Forging a Future After Childhood Trauma

David Miller has been in the R3 Program at the Eugene Mission just 98 days (yes, he keeps count because he’s proud of those days), but he says God has done such a profound work in his heart that he’s starting to see a real future for himself.

When he arrived at the Mission on November 9, he was coming off the streets and off a meth addiction that was starting to wreak havoc on his heart. “I was going into these panic attacks; meth is really hard on your heart. It was scary,” he recalled.

Though drug use and homelessness are both traumatic, David says his real problem began in childhood, when he and his siblings were seriously abused by his stepfather. David said he experienced every kind of abuse possible, including physical, emotional and sexual, at the hands of his stepfather, who has since died.

The kind of trauma David experienced doesn’t simply go away with time and the pain put him on a downward spiral. He got to a point where he had spent five years tent camping, engaged in a daily fight for survival, before he made his way to the Eugene Mission.

It took settling down, resting and connecting to a place of kindness for the first time for him to begin to heal.

He said he can feel God’s love and power at the Mission. “When I got here, I would sit in the chapel and reflect and cry.” He recalled a moment when he said he felt like God took his hand and held it. “The Bible says God will guide you with his right hand.”

David is working through his trauma and dealing with the effects of his abuse, including PTSD, and has become active in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, where he says he’s found a lot of support through community. Getting connected to loving community is an important objective in the R3 program.

Going forward, he hopes to travel and tell his story and help people understand that his addiction was just a means of masking the pain which came from his childhood.

“I feel like the dark cloud is dissipating for the first time,” David said. “I want to spread the word of God, joy, mercy and love.”