During his teenage years, Dustin Garrett went through a life-changing experience that shaped who he is today. He struggled through feelings of regret and abused his body through illegal drugs.
Garrett had his girlfriend pregnant at 15 – something that neither of their parents wanted. So they suggested that they have the baby aborted because they said that it was just going to bring problems. After his girlfriend went through the process, instead of feeling relieved he felt horribly guilty.
Thoughts about the baby’s gender and how he or she might look ran through his mind. The abortion also deeply affected his girlfriend and they both turned to drugs to drown out their guilt. A decision that tragically ended his girlfriend’s life.
“Instead of it being a problem that needed to go away that’s when it sunk into me like..what if it’s a boy or a girl or what it look like…or like what happened to it. We couldn’t bear to talk about it and it plunged us into this spiral of drug addiction,” Garrett told The 700 Club.
Following her death. Garrett became a heroin addict and resorted to stealing to satiate his need for drugs. He eventually served time in jail and was put on the suicide floor of the jail. He experienced severe withdrawals and feared he would die from it. Then he remembered a story about Jesus that his grandmother told him when he was young.
“She communicated to us that there is a God and Jesus is a savior and He is who you need…in that moment in the jail cell I cried out, ‘Jesus please save me if you’re there, please save me.’ Then something changed in my heart like something changed to where I just had my spirit just testified that this Jesus is what I needed,” Garrett shared.
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When he was released from jail he didn’t know how to follow Jesus so he fell back into his old habits and became homeless. However, it was at the homeless shelter that he formed a relationship with Jesus through the Bible.
“I began to say no to the things that were destroying me by the grace of God, by the spirit of God with the Word of God and my life has never been the same since,” Garret testified.
Now, Garrett’s faith has never been stronger and he shares God’s grace and mercy with others through ministry at Samaritan Ministries, which is a pro-life medical sharing ministry. There’s never a moment that he looks back at his past and give thanks to God for his forgiveness. He feels blessed to be loved by God despite his past mistakes.