Macon man finds hope, new calling after years of anguish

When Brad Sappe was knee high to a tadpole, his father would take him to the creek behind their house in Wilkinson County.

It wasn't wide enough to fish or deep enough to swim, so they would wade in the cool water to find smooth rocks. They would skip them across the surface or find a floating can and take aim.

Once, when they were fishing at a nearby pond, Brad leaned too far off the edge of the dock and fell in. He couldn't swim and went under.

Larry Sappe's strong hands, the ones that labored in the family's heating and air conditioning business, reached to rescue his son.

Brad believed his dad would always be there to save him.

Then, one day, he wasn't.

***

WALKING IN THE SHADOWS

Brad Sappe began drowning himself in a bottomless cup of alcohol and drugs 16 years ago this month.

He never saw it coming, the grief that consumed him and sentenced him to his own private hell. He was a 21-year-old student at Georgia College & State University when his 48-year-old father was killed in a fire while working on a job site in Milledgeville on March 13, 2000.

Brad turned to drugs and alcohol to dull the pain and heartache.

"I never thought I could be free from the anger, resentment, frustration, hurt and deep sorrow I carried with me after that day,'' he said. "My heart was hard for a very long time after his passing.''

In many ways, he led a double life. He quit college and went home to help run the family business in Gordon. He married his high school sweetheart, Jodi Outler, the girl he took to the prom 20 years ago this spring. They had two beautiful children, Lawson and Bella. They moved to Macon, bought a house in midtown and got involved with their church, Ingleside Baptist.

But Brad walked in the shadows, too. Liquor, prescription drugs, painkillers, opiates, Xanax. He took it all, even the heavy stuff that didn't carry labels from the pharmacy. Cocaine. Meth.

He covered his tracks. Temptation may have weakened him, but he was a master of the masquerade.

"I was blindsided because he was always functional,'' Jodi said. "He didn't miss work. We were young and married, and lots of people were social drinkers, so I didn't think anything of it.''

It wasn't just the drinking that blurred his senses and clouded his thinking. He was using it to chase down the pills. He had been introduced to painkillers when he was a teen-ager. He never needed them when he played football and baseball at John Milledge Academy in Milledgeville. A doctor prescribed them when he was hurt in a four-wheeler accident and, later, after tearing his ACL playing flag football.

"At a young age, I knew pain pills did more than just take away the pain,'' he said. "They made me feel euphoric.''

Growing up at Faith Baptist Church in McIntyre, he had enough of a foundation to realize what he was doing was self-destructive. Even the joys of marriage and fatherhood weren't enough to make him stop.

He was angry at God. He internalized everything. "I was like a bottle of Coca-Cola you shake up and take the top off,'' he said.

He tried to slay the dragons. He attended AA meetings and sought help in the detox clinics at local hospitals. After a few months of sobriety, he would fall off the wagon again.

In 2006, he entered Penfield Christian Homes, a residential addiction treatment program in Union Point, near Greensboro.

"Those six weeks felt like forever,'' Jodi said. "When he came home, I assumed he was cured.''

But he wasn't. Not yet. It would be seven long years before he was strong in all the broken places.

The façade never crumbled. "I could change my actions to convince just about anybody of just about anything,'' he said.

A framed photograph on a wall of the Sappes' living room shows a happy family. It was taken in 2012. Everyone was laughing.

"But the guy smiling in that picture,'' Brad said, pointing to himself, "was hurting very much.''

TURNING POINT

The turning point came in the fall of that same year. Brad began having seizures. He and Jodi thought it might be neurological. Instead, it was the chemistry of a reckless lifestyle.

In February 2013, the night before his mother's birthday, Brad's hands started to shake. He began to sweat. After he moved from the supper table to his recliner, he began having convulsions.

"The next thing I remember, I was being put on the gurney and into an ambulance,'' he said.

Jodi spent the night with him at the emergency room. He was released at 4 a.m. She took the children to school that morning. He drove to work in Gordon. When he didn't come home that afternoon, she called his cell phone.

"His words were slurred and something was not right,'' she said. "He had taken a whole bottle of pills on the way home. It was by the grace of God he didn't kill himself or anyone else.''

She asked him to leave. He went to stay with friends. A counselor had told them about No Longer Bound, a faith-based recovery program for men in Cumming. He checked into detox at Anchor Hospital near the airport in Atlanta, then Jodi drove him to Cumming on Feb. 21, 2013.

"When she put me out, it was with the understanding she was done with me, that it had been too much for too long,'' Brad said. "She told me I would always be our children's father. If I ever wanted to see them again, I would stay with this program. I was so prideful, I wouldn't even allow myself to admit how much I loved her.''

Still, he had no real expectations. Same song, different verse.

"But I didn't want to lose my kids,'' he said. "And I do believe there was a part of me that was tired of it. I was tired of being angry about my dad's death, tired of the lies and tired of trying to live two completely different lifestyles.

"There were no locks on the doors at No Longer Bound. I could have left at any time. But it got to the point where I kept thinking what am I going to do if she does take the kids, tells me I'm a dangerous man and I've lost everything? Was I going to going to turn back to using drugs and alcohol to numb the pain like I had been doing for the past 15 years? Or was I going to stay and get help from the burden I was carrying? So I surrendered.''

Brad had no contact with his family for 107 days. No phone calls. No email. No television. It was like being sequestered for jury duty. Or locked in a prison cell with 50 other men.

He had been there 10 days when Easter came.

"I remember lying there in my bunk, crying as I listened to the other men outside hunting Easter eggs with their children,'' he said. "Because I couldn't see mine, I thought I had blown the opportunity to ever do that again.''

Brad's story, like the story of Easter, is about hope and resurrection. It is like the beginning of spring and the new life it brings with it.

Back home, Jodi, Lawson and Bella were wearing out their knees praying.

Brad and Jodi kept separate journals. When she would visit, they would share and compare notes.

"God was teaching me the exact things he was teaching Brad,'' Jodi said. "It had looked as if my world was falling apart. This was not how I expected my life to turn out. I was like a single mother, and it was hard.''

"You don't have to do anything right now,'' a wise friend told her. "He's gone. The chaos has been removed. Use this time to pray and seek out people you respect.''

She began to pray fervently for great wisdom. Her prayers were bold, not timid.

"I prayed the Lord would show he had done the work, that this was going to be sustainable because I wanted our marriage to be intact, and for our kids to grow up in a whole home,'' Jodi said.

She remembers the first time she saw Brad after more than three and a half months. There was something different about his eyes. They were clear. Except for the tears.

Just hang on, she told him. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be beautiful.

'NAILING IT TO THE CROSS'

Four days before Christmas, a new man with a "new heart" came home to the old house, built in the 1920s along the city's winding Cherry Blossom Trail in the Ingleside neighborhood.

In sharing his testimony, Brad now talks about forgiveness, about "writing a debt invoice, folding it up and nailing it to the cross.'' He talks about rededicating his life to Jesus Christ.

"It is no longer a story or a fairy tale or this mythical figure I used to hear about,'' he said. "It is real, and I can have a personal relationship with him I never thought possible.''

He began to take long walks with Jodi. He hugged his children and tucked them in bed at night. He played ball with his son and read books to his little girl. He sold his share of the family business and went back to college.

On May 14, he will graduate from Mercer University with a degree in liberal studies, with concentrations in communication and human services.

Jodi looks back at Brad's first rehabilitation 10 years ago. Penfield, of course, later became Mercer, and the facility is located on the same property as the original campus of the 1830s.

It's a reminder, she said, that "God is in the details of life.''

"I guess he has kind of graduated twice,'' she said of her husband.

Now, when Brad thinks about his father, he smiles. "And I know he finally has something to smile back about,'' he said.

Last year, Brad and Jodi founded Cross Roads Recovery Ministries in Macon, a long-term, residential, regeneration program for men struggling with addition (crossroadsrecoveryministriesinc.com). It is patterned after No Longer Bound but not affiliated with it.

Brad began working with his first client in December and will start bringing others into the program after he graduates in May. They hope to break ground on a facility next year.

"It's not about rehab, but regeneration,'' Jodi said. "No Longer Bound's motto is to rescue the addict, regenerate the man and reconcile the family. Cross Roads stands on those same principles and beliefs. We believe that when Jesus does a work, it is finished, and if men can find freedom from those strongholds, then they can go on to lead productive, drug-free lives. That is what sets our program apart. There is no other program like this in Middle Georgia.''

In some ways, Brad said, we all bear the scars of addiction.

"That's why we call it Cross Roads,'' he said. "For me, it all begins and ends at the cross.''

Ed Grisamore teaches journalism and creative writing at Stratford Academy in Macon. He can be reached at edgrisamore@gmail.com

This story was originally published March 26, 2016 at 11:32 AM with the headline "Macon man finds hope, new calling after years of anguish ."