I am currently living at the Wings of Life believing in Jesus and thanking God everyday for being alive.  My life has not always been of God.  After more than thirty-five years of constant drug and alcohol abuse my situation was becoming desperate.  Four years earlier I was in an automobile accident where I received a serious neck injury.  It was only after the pain started and I received a MRI that I discovered that I had seriously dislocated the third vertebra in my neck.  It was putting pressure on my spinal cord in three places and pinching the nerve to my right arm.  I, of course, just used this as an excuse to get drugs legally.  I was getting 485 pills a month and using them by swallowing or injecting a combination of pain relievers, muscle relaxers , and tranquilizers.  During this period I lost my home, my new car, most of my money, my job was playing out, and my family had given up on me and turned their back.  I didn’t know what to do or where to turn, but God was there . He never abandoned me.

            God had His own plan for me.  For reasons I’ll never understand He revealed Himself to me in ways that I could not deny.  First He gave me a spiritual awareness of His presence and told me that He wanted me in His church.  Then with a loud “pop” He healed my neck and told me in an audible voice that He was preparing me for what I had to go through and that I would not have the operation scheduled for late December.  He also gave me a revelation of my mopping a beige tile floor and working in a food line at a facility that fed the homeless.  Later I did work in the dining room mopping a beige tile floor three times daily.  It was as the kitchen overseer at the Wings of Life where I serve the homeless of Mobile daily.  There has also been many, many small everyday things that God has done for me.  So many that I don’t even know how to express them.  From my health, where I no longer have high blood pressure which I have battled for years, to giving me the knowledge of who I should learn from, and many other day to day things that the Lord has truly blessed and protected me with.

            But even with all this I somehow was led to my second suicide attempt before I came to the Wings of Life.  Having taken enough drugs to have killed me within thirty minutes, yet I lived for five hours before help arrived.  My heart was not beating and I had stopped breathing, but was revived at the hospital.  Miraculously, there has been no lasting damage to my body despite the major toxin overload to my internal organs.  I know that only God could have brought me through this and placed me at the Wings of Life.  I have regained my strength and more importantly learned how to worship God.  I don’t know what the future holds, but God does and I need only to trust in Him.  Incidentally, I have recently had another MRI and there was no trace of any neck injury.  Praise the Lord!!

Gary Kroll