From Addiction to Redemption: A Couple's Story of Salvation

Bryce De La Rosa.

“I used to say to my mom that some vessels are made for honorable use and some for dishonorable use. Maybe I’m just meant to go to Hell.”

Bryce De La Rosa always believed in God, but he didn’t bow a knee to the king who made him. He loved his sin too much. Raised in church, Bryce dutifully attended Sunday morning services and learned biblical truths. When he saw his brothers smoking weed in the backyard, he first became angry at them, knowing it was wrong, and against the teaching they were raised with.

James 1:14-15

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Curiosity (temptation) overcame him, and he soon tried weed too. As he entered high school, parties, booze, and marijuana were staples in his life. 

“I went downhill real fast. I got kicked off the basketball team my freshman year for smoking weed and started ditching too. In 10th grade I smoked crank for the first time. I liked it. I liked it a lot and I didn’t ever quit.” He leaned forward, fidgety. All the fondness for the drug was long gone, replaced with obvious disdain.

Proverbs 13:20

Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

Rob and Paulette Hastings were prayerful bystanders to Bryce’s self destruction, and they had no desire for their sons to be the companions of a fool. The Hastings and Bryce’s parents had deep, longstanding ties from childhood, and they all attended Grace Church in Greeley, Colorado together. 

“Probably one of the hardest things we had to do was to tell (our son) Bret that he could no longer hang out with Bryce. We were best friends with their family and the boys were very, very good friends, but when they got into highschool, we had to make that decision for our own children. For their protection,” Paulette recalled. “When you asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said he wanted to be a gangster. From an early age, he was drawn to those worldly things that were glamorized in our culture.”

James 4:4

You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

While his family was preoccupied with other troubles, Bryce found new friendship with the world and his newfound drug addiction slipped through the cracks. He began skipping school and running away from home so often, the police repeatedly searched for him and brought him back home.

At 18, Bryce moved out of his family home. Without a steady job to cover rent, he was soon evicted. He couch-surfed with friends and scrambled for quick cash.

“When you’re first doing it, everything’s better, you know? It’s like you’re smarter and better at everything you do for a little while, until the sleep deprivation and drugs actually start catching up with you. But I loved it. I even loved it when my life started falling apart,” he shrugged, voice low.

He recounted the memories with raw honesty, stripped of excuses, the humility aligned with his personality. Jeans and white t-shirts are his uniform of choice, except for the days he ushers at church. While the tattoos covering his work-muscled arms tell stories of his life before Christ, his face most often features the joyful humility of a one who evaded death. He escaped not only spiritual death but also the premature earthly death toward which his lawless ways were unmistakably driving him.

1 John 3:4

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.

Lawlessness was his way of life by then. Stealing car stereos paid for his drug habit, and there was no fear of God in him. 

“Crime started paying,” he reflected with a regretful laugh, as he shifted in his chair again, bouncing his leg with restless energy. As his addiction deepened, Bryce’s life spiraled further out of control. Soon after his 18th birthday, the cost of crime caught up with him, and the police caught him breaking into cars. 

That was the first time he went to jail. One day in the slammer and a sentence of three years probation did little to deter him from the path of destruction he was on. Though he stayed clean for a few months following his arrest, Bryce was soon back to the life of addiction, and whatever he needed to do to enable it. In the same matter-of-fact way he remembered all his past, he shrugged regretfully and admitted, “I liked it. I liked it and I liked the life.” 

Desperate to satisfy his addiction, he never reported to probation, and was caught stealing again a few months later. After 8 months in jail, he completed a 45 day treatment program, but relapsed the very first day he was released from it. Although he had been ordered to remain at the halfway house, he ran away from the facility and never returned.

Unable to obtain a job while he was on the run, he went back to the work he knew would pay: crime. Soon enough, however, he chose the wrong house. The owner came home in the middle of his ransack and angrily chased him down. To Bryce’s great surprise, it was none other than his old basketball coach, the same coach who kicked him off the team for smoking weed his freshman year. 

The reunions didn’t end there. When police arrived, Bryce was startled to see that he knew the arresting officer personally - it was his old DARE teacher. The DARE program (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) was instituted in public schools to warn students about the dangers of drug abuse. It was undeniably ineffective for Bryce, and his former DARE teacher cuffed him.

Ironically, Bryce wasn’t even high when he robbed that home. He simply didn’t know what else to do, and that life was familiar to him. He even had a conversation with his mom about turning himself in, but he hadn’t followed through.

The day he was sentenced to prison, Paulette joined Bryce’s mom, offering support and prayer.

“I felt like prison was possibly the best place for him because it could save him from further damage to himself and others. I did know that if God ever got ahold of his heart, all his head knowledge would be turned to heart knowledge, and he would be saved,” Paulette shared.

This time, the crime only paid in consequences: a 24-year prison sentence that shattered any illusions of invincibility. Bryce sat in jail for a long time, waiting for a plea deal. The court reduced his sentence to 11 years. After completing a bootcamp type program, another year was reduced and he was sent to Sterling Correctional Facility for the decade of consequences awaiting him. 

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Genevieve De La Rosa

In the neighboring state of Utah, Genevieve, who would later become Bryce’s wife, followed a parallel path. During her freshman year of high school, a friend she met in the bathroom during class offered her drugs: methamphetamine. Genevieve accepted and they smoked it right there. It wasn’t a great leap from the vodka-filled water bottles she was used to chugging with her friends at school. 

‘I would get drunk all the time at just 13, 14 years old at parties and school. I had a friend in high school. Her mom would throw house parties for all the high schoolers and I would tell my parents I was spending the night. And I would go over there and get drunk,” she recounted, with a short laugh, but not one of amusement.

In a detached voice, Genevieve remembered a peer raping her at one of those parties, the memory too painful to give more that a few seconds of consideration to. She was only 14 years old.

Proverbs 21:10 The soul of the wicked desires evil; his neighbor finds no mercy in his eyes.

At the same time, her mom was diagnosed with cancer. In an effort to escape the chaos of her troubled home life, Genevieve spent as much time away as possible. 

After that first time smoking meth, she craved its escape. “It made me feel light as a feather. I wanted to do it again, so we went to my friend’s drug dealer’s house after that.” 

Her youth and beauty allowed her to obtain drugs easily, and it quickly became a regular habit. While her home life crumbled and her parents divorced, Genevieve took on the role of provider and caretaker. She balanced work, school, and caring for her sisters the best she could, while addicted to meth, and still just a child herself.

“I was trying to hold down a job, take my sisters to school and come home and try to feed them when we had no groceries. There were bills on the fridge asking for money we didn’t have.”

By the time she was 17, meth was only one of several drugs, and her mother insisted she enter outpatient rehab. Rehab succeeded for a time, and she even began a relationship with a man she met in the program. Clean and in love, the couple moved from Utah to Colorado to be near his family. Life was smooth for a little while. Genevieve had a respectable position at a bank and was living a drug-free life. 

“We were doing really good, and this is how it finds me! One of my coworkers was following me on my way home, and he was flashing his lights, and he’s like, ‘Hey, do you want to come meet my wife?’ And I went to his house and met his wife, and then he pulls out a freaking light bulb with meth in it. So I used it. And that’s when it all went downhill again.”

Proverbs 1:10, 16 My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent… for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood.

Sinners called to her, and she did consent. It was a defining moment in Genevieve’s life. The years of doing drugs as a teenager, with few cares in the world, and the foolishness of youth, were nothing like doing drugs as an adult. 

As drugs were her god, nothing mattered but satisfying her addiction. She lived with her boyfriend but disregarded his sobriety, driven only by her addiction. “My only priority in life was to get high, and anybody else’s feelings didn’t matter.” 

Her bank job enabled Genevieve to illegally transfer funds to fuel her addiction. With her sharp intellect, she devised new ways to make money, resorting to identity theft, computer hacking, and stealing from accounts to sustain her habit

“I was just a bad person,” she remembered, pushing up her glasses and hooking her long shiny hair behind her ear.

John 8:34 

Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin."

Enslaved by her sin, addicted to heroin and meth, Genevieve carried her struggles home. Few could imagine this easygoing woman turning violent, yet a drug-fueled argument with her boyfriend escalated, leading police to arrest her for domestic violence. Her relationship crumbling, she surrounded herself with friends deep in the same addictive world.

“When you’re in the addiction scene, that’s all you surround yourself with, and you just keep meeting more and more people who are in that life too.”

Barely out of jail from the domestic violence charge, her boyfriend tipped off the police as she was driving. Officers pulled over and searched Genevieve, and upon finding drugs, authorities returned her to jail. The cycle continued. Pregnant, addicted, and constantly in and out of jail, Genevieve’s father revoked her bond, in an act of love. Facing a 12-year prison sentence, her grandmother took pity on her pregnant granddaughter and financed an attorney who negotiated a suspended sentence if Genevieve attended rehab. 

Weighing just 80 pounds, Genevieve gave birth to her firstborn at a state-mandated rehab center.

_____

The Meet-Cute

“I didn’t care about life, you know? I mean, I wouldn’t have said that at the time, but I mean, as you look back and reflect on it, I just didn’t care. I didn’t care if I died, I didn’t care if I went to prison for the rest of my life, I didn’t care about tomorrow. I didn’t care,” Bryce divulged, shifting in his seat again. His mouth formed in a hard line.

In prison, Bryce had the freedom to practice religion and chose to attend the Native American sweat lodge, in spite of his Christian upbringing. 

“I got invited and I liked doing it. I think, in my heart, I always knew the truth. I always believed that the Bible was true. I think even during the rebellion I knew, but I just didn’t care, you know?” 

2 Timothy 4:3-4

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Practicing religion offers a break in the monotony of a prison sentence, and Bryce was among many inmates who were looking for teachings that would tickle their ears. The days were long, but finally, he was able to transition to an inpatient rehabilitation program 18 months before his parole date. 

Narrowly avoiding a prison sentence herself, Genevieve secured a placement in the same rehab program as Bryce, thanks to the relentless efforts of her attorney, mother, and grandmother. There, she lived in a home with other mothers and their children, each striving to complete their court-mandated rehabilitation.

The facility strictly prohibited men and women from communicating, but sparks flew between Bryce and Genevieve without words. As they lined up separately for the bus, Genevieve noticed a broad-shouldered man in a white v-neck t-shirt, his quiet smile catching her eye. The pretty young mother was smitten, and Bryce returned the sentiment. Bound by the rules, they exchanged frequent, silent smiles, their connection growing with each glance.

Eventually Bryce and Genevieve transferred to the outpatient program, granting them slightly more freedom. Though dating remained forbidden, they secretly began a relationship, stealing moments together whenever they could. Another rehab participant, caught using drugs, betrayed their secret to negotiate his own freedom. Bryce nearly went back to prison for breaking that rule, but instead, the two were only disciplined. Months later, they graduated and were finally able to be together freely.

_____

But God…

Life outside prison and rehab offered Bryce and Genevieve more freedoms but brought daunting challenges as well. They took on jobs, bills, and groceries - obligations that came with freedom - but the abrupt transition intensified their stress. Renting a cramped apartment in a rough neighborhood off Colfax in Denver, they relyed on buses and carefully scheduled hours, to ensure someone always cared for their daughter. On the first day Bryce watched her alone, Genevieve came home to a smiling girl with freshly styled pigtails. From that moment on, Bryce embraced the child as his own.

Soon after the state released Bryce from parole, the familiar allure of the life he knew best beckoned him.

“I never smoked meth again and haven’t smoked meth since. But I, uh, started selling cocaine. We snorted it sometimes, but I mean, I started selling a lot,” he shared, with a quick shake of his head and narrowing of his eyes that demonstrated his disgust with his former self, though his tone remained void of passion. “People love cocaine. It’s a really easy drug to sell.” His relapse into dealing marked a bitter return to familiar shadows, driven by the easy profits he once knew.

Genevieve took his life-style relapse in stride, the same way she responded to all the other struggles that plagued her life. “I would just have to go find him at houses. I’d just yell at him a lot, at the most,” she sighed. Despite the strain, she held fast to their growing family, determined to keep them united.

Ephesians 6:12 

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Evil called to Bryce. While meth was no longer on the menu, acid, weed, and cocaine were addictions he could better control, and were financially lucrative. Unaware that he was a sheep, even at that point, and destined for the Good Shepherd’s fold, Bryce could not yet see the Lord’s quiet work in his heart.

“I used to argue that drugs are a victimless crime and they’re not. I don’t believe that anymore. They’re evil. They do bad things and the kids are the ones that suffer the most of all. They cause broken families. It’s evil, it’s ugly. Drugs are ugly. I have no desire to use drugs,” he stated with disgust in his voice. While still seeped in the ugly, evil world of drugs, God called to Bryce.

Romans 5:8

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

When Bryce spoke of the Lord, his voice quickened with conviction, his eyes lifted, and passion infused his words. He shared his faith with a fervor that is captivating to listeners.

“You know, change started when I had my son. Looking back at it, it was the effectual calling of Jesus. God started calling me then.” 

Romans 8:30

And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Through God’s providence, Bryce discovered a book advocating a life devoted to Jesus Christ, urging readers to reject worldly values. Though not doctrinally sound, its biblical truths resonated deeply with him, igniting something within him.

Eager to learn more about the God of his youth, Bryce took Genevieve to the bookstore where they poured over shelves, looking for books to explain who God was, what God was about, and how to pursue the Lord he had once rejected. 

Some time later, Bryce moved their family to Greeley, to be near his family and to put down roots in a nicer area. While visiting with his Dad and brother one day, they showed him the app for John MacArthur’s sermons, Grace to You.

“I was driving to work one day and I turned that on, and I was saved,” he remembered with firm conviction. 

“After I heard John MacArthur preaching, I went home that day and I flushed everything down the toilet. Everything I had, all my drugs, everything, I flushed it down the toilet.”

He continued, “I always knew what it meant to be saved. I always understood the gospel. I probably could have explained it to you, but I didn’t care about it. It didn’t mean anything to me. But that day, I repented of my sin. I’m so ashamed of this - of everything that I’ve ever done.” 

His humility is a character mark of his life. Anyone who spends time in conversation with Bryce knows he attributes everything good in him to God, and he is quick to share that he deserves none of the grace he received. 

“I never claimed to be saved before that. Never. I told my mom that God made me so he could burn me in Hell. I knew I was not saved. I never had a false assurance of being saved like that. But that day, something in my life changed.”

Ephesians 2:8-9

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

We should all have the same shame when we look back on our lives before salvation. While Bryce’s testimony is more extreme, in terms of chasing darkness, even the most moralistic, pious, virtuous person, has nothing to offer Christ except filthy rags. There’s no delight in recounting his past, no longing for his old habits, because he’s a new creation in Christ. The old is gone, and his longing now is only to glorify Christ. 

“I kept listening to John MacArthur’s sermons. That’s all I listened to, all day, every day at work, and at night. The Bible says that an unspiritual person cannot understand spiritual things. I never understood the Bible. I knew it, I heard it my entire life growing up, but I never understood it. Then these things started making sense and the truth of God’s Word started speaking to me and changing me, and I knew God.”

1 Corinthians 2:14

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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The Old is Gone

After his parents divorce, Bryce’s mom moved out of state. When she visited her sons in Colorado, she stayed with Rob and Paulette Hastings. During one such visit, Bryce confided with Paulette and his mother that God gave him a new heart and saved him, through the teachings of John MacArthur. 

“Our church is a lot different now than it was then,” Paulette shared. “I told him that our new pastor, Travis Allen, was an elder at John MacArthur’s church and I invited him to come.” 

Paulette shared about Bryce’s reluctance to attend early Sunday services. “I told him I would call him to get up, so I did call him, for several weeks, and he soon came and brought Genevieve and the kids.”

Grace Church has transformed significantly since Bryce’s youth, and now follows God’s Word more faithfully. When some of the longtime members saw Bryce’s return to the church, they recognized the transformative work of a merciful God and a beautiful story of redemption.

2 Corinthians 5:17

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

“Even to this day, I see Bryce at church - and especially when I see him serving communion - it’s overwhelming to see the work God has done in his life and where he’s brought him from 20 years ago to where he is now,” Paulette shared, with joy and love ringing in her voice. “My heart really went out to Genevieve. When Bryce became a believer, he had all the head knowledge. It was like he was a believer on turbo. When Genevieve became a believer, she thought she should be like Bryce was, and it was frustrating for her that she wasn’t growing as rapidly as Bryce was.” 

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Faith Comes by Hearing

Genevieve’s loyalty, adoration, and appreciation for her husband is evident within minutes of speaking with her. She would follow him anywhere, so naturally, she joined him at church. Raised with a mix of Catholic teachings, occasional Mass attendance, and exposure to Ouija boards and tarot cards, Genevieve initially found little spiritual meaning in Bryce’s newfound faith. However, she deeply admired the positive changes in his life. Willingly joining him for church, she would happily leave mid-sermon for a shift at work, unconcerned about missing the teaching.

“In the beginning, I couldn’t wait for that time for me to leave, and I was like, bye!” she shared, with a chuckle. Pastor Travis’s sermons were beyond her comprehension and she spent the time counting lights and staring at the wall. “But there was a point where I heard a sermon by Josh - I just love his teaching so much - and I was like, I can’t work Sundays anymore. I don’t wanna leave.”

Romans 10:17

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.

God used Pastor Josh Oedy’s teaching that day to bring Genevieve to salvation. She went to work and adamantly declared she could no longer take Sunday shifts. Today, she is engaged by the faithful, biblical teaching of Pastor Travis, just as much as Pastor Josh.

“Every time I think about who I used to be, it makes me cringe. I don’t look back at it and say it was fun. I actually get sick to my stomach and it makes me feel awful,” she confided remorsefully, looking down, hair falling across her face.

Bryce nodded his agreement. “I don’t always like sharing my testimony, just because I think we all come from the same place. It’s not about me and my testimony. Not that it can’t be used, but God saved me. I didn’t do anything.” 

Bryce’s words convey the profound truth that so many ignore. He contributed nothing to his salvation, nor did Genevieve to hers. Yet, they are both responsible for every rejection of Christ and his teaching. Every man is. It’s a paradox the Bible makes plain, but a truth that many reject.

To believe that we have anything to do with our own salvation would be to assert that there was anything good in us that gave us the desire to choose Christ.

Romans 3:10-12

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

If none are righteous and none do good, how is anyone capable of choosing Christ? Isaiah 64:6 tells us that all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment or filthy rags. Therefore, we should all look to our life before Christ in humble sorrow, just like Bryce and Genevieve do, knowing that our salvation can only be secured through the merciful work of Christ. 

Luke 10:16

The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.

To the De La Rosas and to all who repent and believe, God gives mercy, instead of the justice we deserve. It is only by Him and through him that we are saved, yet we are responsible for rejecting Him.

John 3:16-18

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

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Enjoying Him for Forever

Today, Bryce and Genevieve are active, baptized members of Grace Church in Greeley. They diligently sit under the faithful teaching of Pastor Travis Allen, Pastor Josh Oedy, and Bryce’s childhood friend, Pastor Bret Hastings. Bret is now allowed to be friends with Bryce. 

Bryce serves the church by teaching children on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. You will sometimes catch someone standing outside the classroom as he teaches, smiling and praising God quietly. If you catch their eye, they will tell you something like, “It’s just so good to hear Bryce teaching. I remember when he was a teenager. It just fills me with joy for what God has done!”

Genevieve never works on Sundays now. As is her nature, she moves nonstop behind the scenes, cheerfully helping in the kitchen and always ready to assist anyone in need. Eager to grow in sanctification and enjoy the goodness of God forever, she is discipled by a faithful woman of wisdom and enjoys unpacking the sermon with her, as they flip through the scriptures together. 

1 Peter 1:14-16

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.

Together, Bryce and Genevieve are raising their children with a firm foundation, engaging in family Bible time, and praying that the Lord saves their kids. They are joyful slaves to Christ and build their lives around the church, making it a habit to know others and to be known themselves. Even though the memory of their lives prior to salvation fills them with great sorrow, it’s a sorrow that led to repentance, as they exchanged the wrath of God for the mercy given by the blood shed by Christ on the cross. Bryce and Genevieve share their testimony with a sweet humility, knowing that it was God who saved them, and the great work he did in them is of great encouragement to others. 

Psalm 96:3

Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all the peoples!