Michael Smith

What is faith? Faith is being able to get up every morning and push yourself forward, even when you feel you have every reason to give up. Faith is about hope and holding on to it even during times of uncertainty.

Faith is about acceptance. Accepting that there are things that we cannot change, no matter how bad we want to. Faith is about forgiveness. Forgiving ourselves for things we have done, and forgiving others for things they have done to us, no matter how bad those things were.

Faith is about empathy. Empathy for the things we have gone through, but also understanding the pain of others. Faith is about letting go of everything and everyone that has held us back in order to become the very person God intended us to be.

Faith is about healing, and not just our hearts, but the deepest parts of our souls that we never even knew existed. Faith is about praising God. Not just during our greatest wins, but also during the darkest moments of our lives. Faith is about choosing to stand with God and be judged by the world, rather than standing with the world and being judged by God.

My story is one of faith and hope, and my ability to overcome all that life has thrown my way. Faith and hope are what conquer the impossible. I read in a book that sometimes things happen in our lives that aren’t so easily reduced to choices others could understand. Because of this, we are often defined by our mistakes or by how others choose to see us, without anyone pausing to understand who we truly are or who we have been for most, if not all, of our lives.

Growing up, you would have thought I had a golden ticket from the start: a semi-middle-class family and a grandfather who was the mayor of Gaines for 12 years. I mean, we had everything a kid could dream of: dirt bikes, go-karts, snowmobiles, and a boat. We traveled the state playing sports, took vacations, and spent countless nights camping and laughing at jokes that probably weren't even funny. We lived in a nice home and had a cabin on 13 acres.

Despite growing up in what I feel was an emotionally dysfunctional family, I truly believe I had the best parents one could ask for, and I wouldn't change that for the world. Why is it that only during times of struggle do we grow to appreciate those things?

When I think about my life now, this is not what I had envisioned for myself. Everything leading up to this point, everything I had to sacrifice, all I had to survive to be here today— being alive in this very moment is a miracle in itself. I should have been dead so many times over, and to feel nothing but raw emotion day after day eats at the deepest parts of my core.

I can't go a single day without breaking down in tears, wondering why it was me who had to go through that and see things that no one should have to witness. I have seen so much pain in my life that it's almost impossible to fall asleep, especially when my mind will never shut off.

I started therapy at a very young age, 11 to be exact. Not a single day goes by that I don't think about giving up. Still to this day, it crosses my mind often. I can't begin to explain the kind of thoughts a teen has running through his head as he contemplates how he wants to kill himself and then proceeds to slowly follow through with it.

I've never really had anyone to talk to outside of therapy, and really, most of them only do it for the money. You can't tell them everything that's going through your mind because if you do, they’ll lock you in a room for weeks and make you see a psychologist, one who doesn't even have enough respect for you to lift their head from their clipboard and look you in the face when they're asking you why they should let you out.

So drugs became my therapy, and they were a huge part of my life for so long that I didn't even know how to cope with the things I dealt with without them. I never really fit in, so most of the time, I kept to myself. All I ever wanted in my life was to be appreciated, to be loved, and to be a part of something, but deep down, I felt I would never fit in.

Before that, I lost a couple of my best friends and a couple of family members. In 2014, I was drunk at my parents' house. I stayed there with friends while my parents were in Florida, staying for the winter like they had been every year for a few years at that point. Something in me that night snapped, but that's what happens when you hold everything in your whole life.

I just couldn't take the disrespect anymore, when all I ever tried to be was a good person. I ended up getting into a fight. The person I got into a fight with got hurt and went into a grand mal seizure. They sent me to prison for two years. I ended up joining a gang, and the struggle continued while I was in there, to the point where at times I was forced to partake in violence even though deep down I knew it was the wrong thing to do.

When I got out of prison, my uncle passed away a few days later. This was hard for me, as at one point, he was my best friend. I stayed with my parents for a couple of months, but couldn't live there, so I bounced from couch to couch until I finally got my own place.

It was the only time in my life I remember being proud and happy that I was able to get out on my own after spending a couple of years locked up. It was also the only time I had a place to really call my own as a homeowner. It was something I worked hard for, and it was the year that I tried hard drugs for the first time.

I was 26 years old. I started off doing cocaine because my friends were doing it, and I developed a bad habit, which turned into a crack addiction a little further down the road. That took an even bigger toll on my life. I lost my home and everything I had worked hard for. I packed my things and checked into rehab, then moved to Grand Rapids, where at first I did well, but it seemed the addiction followed me, and I slowly slipped back into the drugs.

In 2017, my life flipped upside down, and I remember a day when I stayed at a friend’s house, doing crack all night. I stole and did whatever it took to get high, and the next morning, I went to the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror. I didn't recognize the person staring back at me and instantly started crying.

This was during the month of May. That day, something told me that I needed to go to my parents’ house and talk to my dad, who was someone I never talked to much about problems. But I knew if anyone knew what I was going through, it was him. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly how he felt for most of his. I understood him and what it’s like to go through addiction.

I walked two miles to their house, and when I walked in, I looked at him and asked if I could talk to him. We went outside, and I broke down. I told him that I needed help and didn't think I would make it here in Michigan. I wanted out so bad because living here was a constant reminder of how badly I’d screwed my life up, and it kept me stuck in my past.

My past was one I so desperately needed to escape from, and I told him that I was sorry for not being the best son. I said that I thought he was a great father, and was sorry for not giving him that chance. In all the years of my life, he was one of the only ones who took the time out of their life to sit and not just talk to me, but cry with me as well.

A month later, on June 2nd, 2017, I was doing well after talking with my dad. I called off work on a Friday, which I remember because it replays in my head every night. I only had half a day and just wasn't feeling up to it. My dad woke me up, and we talked about work over a cup of coffee.

He talked me into going to work that day, but little did I know, it would be the last time I ever talked to him or saw him alive. I got home from work, and the rest of the family was up north for a wedding that day. When I walked in, I saw my dad on the couch, dead. He passed away from an overdose.

I panicked. I couldn't even call the ambulance because I was shaking so bad. I had to run to the neighbor's house. I ran back in and tried giving him CPR for 5 or 10 minutes, but I couldn't bring him back. I lost it. I took a deep dive off the edge. That night, I was going to kill myself. I started getting high again, and this time, my life took a turn for the worse.

Addiction is evil in its purest form, and just when you think you have been through hell, it will reassure you hell has a basement, and it will take you there if you let it. It almost took me there. It took me a long time to understand that my dad won't ever come back and that I lost the only person in my life who I felt cared enough to listen, because at that time, I didn't even know who God was.

After he passed away, I got hooked on meth, the worst drug I've ever experienced, because of not only the grasp it has on your life, but also the damage it does to you mentally and in every single aspect of life. I was living in a tent in a friend's front yard, and I ended up moving up to Traverse City, Michigan. Where again I did well at first, but this time I was longing for home, and, of course, the drugs. I didn't last long.

I wound up back down in Flint at the dealer's house. I went back to living at that friend's house, staying in a garage with no heat in the middle of winter. I ended up making it to summer and decided I wanted to go back up north to Traverse City, so I had my mom drop me off with a tent and a bike.

I wanted so badly to get clean, more than anything in my life, because I wanted to overcome the very thing that had taken the life of my dad. Of course, again addiction followed me, and this time I got high on meth again. I was driving one day, and I got pulled over, and they found the drugs. I got charged with possession of meth, and on bond, I moved back down to Flint, where my meth habit took off in a direction I wasn't prepared for.

In January of 2019, I got into it with a friend. I don't remember much, but I got arrested that day for stabbing and carjacking. I went to court and was facing a life sentence. At my court date, not a single person showed up. Not the victim or the cops who arrested me. They dropped the charges and let me go free.

If that wasn't God giving me a break, then I don't know what it was. But I didn't see it that way, because I was so hardheaded. I continued my habit, and later in that year, I got caught for the warrant I had for meth in Traverse City from the year prior. I went back to prison; I served my time in there and got out in 2021. I made it two months before I got caught with more drugs and went right back for a couple more years.

I went from being the youngest of my siblings, who was going to be the first one to graduate, to becoming the one who got into the most trouble combined between the other two. I have over 33 charges on my record, and since 2014, I have spent almost 7 years of my life behind bars. It’s been failure after failure after failure. But I tried over and over again.

Moving from city to city, couch to couch, shelter to shelter, rehab to rehab. all looking for a new beginning. I was a lost soul looking for a way out of the chaos I had not only created for myself, but for all those around me. I spent a good portion of my life looking for something to hold onto, and it took a long time to find that something.

I can honestly say that here today, I did find that something to hold onto, and for me, that something is hope and faith. I used to ask God what I did to deserve this kind of life, and it took me a long time to realize that it's not that I deserved this kind of life, but that it took this kind of life for me to understand people better and understand myself as well.

The greatest thing I've ever done in my life was turn to God when I was going through the darkest time of my life. He saved me and is the only reason why I can write this here today. In doing so, he taught me forgiveness, acceptance, empathy, and what it truly means to walk in faith.

A lot of people look at those traits as weaknesses, but they are the most powerful traits you can possess, next to your faith, and something a lot of this world lacks today. I'm a firm believer that the greatest gift you can give someone is an ear to listen, even if you don't have advice, and if you see someone down in the dumps, talk to them, because even though a simple compliment may not change the world, it can change someone's life.

Most importantly, we need to learn to trust in God even when we don't understand the journey, and never give up, because miracles can happen even to those who have the worst of pasts. My favorite quote is that strength doesn't come from what we can do, but it comes from overcoming things we thought we couldn't. 

This journey has been a testament to the power of unwavering faith. Through every trial and tribulation, there was a guiding hand that lifted me up. I learned that perseverance isn't just about pushing forward, but about trusting in a plan far greater than my own understanding.

God's strength became my strength, His hope my hope. And in the end, it's His love that has brought me through, leaving me with a heart full of gratitude and a spirit forever changed.