{"id":98,"date":"2020-03-27T09:53:56","date_gmt":"2020-03-27T09:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desafiojovem.workmove.pt\/en\/?post_type=history&p=98"},"modified":"2020-03-27T09:53:57","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T09:53:57","slug":"jose-miguel","status":"publish","type":"history","link":"https:\/\/desafiojovem.com\/en\/history\/jose-miguel\/","title":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Miguel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My name is Jos\u00e9 Miguel and this is my story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was born in a Christian home. My parents lived in\nAngola when they started attending church and got converted. Curiously, it was\nmy father who took my mother to the church for the first time. But\nunfortunately, when I was born he no longer attended church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am the second oldest of five brothers. My older\nbrother never really enjoyed going to church, but my parents insisted\notherwise. However, at the age of 14, my father told us that, from now on we\ncould decide whether to go or not. That’s how I stopped attending church. At 14\nyears old, I thought I knew it all. I started to drink and smoke with a group\nof friends. We were very close and spent more time together on the street than\nat home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, my older brother discovered that I\nsmoked hashish and told our parents. I stopped talking to him on that same day\nand we were like this for 6 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I quit school at 16, only with the 7th grade completed \u2018I\nwanted to work, so I could have money to buy drugs and keep hanging out with my\n\u201cfriends\u201d. In fact, with them I felt goodand safe. Or\nperhaps I enjoyed their company because we didn’t feel anything \u2013 we were high,\non drugs and alcohol most of the time. \nFrom then on, my life consisted of working two or three months, getting laid\noff and staying home for another two or three months. Despite this, I always\nfound a way to use hash and alcohol, and I even smoked heroin several times.\nThank God, I didn\u2019t do it frequently, so I didn\u2019t get addicted to heroin.\nHowever, many of my friends did get addicted, and some even died. Although my\nlife was unstable and friends had died, I didn’t change my mindset – I still\nthought I had everything under control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After four months of compulsory military service, I\nstarted working as a carpenter in a company, but I missed the work a lot. I\ndidn\u2019t have any interest, whatsoever, in what I was doing. I just wanted the\nmoney to support my addictions. I would spend it all, and even more, if I had\nthe chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was then that I met a woman with whom I would live\nfor 3 years. During that time I tried to make my drinking problem as discreet\nas possible. During the day I drank moderately, but at night after leaving her\nhome, I drank all I wanted. Obviously things didn’t work out and we split up. This\nleft me without accountability. From then on, the alcohol dependency increased\nand I returned to what I had always been – someone with no goals in life, no\ndesire to do anything. I had other relationships, but they all ended, for whatever\nreason, and whenever that happened I drank even more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One morning, my hands were shaking so badly, that I\nhad to grasp the cup of coffee with both hands to be able to drink it. It was\nthen that I realized that I had to drink alcohol for breakfast instead of\ncoffee. Otherwise, I wouldn\u2019t be able to go to work. I kept getting worse and\nworse. One day without understanding it very well, I felt like dropping\neverything and going away. My life was senseless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My parents always helped me, but at this point they\nwere tired of my sad behavior and schemes. Of five children, I was the one that\ngave them more work. Then my mother told me about a lady friend from the\nchurch, Yolanda, who I also knew. She told me that Yolanda worked at Teen\nChallenge \u2013 a Christian association that helped drug addicts and alcoholics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I accepted my mother’s advice and I went to meet\nYolanda at the Fanh\u00f5es Insertion Center. There, she explained to me how the\nrehab program worked and advised me to go to the coffee house in Lisbon – the\nTeen Challenge support center. I agreed to go and began my admission process.\nDuring the time I attended the coffee house meetings, I always continued my\nconsumptions. I had decided that I would stop it as soon as I entered the\nprogram. I also decided that I was not interested in the spiritual part of the program;\nI had no interest in a possible relationship with God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As soon as I entered the program, I realized that nothing\nmade sense without God. Therefore, I had two chances: either to look for a\ndifferent type of program or to get closer to God.  I decided to put God to the test: \u201cGod if you\nexist, if you are there, if you want to know who I am, if you care about me at\nall, prove it to me!\u201d Then, one day at a chapel service, we started singing a\nsong that I remembered as a kid. The lyrics say: \u201cI look at everything and I\nalways see You\u2026 in the earth, in the skies, everywhere I go I feel your love\u2026\nit is impossible not to find You, it is impossible not to know You\u2026\u201d At that\nmoment, that song made perfect sense in my life. The truth is that it is possible\nnot to see God’s hand. But in fact, He had always been in my life, and he\nalways kept me. I began to remember car accidents that I had under the\ninfluence of alcohol and how I was never seriously injured. After all, God had\na purpose for me! And He wanted me to be reconciled to Him. I just had to be\nleft without any strength to be able to realize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I know that God has a purpose for my life; I have\nlearned to dream, to have goals and to be determined. Whatever I do, wherever I\ngo, I will serve him and live for him. I won’t lose him again. \n\nToday I am married to a beautiful woman who, I\nam sure, God who put in my life. I have a little boy and we\u2019re expecting our\nsecond child… I thank God for all he has added to my life. \n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":100,"template":"","class_list":["post-98","history","type-history","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desafiojovem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/history\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desafiojovem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/history"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desafiojovem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/history"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desafiojovem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desafiojovem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}