MyStory Part 3 (Written By Carole Turner)

In 2005 he started drinking heavy. He tried attending church at the invitation of his neighbors but he still felt alone. He went to church service weekly for six months and no one ever talked to him. He felt invisible. So he stopped going and started drinking heavy again.

On his birthday, Christmas Eve 2005, he was drinking and driving and passed out while on the highway. He woke up in a ditch, drunk, hurt and police preparing to take him to jail. While sitting at the police station on Christmas Eve, waiting to be booked and processed, Chris broke down. Why was he always ending up back here? How did things get so messed up again? Why couldn’t he stay away from drugs and alcohol? In his tears and cries for help, he heard God speak to him about his life. God met him there, comforted him and spoke peace, mercy and forgiveness into his heart. Chris spent Christmas and New Years in jail, all together 10 days. After he was released he immediately went into detox and from there moved into Fellowship Ministries Church, in Hammond, Louisiana, which was a home for addicts trying to break free from their addictions. Over the three months he was there, God did a work in his heart. He helped him deal with all his pain, his addictions and showed him his future working with Orphans and reaching the nations. Finally Chris knew he had been delivered and set free from his addictions.

After he left Fellowship Ministries he went back to Baton Rouge but he had no place to live. He went to a Thursday night meeting for college and young professionals, Late Nite, at the church he had attended in Baton Rouge before going to jail, Healing Place Church. At the end of the service, he went to the alter to be prayed for and the man who prayed with him at the alter, Chris McDonald, also helped him find a place to live that night. He soon got a great job, met a beautiful girl and started dating her, made new friends, enrolled in ministry school and really felt like life had taken a strong turn in the right direction. But the relationship ended and it broke Chris’ heart. He again sought to blame someone, this time it was the church and God. But Chris knew that following this train of thought would only lead to more hurt and pain so he sought out a mentor. He started spending time with the McNabb family who helped him through this difficult time. He also started getting professional counseling again and God saw him through this painful break up.

In 2007 he knew it was time to contact his biological mother. He had to tell her that he forgave her. He knew that THIS was part of his healing. When he finally found her he discovered that she was addicted to prescription drugs. The life she had left him for, all the work, had taken its toll on her and now she was seeking comfort in pain killers. Chris told his mother that he forgave her for everything. He even thanked his mother for putting him up for adoption. He told her that if she hadn’t he would not have come to know Christ. Everything from being adopted by Wayne and Sarah, who introduced him to Christ, to being friends with Nathan who showed him there was life in Christ, to being roommates with Paul who helped him grow in Christ. All of it was working together for the good and he wanted her to know that.

From the forgiveness Chris showed his mother came a well of emotions and healing for both mother and son. Chris told his mother how Jesus had changed his life and she saw it by the action of forgiveness and grace that Chris extended to her. One night while Chris and his mother were talking on the phone, Chris led his mother to the Lord and they prayed together. She was the first person he had ever led to Jesus. Now they talk regularly, study the bible together and pray together.

The seeds of love that David and Lisa planted in Chris’ life when he was 12 showed him that family was possible. The friendships of Nathan and Paul gave him a safe place to fall and be himself, and the family and stability given to him by Wayne and Sarah grew into true heart knowledge that God the Father loved him. Chris now knew that no matter how many times he fell, God would be there with grace, mercy and love to pick him up. He saw the miracle of forgiveness and mercy in the relationship with his mother and everyday he was seeing more and more that our wonderful heavenly Father has adopted all of us into his family.

Chris is now 27 years old, and he is still very much a work in progress, like we all are. God has given Chris a wonderful story of victory over adversity, beauty from pain and strength from brokenness. Chris’ story shows the wonderful healing forgiveness and mercy can bring. It also shows how adoption can change a child’s life, no matter what age they are adopted; it is never too late to make a lasting impact on a child.
Chris has been on both short and long term mission trips to The Dominican Republic, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India and Japan. He is currently serving at the Baton Rouge Dream Center, which is an inner-city outreach of Healing Place Church. He still has a strong call to the mission field, particularly Asia.

If you would like to support Chris, check out his web site, http://www.chrisnickjoy.com

Carole Turner
http://Thewardrobeandthewhitetree.com
carolesturner@yahoo.com

MyStory Part 2 (Written By Carole Turner)

Wayne and Sarah had never been able to have children. They had a big farm, a great life but longed to have a family. Their faith in God and their belief that God calls Christians to care for Orphans led them to seek a child through the foster care system. That is where they found Chris. They started foster parenting him and before long they officially adopted him.

Before coming to live with Wayne and Sarah, Chris had very little knowledge of the love of God. His biological family had been strict Catholics but there was no relationship with Jesus in the practice of their religion. It was all about rituals, rules and regulations at their church in particular. Now that he was with his new parents, he began to understand what it meant to be loved by his father in Heaven. He started attending the Baptist church with them, where he was told about having a relationship with Jesus. He also met Nathan at church. Nathan was the son of the lead pastor of the Baptist Church on the Indian reservation. Nathan and Chris became fast friends. They did everything together. They both loved to play football, go biking, run, go wakeboarding and camping. Nathan loved God and Chris saw the light of Jesus in him. Nathan was positive peer pressure for Chris and now Chris was happy. He had a great new family and a best friend. Life was good.

But sadly for Chris, Nathan’s father was transferred to another church and Nathan had to move away. Chris was devastated again. He had lost that special friend that didn’t think he was weird, liked all the same things, loved God and completely loved and accepted Chris. With out Nathan by his side at school, Chris felt lost and confused. He wanted another best friend but all he found were the “bad” kids at school. He soon started smoking pot and getting into trouble and life quickly went down hill.

By the time Chris was 18 he had quit high school, moved out of his new parents house and in with his biological cousin. Living with his drug addicted cousin and friends only worsened Chris’s spiral out of control. He started doing heavy drugs, stealing cars and selling them to chop shops, breaking and entering and all kinds of illegal activity. Life was bad and was getting worse, now he also had people wanting to kill him for bad deals he had made.

The car stealing finally caught up with him and he was arrested and spent two months in jail. His aunt bailed him out and he decided he was going to get his life straight. Jail had scared him. His aunt helped him graduate from High School with honors, and enrolled him in Community College and quickly had a 4.0 grade point average. By some miracle of God, his car theft charges were dropped and he was accepted into Old Dominion University. Things were looking up again for Chris. He finished his first year of college with a 3.8 GPA.

But the call of the wild was too strong to resist for long and soon Chris was back smoking pot and hanging out with Surfers who had no interest in school. Chris’s GPA dropped to a 1.2 and he found himself on probation. Then his girlfriend broke up with him for his roommate so now he was without a girlfriend and a roommate. Then he met Paul. Paul was a cool surfer dude. He was also a Jesus follower. He was hyper, outgoing, fun and very involved in the college Christian group, Varsity. And he was now Chris’ roommate. He invited Chris to a Varsity church service and Chris committed his life to God there. He had seen in Paul a real picture of Jesus. Paul didn’t preach at Chris, he befriended Chris. They would talk about Jesus, about their lives and struggles. Over time Chris started to see that he had blamed God for all the bad that had happened to him. He realized he had to completely surrender his live to Jesus and follow Him with his entire heart. In the fall of 2003 this all came to a head one night, Chris broke down and cried out to the lord. He let go of all of it, placed it at the feet of Jesus and before long he felt the call to the mission field on his life and went on a short term mission’s trip to China. Chris felt he had found his calling in life.

When Chris returned from China he reconnected with his former step father. Chris decided to move to Baton Rouge Louisiana with his step father so he could help him take care of his mentally impaired younger brother. The baby brother he had loved and lost when he was a small child. But being away from a strong Christian environment caused Chris to once again lose faith.

MyStory Part 1 (Written By Carole Turner)

Chris was only twelve years old when he tried to kill himself by cutting his wrists. Life was just too heavy a load to carry. His single mother worked all the time, she had three jobs. She was never at home, but his older, mentally impaired sister needed to be cared for so that job fell on Chris. There was no father; he had left when Chris was a baby. There had briefly been a violent step father for a couple years when Chris was younger, but one day he abruptly left and took Chris’s baby brother. So now Chris was left to take care of the house and his sister while his mother worked all day and all night. Chris also worked hard making good grades. There was no going outside to play, not in the neighborhood they lived in, and there was only work inside or sitting in front of the TV. When you are a child that has already had a life time of responsibilities and you are neglected by your only parent, it just becomes too much to bare and that is why at age 12, death looked better to Chris then living this life.

After his suicide attempt he was sent to a mental facility and in Chris’s mind, it was actually pretty decent there. Finally he was getting some nice, calm, positive attention, what he had always hungered for at home but never got. While at the mental hospital he started feeling better about living. The medication they gave him helped too.

After Chris came home his mom went to counseling, stayed home more with Chris and his sister and even enrolled Chris in the Big Brother program. But it was all short lived. She quickly went back to working three jobs, the “Big brother” quit and Chris went back to being stuck in side watching TV, cleaning, doing homework and being the care giver to his sister and his mom. In his heart he was bursting with frustration and a need for positive attention. He would settle for any attention and any outlet for his pain. So at thirteen he started doing drugs, drinking and fighting.

An appointment was set for Chris and his mother with a state appointed Social worker. When they arrived at the appointment, Chris sat down in the counselor’s office, his mother said she needed to go to the restroom and would be right back. She walked out of the office and never returned. The counselor eventually called her and she told him she could not parent Chris anymore. She wanted the state to take him. She gave Chris up for adoption that day. He was 13 years old.

Chris immediately went into foster care and was placed in the home of a wonderful couple, David and Lisa. They had no other children and to them, Chris was a dream come true. He was finally getting positive attention. He was receiving regular counseling, His grades were great, He played sports and David was at every practice and game. Chris finally felt like he was in a real family and he was flourishing.

Sadly this dream was not to last. After only 10 months with David and Lisa the state informed them that Chris’s biological father wanted Chris to come live with him so they were sending him to his father in Florida. Chris was devastated. So were David and Lisa. Chris had wanted to stay with David and Lisa forever. He loved them, they loved him but now he was being forced to go live with a father who was a stranger. On arrival in Florida, Chris discovered that his father was an alcoholic. He immediately started running away, stealing, and doing anything he could to get away from this new environment. His father had no idea how to deal with this wild teenage boy of his. He placed Chris in a horrible detention center for juvenile criminals for two weeks but even that didn’t detour his behavior. After only a couple months, his father conceded and sent him back to state care in Virginia.

At this time Chris was 14 years old. He was lost in grief, loneliness, anger, depression and complete despair. But hope was on it’s way...