My mother had this Teen Challenge pamphlet and she kept showing it to me every day. ‘Brendon, you need help, call this place, tell him you need help.’ And I’d be like, No, I’m okay. I’m good. I got this.
My name is Brennan Stevens. I grew up in a well-off family, my father was a police officer. I pretty much had everything I’ve ever wanted. I had two brothers and a sister and my mother was a stay at home mom. They gave us everything we ever wanted, I never had to ask for anything, I was pretty much spoiled in a sense. I went through high school, you know, just playing sports. Baseball was my sport, baseball and bowling, I was very good at it. I got out of high school, I didn’t know where I wanted to go in life. I just wanted to, you know, I just was confused, I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life. I just pretty much built race cars, played baseball, hung out my friends, drank a little bit, partied.
And until I was 25 years old, I met this, you know, nice young woman that I really wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And I sold a lot of my prized possessions to get her what she wanted, that ring, and she broke my heart. And then from then on in, I just went downhill. I started drinking. I started taking pills. It got worse and worse. I decided to join the military. I was in the military five years, it was the best time of my life. I had the best time of my life joining the military but instead of finding out what was wrong in my heart, and in my mind, I just brought myself with me everywhere I went. So, I was always like a destructive person, self sabotage. I went back home, I got even more depressed, I went to like three or four different rehabs that didn’t help. I stopped using heroin, I went right to, you know, cocaine. My life was a mess. It was horrible. I started hanging out with wrong people, I started doing things that I shouldn’t have, robbing people, hurting people, especially my family because they were always there for me 100%, my mother was there for me and my father.
I lived on the streets, my parents kicked me out. I lived on the streets, I’m bouncing from home to home, the house to house, I’m living in a car, and my ex-girlfriends house. That’s how bad it was. It was really bad. I kind of figured out that, you know, I was searching for love and friendship, but I never had that. My mother had this Teen Challenge pamphlet and she kept showing it to me every day. Brendon, you need help, call this place, tell him you need help. And I’d be like, No, I’m okay. I’m good. I got this. Next day, my parents would come back up to me and say, Hey, Brendon, listen, you know, maybe you need this place. And one day I just woke up and like I’m going to come the Teen Challenge. I resisted I fought and then one day, I just had a breakdown. Well, I wouldn’t call it a breakdown. My mentor, Nicole called it a breakthrough. I just completely lost it. I cried my eyes out in front of everybody, I need help, I never felt the friendship, the love, everybody surrounded me gave me their love. I’ve never had friendship, I’ve never had love and these guys, all my friends out there, they just surrounded me. I was bawling, crying. I lost it and from then on in I had a smile on my face, I was happy with my life. And for the longest time I was fighting it and I just let go and let God. I pray every day and thank Him for this opportunity of Teen Challenge. And then all the opportunities of going out to the PGA tour going out to the tennis thing going out to rock the blocks or going camping upstate. What other what other place does this and I try to tell other people listen, I’ve been through it. And you could go through to your emotions are going to flood back like a roller coaster. You are not going to know what hit you and your mind is going to go 8 million different directions. But that’s what your friends and Teen Challenge will help you with of feeling love feeling hope, feeling of friendship, feeling people that actually care for you that want to be there for you. I just want to tell you that there is there is hope, there is faith, there is love.
The scripture I stand on is Philippians 4:6. “Do not be anxious about anything but in everything in prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God.”
