People who knew Mike McClary when he was a “street person” often ask that question when they see his new life as the founder and executive director of GOOD SAMARITAN MINISTRIES in Richmond, Virginia. This is the compelling story of one man’s escape from a life of alcohol and drug addiction through faith in Jesus Christ.
My first birth was in Alexandria, Virginia in 1949. Both of my parents had passed away by the time I was seven, so I was adopted by my grandmother. There was a sense of not belonging — a really hollow feeling that I tried to satisfy, first with alcohol, then with drugs. At thirteen I began the drifting that would eventually take me to every state in the United States except Hawaii. I believed the world owed me something, and I was out to get it.
There was seemingly endless string of jobs. I was never able to continue working at any one job for long due to my drinking. In 1967, I joined the Army and added drugs to my life. I went in a rebellious private and came out a rebellious private. My life was empty.
The drifting began again. I found myself sleeping in dumpsters and beneath over-passes — the hard concrete under me and a cardboard box over me. On a cold Thanksgiving Day in 1979, as I hungrily gnawed on a turkey carcass I had pulled out of a garbage dumpster, I wistfully thought of my family gathered at Granny’s house enjoying a hot, home-cooked dinner. Knowing I could not go home, I thought of taking my life. I walked to a bridge and, peering into the dark below, I thought, “Why not jump and end it all?”
Along the way, the inevitable happened: hard drugs took the place of pot and pills. I was incarcerated five times from the east coast to the west coast. I would steal so I could put a needle in my arm. I cannot remember the number of times I used my belt to tie my arm, cutting the circulating so my vein would pop up, and I could stick the needle in the vein. This was the person my friends had known.
One evening in May, 1982, when I was hitchhiking from North Carolina to New York, a fellow gave me a ride to the Union Gospel Mission in Norfolk, Virginia. My stomach was empty and I was tired. I was given a bowl of bean soup and some bread, and I was told I had to attend their nightly chapel services. Again I had that feeling of being out of place. I reluctantly shuffled into the chapel, sat down and listened to a man behind the pulpit tell me what a sinner I was, how bad drugs and alcohol are, and how I was going to hell. I already knew all of that. The next several nights were the same.
Then, on the third Monday night in May, a minister turned to John 3:16. He told me that God loved me, that He died for me, and that if I asked Christ into my life He would save me from my sins and make a new creature out of me. For the first time I was not hearing just about my problem, but I was hearing the solution to my problem.
That night I got on my knees and asked the Lord to save me. When I stood, there were no lightning bolts or ringing bells, but I had a peace and assurance that I had never known before. For the first time I could remember, I felt I belonged. That was my second birth.