“God is a God of restoration,” Bon Fernandez (not his real name), 33, joyfully quoted the bible verse in Joel 2:25. “I will restore the years the Locusts had eaten,” he continues to read as he showed his digital bible.
This verse, he said, was one that can truly describe his transformation from a person addicted to drugs to a changed man addicted to Jesus Christ. He is now enjoying the restoration from the years of being hooked to drugs and from an empty, messy life.
When Bon was 16, he began using drugs. “Since high school, I’d been involved in drugs,” he admitted being a drug user and drug dealer. He could not remember how he started using drugs or who influenced him to try it. But one of the reasons, he said, was lack of attention from his parents during his teenage years. With busy parents, his father as a hospital chief administrator and his mother as a midwife, Bon grew up as a latchkey child.
With a growing loneliness atmosphere at home, he vent out his boredom by stealing the gadgets of his classmates. His stealing activities escalated later as the desire to sniff drugs grew in his system. Accompanied by co-drug dependents, riding in a motorcycle, they would snatch cellular phones with university students as easy victims.
On Dec. 9, 1996, his family finally decided to put him in a Drug Rehabilitation and Treatment Center in Lahug, Cebu. But even as he was in the rehab for six months, according to Matt, he was still able to sniff shabu once.
After one month inside the rehab, he and ten others tried to escape but, unfortunately, he was one of the three who was caught. “Ako rang usa ang dili taga Cebu so dili ko kabalo asa ko moadto, asa ko motago and I end up climbing the stairs of a fire exit,” he was hiding behind a billboard of an appliance center right across the rehabilitation center when the guard saw him. Thinking Bon was a thief; the guard fired a gun towards Bon. For some reason, the gun did not discharge a bullet.
But he got caught eventually.
“Ilaming gipalangoy sa canal napunoug tae sa tawo,” he said with a tinge of embarrassment in his voice. “Ilang gipumpang septic tank before mi nila gipalangoy.” And as if the former was not disgusting enough, “I thought we were done pero ilang gitumba nang among ulo and asked us to produce bubbles,” recalls Bon.
“The punishment was really humiliating, very degrading. Ang akong value as a person, wala na,” recounts Bon. And on one of his father’s visit to the rehab, as if to validate the new image he had of himself, he was told, “Bon, ang imong utok ug imong kinabuhi murag nag iscramble nga itlog.”
He was affected by the words that came out from his father’s mouth. “Tungod ato nausob akong pagtanaw sa akong self. Down kayo akong self-confidence,” Matt says while shaking his head. And he took this scrambled egg label to his heart. He became worse. Three days after getting out of the rehab in 6 June, he experienced a relapse. He was using and selling drugs again.
In 2006, Bon’s older sister, who paid all his debts and who he described as the perfect example of a Christian, enrolled Bon in a Values Formation Program, Semilya sa Kinabuhi, in Bukidnon. At first, Bon was pessimistic; he thought it would just be another rehab experience. “Akong impression sa lugar mura ra gihapon sya ug rehab,” he notes. It was like that until later in that 3-month program, in one of the lectures, he heard the three most important words that would eventually change his heart and life. It was just what he needed to hear most.
“God loves you,” Bon said quoting the words that struck him. “God sent His Son Jesus to die for your sins on the Cross,” he goes on.
All those years, describes Bon, he had imagined an indifferent God. “A God who doesn’t care kung mag kalisod ko.” On that day, he realized that we have a loving God. Suddenly, all the insecurities and self-hate that Bon was feeling were dispelled. “For the longest time, I believed I had no value as a person. But that moment, I felt that I was special. I was important.”
It only took three words for Bon’s heart to change. It took three simple, but powerful, words to surrender his past for a better future.
“I am happy to tell you that for 6 years now and still counting, all by His grace, I am free of drugs,” Bon said proudly. He also credited his restoration to the two women in his life, his wife and his sister, saying it was “the power of a prayerful sister and prayerful wife.”
But Bon says that restoration did not come overnight. For some time he had to prove to his family, that he’s a changed man already. “Dili dayun, una gyud doubtful sila nako. Kay how many times na gyud ko nagbabait-baitan rah ba. So dili sila matuo. Kung may mawala sa balay ako dayun pasanginlan na nangawat.”
Bon’s life is a testament that even though the world has no reverse button to change our past, we have a God who can restore all those years that were wasted doing the wrong things. We do not need a time machine; what we need is to have a relationship with Christ and experience His love. That is enough to turn your life around, no matter how dark and ugly your past is.
Do not lose hope when life is becoming like a scrambled egg. “Ug katong giingon sa akong Papa nga ang akong ‘utok’ ug ang akong ‘kinabuhi’ murag scrambled egg… before mao to sya ang akong pagtuo,” says Bon. “But now I believe that God can turn that scrambled egg into an amazing omelette or a delicious leche flan.” (Josebelle Bagulaya/SU Masscom)
