In 2015, I met a man.
Jeff came out of “no where”. He found me on Facebook, showed up to my apartment the day I moved in…and kind of, just didn’t leave.
He told me initially that he was divorced which was not the truth . I found out later at Thanksgiving when his mother made mention of it when he was not around me.
But man, He loved Jesus… He wanted so much to start a ministry for addicts. We talked about it a lot. I still have his business plan for a vision of struggling addicts, just haven’t opened it.
We both were struggling in alcoholism…but the slivers of Holy Spirit, in that time I don’t take for granted.
I carry a scar on my upper lip from this man. Really in truth, I carry the scar from my struggle with walking upright.
I bent my head and met a fist.
(The kids said I bent over, and ran into his fist.)
A functional alcoholic isn’t a stranger to me. I’ve hung out with them…and I’ve been one.
The warfare isn’t a darkness that Jesus can’t penetrate.
Walking into class at MTSU years after leaving my apartment– I learned he was found in a bathroom of a hotel, dead. His son had committed suicide not a few months before.
My heart still breaks for the situation and why I was met in the middle of it…but I pray for his daughter. She lost a brother and a father. Please, help me cover her in love.
This post is not to place him “less than” it’s to show how every person influences those around them. Not one is taken out that impacts another. Not one that rises, perhaps, that doesn’t think about the ones they could have “done more” which propelled them.
The church building fails a lot.
This one, failed some…
Don’t make man your Jesus.
Jeff, Kaiden (my son) and Donte 2015
Kaiden & Danielle, Jeff & Chloe 2015 at church in Nashville, TN
OBITUARY FOR JEFF:
Haven On Earth 
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