No one sets out to be a drug addict, an alcoholic, or a thief. Those things don’t just occur, they come from years of choices steeped from pain, neglect, wanting to feel something real or just plain curiosity gone awry. Jared’s story is made of it all. He hit what he felt was rock bottom at 18 & asked his parents to send him to rehab.

He thought it was the end but the next four years were as he explains, “unable to put into words- a nightmare- in and out of jails and treatments centers”, the lowest of his lows. And then that Sunday morning happened when he snatched the last purse he would ever snatch again. Arrested, left in jail by his family, and in the deepest kind of desperate one could possibly feel.

Three months and in the midst of his darkest hours and hardest points in life, he found it in his heart to finally talk to the God he had been mad at for all those years. “God I need help and if you are real and all the stories I heard about you growing up are true can you help me, can you heal me, can you forgive me?” I suppose deep desperation was the answer because what happened next was an awe-inspiring God moment. “I was a different person after that prayer,” Jared says.

That was 6 years ago. Jared is now married & has his first child, Mylan, after a song that he rehearsed repeatedly in jail. “God is the same yesterday, today & forever. If you need help ask Him and see what he will do for you too.”