Nenad

DISAPPOINTMENT IN LIFE HAS DISAPPEARED

My name is Nenad Bićanin and I`m 40. I come from Aleksandrovac, a little village in Central Serbia. I grew up with my grandparents because my parents worked abroad at the time. I graduated from music school and I play several instruments. I am a father of a five-year-old girl and I have been married to Jelena for 6 years.

My first encounter with drugs was when I was 17. It was marihuana. When I tasted and felt heroin I knew that was the feeling I want to have the rest of my life. During the next several years I used it occasionally, on weekends. Then I left to Germany for work. I started making money so I used heroin on an everyday basis. When I came back to Serbia, I tried everything only to get clean. I managed to stay clean for three years. In that period, I got married and started using hepatitis C therapy. After the therapy I got depressed, I was apathetic. Neither family nor love of the closest ones meant anything to me. I started using various anti-depressants and, gradually, I turned back to heroin again. This drug abuse lasted for 15 years, along with all the following things that go with it.

The most important thing happened when I came to Crossroads. As a non-believer I met people who were ex addicts, who looked normal and lived normal lives with their families. Even though I hadn`t believed that there was a solution for my addiction, I started to believe that I had been wrong. The only problem I had in the centre was God. I couldn`t possibly believe in him. I couldn`t believe in something I hadn`t seen. At my first service I heard a sentence I couldn`t forget: “Try God, there is nothing you can lose.” That was where a battle with my reason and logic began. One of the problems was that I had to surrender my life to God and to start changing myself, that is, I had to give up on all the things I didn`t consider to be problems. After several months in the program, the staff wondered why I still felt bad. I was obedient; I did everything I was told to do. I started leading worship services and everyone changed, only I didn`t. That was when the staff discovered that had smoked, drank alcohol and pills during weekends. I kept that for myself, not considering that a problem. Then I made a decision that I didn`t want to do that anymore and for the first time in my life I wanted to keep my promise. Soon, through worship, I started having a relationship with God. Through God`s word God shaped me, gave me strength, announced the truth to me. I was delivered from addiction, cigarettes, and alcohol. I felt relieved and I literally felt that. First, I forgave my parents whom I had blamed for all the failures in my life. The Lord taught me how to forgive and be grateful. He taught me to be humble and obedient and to ask nothing in return. He took all my worries. A huge burden in my life disappeared, along with disappointment in people and parents, in my life. Everything was given a new sense. I got a new purpose in life. I believe that the Lord has a plan for my life. God, your will be done.

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