I was speaking at a summer camp for aboriginal teens. The rule with teens is that if you get one of them by himself or herself he or she has many, many functioning brain cells. Put two teens together and the number of functioning brain cells is immediately halved. But these were great kids with great potential. Life is challenging for them, though. Drug and alcohol abuse is common. A father in their lives is not. Many have considered suicide. One told me, "Things are dark where I live. There's fear. There's no joy."
And then I met Monique.
As crows sat in a tree overhead, trying to yell us down, I listened to the story of a young woman who looked for peace, joy and hope-and finally found them.
Monique began going to summer camp when she was eight. It was a welcome break from life at home where prescription drugs were a problem. Before long it escalated to stronger medication, and soon both her parents were on the streets.
But Monique was a teenager, doing her own thing to numb the pain. Family members provided her with alcohol, and she experimented with drugs. Soon she was an addict.
Looking for a way out, she went to rehab, but nothing changed. At summer camp an older girl prayed over her and said, "God has a call on your life."
A call? Monique had no idea what that was.
"Maybe I'll get a phone call," she thought.
But as she began to pray, she felt God calling her to get to know Him better. She began reading a Bible, and she discovered that living for Him sure beat living for the next hit.
"I came to realize that Jesus loved me in the midst of what I was. He took all my dirtiness and made it clean."
Meet a teen with a crack cocaine or crystal meth addiction and the chances are he or she will never come out of it.
"How is that possible?" I asked her.
Monique laughed and smiled widely. "I'm still in awe of how God protected me. I know He healed my brain too, because I'm now pursuing nursing, and I never thought I'd have the brains to do it. Only God can do that."
The result is that Monique is now counseling at camp, wanting to help those with the issues she faced. The rewards are out of this world.
"Seeing God work in their lives is just unbelievable," she says. "It also gives me the endurance to keep believing for people that are still in the bondage. I look at what God's brought me out of and there is hope."
Romans 12:2 is one of Monique's favorite verses, "Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect."
"It doesn't matter what kind of drug you're on or what you use to dull the pain," says Monique. "There's hope and it's only through Jesus. He's the best 'high,' you'll ever have."
Phil Callaway is a speaker, best-selling author and host of Laugh Again Radio. Check it out at laughagain.org
