Richard Evans
Follow this link for a video version of Richard’s Testimony at Prairie College Thursday March 19, 2020.
I grew up on a farm outside of Three Hills with a brother, sister, both parents, and one set of grandparents. Being from a small family farm, I learned from very young to work hard. Also, being from Welsh and Mennonite heritage, I learned from very young that emotions get in the way and need to be stuffed way down deep. Fast forward a few years and I decided to become a fire fighter and EMT.
Working hard was important for both career paths and served me well. As I progressed in my career, I had less and less time for God and spent more and more time working.
A few years into this pattern of living and I came face-to-face with one situation in particular that shook my already-tenuous beliefs. An event at work left me wondering whether God actually cared about me and life in general. I began having nightmares at night and great difficulty focussing on anything during the day. My anxiety went through the roof and I was incapable of processing the new emotions. At this time, I also found that alcohol and pornography could take away my anxiety and numb the emotional pain so I didn’t have to process it. In no time at all, I was drinking every day all day and using pornography to escape reality.
Many years went by where I drank, lied, and lived in shame over my choices but didn’t know how to stop the cycle I was in. More and more work events piled on until, in 2015, I came to a point where I “slept” (nightmared is more like it) for no more than 3 hours a night and worked more than 100 hours a week. When I wasn’t working, I was drunk. I hated my life and couldn’t see an end to the pain ever. My life meant nothing to me anymore and I tried to commit suicide, but something always stopped me. Finally, my wife called my fellow EMS personnel to come and get me and take me to Alberta Centennial Hospital. I spent Christmas in the hospital and was started on medications to manage my severe depression and PTSD.
I began the slow climb out of depression and was able to stay sober for about 6 or 7 months but was unwilling to turn to the only one who could truly heal my heart and brain. Without God, the pain kept coming back so returned to the only solace I knew; alcohol. It was no longer about getting as drunk as possible, it was about staying just the right amount of drunk so I wasn’t shaking or feeling the full brunt of the pain in my heart and mind. For obvious reasons, this could not go on forever.
In June of 2017, my wife showed me the greatest act of love I had ever conceived of to that point. Along with a collection of close friends and family, she presented me with the option to go to rehab in B.C. or not come home. While I could not see it at the time, this was my first step out of denial and into freedom. During my 3-month stay at rehab, I came to believe that God cared about me so deeply that he sent the only son he had to live on this dust-ball and be willingly tortured and killed just so I could thrive in Him. I finally was able to sleep without nightmares and wake up without guilt. It was and still is overwhelming! This is not the end of my story but the beginning and I am thankful every day for the opportunity I now have to be a father, husband, friend, and most importantly a son of God.
