By Mandy Underwood
munderwood@thepaperofwabash.com
A large crowd was gathered on Saturday, Aug. 24, at the Emmanuel Free Will Baptist Church for the Break the Chains conference.
The conference was open to anyone who wanted to attend, but geared toward people who are in the midst of addiction or have loved ones who are struggling with addiction.
The conference started with a welcome from Emmanuel’s pastor, Terry Hinds, who explained that this conference had been in the works since he had the idea for it about a year earlier.
“I asked (Jim McComas and Joseph Habedank) ‘Could we coordinate a service where we get both of you together to share a story that we need to hear, and this community needs to hear, and that this country needs to hear, that there is hope and that our hope is in Christ.’”
Habedank took the stage next to share his music and his story.
The crowd was clearly enthralled by his music before hearing his story. Habedank is a Christian singer/songwriter who battled with a narcotics addiction for years before finally going to rehab and beating his addiction.
He started his story explaining that he grew up in a nice Christian home, but was surrounded with drug addiction his whole life. His brother had been introduced at an early age to drugs and has struggled ever since.
“I watched my brother’s life unravel,” he said. “On the flip side of that, I kind of felt guilty because all of my dreams started coming true at an early age. All I ever wanted to do was sing Christian music and I got the opportunity to do that on a full-time level when I was 17 years old.”
He then went on to explain how he found himself at his rock bottom, addicted to narcotic drugs.
Habedank woke up one morning with an ulcer in the back of his throat that was causing him the worst pain he had ever felt. That day, he was singing at a church, and a lady from the church that was hosting him for dinner innocently offered him some narcotic drugs to help with the pain, so that he would still be able to perform.
Not long after that first experience, he was to the point of taking 10-12 narcotic pills a day just to be able to feel normal. Luckily, he shared, his wife had stood by him through all of this and encouraged him to get some help by going to rehab.
Habedank shared with the crowd that it has been exactly 22,082 days since he has gotten clean.
He finished his time on stage with a song that he deems his “most personal song,” called “Beauty of the Blood.”
Next, McComas was welcomed to the stage where he began by asking the audience “Who is God’s favorite?” He then went on to prove, through scripture, that God favors the people who are broken.
“If you are broken for any reason, you are God’s favorite,” he told the crowd. “The truth of The Word is that the very thing that has caused you to be broken is the very reason that God is closest to you.”
He explained that it doesn’t matter why a person is broken, whether it is because of grief, sickness, or circumstance, that God favors brokenness because that is what brings people to Him.
He followed his message with the telling of his story, how he lost his son, Michael, to drug addiction.
“Our family was a typical Midwest, small town American family,” McComas said.
He shared anecdotes about the normalcy of his son’s childhood, baseball games and birthday parties.
McComas said that his Michael’s addiction started with alcohol, then pot, then pills.
“It is so easy to wake up one day and find that the thing you thought you had control over, has taken control of you,” he said before sharing that Michael’s addiction to pills turned into a heroin addiction.
After jail, and rehab, Michael was clean nine months and doing the best he had done for a while. This was Christmas of 2016. He shared a picture of himself, his wife, and his sons.
“We had no idea that that would be the last picture we would have with him,” he said to the crowd who went silent as they waited for him to continue.
Through tears, McComas challenged the audience to enjoy each day as it happens.
“One day, those memories of today, may be all that you have left.”
McComas lost his son to an overdose Feb. 25, 2017, just a few days shy of his one-year anniversary of being clean.
He shared that God worked through this loss by making it possible for McComas to share his story and help other people who are struggling with addiction or loss due to addiction. McComas ended with a call to prayer.
“We’ve heard a story of victory, tonight, and a story that did not end the way we wanted it to, but they are both stories of God’s faithfulness,” he said before the crowd joined together to listen to a song that said “God is good even when life doesn’t work out like it should.”
As the conference ended, there was an atmosphere of hope, understanding, and love for those who are struggling, have struggled, and will struggle with the chains of addiction.