It is difficult to relate my experience with only a few words, but in the interest of time and space I will condense it as much as possible. I was raised in church, both my parents were ordained ministers and I had the best childhood I could imagine. I never heard my parents argue, I always knew when Mom and Dad would be home, I seldom heard any type of profane word from my parents, they were Godly people.
While I was growing up, I never felt like I really fit in anywhere. I was just a little different from the other kids, and this caused me to try harder to fit in. I was a little quicker to try something a little dangerous, a little evil. I started smoking cigarettes at the age of 12. I got drunk the first time at the age of 12, I got high the first time at 13. I always ran around with older guys and felt I had something to prove, maybe it was because my parents were preachers. My first sexual experience was when I was 14, and I was addicted. I got married and quit school at 16 because my girlfriend was pregnant. We had 2 children together and by age 19 I was divorced and on my way to what would become a serious alcohol addiction. Over the next several years I became more and more substance inclined, at 22 I tried cocaine for the first time, and this became my recreational drug. Alcohol had become a daily thing.
Over the course of the next 14 years I had 2 more failed marriages, countless failed relationships, and a big gaping hole where my heart had once been, I was a walking dead man. In May of 1996 I began dating the woman who would become my 4th wife,and we moved in together shortly afterward. This was around the time I first "shot up" methamphetamine. During the next 2 years my meth use got increasingly worse and so did my alcohol problem, I had become the epitome of evil.
On the 6th day of February1998 I married my girlfriend Gayle which turned out to be the second best decision I have ever made. We were in love and life was one big party. We had a meth lab set up in our bedroom,and we cooked dope constantly. But our lives were about to be changed forever, on June 24, 1998 we got up that morning to go to work and Gayle was seriously sick. She had developed an "issue of blood" and all I could think was CANCER. On my way to work that morning, on a gravel road in southern Ouachita county Arkansas, I called out to God for the first time in years. As I drove down that gravel road, God began to speak to me about the life I had been living. He reminded me of Psalm 91:7 which says; A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou see and behold the reward of the wicked. At that moment God said "Keith, I cannot take care of what is not mine, you are supposed to be the prophet, priest and king of your household, but you have taken your family down the pathway to Hell". Then and there I cried out to God and He heard my cry, and saved me. But that is not all, by the time I got home that day, God had healed my wife. The first time we went to church together, July 5th 1998 Gayle and both our children that were with us were born again and I was baptized in the Holy Spirit! We haved lived for God every day since. We are living proof that God can deliver anyone from any thing. You don't have to be addicted, God can set you free!