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closeAllen Spangenburg will turn his eyes toward God today and celebrate not being drunk, high, in jail, in trouble or homeless.
The 42-year-old father has been clean for 16 months — sober from alcohol and drugs, substances he began using as a 14-year-old in Warner Robins.
He’s living back at home in Kathleen, reunited with his ex-wife and two teenage daughters, a family he walked out on in 2005 at the height of his addiction to methamphetamine.
For more than a year, the Northside High School graduate has maintained steady work at a commercial wood framing company, and the owner has him in a management position.
Spangenburg also has regained the trust of his parents.
After plenty of failed attempts to help him reach sobriety — after cleaning up as many of his messes — they had stopped speaking to their son, their eldest.
These days, the recovering addict chats with his mother and his father, a retired Warner Robins city policeman, at least four times a week.
“I’ve been as low as you can go,” Spangenburg said Thursday, sitting in his pastor’s office at Southside Baptist Church in Warner Robins. “I’m one of those people.”
ONE FAVOR
Spangenburg got out of jail in September 2007, the last of several incarcerations. He came to Southside to find the word of God at Celebrate Recovery, then a 2-year-old ministry for people dealing with addictions and unhealthy habits.
He says he was looking for Christ after having read the Bible behind bars.
“My mother came to me and asked me for that one favor,” he said. “I went and borrowed a Bible from the pastor of the Houston County jail and read it front to back twice.”
Celebrate Recovery, a 12-step program based on the eight Beatitudes of Jesus Christ, was developed from a national model created 18 years ago at the Rev. Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.
More than 10,000 churches have adopted the program, including four in Macon.
At Southside, about 250 adult participants follow the eight principles, found in the fifth chapter of Matthew, while working in small gender-separated groups to handle problems with alcohol, drugs, depression, co-dependency, sex addiction, eating disorders, divorce, and mental and physical abuse.
The church offers a similar section for teens, and it soon will add a section about managing grief.
Thursday evenings, participants meet for an hour of praise and worship led by the Rev. Charlie Bibb, followed by an hour in the groups of about 12 to 15 people. Group leaders teach from the “Life Recovery Bible.”
Spangenburg, who admits to joining the recovery program willing to give up meth but not beer, now leads the alcohol addiction group for men.
“There’s something about this place. It’s hard to explain,” he said. “To go in there and sit with a group of men that start pouring out their hearts, ... you start getting a relationship with the people that you’re in class with.”
During the 7 p.m. service Thursday, about 90 people filled Southside’s large, new sanctuary where Bibb’s sermon was about action and calling on new servants for the Lord.
Blond and tan, the pastor focused his message on the program’s third principle: Consciously choose to commit all my life and will to Christ’s care and control.
“Turn it over! Turn it over!” he yelled. Then he quoted Scripture: “Come to me and I will give you rest — all of you who work so hard beneath a heavy yoke. Wear my yoke — for it fits perfectly — and let me teach you. For I am gentle and humble, and you shall find rest for your souls.”
Bibb, a married father who is more than 10 years clean from cocaine and alcohol, said other men and women struggling to get their lives back on track can relate to his lessons.
“If anybody was at the point of wanting a new start, I was,” he said. “I just use my life experiences to help others.”
About 15 days after Spangenburg joined the program, he confessed his sins to Jesus. Three days later, on Aug. 17, 2008, Bibb baptized him.
“He was very broken,” the pastor said. “He came to us like a little babe in Christ.”
Aleshia Watson, a founding member of Celebrate Recovery, said the program encourages people to actively serve God. Activities such as Southside’s Life Groups, which are Sunday School classes held on weekdays, church athletics teams and other ministries help to fill time people might be tempted to spend drinking or getting high.
“We try to teach people not to dwell in their past. We try to get people plugged in and get them serving,” she said. “An idle mind is a dangerous place.”
Watson, a nail technician in Warner Robins, leads the drug addiction section for women.
“I’ve replaced myself three times,” she said, citing other recovery sections she has attended and then graduated to lead.
‘COULD ALWAYS POINT A FINGER’
Spangenburg keeps cheerleading photographs of his daughters, who are 16 and 13, in his wallet. The girls have their mother’s spunk, he says, but they’ve got his brown eyes.
“I’m back home. My relationship with my family is phenomenal. All things are possible through God who strengthens me,” he said. “I don’t live for tomorrow and I can’t change yesterday.
“The program puts you in touch with yourself. Once I got saved and baptized, it was a new beginning. I lived for Thursday nights. It caused me to do a lot of soul searching. Before, I couldn’t tell you that I was a drug-addicted alcoholic. Now I’m not proud of what I was, but I’m proud of what I’ve become.”
Through Celebrate Recovery, he’s not only stayed clean and sober, but he’s become an accountable, honest man.
In the group sessions, he speaks the change.
He opens up about his tumultuous childhood and bouncing between seven elementary schools. Or, while at Northside, feeling embarrassed about his size and his father’s profession; and years later, funding cases of beer instead of child support.
“That’s been my biggest problem,” he said. “I could always point a finger.”
Jim Coursey, Spangenburg’s boss at Dream States Construction and his program sponsor, said the men have become as close as brothers.
“We like to hunt and fish. We have a good time no matter what we’re doing,” he said. “Allen has come a very long way. I can tell you the miracles in his life that even he has not seen.”
Coursey employs other Celebrate Recovery participants at his job sites. Workers recently put down roofing at the new Mellow Mushroom pizza parlor on Bowman Road in north Bibb County.
“I do that because we run a seven-day-a-week ministry,” he said. “It’s a way to put someone up under your wing and carry them a little bit.”
Today, Spangenburg says he’s reflecting on his progress and “angels” such as Coursey who have helped him along the way.
“Two years ago, Easter was just another day. I didn’t care,” he said. “It was a time for kids to get candy and play dress up. Now it is a celebration to me. It is time with my family — the church — my family at home, a joyous celebration in my mind.
“Easter to me is the most wonderful day. Every day is the most wonderful day. Every day that I take a breath is the most wonderful day.”
To contact writer Ashley Tusan Joyner, call 744-4347.
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