Fearless (11 page)

“How?” Adam asked.

“Let me just show you a verse in the Bible. ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’ That’s Philippians 4:13. If we try to do it within our own power, Adam, we’re going to fail.”

One week later Adam faced the judge, who sentenced him to a total of forty-five days in the Garland County Detention Center, after which he would attend the Teen Challenge drug treatment program at an out-of-state location. Teen Challenge—a faith-based nationwide residential program that treats all ages, despite the name—was not a lockdown program, the judge explained. Adam could leave anytime he wanted, but if he did, he would be back in jail for an additional year. As for the
restitution, it was more than ten thousand dollars, which Janice and Larry paid once again.

After Adam served the entire forty-five-day sentence, Larry picked his son up from jail. Adam was stoic as they hugged, then walked to the car, but once they began to drive, he broke down and cried. Larry told him they weren’t going home but instead heading to a father-son weekend retreat run by Second Baptist Church. Knowing that Adam, too, had recommitted his life to Jesus, Larry believed the retreat would be a safe environment for reconciliation before Adam left on Monday for Teen Challenge.

They arrived at a local lake in time for the hamburger cookout and found forty ten- and eleven-year-old boys eating at picnic tables with their thirtysomething fathers. “We at the right place, Dad?” Adam asked, and the two began to laugh, the first time in a couple of years. They laughed again when the boys expressed their delight at having Adam on their team for the fathers-versus-sons soccer game.

The night was spent in a group Bible study, roasting marshmallows around a fire pit, and sharing a cabin dormitory. Early the next morning, with cups of coffee in hand, Adam and Larry walked to the edge of the lake and had a heart-to-heart. Adam apologized for the pain he’d put his parents through in the past two years, and Larry apologized for the harsh words he’d spoken to Adam. What haunted Larry most was when he’d called Adam “simpleminded” and “lazy” during one heated argument.

Adam told him he probably deserved it at the time, but Larry was firm that it had been hurtful, and he’d meant it to be hurtful, and that was wrong.

They agreed to leave the past behind them and prayed together. “That’s done, Lord,” Larry said. “We’re going forward from here, and we are putting all of our trust in you.”

On Sunday Adam reconnected with his mother, receiving too many hugs to count. Manda, who had graduated from college and was working as an x-ray technician at a local hospital, did the same when she joined them at church. Though happy about Adam’s sentencing to rehab, Shawn still had his reservations about his brother and chose not to see him. “I was behind him,” he explains. “I just wasn’t ready to face him.”

The following day, as Janice and Larry saw Adam off at the airport, she told her son she was proud of him. “For what, Mom?” Adam said. “I just got out of jail.”

“Because I know what you’re fighting is real hard,” she said. “You keep fighting.”

Larry sent his son off with Proverbs 3:5–6: “Trust in the L
ORD
with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”

At the Sanford, Florida, Teen Challenge, Adam was one of a hundred mostly young men receiving treatment for “life-controlling” behaviors and addictions. There were no fences around the suburban neighborhood property that looked like a small school with a central basketball court. The doors were not locked in the dormitory-style housing, which consisted of bunk beds, lockers, and a communal bathroom. “When we first got there, it felt like Bible boot camp,” says Kenny Marsten, a recovering crack addict who roomed with Adam in 1996. “But it was a safe haven, and we needed that.”

This safe haven at first isolated Adam from any outside pressures. Phone calls were prohibited the initial month, while letter writing was encouraged. No visitors were allowed in the first four months, then family visits were permitted on prearranged weekends for a few hours, and then, with good behavior, eight-hour passes for day excursions were issued. Otherwise, Adam was ensconced in the program.

What little free time there was consisted of half-hour to one-hour blocks that could be used for exercise, working out in the weight room, or playing a pickup game on the basketball court—where Adam usually gravitated. Five days a week, Adam rose at 5:00 a.m., ate breakfast, and was driven to the program’s auto-detailing shop at the Manheim Auto Auction in Sanford, where he waxed and buffed cars with a heavy commercial buff pad from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. On the ride back to the center, he would get in a quick nap before attending Bible-related classes with titles such as “Attitudes,” “Overcoming Temptation,” “Growing Through Failure,” “How to Study the Bible,” and “Loving and Accepting Myself”—followed by one-on-one counseling and chapel. After that it was a cafeteria-style dinner, quiet time for personal devotions, and lights out at 10:00 p.m.

That first week at Teen Challenge, Adam heard the parable of the prodigal son. This story from the book of Luke would become his favorite, one he returned to repeatedly for inspiration while attending the rehab program.

In the parable, Jesus told how a man’s son brazenly asked for his inheritance while his father was still alive, a rebellious and selfish thing to do. The father complied, and
the young man left home and squandered all his money in “wild living.” A severe famine came, and the young man, now broke, ended up feeding pigs in order to support himself. He’d hit rock bottom.

Destitute and starving, the young man finally decided to return home, hoping for forgiveness from his father but expecting anger. To his surprise, his father welcomed him home with open arms, saying that his son had been “dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (see Luke 15:11–32,
NIV
).

In an early phone call to check on Adam’s progress, Janice and Larry spoke with the program’s director and Adam’s counselor, Wayne Gray, who said that “Adam is really embracing a relationship with Jesus Christ. Because of that, I believe Adam will find true meaning and purpose. He’s learning that God loves him and God will guide him through this dark time.”

Adam began to earn a reputation among the staff and his peers for his enthusiasm, empathy, and—while he could be lighthearted and goofy—competitive nature and drive, which really shone on the basketball court. Most Sundays, when Adam traveled with Teen Challenge’s small choir, singing at churches across central and northern Florida, he would volunteer to give his personal testimony, “how his drug addiction had impacted his family,” says Gray. “He cried every time he told of driving away in the backseat of a police car while he watched his mother crying so hard that his father had to hold her up.

“He always volunteered for our community/street outreaches. We owned a fifty-by-eighty-foot tent and would put it up in housing projects and parks to witness, do kids’ programs, and serve meals. In short order Adam was in charge of the tent crew. I’d watch him bark orders to make sure things were done safe, and then he’d play with the inner-city kids for hours.”

Says Kenny, “During outreach, Adam really connected with the kids, and he’d use that to impart some wisdom: ‘Stay on the basketball court—stay off the drugs,’ that kind of thing.”

Two weeks into Teen Challenge, Adam sent his parents a letter, which they put on their refrigerator door to read and reread in the months that followed.

In August 1997, after nearly eleven months in the program, Adam was granted a special leave—a two-day visit home to attend Manda’s wedding to Jeremy Atkinson, whom she had begun dating in college.

At the ceremony Adam and Shawn escorted Janice into the church and seated her, then together they lit the candles. At the reception Janice was impressed by Adam’s poise when he graciously deflected any focus that came his way from relatives and friends aware of his recovery and sobriety. “Thank you, but this is Manda’s time,” Adam would say. “We’ll talk about it later.” All had been forgiven in the Brown family. “The past is the past,” Larry had told both Shawn and Manda. Shawn agreed but was still wary and cordial at best when he was one on one with his brother.

On the last Saturday in September, Adam celebrated a year of sobriety by returning to Hot Springs for good. The next morning, he stood before his parents and the congregation at Second Baptist Church. Although he had been sharing his testimony publicly for months back in Florida, he was especially nervous to thank the people who had been praying for him since his parents began attending the church.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had such beads of sweat rolling off me before I tell this story to people I know have loved me and prayed for me and been such a determining factor in changing my life,” he began. Adam then told how he got off track in life and ultimately became an addict. “You never know what hopelessness means until you get there, and I got there,” he said through tears.

He talked about how he ended up stealing from his parents, others in his family, and friends so he could buy drugs. Finally, he reached rock bottom with his arrest for eleven felonies.

“I got on my knees in jail, and I accepted Jesus Christ back into my heart, and God has changed my life. It was a little over a year ago that I accepted the Lord back into my life. I went to a program called Teen Challenge, a safe haven away from the world where you can learn the Word of God, and how much God loves you, and how God will never leave you or forsake you. I have true confidence now, not in me, but in the One who lives in me.”

“Amen,” the congregation said.

“My paths are straight now in Jesus Christ. I just praise God and thank you all so much for your prayer. There is a purpose for it all, and I just try and encourage you to remember this, and all of you who prayed for me. What you have done for me was not idle. It changed my life.”

W
HILE
A
DAM SPIRALED TOWARD DRUG ADDICTION
in Hot Springs, a young woman a year and a half younger named Kelley Tippy was living a life somewhat paralleling his, though not as dark or wild.

Born in Georgia and raised in Little Rock, Kelley was an A and B student through high school, a cheerleader who was active in her church, barely drank, and never smoked. She attended the University of Central Arkansas in Conway but dropped out after one semester because she “lacked direction,” she says. She moved to an apartment back in Little Rock, where her life revolved around work and partying, which continued heavily when she and some girlfriends road tripped to Panama City Beach, Florida, for spring break. “You know what?” one of her friends said after a week. “Wouldn’t it be great to move here for the summer—really have some fun?”