From Addiction to Ministry - How God Gave Him a New Identity

Growing Up in Church - Resentment and Rebellion

When I started following Christ, I found out everything I needed was right there. That emptiness that I had for some of the years, it was being filled. And I was like, well, maybe this is what I was searching for this whole time.

Well hey, just welcome. I want to welcome you guys to another episode of the podcast, Rebuilding Life After Addiction. My name is Justin Franich and I'm here with Ashley Marner. And man, we're excited to sit down and have a conversation today.

Yeah, I'm Ashley Marner. I'm from the Outer Banks, North Carolina. I'm 35 years old. And I'm here at Shenandoah Valley Teen Challenge. So growing up, I had like a normal childhood. When I say normal, I had four brothers and two sisters and I also had two adopted brothers. My dad was the chairman of the church. And my mom and my dad, they had to work a lot because they had to support all of us. But every time the church was open, my dad had us in there.

And as a kid, it was like, why are we in church so much? I guess it started. I started building like a resentment towards church because I was in there so much. But I remember the stories growing up and I actually just came back to me now, like started coming back to me some of the stories I heard. I was like, well, this is more than a story, like Noah and Moses parting the Red Sea. But as I got older, I started to walk away from the church.

When I became a teenager, I had the decision where I can go to church or I could not go to church. So I started staying home from church. And another big thing is that I wasn't getting like the attention from home because my parents worked all the time to support us. And so I kind of turned to the streets. It was the wrong kind of love, but at least I was feeling some kind of love.

From Fire and Brimstone to the Streets

Man, my church was, it was like, basically, this is how I felt. It's like anything that I'm doing, anything that I do, I'm going to hell. I was like, I told my dad one time, I was like, I don't even know why I'm even going to church. I'm going to hell anyway. And that's the way the preacher, that's the way he preached it was. Salem Missionary Baptist Church and it was a lot of fire and brimstone. On the hottest day, they cut the heat up so that you would sweat while they were preaching. And it just turned me away from church for a little while because I was like, man, I didn't think there was nothing I could do. It felt like that all the time.

So you mentioned you started to run to the streets after that. Well, I think it was more so I was doing what I wanted to do and I didn't have to do what nobody was telling me to do. But I really felt like I just wanted to be like, you know, I wanted that attention. I wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere. And of course, they accepted me for a season and then it led me right back, it led me to addiction.

Well, I was actually, I turned into a drug dealer and then I started watching all my friends go to jail. I remember walking home from school one day and we were walking to the little place where we went to go sell drugs at. And I remember I was walking with my friend and the cops, the feds, like 50 feds just came, surrounded us and they picked him up, left me there. And like we were best friends. I was probably 15. And I remember him getting three years. First time he had ever been in trouble and he got three years in federal penitentiary. And after that, I just turned away from the streets. He's like, I'm not going to jail. I'm not doing that.

The Progression Into Deeper Addiction

So 15, you have this experience that kind of almost scares you straight for a little bit, right? And then you fell back in later on. Well, that's kind of, well, I was with the whole selling drugs thing. I was smoking weed. I was walking to school. I thought it was cool just to smoke before I went to school and just to have that aroma, which is weird. But it seems cool when you're walking in school.

And my older brother, I started hanging out with him and his friends. And they drank and I think they did a little cocaine. And so I went from selling drugs to hanging out with him. And the more you're around it, the more tempting it is. And it's not something that I wanted to do, but it's almost like fitting in again.

For me, I feel like it was just who I was around and what was going on at the time. Because before everybody was smoking weed around me and so eventually I'm going to try it. And then everybody else was doing cocaine and I was like, well, it took me a little bit longer to do that versus smoking weed. Because like growing up, cocaine wasn't really upset. It was like you're a cokehead, like that's almost bad. Well, it is bad. But for me, I think it was just to fit in and then from fitting in, I started to enjoy it.

I think, honestly, if I were to just stay in church and listen to my parents, I think I would have been there. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants that preaching. It's like when your parents tell you that the stove is hot and you still touch it anyway. You've got to find out for yourself. I mean, I really think it's almost like a sense of pride and you don't want to be told what to do. It's almost like submitting. Like a grown man doesn't want to submit to another grown man. But if you just look at it, I mean, like God placed this into your life, it changes everything.

Rock Bottom and a Mother's Pain

Me personally, rock bottom was always different. Like it was always a new bottom every time that I fell. But one of them, one of the biggest ones was when I started putting the needle in my arm. And I remember saying that those people were the worst of the worst and they were the scum on the earth. And next thing you know, I was doing it and I ate those words. And I remember the exact words. God told me, it was like, you remember what you said about, and look at you. So basically I was no better.

But I remember staying with my parents. I was sleeping in the back room and I was shooting up at the time. And my mom and dad had left. They went somewhere and they always had gospel music playing in the house. And so I was going to my room. I was in the living room. I was going back there to my room, but every time I would try to go to the room, I would get turned around and I wouldn't go back there and do my thing.

But if you know, when you shoot up the heroin, like you get sick if you don't have it. All that day I never shot up anything. My parents got home and I told them what was going on. And she was like, baby, me and your daddy are knowing that that door handle so just for that very reason. But not knowing that day, my mom had drove to a bridge and she stopped at the top of that bridge. And she said I was going to jump off because I could never imagine none of my children going through what you're going through right now.

And to see my mom hurt like that, it just took me to a bottom where it's just like, you know what, I need to get help. And so I went into a program and I think that was one of the turning points where like this is it.

Man, it was just, it just showed me that it hurt her. And it almost, it was like, man, I keep putting my family through this hurt. And it almost made me feel like I wasn't good enough, like I wasn't good enough at all. And it was almost to the point where I wanted to commit suicide. Because in my mind, this is how I played it out, is that instead of putting my family through constant hurt, like with the drug using and all that, if I just kill myself, it'd be one big hurt and it's all over it. And that was my thinking, man. And thinking that was, it's gonna solve everything, but it wasn't.

Finding Everything I Needed in Christ

Oh man, that was the best feeling in the world when I was actually in recovery. And they were just so happy. And it was like, almost like being a child again, because it was like restoring things that were broken for so many years because, you know, you're detached from everything. And it was all, I was building a trust back. And I mean, it felt great. It felt great.

And that feeling is the best in the world, knowing that your family supports you and they're behind you 100%. And they can sleep at night. They don't have to worry about whether you're going to be in jail or dead. And yeah, that's probably one of the better feelings that I felt.

Well, one of my biggest things is like, after my dad died, it was like, it was a game changer. It changed everything. Because when I started following Christ, when I became a follower, I found out everything I needed was right there. Like I felt that emptiness that I had for somebody years, it was being filled. And I was like, well, maybe this is what I was searching for this whole time.

I mean, it just felt like everything I needed was right there. At the same time, it was like, I would want to go back to trying to please people. I mean, there's even a scripture that talks about that. But I always, like I always go back and forth. And that's the, and then I got to the point where it's like, God is what I need. I mean, no matter what, this is how my life should be for the rest of my life. And who cares what people think?

My mom used to have a saying. She said that they talked about Jesus, what makes you special. But we do as people, I feel like what people say about us can make or break us. I mean, you might call me fat or something like that and I can act like it doesn't affect me. And I might go home later on, it's like, man, I must be really fat. There's my feelings. But I think the real thing should be is what does God say about us? And that's where our place should get to.

Called to Ministry and Serving Others

Man, it's funny because when I stopped using and I went to recovery programs, it's like almost throughout those places, like to a point where it just became natural to me, like just serving and helping out. And so, but I always felt like there was a reason that I came back. And I really feel like the Lord's just calling me to be in ministry, like this kind of ministry for helping people who has drug addiction.

I like helping, I really like helping. I like to see the transformation and to know that I made a difference in somebody's life. And a lot of times guys don't see it. Like they don't see holding them accountable for the rules as helping them, or just being there to listen to them because everybody has stuff. And just that is like fulfillment. Like I get more joy out of that than catching the 700 pound tuna.

One of the biggest things is, too, is like being in the recovery world, you've run and meet so many different people. And then when you see some of the same people that you met in another program, and it's like, man, what are the chances that God has us here right now at the same exact place at the same exact time? Like I would never thought that I would be in Mount Jackson. But it was just like a preacher said the other day, it was like, anywhere you are is basically a Holy Grail. Like where God has you at is Holy Grail.

We try to make it this great big thing. Like God wants me to go preach in front of millions of people. But it starts right where you're at. The will of God for you is to serve him where you're at. We get to follow the purpose of the Lord wherever we're at. It doesn't have to look a certain way. It doesn't have to feel a certain way. And I think sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves trying to pursue this version of God's will for our lives that may or may not be His will. But it's like, let's just make the most of where we're at in the moment.