was the day I really took hold to change my life,” he says. He was so determined that he stayed in our emergency services program for a whole month, waiting to get into the New Life Recovery Program. Now Don has finished the program and is ready to resume working. “I’m blessed,” he says as he talks about his plans. His relationship with his daughter is restored, and he is looking forward to getting to know her better and spending time with his two beautiful grandchildren. “I’m not going to get ahead of myself,” he says cautiously. “If I do, I’m going to stumble. And I don’t want to do that.”

Don is very grateful to all of our faithful friends—folks like you who make our programs possible. To all of you, he’d like to say: “God bless you and thank you very much for everything...this place has given me another chance to live a clean and productive life.”