Really Recovered leader talks about journey away from addiction toward faith and peace

Recovery is more than a word for Travis Tester. He is living out its reality.

He shared his story in March with a crowd gathered in Kidron to support Really Recovered, a faith-centered mission that operates a sober-minded campus on the east edge of Wooster.

Like many, Tester's life had a rough beginning.

“I experienced a lot of brokenness in my parents' marriage," he said. "They got divorced when I was 13. When they got divorced, I took it really hard. I started to hang around people I should not have been hanging around. I got mixed up in some things that I had no business getting mixed up in.”

At age 16, he found his father dead in their family home.

“That was really traumatic for me,” he said. “I started to get addicted to painkillers. The painkillers just lead to deeper, darker, harder. I started to do cocaine, and from the cocaine I started to do heroin.”

He received an inheritance that enabled him to address his emotional pain with self-medication and partying with his friends. His downward spiral continued.

“Over the course of 17 years I just became deeper, darker and harder. I started to shoot up heroin. I started to shoot up other drugs − pretty much anything that I could get to mask the pain that I felt from losing my parents.”

Homeless, living in a cemetery, 'ready to die'

Tester ended up living homeless for an extended period in a cemetery near Rittman to be close to where his father was buried.

“After a while being out there and being alone, I started to realize that I was pretty much ready to die. I felt like that was the easiest way to get out of the situation − the pain, the suffering, the sorrow,” he said. “It was so bad that I started shooting up creek water in the cemetery. My arm got infected. I was about to lose it.”

Then his crisis brought him to a turning point.

“I remember one night, I was at my wits end, and I cried out to the Lord. I got on my knees, and I cried out with every ounce of my energy, I was asking the Lord, 'Why? Why have these things happened? Why has it come to this place in my life? Why did I have to lose everything?'

“In that moment, something changed, because I surrendered. I surrendered my life. I told the Lord that I was done running. I was done doing the things that I had always done," he said.

Later that night Tester was arrested and taken to the Wayne County Jail, which he viewed as a blessing because he hadn't been inside and away from the weather for quite a while.

“Jesus does not always answer prayers the way that we think He is going to answer them," Tester said.

Praying for discipleship: Enter Really Recovered

While in jail he recalled hearing that there is power in the Bible, as being God’s word. A prisoner who was being released was going to leave his Bible behind, Tester said.

“I was probably 115 pounds, and my arm was bad infected," he said. "I mustered up the strength to crawl out of my cell and I'm, like, 'I'll take that Bible.' The man gave it to me. I started to read it, and I read it, and I read it."

As he waited to be sentenced to prison, Tester prayed for someone to disciple him.

“Jesus sent a couple of people from Really Recovered. They took me through their initial discipleship. They would meet with me every week. I was so thirsty," he said. "This was like a green leaf in a dry desert wasteland for me. It was a blessing and an answer to prayers. I poured everything into their discipleship that they had in their disciple process.

Beginning to build a solid foundation

“We tore down all the things that had caused me so much suffering and sorrow in my past. We tore that stuff down. Through the Word of God, and through people that were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, we started to build a solid foundation − a firm foundation on which I could stand.”

Tester described his two-year state prison stay in London, Ohio, as being a mission trip.

"What the enemy meant for evil, Jesus turned to good," he said. "There I was, in the middle of prison − free. I was completely free. I was not in bondage. I was free in the Lord. I wanted to tell other people about the mistake that I made ... but I didn't want other people to experience that.”

Tester talked about the brevity of life, and wanting to "tell everybody that life is too short. You need the Lord. And today is the day of salvation."

Test was determined to live at Really Recovered's Wooster campus after her prison term. Upon his arrival, “... All I had was prison clothes. That's all I owned because I didn't have anybody or anything. I didn't have any way to get money while I was in prison. But I was spiritually rich; I was a spiritual billionaire.”

He said he “instantly" felt loved at Really Recovered.

"I had been walking with the Lord. But when I started to experience love through people that were filled with the Spirit I knew that I was at home. I knew that I was at home in the presence of people that loved Jesus," he said. "And they were loving me. All I had on was prison clothes. But they were willing to love me and get me a new shirt and to clothe me. It was a great feeling.”

At the end of a two-month discipleship at Really Recovered, Tester was asked to step into house management, which he took on.

Now he is a key leader at Really Recovered.

“Really, I think a leader is more like a servant and less like a leader. That's one of the things that I learned over the last two years," he said. “Jesus has put me into a position to be able to serve and give my life for other people. He's still calling people that are in the muck and the mire and that are still in bondage and chains. He's leading them to the same place that He led me."

This information for this story was submitted by Ron Amstutz, with the permission of Travis Tester, following his presentation in Kidron.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Travis Tester's path from trauma and addiction to Really Recovered