Twenty months ago, Ron walked into the Union Gospel Mission with a two-foot, bleached Mohawk, a ten-gauge lip ring and a thirty-year veneer on a wounded child’s heart.

Ron was born in 1966 to a 14-year-old girl, who relinquished him to her mother to raise. For 17 years, Ron believed his grandmother to be his mother, his mother to be his sister, and himself to be a miserable mistake.  “I had nobody stable in my life that actually cared about me. I was told I was a burden, that my mother’s life would be so much better without me. She said, ‘You’re the cause of all my problems. I can’t get anybody to love me because I have to take care of you.’”

At his core, Ron believed her. The fierce words bit into his soul and would not let go. So, at 10, he began his life’s work – coating his wounded heart with layer upon layer of every pain killer he could find. Ron tried alcohol, sports, drugs, sex, work, but the pain always came back.

When Ron came to the Mission at 42 years of age, the veneer was cracked and peeling, the pain excruciating. His appearance still said, “I’m a cold, heartless guy you wouldn’t want to know,” but in reality, he was broken, confused, lonely and ready to try something new.  Ron was ready to get well.
 But how does one go about reversing 30 wasted years? In a word, slowly. Very slowly. Ron didn’t cut through all the protective layers and expose his wounded heart that first day. First, he got the feel of the place and decided to enter Freedom Bound, the men’s recovery program.

The next step was to reveal a piece of himself:  Ron used to be a swimmer, a good swimmer. In fact, Ron went to the Olympic trials at 17. The freestyle and butterfly strokes over longer distances were his specialty. Throughout high school, he was in the pool every morning at 5 am. After school, he was back in the pool.  Altogether, he swam eight or nine hours a day, which was great with him. It kept him out of the house and away from alcohol, and his family, never much interested in him before, delighted in his success. When he won, he felt great. Everybody loved him, and he was on top of the world. The downside came when he didn’t win, and as every athlete has experienced, you can’t win every single time.

Eventually, as Ron opened up about his life, he came to this defining moment: After a disappointing performance in one of his events at the Olympic trials, Ron’s mom went crazy. She started yelling at him poolside, belittling him in front of a crowd of people. Ron went back to his motel room to take a nap but was awakened by his mom slapping him and yelling, “If you don’t do better tomorrow, then I’ve wasted by whole life. I put my life on hold for this, you stupid, lazy . . .” As Ron woke up to this confusing scene, his mother proceeded to tell him she wasn’t his real mother. Boom!

Any feeble sense of belonging and worth Ron had known disappeared at that moment, and twenty plus years of self-destruction (albeit in the name of pursuing pleasure) began. From the time he was 17 until he was 41, Ron was shot, stabbed, had his teeth knocked out with an axe and his head bashed in twice – once with a golf club, once with a bat. He attempted suicide several times, coming close enough to land himself in a two-month coma, and for years, a fifth of whiskey and a syringe of meth were the only way to get him out of bed.

Finally, Ron came to the Mission seeking help. He joined the recovery program and began to trust people enough to share a piece of himself.  Eventually, he revealed his wounded heart and the lie wrapped around it: he was unlovable.  Supported by a community of people who cared about him, Ron exposed that long-held lie to the Truth: the Creator of the universe loved him enough to die for him. And the healing began.

Ron is not cured, but he is in the process of transformation. He is being made well and doing everything he can to assist the process. He is clean and sober, committed to purity, working as an intern in the Mission’s pantry, assembling a group of people outside the Mission to whom he can be accountable, and growing in his faith.

Recently, when he completed the fourth phase of the Freedom Bound program, his counselors quoted this verse in reference to him:  “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you?  Indeed, you are our glory and joy.”