Flanders Fields

My name is Ben and I’m an alcoholic. And an addict. I’m also a daddy, an employer, and a humanitarian. Ten years ago, I was in this exact same spot in this exact same house (it had walls back then) and I said a prayer. I asked God to kill me. I was in the depths of active addiction and had lost any and all hope. A month later, behind the house next door, I thought that prayer was being answered when I looked up to a pistol in my face and the man on the other end of it pulled the trigger. For reasons only God knows, it didn’t fire and I survived to suffer another day. Another month went by and things got immeasurably worse as I found myself arrested for the first time on a slew of dope charges, eventually being held without bond before it was over with. Five years went by, a flurry of arrests, violence, losing friends, realizing just how much worse things could truly get, and I found myself back at this same house, still addicted, and much worse for the wear. This time I prayed a different prayer. “God, get me out of hell and I’ll spend the rest of my life coming back for those I left behind.” Six months later He did just that, I left these streets and I got sober. Two years into sobriety, I began praying a new prayer, Isaiah 6:8 “Here am I, send me” and God reminded me about that promise we’d made Him to save those we left behind. I knew one day this journey would bring me back here, I just had no idea how many bizarre twists and turns it would take to finally end up right back where it started. To prepare us for the journey that lay ahead, God sent us indeed - Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Mexico, Israel/Gaza, Ecuador, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, El Salvador and probably some I’m forgetting - all part of making us ready to do what we’re doing today. Shutting down the “hell houses” in Memphis, fighting the human and narcotics trafficking that plague this city, acquiring the houses and turning them into safe houses, sober living houses, recovery homes - anything but the anchors of instability and chaos they once were. We will change this city, and we will do it from the bottom up, grassroots, making good guys out of bad guys, bringing hope to the broken, stopping the suffering of kids, without seeing any arrests made or shots fired. We will do what the government can’t/won’t/shouldn’t do. Because at the end of the day, these are OUR streets. OUR neighbors. OUR problems. Who better to love the broken than those of us who were once right there with them? Who better to fix a problem than those who used to be PART of the problem? Nobody’s coming. It’s up to us.