Michael Reed, left, spent years of his life in and out of prison. His wife Joyce held onto her faith. Now Michael has been sober for nearly two years, and it's all because of chances only God could give him.
Michael Reed was 19 years old the first time he went to prison. Because of his addiction to pain killers and heroin, Michael spent almost all of his 20s behind bars.
“You live your whole life in a small town like Crawfordsville,” Michael said, “and at 19 to get thrown into a prison full of adult men...it’s hard to explain. Prison just sucks. It sucks a lot.”
Now, at almost 31 years old, Michael is almost two years sober. And it’s because of the chances that only God could give him.
When Michael was in high school, he was in a serious car accident that broke his collarbone and separated his shoulder. His doctors put him on pain killers, and he was never able to shake them.
His addiction led him a two-year prison sentence. After his release, Michael said he did really well for about seven or eight months. And then he found heroin.
“I tried to go back and hang out with my same buddies, thinking I didn’t have to do it just because they were doing it,” Michael said. “It took one time. I remember it was a week or so before Christmas. I got high one time, and it all went downhill from there.”
While still doing drugs and going in and out of prison, Michael married Joycie, a girl he had known through school but fell in love with later.
“I don’t want to make him out to be the only bad guy,” Joycie said. “I did drugs too. I did them recreationally. I had no problem doing drugs. I didn’t need drugs. I just did them for fun.”
A little more than a year into their marriage, Joycie became pregnant with a son. She stopped doing drugs all together; Michael didn’t.
“It was just frustrating because, when I was done doing drugs, Michael still wanted to do more,” she said. “But I’m very non-confrontational, so a lot of that, I didn’t say out loud. But it got to the point where I just hated drugs because they were destroying our lives.”
Not only was Joycie pregnant, but her older brother was dying from cancer. She needed her husband; he needed drugs.
“It was really hard because I was pregnant, my brother was going through chemo treatments and my husband was strung out and lying about everything and our money was always gone,” Joycie recalled with tears in her eyes.
Joycie and Michael’s son was born in 2013. But they didn’t have too long to celebrate their newborn because Joycie’s brother died three months later. Less than a month after that, Michael found himself locked up once again.
“My whole world just crumbled,” Joycie said. “It was so hard.”
And though it might sound like Joycie was left to raise their son on her own, Michael leaving forced her to ask for help from the best source she knew.
“When God took Michael away,” she said, “I felt like it was a learning experience for me. It was really a huge growing experience letting go of Michael and focusing more on the Lord. I had to. I had to trust God for my every breath because I was so broken.”
And one of the best gifts God could have ever given Joycie to help her through this time was the one she was holding in her arms. And his name was Chance.
“God gave Michael Chance, and he gave me Chance too,” Joycie said. “Chance was a doll from the get-go. He never cried. He always hugged on me. Always loved me. I felt like God gave me that right when I needed it. He doesn’t understand it, but he’s like my little hero.”
Joycie prayed for Michael almost non-stop every day. She went through the Bible, finding anything she could relate to, and she would pray those verses over her husband. Joycie would even replace names in certain verses with Michael’s name. She believed that God was going to do something amazing in her husband’s life. She wasn’t sure when. But she just knew.
“As awful as Michael was — I loved him, but he was — you don’t leave someone when they’re at that point in their life,” Joycie said. “That’s not going to help at all.”
Michael was released from incarceration after about eight months. Like usual, it was better for a while. But it only took about four months for him to go right back to drugs.
“I was a horrible husband,” Michael said. “I was a horrible dad. I know I must have been incredibly aggravating because all I cared about was me. Everything I did, I did for myself. I put myself above her. I put myself above Chance. Now looking back, it breaks my heart.”
Michael found himself headed back to jail again — this time for almost a full year.
He started to really become afraid that, pretty soon, Chance wouldn’t be able to recognize him. And then he found Trinity Mission.
It was a chance that he had to take for his son.
“Chance is my life,” Michael said. “I love him more than I have ever loved anything in my whole life. He is amazing. He was the reason I really, really wanted to be able to do this.”
Located right across the street from the Montgomery County Jail, Trinity Mission is a faith-based, non-profit ministry that provides life transformation programs for men focused on addictions. Those accepted into the 5-month program are provided with housing, addictions education, life skills training, counseling, mentoring and life transformation assistance.
“I had known that it was a place,” Michael said, “but I didn’t really know much about it. I was sitting in the county jail — once again — and really, at the time, I had applied to get out of jail. I had heard people talk about it. I knew it was right across the street. I really, really did want to change. I was sick of the way my life was going. I was sick of just hating myself. I wanted my life to be different. I just didn’t know how to do it.”
Trinity approved Michael’s application, so all that was left was for the judge to approve the move from jail to Trinity, and Michael thought he had that in the bag.
However, the judge decided Michael needed to finish the rest of his jail time — about six months — before he was able to attend Trinity Mission.
Although he was angry at the time, Michael later found out the judge’s decision was a blessing in disguise. One of his friends had moved over to the program the same time Michael expected to, and he started making bad decisions and simply wasn’t trying. When he looks back now, Michael said if they had been in the program at the same time, he would’ve gone right back to the world he was so badly trying to leave.
“I was so ready to not be the guy that I was anymore,” Michael said. “I hated myself. I was miserable. And I wanted so bad to be a godly man. And very quickly, I realized that was the only way I would change. It just seemed like he answered that prayer.”
Michael wasn’t too far into the 5-month program before he and everyone in his life began to see incredible changes.
“The changes that happened in Michael were so profound and so immediate,” Joycie said. “It was like God was growing him up so quickly. I was shocked because I had been praying for him for years and kept feeling like I didn’t really see much. So when Michael went to Trinity, it happened so fast! God was finally answering my prayers!”
Through the classes, the counseling and the volunteer work that Trinity offered Michael, he began to see the world that drugs had been taking away from him and how much more it had to offer.
“Trinity was a very humbling experience and allowed me to see how arrogant and self-centered I had been my whole life,” Michael said. “Drugs were how I felt whole. And Trinity shows you the only thing that can really fill that void. I mean, you can’t just not do drugs. Something has to fill that gap. And Trinity shows you the only thing that can successfully fill that gap is God.”
Michael graduated from Trinity Mission six months ago, but is still involved in the program through Phase Two classes. These are offered to graduates who would still like some extra support or would just like to learn more.
“It’s cool for the other guys to see him still involved — someone who has been out there and is still seeking God and is still sober,” Joycie said. “It’s encouraging.”
Although Michael and Joycie both believe God would have intervened in Michael’s life eventually, they’re so grateful God chose Trinity to be the tool he used to change Michael’s life.
“The staff here is so supportive and loving,” Michael said. “The people here really do care about us. That’s so obvious. And nowhere else would that have happened. Trinity saved my life.”
Michael admits that thoughts of drugs still cross his mind every once in a while, but that’s as far as they get. He has too much going for him to give it all up again.
“I don’t put myself in those types of situations anymore,” he said. “That’s another thing they teach us here: shut the door. Leave the door shut. I don’t go out with old friends. I don’t see any point in testing it. How would I do in a dangerous situation? I don’t know. I don’t feel like I need to test it. And I’m on probation, so that’s another level of accountability. Because I won’t go back to jail. I won’t do it. I won’t miss out on everything again. It’s not worth losing the relationship I have built back with Joycie and being a dad. I can’t lose that.”
And for anyone who has been where Michael was — miserable, stuck in a vicious cycle of addiction and wanting to change — it doesn’t have to be that way.
“It’s doable,” Michael said. “It’s not impossible. Just look up and ask God. Things can be so much better. To not have the first thought when you wake up not be how am I going to get drugs. Not having to go to bed scared because you don’t have something for the morning. My life is better...being grateful for all of the gifts that I have that I never recognized before. It is a very, very possible thing. Because a lot of people had thought and said that I was a lost cause. If God can change me, he can change anybody.”
Trinity Mission, 1101 Whitlock Ave. in Crawfordsville, can be contacted by calling 765-742-1060.
