FOR HIS DAD — An Unexpected Path To Grace
“I grew up going to church every Sunday and Wednesday night, but felt like it was forced on me,” said Kelly Martin. “I knew all the Bible stories, but I felt detached.” After a youth leader and others in the church let him down, he decided he was done with church. “I developed a distaste, a distrust for church and for anybody telling me ‘this is how you’re supposed to live your life.’”
When Kelly went to college and then on to play professional baseball for the Cincinnati Reds, he abandoned church. “Drugs came into my life—cocaine and ecstasy—and my drinking was pretty bad. I was sleeping around and I had an awful mouth.”
Meanwhile, his parents began attending Scottsdale Bible, and in 2006, Kelly’s dad was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Doctors told him he had nine months to live. When Kelly heard the news, he was devastated. “I remembered I hadn’t prayed in ages, but I prayed, ‘Okay, God, give me a few more years with him. I’ll do whatever you want.’ It was the normal plea you make when you’re just lost.”
After his dad’s initial surgery and recovery, Kelly and his older brother, Trey, decided to start attending church with their dad every Sunday, just to make him happy.
“I hadn’t attended church in years,” said Kelly, “and when I sat there, I always felt like there were these eyes looking at me and God was saying ‘Why are you here? I know you’re going to go out and do drugs again and sleep with another girl, so why are you even here?’ That’s how I felt.” But he resolved to keep an open mind and heart. “I started listening to Pastor Jamie and it started making sense to me, but my actions didn’t change. I was still living the same lifestyle.”
Along the way, they had multiple scares with their dad. “My dad was never afraid to die and I think that was because of his faith, but he always said he didn’t want to die alone. My brother must have said a thousand times, ‘Dad, I’m going to be here for you.’”
Exceeding all expectations, Kelly’s dad lived another two and a half years. The day before Thanksgiving in 2009, the family had taken turns watching him through the night when something changed with his breathing. They knew it wouldn’t be much longer. The other siblings came, but Trey couldn’t be reached. He was sound asleep after spending hours the previous day and night with his dad. “We tried calling him 15 times, but he didn’t answer.”
As their dad’s breathing slowed, they finally reached Trey. “We knew my brother would never recover from missing this. So when Dad stopped breathing for a moment, I yelled at him and said ‘you can’t go now, you’ve gotta stay.’ He opened his eyes and took another breath, and then my brother ran in and grabbed his hand. Just 30 seconds later, he passed. At first, I think my brother felt like he wasn’t there for my dad, but now we look at it the other way. God was that good to us that He let Dad hold on until Trey got there.”
After his dad passed, Kelly decided to keep going to church—for his dad. He cried every week and his drug-use worsened as he sank into depression. “At church, as I listened to Pastor Jamie, I would challenge myself to make changes and I thought, I’m becoming a Christian, I’m working it out. But I couldn’t keep from doing all the things I struggled with.”
Two years after his dad died, in March of 2012, Kelly hit a second low. He was arrested for a DUI. “I’m sitting in the back of a cop car, bawling, thinking ‘Who am I? This isn’t who your dad and mom raised you to be. What are you doing with your life?’”
Later that summer, he moved to Mobile, Alabama, to join the coaching staff of a baseball team and was experiencing the worst depression of his life. One morning in the team weight room, he heard Lincoln Brewster’s song “More Than Amazing” playing. “I was the only one in the room but I felt like someone was saying ‘just get on your knees and give it up. Stop trying to do this on your own.’ I walked around that stupid weight room for 20 minutes. Looking back now, I think I knew once I made that decision, the old life was over. I knew that’s what was keeping me from progress before, because I wasn’t ready to get rid of all these things I was holding onto—the drinking, the drugs, everything. I didn’t want to be held accountable.
“Finally, I got on my knees and said ‘I’m done. I can’t do this on my own anymore. I’ve got to have help. I’m just broken right now.’ People tell about it, and I experienced it. It’s like a weight is lifted. From that moment forward, the drugs stopped, the language got better to the point that now I don’t cuss at all, and I had the worst mouth ever.
“Slowly, with gradual progress, I started becoming the man I wanted to be. Now I come to church and I come for God, not for my dad. I think I’m alive today because of this church and Pastor Jamie. Although I don’t know him personally, he and God got me through the depression, the drugs and alcoholism. And the fun thing about Jamie is he doesn’t mince words. You have to self-reflect with him and challenge yourself. If you do that, you’re going to grow.
“Before I submitted my life to God, when I heard a song my dad liked, I would get shivers up the back of my neck. I took it as God allowing my dad to come back and say ‘Hey, I’m here. I’ve got you.’ Sometimes I imagined Pastor Jamie with his arms wide open saying, ‘I’ve got you.’ But then slowly, that shiver became God saying, ‘You’re alright, you messed up, but it’s okay, I’ve got you.’
“It’s funny how church was about Dad, and now it’s about God. I was aching to get my story out because I know there are people out there who are so screwed up with their guilt and their shame, and I’ve got the worst shame you ever thought of. I imagine a person sitting there, coming into the church for my same reasons, thinking ‘Why am I here? I know I’m going to go out and do this sin again or I can’t get rid of this struggle.’ And I would say to them, ‘Is that all you’ve got?—because I’ve got a mountain full of stuff behind me and if God can forgive me and allow me to grow and to learn, you can do it, too.’
“Why was a person like me given the grace to work through my issues? If my dad had passed suddenly, I think I’d still be a train wreck. I think it was God’s grace giving me those two and a half years to get settled and understand who He is and how He could change my life. And I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything in the world.”
Kelly and his new wife, Jazelle, attend The Venue services and are part of First5, a community of couples in their first five years of marriage who meet on Sunday mornings at Scottsdale Bible.
