“It affects every An Awareness Journey for Parents of Children in Recovery: Part I family. It is every-where. the prodigal son By Pat Bradford | Photography by Allison Potter “He was a good boy, with a sweet spirit,” Richard’s wife Esther says of her son Michael. “He played sports; he was an excellent baseball player. He went to church.” The family lived 15 years in New Jersey. A native of Dunn, North Carolina, Richard is an evangelist and retired union electrician employed by nuclear power plants who ministers to federal and state prisoners as well as to drug-addicted teens. The family joined a church congrega-tion when they returned to Jacksonville, North Carolina, where Michael was born. Michael, age 15, joined the church’s 100-member youth group. Struggling with rejection and des-perate to fit in, it was with boys from the youth group Michael first smoked marijuana; his experimentation rapidly escalated. “We didn’t realize how quickly he got into drugs,” Esther says. “He started with pot, but within a year, he was doing everything under the sun,” Richard says. “He was doing drugs before school, in school and after school. You could have told me, and I would have said, ‘No way. No way in the world.’ He was such a good boy. It was so hard to believe.” “I called him the mystery man,” Esther says. “He would never bring one of his friends over; he’d never say where he was going. He’d go into his room, not talk to you.” “I was doing ministry in the Onslow County Jail to kids on drugs,” Richard says, “and my own son was out there doing drugs. He was stealing gas, writing bad checks. He’d go in bars and start fights. Lying, pornography — but God protected him.” may 2015 The first time Michael was jailed, it was in Burgaw. He was high and stole a case of beer from a little store on Topsail Island around Easter time. “Michael called me and said, ‘Dad, I am in jail,’” Richard recounts. “That was a Sunday morning. I said, ‘No, I am going to church.’” When Richard and Esther picked Michael up, he said he was going to change his ways, but he went right back to the same pattern of using. “When you get addicted to something, it is a disease, controlling you in sickness,” Richard explains. “It will make you do something you don’t want to do.” Michael wanted to join the Marine Corps, Richard says, but he was overweight. He had graduated from high school and moved out of his parents’ home, and was hanging out with the party crowd. “He was at a party at East Carolina,” Richard says. “He stole a $2 sausage, a Slim Jim at a Quik Mart. He had money in his pocket, but he was drunk.” The woman at the store called the police. Michael was arrested and jailed again. “Me and Esther had to cry and pray,” Richard says. “He said, ‘You are going to come and get me out?’” “We said, ‘No,’” Esther says. Richard and Esther knew Michael was drink-ing and using drugs at the time of his arrest. “I let him sit in there for 21 days,” Richard says. “I just had to trust the Lord. He said to me, ‘You go minister to somebody’s son, and I will minister to your son.’” During those three weeks in the Lenoir County Jail in Kinston, Michael had an eye-opening experience: he met a man whose entire family was in prison. “Michael said, ‘Daddy, I wasn’t raised that It doesn’t matter whether you are the mayor or the pastor,” Rev. Richard Thornton says of addiction. Esther and Rev. Richard Thornton. 24 WBM
Wrightsville Beach Magazine May 2015
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