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First Step in Staying Clean Dear Friend, I cannot believe that we have made it through all the Seven Steps in Coming Clean. When the Lord put the idea on my head to do this, I thought I would finish this in seven weeks. Well it took us 17 weeks but who is counting? Now, we are faced with traveling through the most difficult part of the coming clean process. I remember when I first took over what was to become the Medellin Cartel my God Father telling me, "One day, Jorge, you will find out that making a million dollars is the easiest thing in the world, keeping it is the hardest." Well, coming clean is not the easiest thing in the world, but it sure is a lot easier than staying clean. It is my prayer that as we go deeper with Jesus and pray that He will give us strength to not only come clean and stay clean, but to realize that the most important and critical component to staying clean is prayer. In our previous E-letter we suggested that it is through our individual choice of Coming Clean and living a life of transparency before God and those whom we love, that we are able to enjoy the consequence of Staying Clean. The key word here is choice: Choosing! Every second of our lives we are faced with making choices; we make good choices and we make bad choices. It is important to remind ourselves that every choice we make carries a consequence. Looking back at the choices we've made in the past, there were times that those choices we believed to be good turned out to be bad, and that is ok. That is an all too real part of traveling through life. In taking the First Step to Staying Clean we must realize that to live a life that liberates us from the bondages of sin we have to choose to stay clean. Therefore we profess: "I choose today to Stay Clean and transparent before Christ and those whom I love." This first step of choosing to stay clean and being transparent is not something our loved ones can do for us, or something a doctor can prescribe in a pill, it a willful choice that WE must make. And it is something that we had better realize right now; that it is extremely difficult for us to do. We may have a desire, we may even make a resolution to do it, but we always end up in the same spot. So, how do we get to the place of staying clean? As people read about my life and begin to reflect on the fact that so many people are struggling with addictions as a direct result of my work in the Cartel, the first question that they always asked me is: how were you able to change? I have spent a lot of time contemplating how to give an answer that is direct and brief. Before I even attempt to answer that question I want to emphasize that I was not able to change. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how bad I wanted to change, I simply could not; I stayed caught in a vicious cycle. It was not until I surrendered to Christ and allowed Him to do a work in my life that I was able to step out of that cycle. Surrendering, that was the choice and I had to personally make it. No matter how much my mother prayed for God to change me, she could not surrender for me. Therefore, how was I able to make that choice? And, more important, how do I keep making that choice on a daily basis? For Jorge Valdes it was coming to the realization that my life had to change and that no matter which I direction I chose to go, I did not want to return to that old life. Therefore, if I could not return to my former life, where was I to go? “But if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. ... But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15) I suddenly realized that I was in rebelled against the God whom my mother served. I was following the gods this world has to offer, the same gods that led me to 11 years in prison. I chose to follow the God to which my mother prayed so fervently; the God whom she believed would change her son to be the child she had brought into the world, not the monster the gods of this world had created. My friend, choose you today whom you will follow! God bless you.
Love,
Jorge Valdes, Ph.D.
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