I wish that I could blame my circumstances on someone beside myself, but I can't. I wasn't abused nor did I come from a broken home. My parents were married for 54 years when my father died. I had honest, hard working parents that raised me with spiritual and moral values. My mother made sure I was dressed and ready for Sunday School and church on Sundays, no matter how much I complained.

My father was a paint contractor and he loved to fish. He would come home from work so many times and say, "come on Tommy, let's go fishing." On warm summer weekends we would unload all his brushes and ladders from his old Ford station wagon and fill it with our Coleman lanterns and camping gear and head for the river. In my mind's eye, I can still see my family's smiling faces around the campfire and smell the wood smoke and fish frying in a big iron skillet.

So how did I get here? How can anyone who comes from such good beginnings, find himself in a place like this, surrounded by razor wire and guards? The answer is simple, drugs and alcohol. I am a recovering alcoholic and addict, and my journey to this place started when I was a child. I discovered alcohol at the age of nine or ten and was arrested for public intoxication the first time at fourteen. You have to understand that I was a child of the 60's and teen drinking was thought to be just a rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood. An alcoholic was a skid row bum sleeping in an alley - certainly not a 14 year old boy. The truth is that I was already an alcoholic and had begun a relationship with alcohol that destroyed most of my hopes and dreams. Most people don't realize how powerful drugs are and how completely they take over your life. I am not going to tell you the horror stories and tragedies that my drug lifestyle wrought. Most of you have your own that you're living. I'll only say that drugs destroyed two marriages and hurt my three sons and everyone else around me. It’s also sent me to prison 4 times.

Ah, but there's a light at the end of this tunnel. In 1995, while I was at the Stevenson unit in Cuero, Texas, I was sent with 11 other men to the Central unit in Sugarland. We were sent by our warden to learn to build a new Operation Outreach Program for our unit. We spent a week talking to the members and learning all we could. Operation Outreach is an inmate run program that brings at risk teens into the prison to tell them about drugs, crime, prison, and how bad choices can effect their lives.

You can't imagine how excited we were after having seen this program at Central. We returned to Stevenson and began building our own program. There was so much to do and learn. We had to organize skits and field schedules so we could work with the kids in the field. We had to work up our own presentations and hone them to be effective. When I started looking for the keys that would unlock these young hearts and minds, I had to look deep within myself - to understand why these children were making bad choices in life. I had to discover why I had done the same things. I learned a lot about myself. I also discovered that alcohol and marijuana were probably the most dangerous drugs because they open the door to all the other drugs. Someone hands you a joint or a beer and once you've said yes to one, it’s only a baby step to the next. It’s so easy to get into the drug world and so hard to get out.

At the end of six weeks, we had our first group of juvenile probationers. We performed prison skits and spoke to them in the field and at the end of the program we had a one on one counseling session to give them a chance to tell us their stories. Some of those troubled children still haunt me today. Are they all right? Did they get their lives together or are they walking in my footsteps. Its hard to describe the feeling of standing in front of these precious children and turning all the negative things in my life into something positive in theirs. These children listen to us because in their eyes, we're qualified to speak about drugs or broken dreams - it’s from experience. What we know doesn't come from some book. It comes straight from your heart; it goes straight into their heart.

There are times when I've made a spiritual contact with a child. All the hairs on my arms stand up and there's this feeling that settles over me. There's no drink or drug I've ever done that comes even close to that feeling. I know in that moment that it’s not me but God using me to reach into that child's life. I've come so close to dying so many times and I've wondered why God spared my worthless life. And now I know. I am alive today to pass on this quest. To tell each and every one of you that the power to save so many children is in your hands. All you have to do is open your heart and let God use you as his sword.

Will you answer His call?

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