I grew up Christian. I always wanted to do the right thing. I was in church and serving in extra- church activities. I was going to school full time at the University of Winnipeg to become a teacher. The only thing is… I hated school. What I really wanted was to be an artist, but I knew this was too impractical so I stuck with the teacher path, hoping I could still do art at least in my spare time and have summers off to paint. I started to get tired. I was overextending myself with going to school and working as a server in banquets, plus all the extra church stuff. To cope with all of the stress I would take A.D.D medication called Concerta. I would take Concerta whenever I faced anything daunting like school work, or computer work, that I felt I couldn’t handle on my own. In 2015 my mother came into a lot of money; her business started to blossom. We grew up poor, so my mom wanted to do something for me and my brothers. She gave each of us a lot of money. Up to this point I was always asking myself “What is the right thing to do?” but this money made me stop and ask myself “What do I want?” I stepped back and took a look at my life: I didn’t want to be a teacher; I wanted to paint and be an artist. Early in 2016 I bought a house with the money and turned it into a rental property. I thought if art wasn’t doing well or if I hit a rough month then I would live off of the rent income from the house. In September of 2016, with the rental property I acquired, I felt secure enough to follow my dream and dropped out of university. I really felt like I was free to follow the question; “What do I want to do?” It was a very exciting time in my life.

My art career started to pick up off the ground. My first art show at 618 Arlington was the most successful art show I have ever had; I sold 16 paintings in the course of 2 days. I really felt like this wasn’t just a pipe dream; it could really work! I had 2 pop up shops in 1 year. During that time I met a lot of people and made a lot of good connections in the creative community. When I was in the pop-up shop on Graham Ave by the Bay, I got commissioned to make an 8’x4’ detailed city scape. It could be anything I wanted, but it had to be done in one month. I felt like I wanted to do my best work, so I took a lot of Concerta. Concerta is an ADD hyper-focus drug (really just slow-release cocaine or speed throughout the day). I was taking far more then the recommended amount in a day, and then smoking cigarettes to calm down from jacking myself up too much. I barely ate during that time. I had a strong ‘got-to-prove-myself-to-the-world’ complex, so I was very hard on myself. I pushed myself so hard that my arm started to feel heavy. I pushed through it till I finished the painting. Afterwards I noticed that whenever I tried to do computer work, or painting, or any fine motor work, my right arm would just feel really fatigued and really hurt the next day. I took a break from painting and went out dancing a lot. During this time I did a lot of drugs. For a while I was having a good time, but I had realized that I had a real issues with my right arm. I went to different doctors, but no one could tell me what was wrong. Painting at this point started to be a real strain. I still enjoyed seeing the colours come to life, but getting the colour on the canvas was very straining work. I would have to take long breaks in-between paintings to let my arm recover and in those breaks I’d do a lot of partying. I started making less and less money every month painting, and as a result I would dip more and more into the rental property.

I began to think it was normal to have 3 or 4 drinks every night. I was beginning to see myself as always smoking weed even till I was an old man. I would smoke weed every day. I would get bored easily. There were some days that I would have so many different substances just to feel ‘good’ throughout the day. I needed a constant buzz on something. It was worse if I was going to a party or an event, I’d have to do harder drugs so I’d at least enjoy myself at the party and have a good time, or a weird time. As long as it wasn’t a normal time, I was ok. I was so bored with normal. After a year I started to get really tired of parties, and social night life events. All I really wanted was to just stay home. It was all the same, every night. No one would talk about anything meaningful.

There was one night when I made about 10 new friends. I had them on Facebook, but I had no memory of the night, or the people I met. The next night they came up to me like they knew me, but I had no idea who they were. Around that same time I lost my best friend that I had throughout childhood because it was too painful for him to see me destroying myself.

I ran out of money. The rental property at this point was doing really poorly. My good tenants moved out and I had just approved a bunch of new people as tenants and didn’t really look into their background. Some of them ended up being gang members, two of them from opposite gangs. One night they had a party at the house, and they all invited their friends. A gang fight broke out at the house and someone shot a gun at the opposite gang member. I was scared to go down to the house. At the time I was living at an apartment. I was afraid to look into my bank account, and would just go deeper into deficit every month. I began to eat really poorly, I lacked the motivation to cook, I just ate subway, or craft dinner, or pizza pops. This added to the loss of motivation with my brain just not thinking clearly.

During this time, my arm wasn’t working properly so I couldn’t paint to support myself, I had become addicted to substances, I was scared to look at my bank account, and the house that I thought would be a financial support to me, ended up being a financial burden. It was always in need of some repair and I didn’t know what to do with the gang members in the house. In the summer of 2017, there was a bill that was overdue, my property tax would go into NSF every month when they tried to take it out. I tried to take care of that by meeting with them and requesting more time to pay the bills or set up something more manageable but it didn’t work and I just ended up running into a wall with them. I hated government paperwork, computer forms, and those types of things. Whatever it was, it was my breaking point. I lost my composure right there in a parking lot. I tore my clothes, I pulled out my hair, I screamed. (I was 28 years old at the time). I walked home like that, clothes torn, tears streaming down my face. I saw some really beautiful flowers on my way home, but I was in no mood for nice flowers. I saw an old friend across the street that I used to go to church with, but I was in no mood to talk to any old friends. A bus passed by between us and he didn’t see me. I got home and tried to call my dad but my dad didn’t pick up. I tried to call my mom, but my mom didn’t pick up. So I cried out loud to Jesus and said, “Why can’t I just talk to You like You’re a person? Why do You have to be some kind of abstract force? I’m hurting, I need someone!” I heard Him reply, using scripture. He said, ““Have I been with you this whole time and you still don’t know Me?” I was in the beauty of the flowers, but you didn’t want to look at the flowers, I was in your friend across the street, but you didn’t want to come talk to Me. Why are you mad at Me?” And I thought about it, and I was mad at God. I felt incapable of running my life, everything I was trying to do I just felt like I was running into a wall. And the question I had in my heart was “God, why did you make me like this?” (incapable of running my own life). I knew that this question hurt God, and I felt it hurt Him. But He said, “Go ahead, write down your question, write it down.” And I tried to grip the pencil and write the question but my pencil fell to the ground, and I fell to the ground crying, I still tried to get off the ground to finish writing my question. Every letter I felt His pain. I’m not sure if I finished writing down the question, but then I heard Him say, “You know the truth, you know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made.” I collapsed on the ground crying again. In that moment I felt His arms come around me. I knew it was Jesus. He held me as I cried, and I released tears that I could only release if I was crying on the shoulder of someone. He answered my first question. Even though I asked it in anger, He came to me as a person. After I had finished crying, I felt Him say, “Okay son, let’s build you back up from here.”

Immediately I felt different. I felt happy and content with myself. I knew that He had become my Father in that moment. I wasn’t alone anymore! That deep sense of longing and loneliness wasn’t there anymore. I felt constantly comforted, and just ok with myself. I started to like who I was. Jesus showed me what to do and how to do it well so that it would stick, rather than before when I would try to do something and run into a wall. With Jesus’ help I got control of the house again. I also got control of my life again! He gave me a dream about facing my fear of death, and in the dream I came face to face with a bear that could have killed me. Instead of running I stood my ground and accepted my fate of dying. Then in the dream the bear looked me in the eyes, then noticing that I wasn’t afraid, just moved on. With that same courage, I went and faced the gang members in my rental property and told them to leave. I said, “Sorry, you guys can’t stay here any more. There is a 7-eleven down the street; you can go hang out there, but you cant stay here to hang out.” And they all left! Really respectfully! I was so shocked that it worked! They said “Sorry sir” and they all left! Just like that! They came back a few more times, but every time I went there and told them to leave, they would leave! Things weren’t sand any more; the things I did to improve my life actually worked! It’s like Jesus became my foundation and I was no longer building my life on shifting sand, but the things I built would stick around! And I could build off of them! Because Jesus was the solid ground I needed to build on!

Jesus helped me to evict all the bad tenants, and clean up and fix the house. Since my life was also in real disrepair and needing solid ground, (my life ran a similar path to my rental house), a really good friend took over my affairs as property manager at the house, and I left my apartment to live in my mom’s basement. This allowed me to heal in other areas of my life, like getting off of drugs, starting to eat well again, and to start going to church again. Eventually in 2021 Jesus helped me to sell that house. I am soooooo glad to be rid of it! Thank you Jesus!

Jesus also helped me become ambidextrous. Before it was too daunting of a task, but after I had that encounter with Jesus, and I knew He was with me, it wasn’t this big hard thing, it was just a thing. He was the biggest thing in my life, and so every other thing wasn’t a big thing, but just ‘a thing’, if that makes sense. Before I made Jesus the biggest thing in my life, lots of things were big and scary. But now nothing was big and scary or too unmanageable. Because of that, I was able to do “hard things” without Concerta, or weed, or any drug! Jesus set me free from all substances! I no longer smoke cigarettes or weed, I no longer drink alcohol, Jesus has set me free from all these things I thought I needed! He has created a real desire for beauty, and this really comes through in my artwork. I noticed after I gave my life to Jesus my artwork began to be more cheerful, and have more activity in it, I started to use more colour! It’s like Jesus just breathed into me His new fresh life, and out of that overflow of His love for me, I create art!