by: Chris Dallas
“Hello my name is Chris Dallas, and I am a drug addict and alcoholic…” It is sad to say, but this is how I was known, not only in Alcoholics Anonymous, but to friends and family. What I’m about to tell you by no means is meant to bring light or glory to sin and Satan, but rather to be a message of warning to the reader.
Up until I was ten years old, I lived in a little town in Louisiana called Monroe. At that time in my life, from what I can remember, I had a God-fearing family – a mom and dad who were faithful to church, daily walked with the Lord, and my dad even drove a church bus picking up kids in the neighborhood to bring them to church. I’ve two older sisters, and in that time of my life, the oldest sister began to be very rebellious. She started hanging around friends who definitely were not pleasing to my parents, and she even began to partake of their worldly activities. Things got so unruly and uncontrollable with her that my parents made the decision to take her to a girls home in Kosciusko, Mississippi, called the Lighthouse Children’s Home. I remember, just like it was yesterday, making the trip with my parents and two sisters from Monroe to Kosciusko. When my dad turned on that old dirt road that led to the girls home, it seemed like it was five or six miles long when he finally got up to the administration office and he told my other sister and I to stay in the vehicle while he, my mom, and sister went inside. I didn’t know what was happening then, but now I know – my parents were turning over their rights of my sister to the girls home. I remember as we all left, minus my older sister, dad drove down that old dirt road headed home, but about halfway down the dirt road he pulled the car over and put in it park. For the first time in my life I saw my dad cry.
I remember that day making myself and God a promise that I would never hurt my mom and dad the way my sister had hurt them, and they would never have to cry over failures and mistakes in my life like they had my sister’s. A couple of months after that particular incident, my dad came home and told the family that the company he was working for was transferring him from Monroe, Louisiana to Memphis, Tennessee. A couple weeks later we packed up a U-haul truck and made the journey to Memphis.
When we moved to Memphis our family got settled in many things. We settled in our new home, my sister and I got settled in our new school, our parents got settled in their new jobs; but we never got settled in a new church. If there’s anyone reading this that used to be in church and fell out for one reason or another, you know exactly what happens; Satan gets a strong hold on that family, and it’s a domino affect down the slippery road of sin. I continued to keep the promise I made myself and God that day we dropped my sister off at the girl’s home for some time, but at fourteen years of age that promise would soon be forgotten. For the next eight years I would head down a dead-end road of destruction and turmoil.
I started playing on the junior varsity football team, began to hang out with friends that my parents didn’t approve of, and started doing things that I definitely didn’t learn at home. My new friends were smoking cigarettes, so I started smoking cigarettes. They were sneaking around drinking beer, so I started sneaking around with them. They were stealing tens and twenties out of their moms and dads pocket book to buy dope, and I started doing the same. At fourteen years of age, I found myself in a drug rehab called Parkwood Hospital in Olive Branch, Mississippi. That day I was sitting in a small office with my mom and dad across from me, and a psychiatrist next to me. The doctor began to tell my parents that I would have to live in that rehab for thirty days and get up and say, “My name is Chris Dallas, and I’m a dope addict and alcoholic.” She told them how I would enter a twelve-step program and trust a higher power,(whatever I chose to be my higher power) to help me with my addictive behavior. Obviously, tears were streaming down mama’s face at this point, but only the second time I’d ever seen my dad cry….my dad looked at me and said, “Chris if you promise us that you’ll quit doing the things you been doing and quit hanging out with the crowd you’re hanging out with, we will let you come back home, but if you can’t promise us that, then you’ll have to stay here.” As a fourteen year old punk, I looked at my dad and said, “I hate your guts, and I never want to see you again.”
That was two weeks before Christmas. I remember when Christmas morning came around I was sitting in a large room with fifty or sixty other drug addicted teenagers. One after the other, I began to see their parents come down the hallway with Christmas presents under their arms for their kids, and I said to myself, “There’s no way in the world my mom and dad are going to come and visit me the way I talked to them two weeks ago.” But, before that thought exited my mind, my mom and dad were walking down the same hall with presents under their arm. That day I began to make promise after promise that I would quit hanging out with the crowd I was hanging out with and I would quit doing the things I had been doing, but they were just verbal promises. I was expecting supernatural results with only human efforts. From that moment, as a fourteen year old dope addict until I was twenty-two years old, I went through five drug rehabs, in and out of county jails, and even ended up homeless living in my car. Many times my parents would leave the comfort of their home on Thanksgiving and Christmas to come to some smoke filled AA room and watch their son get up and say, “My name is Chris Dallas, and I’m a dope addict and alcoholic.”
At twenty-two years old, I got word my parents were going on a weekend vacation to Hot Springs, Arkansas. As soon as they left town, I broke in their home and stole everything I could get my hands on in order to feed the drug addiction I had in my life. When Monday morning came around, the dope was gone, the money was gone, and no gas was in the car. I went to my parent’s house and my dad met me in the middle of the driveway and said, “We’re not going to call the cops on you anymore, we’re not going to pack your bags and take you back to rehab.” He said, “As far as your mother and I are concerned, you’re no longer welcome here, and we’ve been down to the police station and signed a restraining order where you can’t come within a hundred yards of the house.”
I got in my car that day, the money gone, the gas gone, the dope gone; but one thing I thought I had, I thought I had some friends. I went to their house, one after the other, and began to ask if I could have a place to stay for a night or two, and all they wanted to know was how much dope I had or how much money I had. I came to a quick realization that day, the ones I was treating like my worst enemies (my parents) were in reality my best friends.
After not finding anyone to let me stay the night with them, I got in my car with no gas or money, and began to head down I-55 South in Mississippi. When I made it about a mile past a little town called Hernando, my car completely ran out of gas. I was able to coast into a rest area, where I would live in my car for a lengthy period of time. My mom was a nurse in Memphis, Tennessee, about an hour from that rest area, and she would come to pick me up each night and take me into town to get a bite to eat. After we ate, mom would take me back to my car at the rest area, and with tears streaming down my face and tears streaming down hers, I’d say, “Mom, please let me come back home. I promise you, I will quit hanging out with those friends. I promise you I will quit doing the things I’ve been doing, if you’ll just let me come back home.” My mom would say, “Chris we’ve heard those promises for too long, and until we see a difference in your life, you are not coming back home.”
One night when my mom came to pick me up at the rest area, she drove past the little town where we would grab a bite to eat each night. She drove clear on the other side of Memphis to a suburb of Memphis called Bartlett, Tennessee. Little did I know, but mama made arrangements for me to quit living in my car and move into a “halfway house” for dope addicts and alcoholics. I came from a good family; a family that definitely never did without. My parents always provided me clothes on my back, food on the table, and a roof over my head; but now I got out of my moms vehicle that night as a twenty-two year old dope addict with just a few clothes in a garbage bag. My mom told me as I checked in the halfway house that night, “Chris, you are not going to hear from your dad and I for some time because we have been getting harassing phone calls from drug dealers who you owe money to.” Sure enough, I didn’t hear from my folks for quiet a while (about six months to be exact).
In order to live in the halfway house, I had to attend AA meetings each night. One particular night; Sunday, August 16, 1998, I was walking out of the halfway house headed to an AA meeting when the phone rang. I went and answered the phone, and it was the sweetest voice I’d heard in a long time; it was my mama. She said, “Chris your sisters and I have found a church we’ve been going to, and we would like for you to go with us tonight.” Immediately, I agreed to go, but not to hear about God and learn about the Lord; I agreed to go simply so I could manipulate my mom one more time to allow me to come back home and get out of that halfway house.
That night I went to church and the preacher gave a sermon entitled, “How to get out of financial bondage.” Little did I realize, but I was in a worse bondage than that; I was in the awful bondage of sin. The invitation was given, and something was going on in my heart. I didn’t know what it was called then, but now I realize it was the Holy Ghost conviction. I was at a place in life when there wasn’t one family member who could allow me in their home, or one person on planet Earth I could even call my friend. God was certainly working in my life that night at the invitation, and He sent a man to come and stand beside me in the pew. That man put his arm around me and whispered these words in my ear, “You don’t know who I am, but I’ve been praying for you.” When he said those words, my cold, hard heart began to melt. He asked if he could talk with me in the back of the church, and I said, “sure.”
That gentleman began to take me on a journey, and that journey was called the Romans Road. He began to show me from God’s Word that I was a sinner destined to Hell; not because I was a dope addict, but all men are destined there before Salvation. He began to show me if I died in my sin without Christ as my personal Saviour, I would spend an eternity in Hell forever. All that he was telling me was bad news so far, but he started telling me some good news. He showed me in the Bible even though death and Hell were my penalty because of my sin; Jesus Christ paid that penalty in full, when He died on the cross and shed His blood for all men’s sin. He showed me how it was personal between me and God, and that I must confess with my mouth and believe in my heart that Jesus Christ would save me. That man then proceeded to show me, in my opinion the greatest verse in the entire Bible; Romans 10:13, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of The Lord shall be saved.” Tears began to stream down my face and tears began to stream down his; and at that moment I bowed my head, and to the best of my ability I admitted being a sinner, and deserved to go to Hell, but asked Jesus Christ to save my soul.
Since that night, my life has never been the same. As the old song goes, “I’m just a nobody telling everybody about a Somebody Who can save anybody.” I testify to you, that AA couldn’t help, and rehab couldn’t help, and jail cells couldn’t help, but it was God Who made the difference in my life.
Chris Dallas
Evangelist
Bethel Baptist Church
Walls, MS