My day-to-day life was a party and partying to me was getting into it. Violence, drugs, women, I mean, all of that, all of the above.” By the time he was fifteen, Jon Suliven had dropped out of school and was doing life on his own. He had achieved his goal – the tough guy – the man who had it all. “You’re always the one flashing the money. You got the cars, you got the women, you got everything. The drug use and selling drugs, it turns you into this guy that you think you want to be.”
What he was, was an angry young man who refused to admit what he really needed. “Everybody yearns for family or just have somebody to love you, right? And I didn’t have that at home, so I got that with my homeboys.”
Jon’s idea of who he wanted to be started in childhood. Growing up in Sacramento, California, he was the son of a meth-addicted mother and an alcoholic father. At five years old, Jon was molested by a relative. “It just makes you feel like nobody even cares about you, ‘Why am I even here? Am I just here to be somebody’s play toy?’ I developed a lot of hate for my family. I wouldn’t talk about anything. I would see all this, and I would just hold it all in.”
Jon’s anger and hatred was also directed at God, who he was convinced had given him a raw deal. “This God, He’s all powerful and He loves you. And it’s just like, well, this is love? I guess we’re reading the wrong dictionary because what people tell me love is, and what I’m experiencing are two completely different things. I ended up selling drugs and then using drugs, doing everything I could to just calm the pain, to remove myself from what was going on in my life.”
Jon drew the line at using meth, terrified of being like his mom. That is until he caught his girlfriend cheating on him. “She takes my son, she runs away. I’m just…I’m livid. I had like two ounces of meth in my center console. I hit a line of it. And when I hit that line, everything that I was feeling, my anger, everything, just disappeared.”
Addicted instantly, Jon says the next seven years were a blur. During that time, he married a different girl and had two more children. Then, his best friend, who was like a brother to him, was murdered. “It destroyed me. I just fell apart. I was using like crazy to mask everything. Doing everything I can to use, robbing drug dealers. Next thing you know, I’m this guy running around, paranoid, schizophrenic. It turned me into everything that I didn’t want to be.”
Jon went on a meth binge and ended up in the hospital. Afterwards, he went right back to the drugs. Now twenty-seven-years old, he realized he had become the man he never wanted to be. “I was at a point to where I was turning into my mother. I was everything that I hated. I knew that there was something wrong with me.” Then, Jon did something else he said he would never do. “I went to a church. I have nowhere else to go. I didn’t know what to do. I just, I was at my wit’s end.”
When he walked in, he saw a couple of men working. “They were in there rehearsing or something, and they asked me what I was doing. I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know, I just kind of ended up here.’ I didn’t really tell ’em much, but I was just like, ‘I’m tore up.’ And they said, ‘Well, we’re gonna do something weird. We’re gonna pray for you.’ I was just like, ‘All right.’ My whole life had just flashed before my eyes about who I didn’t want to be, what happened to me, who I didn’t want to be, who I tried to become, who I ended up becoming, and I just broke.” The hatred Jon held towards God was gone. “And I just felt this peace come over me–and I’m not on drugs! It was the start of a really long process.”
After two years of attending church, rehab, and reading the Bible, Jon completely surrendered his life to Jesus. “He told me, ‘You’ve accepted me, son. You’ve accepted my free gift of salvation, but you’re not depending on me.’ He put me in a position to where every step I took, every decision I made, I had to consult with my Father. He was listening to everything; He was right there with me.”
Since that time, Jon has rebuilt his life, forgiven his parents, and his molester. Though he is now divorced, he has become the father he always dreamed of being. Jon serves as pastor of evangelism at his church and loves to share how God has changed him.
“It completely changed my whole outlook on life. What I’ve found in God is a peace that nobody could take away from me in the storm; is a Father that really loves me for who I am. All my trash, all my baggage, and He still loves me. He gave us a choice. The crazy part about it is, He’s already accepted you. Are you gonna accept Him?”