I went from preacher’s kid to meth addict — what happened at 3am changed everything

I grew up as the son of a traveling evangelist. My mom is truly one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet. Sadly, beneath her elegant facade was a deep fear-driven need to appear as though everything was OK. Our life was far from it. The man I grew up watching speak behind a pulpit was not the same man at home behind closed doors, where I had a front-row seat to the physical abuse he heaped on my mother.

Keeping the secret of Dad’s abuse was our No. 1 rule as a family. No one could ever know. I remember a time when someone at a camp meeting asked my mom about her black eye. I was young, barely tall enough to come up to her elbow, and I was overcome by dread. Would our family secret be exposed? Before my mom could reply, my dad jumped in: “She fell in the shower.” As I heard those words, my whole body trembled with disbelief and anger. Watching my father tell a cowardly lie to protect his image — and my mom sheepishly pretend she was a dumb wife who fell in the shower — was unbearable to watch. At such a young age, I didn’t know how to process any of it.

As I stepped into my preteen years, I became a wrecking ball of bad decisions. In my mind, both my earthly and heavenly fathers were the villains in my story. By the time I was 11 and 12 years old, I was smoking cigarettes, stealing and drinking alcohol. 

As a teenager, I stayed up almost every night, snorting cocaine, drinking, smoking pot and, finally, taking painkillers to get to sleep. When I was 17, someone introduced me to a drug called crystal meth. This was a new low. Looking back, it feels like an out-of-body experience. How could I have made such monumentally destructive choices? I had built an entire life around my trauma, my hurt, my anger and my addiction.

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At 3 a.m. one night, I was in a dark place when Jesus revealed himself to this wounded preacher’s kid. Right there, that night, I put my faith in Jesus. I share more about my transformation — and how Jesus changed my life overnight — in my new book,“Radically Restored: How Knowing Jesus Heals Our Brokenness.”

This is why I believe God heals, and that He still performs miracles. I believe because I follow the same Jesus who “cast out the evil spirits with a simple command, and he healed all the sick” (Matt. 8:16 NLT). But what about deep wounds left by trauma? What if those wounds are caused by a parent or a spouse — someone we should have been able to trust, someone who should have been a safe place? We all know those wounds go much deeper.

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When asked whether God can heal emotional trauma, Christians might give a knee-jerk church answer: “Yes — and won’t He do it!” We want to assure others — and maybe ourselves — that we’re saved and believe without doubts. We tend to avoid asking difficult questions because, as Christians, we’re not sure it’s allowed. 

As I stepped into my preteen years, I became a wrecking ball of bad decisions. In my mind, both my earthly and heavenly fathers were the villains in my story. By the time I was 11 and 12 years old, I was smoking cigarettes, stealing, and drinking alcohol. 

My perspective is that honest faith does ask questions, but it doesn’t question who God says He is. That might sound contradictory, but it’s not. God wants authenticity, yet we must trust Him even in painful experiences. When we are authentic and we trust, God reveals the chains that bind us so we can lay them at the foot of the cross and walk away in freedom.

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That’s easier said than done — especially if those chains were put there by people we once considered safe, or by a parent or spouse we should have been able to trust. Unresolved trauma became my prison. I didn’t know how to be set free. The hardest part is that even after the physical abuse stopped, my father never addressed what happened. In my childhood, his presence was massive and terrorizing. But throughout my teens and early 20s, he was there — but not really there. In the movie of our lives, he became less of a monster and more of an extra who blended into the background. His absence during those years was a new and different kind of wound.

Stephen McWhirter attends the 11th Annual K-LOVE Fan Awards at The Grand Ole Opry on May 26, 2024, in Nashville, Tennessee. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

I wonder whether my father’s detachment was because he believed that, after all he’d done, he no longer had the right to be my father. Maybe he didn’t talk about the past abuse or make amends because he would have had to own what happened. He would have had to drag it out of the shadows and into the light. I don’t know the answer for my dad; I only know he pretended it never happened.

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But it did happen. And at some point — for my father and for the rest of us — everything we try to hide will be laid bare. Jesus said, “For everything that is hidden will eventually be brought into the open, and every secret will be brought to light” (Mark 4:22 NLT). Everything — even the things we want to keep hidden in the dark — will be brought into the light. That might sound scary, but it doesn’t have to be. When we willingly bring those hidden things into the light to confess, repent and make amends, they begin to lose their power.

Unfortunately, my dad could never bring himself to face what he had done. I believe this kept him imprisoned by guilt and shame. If you relate, please know Jesus loves you and is fighting to set you free and heal every broken piece of you. This promise isn’t just for sons and daughters who have been hurt. It’s also for the father, mother, spouse or anyone who has harmed others. Jesus doesn’t just heal and restore the bad things that happened to us. He also mends the unthinkable things we may have done to others. When we feel chained to guilt and shame, real healing and freedom await on the other side of something called repentance.

Adapted from “Radically Restored” by Stephen McWhirter. Copyright Stephen McWhirter© (May 2026) by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan, www.zondervan.com.