‘Success has many fathers’, as they say. Well, we’re having a successful year at the Mission I’m Possible workout, often with thirty or more men present. There are more than a dozen veteran F3ers who make it so.
Today we had thirty one men. We split the group with multiple Qs, making extra effort to maintain distancing and hygiene. This continues a pattern of about eighteen or twenty Charlotte Rescue Mission residents, and about a dozen stalwarts from around Charlotte Metro. There’s usually Beaver (my co-site-Q), and Pigskin, Charcoal, and Reverend Flo Rida. These guys probably lead the roster in MIP Qs this year. Carrier and Deertick, two of our ancestor-Qs and patriarchs of the F3 program there, are often present too. And you can count on Vega to be there: he’s a CRM graduate and chief cheerleader for those men. The rest of the Cadre are familiar faces to you: M-80, Fletch, Pomfret, Moses, Monkey Feet, Blue Tornado, Sunshine, and more. These are just some of the Charlotte Metro bunch who block out a chunk of their Saturday morning and drive across town to grunt, run, and sweat beside the good men of the Rescue Mission.
Recovery from addiction is a long trek along temptation’s knife edge. Today, our numbers included a couple of guys who have returned to CRM: they had graduated from the program but still didn’t have all the skills they needed to fight back against old vices. They returned to the Rescue Mission because it’s a place of safety, with structure and standards of behavior within which a determined man can repurpose himself. And of course they returned because they fell off that knife edge.
When we’re all there together, the stalwarts and the CRM men, we all share something in common. We are members of the Wrong Turn club: all those men who’ve made the bad choice or done the wrong thing and usually paid a terrible price for it. Our CRM brothers are still paying that price, but eager to redeem their lives and futures.
Nowadays, MIP is much more than a workout. It’s an hour of hope and brotherhood. It’s a place where the Wrong Turn club can become the Second Chance club. Come be a part of it.
Valdez