Caught in the Crossfire

Alphonso Amos excelled in school but didn’t feel his parents noticed his accomplishments. His brother who was always in trouble, got all the attention. “I was a little jealous and envious of him because you’re getting all this attention and I’m trying to strive hard to get good grades at school and ‘Man, nobody’s watching me. Nobody’s paying me any attention.’” Eventually Alphonso gave up and stopped trying and his report cards showed it. “(I was) Pretty much not caring about anything. I don’t care really what my life turns out to be. All of this is worth nothing.” His lack of motivation followed him into adult-hood. “I just started to drink heavily. It kind of felt like it made the anger go away. I would just get that drunk that I wouldn’t think about the situation with my brother. I wouldn’t think about the situation with my parents and things like that. It suppressed the pain.” Soon, Alphonso’s friends convinced him marijuana would also help him feel better. “They were like, ‘You’re always mad at something or you’re always angry at something. Try this, it’ll make you happier and it’ll make you better.” I sat around and just played video games and smoked weed. I tried being sober and not smoking all day and it felt like I got angry. So, it was like, ‘I’m think I’m better high. I’m a better individual smoking weed than when I’m sober.’” One day Alphonso and is friends got caught in a shoot out between two drug dealers. “We tried to duck and hide. And at that point I realized I’d been shot. I’d been hit. I tried to tell the individuals in the car with me that I had gotten shot and they didn’t believe me. They said I was drunk and I was high and that I would be okay. I feel the bullet go through my left shoulder, and nobody’s listening to me. And I felt like I was slipping away. And the only thing that I grabbed hold of was what I remembered growing up, ‘When you’re in trouble, you pray.’ And they verbally heard me pray. And that’s when they realized, ‘Oh, he’s serious. We have to get him to the hospital.’” In the hospital he remembers dreaming that he was walking with Jesus. “He took me to different places in my life where I should not have made it out of. I was born two months early, and the doctors said I wasn’t going to make it then. Then He took me to a place in elementary school where I was hit by a car and the situation should have been a lot worse. I shouldn’t have made it then. And then He began to say the Hand of the Father was upon me. And He asked, would I follow Him. Would I trust Him?” When he woke up, he immediately asked for a pastor. “And I shared the dream that I had with him. He began to share with me about God’s grace and His mercy. I still wasn’t really sure what all that meant. But I did realize that God definitely intervened on my behalf. I prayed and just asked Jesus to come into my heart. It felt like Jesus was right there with me. That moment I opened my mouth and just began to just call and say, ‘Lord, I need You.’ It felt like all my burdens were being lifted off me at that moment.” Alphonso made a full recovery and restored his relationship with his parents. He surrounded himself with new Christian friends and read his Bible every day. Today, he is a youth group camp director helping young people make better choices than he did. “I’m truly grateful for Jesus just being my all-in-all and for just intervening in my life and ordering my footsteps. Because without Him, without Him, I don’t know where I would be.”