A Letter To My Brothers

As I wandered into the sanctuary, I couldn’t remember what had brought me to this place. A place of hopelessness, a place of desperation, a place where I was confused with my own selfishness and apathy.

You couldn’t have known then, but I was dealing with so much pain. The pain of my father dying when I was 12 from cancer. In just a few months, I watched the strongest man I knew wither into nothing. The back and forth trips to Boston, his long black ponytail to completely bald, from the chemo. Until eventually getting the news it felt as if someone had taken all of the oxygen out of the room.

Shortly after I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on medication, but I’m convinced my mother just had no idea what to do with my out of control behavior. Drugs took the pain for a moment, but I was still desperately looking for an outlet and seeking approval from anyone who accepted me, but you couldn’t have known that.

You couldn’t have known that my mother would have to fight breast cancer and couldn’t afford the ridiculous amount of funeral and medical bills, so our house was foreclosed. We slept there for a week while there was no heat and the pipes bursting and water raining down on our last day in my childhood home, seemed like the perfect end of my youth. My mom and my brother and I moved to an apartment, and I had a new start.

As I sit in the cafeteria of this new school, which seemed deafening, a loud voice broke the amplified silence. His name was Andy, with whom I would spend day and night. We began recording music and running the streets, being young and naive was something I miss, not knowing just how much danger you’re in. His energy lit up the room, and his humor is still a part of me today. You couldn’t have known that a few years later, he would be killed in a barbershop waiting to get a haircut.

You couldn’t have known that a girl I met in high school would love me, help me through all my garbage and I would rip her heart out over and over by lying, cheating, getting her involved in car chases and selling drugs. Ultimately I was addicted to a the point they would control me, my heart would beat so hard at night I was convinced she could hear it through my chest. In 2009 we would be in a rollover going 70mph on the highway. Flipping and landing on the roof. As we hit the barrier, I grabbed her, and it was almost like a bubble surrounded us. Her legs flailed around, and a combination of CDs and wires entangled us. I crawled out quickly, not knowing if another car was about to hit us. As I dragged her out of the car, her legs bleeding, she sat on the jersey barrier, and I turned to see a man with white hair and white beard. He asked “Are you ok?” and while I wasn’t sure, I just didn’t want him to see the weed I had just picked up. I crawled quickly into the car and pretended I was grabbing cigarettes. I scooped what I could and turned back to see the man had disappeared. I had almost forgotten about my cousin and her boyfriend in the backseat. All four of us came out with scratches, no seatbelts, the car crushed and totaled, but we had our lives.

You couldn’t have known the miracles God had done in my life like the four-alarm fire in 2011 that completely destroyed our apartment building except for our apartment. Watching the massive building burn from the street all night, only to go in the following day and find the fire had gone around our apartment, only leaving smoke damage.

You couldn’t have known how addicted I was, and that no matter how hard I tried, the withdrawals were too much for me to bear. As I tried everything in me to leave opiates, cocaine, and suboxone alone or how desperate I was as I sat in the holding cell. Praying and begging God to let a man live, who I was being told was going to die because of injuries I caused to him with too much alcohol in a parking lot.

You couldn’t have known...or maybe you did know. As I sat there in that church sanctuary, not knowing how to communicate with God that I was sorry. Or that suddenly I felt a hand, and the pastor asked if I wanted to accept Christ into my life. The time a guy invited me to a Bible group on a night I was fighting so bad with my girlfriend, we were lucky to make it home alive.

Or the countless times church people would invite me to just about everything and show me by example how to truly be there for them. Or one of the first times I went to the church altar, and someone read my mail and told me everything about my past, and I felt the presence of God. A God who knew me and felt my pain and wanted to be there for me. Or even when someone invited me to a place where they served real cappuccinos and fancy coffee, which I have come to love.

Or the time you all took me out bowling to celebrate my upcoming marriage and I ate gelato for the first time. The same relationship I had destroyed God would now restore and make my wife. You visited me in the hospital when my first son was born to tell me it’s normal for us to feel insane. You, the church, have become my family.

So maybe you did know, or perhaps it was God all along. Bringing us together from all walks of life, restoring hope through people like you, the church.

So for my brothers, this is my prayer :

My prayer is that we stay united amongst adversity, through betrayal, through persecution and through rebellion. Let us exalt, encourage and lift one another up and fear not the correction from your brother, for he wants you to be the best you can be.

My prayer is that we remain brothers bound to one another by our Lord, strengthened by his spirit and no matter what the world says about us, let them say they have loved one another, they are brothers.

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Author: Concepcion Pacheco a member of Legacy Church