12 min testimony

Sharing a testimony at Celebrate Recovery in Scottsdale 2024:
  📍 📍 📍 📍 My name is Vin, short for Vin Diesel. But, uh, I went to a culinary school just, uh, just down the street over on Shea and 114th Street.

And it was about 10 years ago. Um, I was heavily addicted to methamphetamines and you don't want to go through a culinary program addicted to meth or addicted to anything for that matter. My life was

It was chaotic. I never knew from day to day what I was going to do or why I was going to do it. I couldn't control my emotions, my wife.

Uh, I've been married as of this January 1st. I've been married 21 years. Thank you. But, uh, it is by the grace of God that he gave me healing. He gave me freedom from my hurts and my habits and my hangups. I hit rock bottom. Rock bottom is basically the point at which I stopped digging that hole for myself.

And when I realized that I couldn't do it on my own and that I needed help, I cried out to God to give me

I didn't know it at the time,

but salvation. I just said, help me. Help me God. I can't do this on my own. And I'll tell you what. God is powerful, if you let Him be powerful in your life. So, I'm gonna back up a little bit.

Seven and a half years I've been clean from methamphetamines. And, at the time I, uh, I would come home 1 or 2 in the morning cooking at restaurants, really nice restaurants. Um, and my daughter at the time, I think she was like four years old, she would wake up at two in the morning and she'd just, uh, wait at the door for dad to walk in at two in the morning.

It was the saddest thing I've ever seen. Because I would be high or inebriated on something. And, uh, I think I fought one night with my wife. It was just, it was awful. I was pretty sure that was the end of my marriage. And, uh, I remember thinking I was sneaky, and doing all these drugs, and nobody knew.

Trying to keep secrets. But the thing is, everyone knew. And, something powerful said to me just this last Saturday by my, uh, 7 year old daughter. She said, We were at the soup kitchen, St. Vincent de Paul, over at Sunny Slope, and we were looking for the homeless. And she says,

"What do homeless people look like, Dad?"

And it stopped me, because I was, I thought it was obvious, you know? But apparently not to a 7 year old. And it got me to thinking,

"What does an addict look like?"

We can be sneaky. We can dress nice. We can pretend that we're not on drugs. We can tell everybody that we're fine. But it's all a lie. So, it's not necessarily how we look that makes us who we are.

It's how we behave. It's how we treat one another. And a lot of times we can't figure that out, and so we build relationships with one another, and we get to know who people are. The best answer I could give my daughter when she said, what do homeless people look like, is that, well, they're a little bit dirtier than some people, but that's not always true.

And they carry backpacks, but that's not always true. And they'll be standing on the street, but that's not always true. Well, what does an addict look like? About the same. So,

I swore I would never do drugs again. Seven and a half years ago. And before that, eight years ago, I swore the same thing. Nine years ago, I swore the same thing. Ten years ago, I swore the same thing. Why did it stick? Seven and a half years ago. Cause I looked up at heaven, at a God I didn't believe in, and I said,

"Can you help me?"

I surrender. I give up. It's over. I can't do this anymore. This is a disgusting life. To want something more than you want to please your own kid. To want something more than you want to please your own wife. It's sick. It's evil. I was raised Buddhist. Karma. Reincarnation. But at that time,

I wasn't thinking about my next life, the way my mom taught me. I was thinking about my life right here, right now. How do I change? How can I get help? And I asked for God to give me a sign. I demanded He give me a sign, and he did. He gave me an powerful sign, a sign that I couldn't ignore, a sign I had to take action with.

Something I had to do after I saw this sign was, quit doing drugs. Figure out who this God is that I now dedicated my life to serving. Who are you? I sat down and started reading the Bible. I told my wife when I left that morning that it's over. When I came back that morning, I said, Sweetie, I'm so sorry.

I'm gonna change. This was right after God gave me that powerful sign in my life. And she looked at me and she said,

"Whatever. I don't care. I don't believe you." Through the tears in her eyes drying on her face. But as she saw me reading the Bible, and she saw me start to get to know who God was, and how I would switch from one version of the Bible to another version of the Bible, trying to figure this stuff out.

Because when God gave me a sign that I could do nothing but respond to, it wasn't that I immediately became a Christian, I wasn't. I just immediately believed that there was a God and He loves me. But as I read the Bible, and I got to the Gospels, I realized that there was this God, named Jesus Christ, and He died for me.

I didn't want Him to. And I cried.

Why did you die for me?

So, the best I could make sense of it was like a, a hero, like a cop, jumping in the way of a bullet. That's ready to take me out and kill me. I was on the,

I was on the fast track to nothing. And Jesus stepped in the way and said, you know what? I'll take this for you. I'll take the hit. I'll die for you. I had to repent from my evil ways. I have to say I'm done with meth, I'm done with drinking, I'm done with being mean, I'm done with making my daughter cry, I'm done with making my wife cry, and it's time to change.

So as I'm reading the Bible and I'm trying to figure out the new me, because I don't even know what this is all about, I became Christian. I remember I cried the first time I got through the Gospel of Matthew. I remember I closed it when they put him on the cross. I thought it was just horrible. I didn't want to go on.

I was like, this is horrible. I suffer from anxiety. I shut the book and I put it away for a week. I was like, they can't kill this guy. Really? And then I opened it up again. I had to figure out what happened.

And I read Mark, Luke, John. Made it all the way through the Revelation. And I did it all over again. I read the Bible maybe 12, 13 times. I'm now a student at Phoenix Seminary. I graduate this semester. I'll have my Master's in Ministry. I'll have my Emphasis in Counseling and Family. But let me back up again.

Six months I've been reading the Bible. My wife, she comes up to me, she says to me, "You know what?"

"You remember that day when we fought? And you came back and you told me,

'Hey, I've changed.'

And I told you I didn't care?"

And I got really excited, and I was like,

Absolutely, I totally remember that day. That was the day that everything changed for me.

I prayed to God that day. And I was so excited, I interrupted her. I didn't let her finish what she was about to say. I told her, you know, I asked for God to give me a sign, and He gave me this powerful sign. And so, I came home, and I was excited, but I didn't know how to tell you I've changed, and you didn't believe me, so I had to show you.

And it was just this powerful prayer that changed my life. And she's looking at me, and she's not really smiling. And she says,

"You know what?"

"I prayed that day, too."

And my wife, she was raised Christian. When she got engaged with me, she said, Are you Christian? And she was gorgeous. She was beautiful. She was kind. She was sweet. And I lied through my teeth, and I said, Absolutely. I'm Christian, too. That's how we got married on a lie. She figured it out right away. I wasn't really a Christian.

But she was with me. We were unequally good. I had to figure out what that word meant. I had to look it up. When you put two oxen together, one's big and fat or skinny or whatever. One's tall, one's short, and they've got this bar that goes between the two of them. It's an old farming term where you're gonna plow the field, but if you're unequally yoked, they can go in circles.

They won't move at the right speed. They're not suited to be attached to one another. I wasn't suited to be attached to my wife. And she was the most beautiful Christian woman I'd ever met. And I destroyed her. And she said she prayed that day. She prayed that day. She prayed that day. And she cried. She said,

"God, please release me from this marriage."

Please release me. Let me out of this marriage. And she had this strong, powerful feeling inside. She's telling me this story and the hairs on my arm are standing up and she's telling me, you know what? God told me "no." And I started crying 'cause I couldn't stand the marriage I was in. But she's read her Bible too.

She knows that God doesn't look kindly on divorces and she's trying to respect that, but she still wanted to leave and then she had one more prayer. She prayed to God. She said, if you won't release me from this marriage. Can you please just kill him? Let him die. As he drives home and he takes his daughter to school, can you let him get into an accident?

Can you let him not come home? Can you let me never see his face again? Take him away from me, please God. And when I saw you walk in the door, I was really sad. But then, I've been watching you for this past six months. And you died that day. You died that day.

I cook food sometimes for Celebrate Recovery.

But my passion is to tell people about a man I met named Jesus. My name is Vin. You can talk to me anytime you see me. Sometimes I wear a funny hat. I'm glad I finally got to meet all of you. I've been doing this for about a year. And it's good to see faces that eat the food that I cook. Thank you for listening.

I do appreciate it.