ARAB, Alabama — New Life Church Addiction Recovery in Arab had around 500 pounds of thawed chicken ready for an event that had to be postponed. That event was a 'Walk to Remember' in honor of those who lost their battle with addiction. The event will still happen at a later date but all of the chicken for the event needed to be eaten much quicker than that.
"This chicken isn't chicken. This Chicken is God's love. This chicken is reaching out to our community and saying, we don't want to see your financial qualifications, we don't need to know your story, though we'd love to hear it, we don't care where you've been, we don't care who ya Momma is. What we care about is, we have something to give you and we want you to have it. And we don't get anything back, now would we love for somebody to come to our church because they got a chicken, sure, we would love that. But what we want is for all these people to go home and eat this chicken and say man, somebody loved me today. Because we don't have enough of that in this world," said Jennifer Greer, a member at New Life Church.
Sometimes all it takes for someone to turn over a new leaf is to know that someone cares.
"The statistics on recovery, permanent recovery from addiction are that about 1 in 10 addicts get better. And a lot of people use that as a reason not to reach out, cause I mean 1 in 10, that's not very many, right? But one life changed, one person feeling, when they lay their head down tonight, like somebody loved them, is worth whatever we do. Whatever we spend, whatever time we take. If handing somebody a chicken, makes them know that we love them, that God loves them and that there is something better for them, than what's going on now, then we've done our job," said Greer.
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Every person battling with addiction has a different story, but there are some things that are the same in every story.
"People need people. People need to feel connected. Most addicts that I talk to, talk about the beginning of their addiction coming from feelings of not being loved, worthlessness, loneliness, not belonging. Always. Their stories are different, every one, and the same," said Greer.