Two Battles, One Savior

James' story can't be explained without God at the center of it. After battling addiction not once, but twice and facing a life-altering diagnosis, this jouney is marked by pain, perseverence and undeniable grace. When there was nothing left, God stepped in.  Today, his testimony stands as living proof that no pit is too deep  and no struggle is too strong for God. 

Scripture: 1 John 3:3

Song: Table of the Lord Hope Darst

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Borderland Podcast for those who have stumbled, the ones who have wrestled, and the ones who decided not to quit. I am HD, and this space is about real people, real stories, and a very real Jesus. Here we share testimonies of what happens when you stop running aimlessly and you start running with purpose. This podcast exists because none of us were created to live an accidental life. We were born to win on purpose with Jesus. So whether you're brand new to faith, you're coming back after a long hiatus, or you're walking closely with Jesus but hungry for more, you belong here. And if you don't necessarily believe, you belong here as well. These stories aren't about having it all together. They are about what happens when surrender means grace, and ordinary people say yes to an extraordinary God. So take a breath, lean in, and let these testimonies remind you that your past doesn't disqualify you, your pain isn't wasted, and your race is far from over. So today on the podcast, we have James Griffin, and he's gonna tell us a little bit about his testimony. I'm really excited. I don't know that much about him, so this is new for me too. So, James, welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Hey, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

You're welcome. Um, so let's just kind of jump in because I like to get started for time constraints, and I was laughing we were laughing about being quiet and a plane just flew over right when we started. So hopefully that doesn't um pick up. But anyway, start. Um we talked about how your testimony is kind of like mine, and there's a lot of details, it could take us all day. So just kind of pick where you want to start and we'll do the highlights.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Okay, I'll do my best. Yeah, if there's any background noise or something happens, you know, forgive me in advance. Uh it's all good. Yeah, so yeah, like you said, my name's James Griffin, and um I'll just kind of give a brief uh description of how I was raised, where I'm from, and then just kind of speed up a little bit as best I can. So yeah, um, Heather, it was nice meeting you not that long ago, and you know, each of us kind of getting to know each other through mutual friends and just seeing your love for Jesus. That was evident. Um, so thanks for having me on your podcast.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

This is welcome.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

This is fun, and uh, I love Jesus and I love who he is and how he became real in my life, and so um I am originally from Massachusetts. I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, Boston. I was born I was born in Boston uh in 1985, and I have an older brother and a younger sister. And we my parents are my mother's side of the family is from upstate New York, and they met in Boston, and my dad is from Holy Oak, Massachusetts, and so they met kind of when they were, I think, in college and got married and were married for 15 years, had three kids, and they divorced when I was like three or four years old. So a lot of my life in Massachusetts, I don't remember too much, but I know that there was a lot happening in my childhood home. And to back up a little further, I know that my mother's side as well as my father's side, we had alcoholism on both sides of the family pretty, pretty strongly and dating back several generations of alcoholics. And so um I think there was some tumultuous things in my parents' marriage. And after 15 years, they divorced. And my mother at the time had a friend who lived in Sarasota, Florida from Plymouth. We grew up in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I was born in Boston, and so they're going through a divorce, it was a custody battle, and then my mom got custody of the kids and relocated to Sarasota, Florida, I think in 1991, somewhere around there. Um, and I grew up in Florida, and um we she remarried um in the course of my adolescent years and getting into being an adult. My mom remarried, I think, two or three different times. So a lot to say about that without judging my parents, but there definitely was some areas of dysfunction. Um, and drugs and alcohol seemed to be one of those contributing factors. And so I think for me, there was always this outgoing ability as a kid to just make friends or be good in sports and be outgoing, like at school and stuff. But I think behind just my ability to act in public around other people, I think our home growing up was extremely traumatic. And so I think internally, especially as I was starting to hit middle school and high school, my adolescent years, I think I struggled a lot with um a lot of self-hatred and insecurity. You know, I had this crazy, you know, overwhelming sense of abandonment. My dad was never really there. And then I get this new stepdad, and then my mom divorces him, and then there's this next stepdad, and then they divorce, and so just this like cycle of father figure type people coming into my life and then leaving, and then my my own biological dad not really there for me growing up. And so for me, I think in high school, what was um probably very similar to a lot of other kids, what seemed appealing was drugs and alcohol, because you know, smoke some pot, maybe take some pills, drink some alcohol, and it kind of took the edge off. And I don't know, for whatever reason, um Sarasota, Florida, just growing up in that city, a lot of young people abused drugs um at an early age. And we all kind of had older siblings. And I know for me, like my older brother and his friends, they were into serious drug use, cocaine, ecstasy, you know, hallucinogenics, even heroin and opiates, prescription pills, and those kind of things. So um that's kind of what was going on. I was I was christened as a Catholic baby growing up. And my grandparents on my father's side, my grandmother was a Catholic woman. Um, so we're like Irish Catholic from the Northeast, you know, uh lots of alcohol drinking and Irish Catholic, you know. So, but what was interesting was my grandmother went to mass every day. She went to Catholic Mass every single day, never missed it, seven days a week, and prayed. And I know that she prayed for me um growing up. And I'm a believer of if God enters your life or does something miraculous, usually somewhere behind the scenes, there's someone that was praying for you.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

And so I know that that person was my grandmother. Um, and so fast forward, I'm kind of in high school. I remember dropping out of high school at 16, and I just quickly developed just this uh defiant towards authority behavior and kind of anger and just kind of radical drug user, sex, drugs, rock and roll thing really fast, uh, sophomore year in high school. And that kind of uh masked over a lot of my insecurities. And I found a false sense of comfort in that false identity to being a drug dealer, a drug user. Um, and then, you know, and then I dropped out of high school. And so for me, kind of 16, 17, 18 years old, you know, I was introduced into, I mean, you know, that's kind of a young age, but I was using heroin and cocaine and a lot of crazy drugs as just a teenage kid. Um, and I remember trying cocaine at 17 years old. Uh, and my brother at the time was a DJ in a nightclub in Miami, Florida. And so I was able to get into a 21-year-old and up club at like 16 years old. And my brother was the DJ at that time in that club, so I could I kind of I could have the bartenders serve me drinks and use drugs. And so that's kind of where my life uh started to get pretty um dysfunctional. And I I don't I don't really know all the I'm 41 years old now, so I don't know all the chronological orders, but basically uh got kicked out of my mom's house. Uh by 18 years old, I had been to jail a few times. I had been to detention centers as an as a minor, um, dropped out of high school, was full-blown heroin. You know, by 19, 20 years old, I was shooting heroin through needles, was like just absolutely a lost cause. And um I had spent time in jail. I went to jail for over a year of my life, which was uh all for drug charges, violating probation. So I'd get caught with drugs, get arrested for drugs, and then um would get put on probation. Um, and my parents would pay for lawyers to try and get me out of trouble, but I could never stay clean. I could never, I wasn't, I never had the ability to change my environment or my friendships or make better choices. And so I found myself always relapsing and going back to those habits, and and then I would fail drug tests or not show up to my court dates. And so now the police are looking for me and I have to go to jail. So I did spend quite a bit of time in my early 20s in jail. Um, and then uh there were there were aspects, spurts of time where I would have these uh moments where I'd want to try and change my life and get sober and try and regain all the things that I'd lost in my younger years. And at one of those times, um I had uh kind of relapsed again and had the police looking for me and checked into a homeless shelter because at that time my my life was at such a rock bottom that I wasn't welcome back in my house. My family didn't want anything to do with me because I would steal. I was addicted to drugs, I couldn't be trusted, I would lie, I would cheat, I would steal, I would manipulate. Um, if you turned your back and you had something of value, I might take it from you. And, you know, so I had racked up um a lot of debts with people. So I had my family wanted nothing to do with me. I had people looking to harm me because I'd stolen from them. I had drug dealers that I had owed money to. And so on multiple fronts, I was up between a rock and a hard place. I was up against a wall and I had nowhere to turn. And now I have a warrant for my arrest, so that even the police are looking for me. So I was withdrawing from drugs at the time and decided I would go to a detox, which I had been to that detox facility in downtown Sarasota probably uh, I don't know, three or four, maybe five times in that same year. And I was back there again. And so I'll never forget this lady. But towards the middle or the end of my detoxing in this medical facility, she looked at me and she was like, Hey, would you consider going to a treatment program if I could get you in there? And I really didn't want to do it, but for some reason, the way that this lady talked to me was so nice. Um, she basically begged me. She was like, if you go back out on these streets, it will just be a matter of time before you're back here or you're in prison or you're dead. So would you please go to this treatment facility? And I honestly to this day, I don't know why I agreed to do it, but I said yes, and I went. And so it was actually in Sarasota, Florida, it was called the Salvation Army. It was a homeless shelter. But what was unique about this place was it was also they had a church that was there on the property, and then they had a whole like section of the property that was for the only requirement is you had to be a resident to the state of Florida, and it was a long-term inpatient rehabilitation program. So I went there and for six months I lived in a dorm with like 20 other guys. There was like 10 or 20 bunk beds. It was like um like prison style where you're on these little rubber mats on these steel frames, and there was one or two bathrooms for 20 guys, and they made you go to AA meetings and recovery meetings and church services, and you had a caseworker, and you did all these things. And I know that for me, I went there, but I wasn't really convinced that I wanted to change my life. At the time, I was more concerned with what girl I could flirt with at the rehab, as if that's like a great place to try and find someone to talk to, a bunch of broken people who well, it's trading one addiction for another. Yeah. So I was I was just trading one addiction for another. It's exactly what I was doing. And um, about four months of being there, they asked me to take a drug test. And um I passed the drug test, but I thought I was gonna fail or someone was framing me. I concocted some idea in my mind why their asking of me to do a drug test was some ploy to sabotage my recovery. I don't know what I was even thinking. I was just being weird. But that confrontational moment, um, the staff of that church looked at me that night and they said, We don't, we don't really care what you think. If you don't take this drug test, you can pack your stuff and leave now. And I was just like, uh, okay, I'll take the drug test. So I took the and I passed the drug test and it was fine. But then they were like, Why are you why what's your deal? Like, why are you so like this? You know? And you know, I really thought about it. And that night I went to a church service. Um, and the director of this program at this Salvation Army, he would like preach the Bible and like put worship songs on the projector, and he would invite local pastors from the community, a different one every week, to like preach a Christian message, you know? And then he would have all these, you know, ex-convicts and drug addicts, homeless people off the street. He would gather all of us into this big room and just have a church service with all of these really extreme, rough around the edge people. And he would open up the service with, you know, like the Holy Spirit is in this room, and I believe God wants to heal people tonight and set them, and all this like stuff that honestly freaked me out. I was just like, I don't want anything. This is this is weird.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

That's a lot, that's a lot to start with.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Yeah, like he he was so, anyways, um, I remember just kind of sitting in the back during some of those services and just kind of in the room, but like didn't want anything to do with what this guy was saying. But at the same time, you know, I'd never really was raised religiously. So I was like, is this stuff real or not? Like, God, and so then I think the takeaway from sitting in those church services was like, God, if you're real, like I want to know, I want to know you if you're real. And so I started like journaling and um like reading, I guess reading the Bible and trying to pray. I didn't really know how to pray. So I figured if I if I'm gonna pray, I should probably like throw away my cigarettes and like make my bed and kind of like get down on my knees at the end of my bed and like try and clean myself up, like if I'm gonna talk to God. So I kept I for a while I I started trying to do all these ways to like try and connect with some person or thing that's out there or Jesus or what what this guy's saying in these services. And so um, so that that went on for a couple of weeks, and then there was this one service where he was talking about being honest, um, and just honesty. I think the theme of that night was honesty, some message on honesty. And I don't know what happened other than there was just this sudden, like overwhelming sense of remorse and conviction that I started feeling almost even like physically in my body. Um now looking back all these years later, what I know now, like that was what some would say was the Holy Spirit like moving on my life, or however you would say that. And so I just felt this overwhelming remorse of how much I had lied and defrauded people, and just started to feel this conviction for sin. And as this guy was preaching that night, I remember just sitting in my chair, just crying, like for a long time, just like let letting out this overwhelming cry. And I I don't even know that I understood the Bible or knew who Jesus was. You know, I could piece together a lot of the stuff that maybe we all hear, but like at that point, I was willing to surrender my entire life to Jesus. And I and I remember that night just saying, God, I, you know, I give you, like, I give you my heart. And clearly at 24 years old, I have wasted so much of myself. And I was diagnosed with hepatitis C from using needles. So I had um, I had a virus, a disease in my blood. I had track marks down my arms. I was homeless. I mean, like I was broken. I had no, I didn't really have anything else going for me. So why not? Why not just give my life to Jesus, you know? And I remember it was so my reach in that moment to surrender my life was so sincere that I can't describe it other than it was just like this weight just began to lift off of me. And I just felt a peacefulness like I'd never felt before in my life. And I can just remember it like it was yesterday, even though that was over 20 years ago. Um, so fast forward from there, uh I I really got immersed into a lot of I went to Bible school, I studied scripture, I went to seminary, I became a missionary, I've traveled the world, I joined with a bunch of people, praying for people, preaching, gone all over the world leading people to Jesus. I started leading all of my ex-drug addicts and drug dealers to the Lord, uh, some of my best friends. And so it was really cool because um right after that, you could really kind of tangibly see a lot of productive fruit in my life. Like there was no denying the transformation that took place in that moment. And I was like a completely new person. Um and then I started reading the Bible, and I think it happened progressively where I started to understand the revelation of the person of Jesus, like who he is, being both fully man and fully God in the flesh. Like he's risen, like you know, all of the ways in which the Bible depicts this person. I don't think any of that made sense when I gave my heart that night in a homeless shelter and felt the power of the Holy Spirit bring peace into my life. I think from then I started discovering who Jesus was. And um, like so many miraculous things began to happen for me. Uh started gaining impressions and having dreams, started being able to interpret the Bible, started teaching scripture, leading other people to the Lord. And I remember just seeing things in the Bible and saying, wow, if that's in the Bible and if that's real, God, I want that. If that's in the Bible, if this is true, then show me. And let's, and and beginning to just have such great faith to take God's word at face value. And if you said it and if it's written, then it's real. And then moving in that power of what the Bible describes. And nothing really religious about it, or no real motivation to try and build some church or have something, other than to just take God at His word and share the love of Jesus with everyone and tell them about how the how God changed my life and he can heal and change yours too. So that happened for a long time and then moved to Kansas City. I met my wife, we had two kids. Um, and I had probably I had been working as a full-time missionary for a long time. Um, had raised support. I had a handful of different churches across the country, uh, family, some other friends contributing to me monthly and was teaching and doing a bunch of different things. And then uh about it during COVID, um, I know that me personally, uh yeah, I just went through this weird time where I kind of felt like I started to burn out. And I know that I, in the time of getting married, you know, becoming a husband and having two kids, I know that that changed a lot of dynamics for me. And um no longer was it just like me always on the run as this guy, loving Jesus and doing ministry work, but now I've got this family to take care of. I have this marriage that I need to cultivate. Um and I know that, you know, I just began to burn out. There were a few things um that happened within the church, and even just some aspirations that I felt like I was supposed to step into and to do. And then those things didn't really kind of work out the way that I thought they would. And I I found myself at a real crossroads in my life um in my marriage as a father during that COVID time frame. And there was this weird night where we had a friend come over and he was drinking, and my wife was drinking. And I just remember, like, you know what? I'm not gonna sit on the sidelines tonight and not have a drink. I think I'm not that old drug addict that I used to be back in Florida, which my wife had never met that type of person. She'd always known me to be this awesome Christian guy. And so that night I just decided I'll drink. I'm gonna have, I'm gonna do this. And I think I can control this. I'm I'm a new creation in Jesus, I'm a new person. So why can't I enjoy an adult beverage like other Christians do? Um, and so alcohol hit my lips for the first time in like 10 or 11 years. And I remember just feeling that initial feeling of alcohol hit my system, and my addict, addictive ways just exploded. Um, and I started drinking, I think that night I we went through like two bottles of wine. And um and then my wife just observed how much I drank and was just like, Are you okay? You know? Um, and then the weeks following that, like started coming home after work or at the end of my day with beer or a six-pack or whatever. And she's like, Oh, so we're you're gonna do this tonight, like you're gonna drink. And I'm like, Yeah, no problem, you know. And then before I knew it, I was like, the amount of alcohol that I was consuming and how frequently I was drinking it, just it just it was like a bonfire, like gasoline being poured on a fire, and I was full-blown, like alcoholically drinking again. And then um started so then that really clouded my moral, you know, situation. And I I liked how it made me feel. So I can't, I can't describe the headspace that I was in, other than I had felt like I was exhausted of trying to jump through all of these Christian hoops to try and please Jesus when things weren't working out for me so well within Christianity. I'm tired of my wife telling me I can't drink. I'm tired of people telling me what I have to do. Like I pay my taxes, I'm a grown man, I love my family. Like, no one's gonna tell me I can't not drink or do what I want. And the more that my wife would confront me on it, the more I began to resent her. She's just concerned, obviously, that her husband is now spiraling into alcoholism, who she never saw drink. What she didn't know was that I was also using drugs again. Started using marijuana, going to the dispensaries and getting gummies, and I found some sources to get some prescription pills. So I was like full-blown running my painting business and going to church still, leading prayer meetings as a leader in our church, but then cracking a beer in my car after the prayer meeting and driving down the road, drinking and driving because I can't really drive in my drink in my house because then my wife. So it just was this horrible, horrible, horrible like lifestyle that I found myself in to where now I'm become like this hypocrite living this duplicitous lifestyle, and I have to maintain this public image, but deep down I'm suffering so deeply in my heart. I'm stuck in life, I don't know what to do, and I just want alcohol to take the edge off. And so it wasn't malicious, like I was trying to hurt my wife or I was trying to be a liar to all my Christian friends. I just wanted my pain to go away and I couldn't know how to get rid of it. Um, and so then I went back to my doctor because when I married my wife to back up, um, she's like, you need to get treatment for your hepatitis. If we're gonna be married and, you know, in a marriage like that, you could pass that disease on to me through sex in our marriage, or like if my blood ever touched your blood, like I could get like you can you can pass hepatitis C. It's not common, but it can happen. You can pass that. So she's like, we need to like deal with this situation. So I went through treatment for hep C. Um, and I think if I'm honest now, or not necessarily honest, but more aware, I think that that played into my psyche a little bit. Like, oh, I've got a clean bill of health and I've gone through treatment. And it was almost like, wait a minute, if I ever wanted to go back and touch the waters of drinking again or flirt with drug use or some substance, like technically maybe I could because it's no longer a health risk to my liver because I've gotten I've gotten treatment. Um, anyways, now fast forward back to where I'm using all of these substances. Nobody knows this, by the way. And this is just maybe four or five, six years, four or five years ago. Nobody knew it. And I had this ability to just lie to people and keep a straight face, but I'm I'm I'm in the tank. I'm completely so that's kind of if I'm vulnerable on your podcast, that's kind of where I got in my life as a 40-year-old man. Um and I went back to the doctors to get uh blood work because I think with my hepatitis history, I have to get my enzymes in my liver and blood blood labs every six months. So they came in and they're like, hey, we don't know what's happened since your treatment. I knew what happened. I was drinking copious amounts of alcohol and abusing drugs. So they're like, we don't know what's happened, but you've got cancer in your liver now, and you have stage one compensated liver cirrhosis. And this is serious because usually livers can reverse. Like the liver is one of your organs that can heal itself if you cleanse it, but yours has gotten so scarred that because you've had scarring from hepatitis for 20 years, and now all something more recent, like you're cooked, you're done. And I was like, No way, are you serious? And they were like, We're dead serious. And I'll never forget that day. She was like, you know, you need to start, we need to meet with you guys. You need to change your diet. Like, you're gonna start to experience like your fluids, you know, your your stomach is gonna become enlarged. Usually it'll happen in your ankles, your skin, your eyes are starting to turn yellow, they're gonna turn more yellow. When you start experiencing brain disorientation, you need to come to the hospital because that's basically like when you're gonna die. And so then you have, you know, and um so I left the hospital, and this was not that long ago. Uh, I remember crying for two days, like just totally devastated. Like, man, I really screwed this. I'm not getting out of this one this time. I screwed this up pretty bad. And now I'll be lucky. They said, if you you live five or ten years. This, depending on if like if you drink alcohol, if you don't stop, you're probably not gonna live long. You might live five or ten more years. We and I was gonna have to get on a waiting list for a liver transplant. And so I remember I was painting an exterior in Brookside at that time, and I just was sitting outside of this lady's house, just prepping her house and doing this pain job. And I just cried all day long. I just cried and cried and cried. I'm like, man, I'm not gonna see my daughters go to prom. I'm not gonna see them get their driver's permit. I'm not gonna see their first date. Like, I'm gonna be dead before my two little