He was not the creator of his problem

I first met Darren when he was a baby.  He was the second child of dear family friends.  His father and I were professional musicians together for many years.  As a baby, Darren was a quiet, gentle, polite and loving little boy and I can still see his little round smiling face and his big eyes looking up at me.  As he grew, these characteristics continued to develop within him, and even though we were later to lose touch, the last time I saw him, Darren was still the same polite young person I had always known.

Darren was also a young man blessed with talent and he had a wonderful understanding of the things he enjoyed.  He loved sport.  In particular he developed a great love for soccer and he became the best in his team.  When his parents took him to the games, not only was he very good on the field, but he was also a great off-field participator of the club, volunteering to help out wherever and whenever this was needed.

Darren also had a heart for music and as a result he developed a creative, musical ear.  He especially loved the piano and if the melody or the song lyrics appealed to his tastes, his playing was beautiful.  Next, he became attracted to the trumpet and again, because of his gift for understanding, he was able to play a tune almost instantly.  Not only was he talented with the playing of melody instruments, but he had great rhythm within him as well.  Not every talented melody musician has a great sense of rhythm and timing, but Darren did.  He could sit behind a set of drums and hold his own more than adequately.

As a child, Darren was also very gifted at fishing.  With his father and older brother, off he would go camping and fishing and more often than not he was the first to catch one.  He only had a small fishing rod and a light line but he knew how to draw those fish in.  I saw some photographs that gave testimony to his efforts – some amazing results, looking at the size of some of those fish.

Later on, of all the things that Darren understood and enjoyed most, it was motorbikes.  He loved motorbikes.  His passion was so strong for them that they almost consumed him and did so for many years.  As he developed into his teens, he set music to one side to solely concentrate on motorbikes – he could tell you all about them, and he certainly knew how to ride them.  Darren also had a flair for doing up old cars.  In fact, he was a restorer who could accomplish in three months that which took others six to twelve months.

Included in his giftings, this young man had a heart and an eye for the beauty of nature.  He was once shopping with his mother and he happened to stop and look at some new season’s flowers, saying, “Mum, if you buy them, I will plant them.”  When it came to children, he adored them.  Not only did he give them things, but he gave himself.  Giving was part of Darren’s nature.  He was always the first to help other people, with no questions asked.

As one reads Darren’s story so far, it is perhaps difficult to imagine that this young man also carried a deep, dark secret within him – a secret so deep and dark that he shared it with nobody.  His parents noticed slight changes in him when he was less than five years of age and just a few months into his preschool or kindergarten years.  He came home from there a few times expressing some anger and bad language.  The parents thought that it was simply the type of behaviour that was picked up by lots of kids at that age and so with some explanations of what is and what is not acceptable, Darren ceased to express such behaviour.

The deep dark secret remained with him however and by the age of sixteen he was an experienced marijuana smoker.  By the time he was into his late teens he had substituted marijuana for heroin and was by now a drug addict.  Naturally his parents were concerned in all of this but given that drug addiction was now so common in society, they simply saw their son as a victim, along with millions of other sons and daughters who had become victims.  They had their questions as to why, but because he was unable to shed light on the matter, his mum and dad were lost for answers and limited in doing the absolute best that they could for him.

One day his father phoned me for a chat.  We had ceased playing together as musicians and had lost touch with one another over the years even though our friendship remained intact.  He knew I had become a Christian and was involved in ministry so he asked me if I would talk with Darren about his drug addiction.  I was more than happy to honor his request so we agreed to a time to visit, a couple of days later.  I could have seen Darren earlier, but I wanted to pray and intercede to God for him in those two days.

In my prayer of intercession for this young man I strongly believed that God revealed to me that he had been sexually molested as a child.  During our conversation together however, Darren kept his secret to himself and I held back on sharing with him what I believed was the root cause of his addiction.  It had been many years since I had seen him last, he was now a young adult and besides, I did not want to cause him embarrassment.  In reality, I was not the one Darren needed to share his secret with anyway, it was my job to point him to the Lord Jesus.

Darren had a Roman Catholic background but he was no longer a practitioner.  When I told him that Jesus had an immediate solution to releasing him from whatever it was that was trapping him, he was reluctant to, “talk about religion, because I hate it.”  I replied by saying that he and Jesus would get on just fine, because He (Jesus) hated “religion” too.  He gave me a strange look of disbelief.  I then mentioned to Darren that he did not have a drug problem, but rather, he had a problem – one that he’d been trying to solve through substance abuse.  He agreed when I said his solutions had failed to deliver him from his trap.

During the course of the conversation I mentioned that he needed to experience peace in his life and that Jesus Christ, as the Prince of peace, would make it His business to ensure Darren had peace in abundance.  But first, he needed to invite the Lord into his being and then tell Him the real issue that had been troubling him.  He informed me that he did not know how to pray, saying, “I only know a little bit of the ‘Our Father….’ ”  My encouragement was for him to forget about all formal prayer and speak to the Lord in his own words,  just like he was speaking to me.  Then he said, “I thought Jesus was God’s Son (meaning, Senior God and Junior God).”

My response was to inform him that They are One and the same and that the reason Jesus came to earth was to show us Who God is.  It was foreign language to His ears to learn that God was his Friend and that He wanted Darren to experience Him as such.  I then felt that it was appropriate for me to tell this young man that, although he had been carrying his problem for many years, he was not the creator of his problem and that God knew this to be so, which is why it was important for him to tell the Lord about it.

Darren then shared with me what had happened to him, as a small child.  I am restrained from revealing the specific details and their after-effects, other than to say that back in his preschool days, he was molested by his female Roman Catholic kindergarten teacher – more than once!  It was difficult for Darren to share this and it was difficult for him to see that this cowardly, diabolical act was the root cause of every other dysfunctional area of his life.  He expressed no bitterness or hatred towards that person, or anybody else, for his troubles. 

After a time of prayer and further encouragement, we agreed to meet again on the same day the following week.  A few days later however, Darren’s father phoned informing me that Darren had been found dead, as a result of drowning in a creek some distance from where he’d been living.  A note, left in his room, suggested he’d taken his life.  We were all devastated by this news.  For two days my only question to the Lord was, “Why God?  Why?”  No answer was forthcoming, however.  There never is.  Only God has the full picture of our lives from beginning to end and that’s where I had to leave my questions regarding Darren – encouraging his family and friends to do the same, when conducting his funeral.

Over the years I had/have witnessed the mercy of God coming upon people in ways that have left me speechless.  That same mercy was demonstrated for Darren in my prayers of intercession for him.  It was demonstrated upon him in my lounge-room two days later when we spoke and, I personally believe that Darren continues to be a recipient of God’s mercy in Jesus’ name, in heaven today.  Satan the devil can destroy the mind and the body of anyone.  But he cannot destroy the soul, when God’s mercy is upon it.  “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”  Matthew 18:6.  “But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them, for such is the kingdom of heaven.”  Matthew 19:14.