How scrap metal saved my life

Growing up was not easy for me. By the time I was 17, I was not coping well with life and started drinking.

After I completed Year 12, I moved out of home and went to university. I thought I had found my place and that this was the life. I would wake each morning to a bottle hidden under my bed, drive to uni and then go out at night. Slowly things got worse—I was not only drinking in the mornings but at night as well.

I don’t recall how I did it but, one night, I drank $A1500 worth of alcohol. I should have died from alcohol poisoning or at least ended up in hospital. But I woke the next morning at home, with only a depleted bank balance to confirm it really happened. I could only guess that God must have a plan for my life. But it wasn’t enough to stop me.

The next night I went out again. After being at the bar a few hours, I passed out and was thrown into the gutter. I remember ice being poured over me and someone dragging me about 500 metres up the street. I was aware of how vulnerable I was and didn’t know what would happen. But I again came to the realisation that God was caring for me when I woke the next day, bruised and shaken but alive and safe in my own bed.

My life was at its lowest. After seven attempts that weekend to kill myself, I realised I needed help. But I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to curl up and die.

While in a supermarket, I unexpectedly, bumped into a woman I had met at Delhuntie Park. I had camped there years earlier and vaguely recalled that it offered health programs.

I thought my life would be better if I could lose some weight, so without thinking, I blurted out, “You’re from a health centre aren’t you?” She said yes, adding that they were currently closed. But I was desperate. “Please help me,” I said, “or I am going to die.” About a week later, she called to tell me I could come for one month as their guest.

Delhuntie Park is a youth-in-crisis intervention centre on a large property that runs adventuretherapy activities for young people struggling with life. Since the program wasn’t running at the time, they suggested I help out in the office. I refused, so Elwyn, the youth director, took me to the workshop where a pile of rusty scrap metal lay.

Every day, Elwyn and I went to the shed where he taught me to weld, grind, put axles together, sand and paint. Suddenly, that scrap metal had turned into something amazing. Slowly, my life had also turned into something beyond my imagination. As I stood looking at our creation, I realised that something had been created in me. Just as the metal was sanded back to reveal something great, the months of work had sanded back my hurts, fears and mistakes to reveal the person God created me to be. Through support from Elwyn and others, I came to see the reality of who I had been and the potential of what I could become.

As for the scrap metal, it had become a Pinnacle of Terror. As it was brought out of the workshop for the first time, a tear rolled down my face.

“There is my life,” I said, “a pile of scrap metal shaped and formed through a lot of hard work.

Now it’s carefully designed and ready to change lives.” The Pinnacle of Terror is a mobile adventuretherapy unit, used to identify at-risk youth and provide a place of learning, growth and community. Since that time, numerous Pinnacles of Terror have gone on to reach young people around Australia and New Zealand.

Since that time, I have reached out to other young people, especially those struggling with many of the same issues I faced. I have supported Delhuntie Park by running health programs, being a group facilitator, working with people in jails and juvenile-justice facilities and travelling with Pinnacles of Terror. I too am being used by God to change lives.