‘I like who I am’: Benn’s radical journey of self-acceptance through Jesus’ love
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 1 hour ago
BY KIRRALEE NICOLLE
Cadet Benn Nicholson now spends his days talking to people in need of physical and spiritual support, and helping children and young people to find their place in Christian community. At Ingle Farm Corps north of Adelaide, he has found a niche where his love of Jesus and his love of people can be fulfilled.
But when it comes to God and the church, he hasn’t always felt he belonged.
Addiction to multiple substances, homelessness, broken relationships and unknowing participation in a fringe religious sect gradually shaped Benn into someone he barely recognised, and someone he had always feared he might become.
“I grew up in a house where we had certain morals and certain ways we conducted ourselves, but especially in ice addiction, you start crossing those boundaries and you start doing things that you said you would never do. You start becoming a person you never thought you would become,” Benn says. “When you're in the throes of it, you’re not really aware. You are aware of what you’re doing, but you’re not dealing with it, [and] you’re not accepting it.
“It’s not until you’ve got a sober mind and you look back on it – [then] you’re mortified at some of the things you did and the person that you were becoming. It’s a sad thing, because you see a lot of people start off in life with a lot of potential, and then after a few years of addiction, they’re a different creature.”
And Benn did become a different creature.
After starting his career on building sites as a labourer, Benn worked in precast yards as a crane operator and dogman – the person who signals to the crane operator where to place loads. After this, he moved into the mining sector, where he worked both in cranes and as a poly welder, joining plastic piping.
“That whole lifestyle – you work hard, but you also play hard,” Benn says.
During this time, while he was in his early 20s, Benn found himself looking for something more. He began participating in a church group which seemed to offer a new way of life. Previous members of the group recently testified to the recent Victorian Legislative Assembly’s Legal and Social Issues Committee’s inquiry into the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and organised fringe groups about cult-like control practices within the group.
“It’s very us against the world,” Benn said of his experience at the group. “Everything you do is done with them … church is first and foremost.”
He says he felt pressure to attend church events during the week, which created tension with his workplace. He also was also forced to attend prayer and fasting days, which ran on a gruelling schedule.
“That’s quite a drag,” he says. “It really is. It’s meant to be edifying and purifying or whatever, but I know a lot of people dreaded those days. I think it was almost a control mechanism over the people.”
Even as a young man with no children, Benn noticed the children at the church were afraid and forced to follow rules to feel loved. It left him uneasy.
Benn says growing up, he had minimal exposure to religion, and so he believed what he was experiencing was a normal church environment. He says leaders at the church portrayed other churches and religious groups as “wishy-washy”, and gave an impression that theirs was the “one and true church”.
“All these other denominations and churches, they’re all pretenders and they’re not serious about their faith – you believe that, and then you start spreading that and saying that,” Benn says.
But Benn says he eventually left that church for personal reasons as well.
“I wanted to step back from that because I was still a young man and I was missing out on nightclubs, girls, partying and all this sort of thing,” he says. “And I wasn’t quite ready for that [to be gone]. I fell away because I hadn’t finished living the way that I wanted to live.”
But living the way that Benn wanted to live eventually left him in a very vulnerable place.
By his late 30s, he was selling drugs and dealing with an addiction to ice and cigarettes. He eventually found himself jobless, homeless and living in a shipping container located in a Toowoomba storage facility. For a couple of dark months, he paid $25 a week to rent the container, which had no running water or heating. His health was suffering greatly, and he was afraid he might freeze to death. While he had turned his back on selling drugs, addiction was still weighing heavy on his life.
“I felt isolated,” he says. “I felt alone. Feelings of despair [started] creeping in. It’s like a darkness, especially when you’re living in this shipping container … in an industrial estate, you actually feel like you’re buried. Everyone else is getting on with their lives, and raising families and building careers.
“And here my life’s become this.”
Relationally, Benn was also in a dark place.
“My mother would help out where she could, and the door was always open,” he says. “She always was concerned about me. A couple of times throughout my life, I’d go back home and sort my life out, and then go back into the world. The door was always open.”
But his mum set a boundary as she noticed her son slipping into deeper and darker places. Benn says she had to “put her foot down”.
“There was a point where Mum said, ‘Look, I’m not giving you any more money or helping you with this,’” he says.
This felt like a new low for Benn.
“I started to feel like others in addiction who don’t have family, because I know there’s people out there that they have nothing and no one, and you see them on the streets,” he says.
So, Benn decided he needed to radically change his life. He locked the shipping container and caught a bus down to his mother’s house in Coffs Harbour.
“I had like $20 to my name,” Benn says. “It was either I buy something to eat or buy a pack of cigarettes. I thought ‘If I buy cigarettes now, when does it stop?’ So, I didn’t buy cigarettes. I stopped cold turkey. I stopped smoking, [and] I stopped using drugs all in one go. I went home to my mother’s [for a] new beginning, but I knew because that had happened a few times in my life, I felt I needed to change within.
“Otherwise, I was still that same old creature, just in a sober body.”
Benn set about a process of change which, eight years on from that crisis point, continues to shape his life. He began attending the Narcotics Anonymous program at The Salvation Army Coffs Harbour, and also Sunday services. After experiencing a high-control religious environment, Benn says The Salvation Army was a space where the messaging wasn’t “driven down his throat”.
“I was accepted and then I was welcomed into The Salvation Army, but say I missed a Sunday, they weren’t ringing me up and saying, ‘Where are you?’”, he says. “I just didn’t feel that pressure of having to be someone that’ll fit into a mould.”
And Benn doesn’t like to fit into a mould. He no longer views addiction or being a former addict as part of his identity, rather, he embraces a life and faith that holds complexity and nuance. He likes to sit in a dark room and ponder God’s presence, but also listens to heavy metal. He finds great joy in serving others and helping lead others towards God, but also takes medication for depression. Though he felt distant from his artist father growing up, Benn embraces the artistic gene he has inherited, and likes to paint for enjoyment. When it comes to his faith, Benn describes himself as “a bit of a mystic”.
“It’s not all about knowing, it’s all about experiencing,” Benn says of his faith.
“I like to encourage people, build people up, and that helps me. Being patient with people, to help people live up to their full potential – that encourages me. It makes me feel like I’m doing what God requires from me, because I do feel God always intend us to live that rich and full life. And that helps me live that rich and full life as well.”
Benn says growing up, he dealt with a lot of negative self-belief, and that this is something he is sure many young men experience. He says he is passionate about communicating to young men that it’s possible to grow up and feel differently. He says he spent a lot of time regretting his actions, and feeling deep rejection when relationships ended. But now, he feels a lot of peace.
“There was a time when I was growing up, I was afraid of who I would become one day and now I am that man, and I like who I am,” he says. “I’m comfortable with who I am.”
And as for how he sees God – a very special person is never far from his mind when he thinks about the grace he has received.
“I feel that the God of love is a little bit like my mother,” he says. “The door’s always open. There’s always an opportunity for repentance.
“That’s what salvation’s always about, isn’t it?”
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