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CBN.com – “I had no control over my life at all. Nothing else was important -- my children, my wife, my farm, nor my life. Nothing except cocaine and alcohol.”
Jeb Britt-Baker is the son of the 1950s country-western singer Elton Britt. As a boy, Jeb idolized his father and loved spending time with him on the family farm – the same place where Jeb and his family live today. Back then, it was a perfect place to grow up.
“This was always a home base,” says Jeb. “It was a secure place that just never changed… I always knew that whatever circumstance arose, whether it be good or bad, I was in safe hands always.”
Jeb also loved to accompany his celebrity dad to his shows.
“He was my hero. He really was. I mean, he played music, and the crowds loved him.”
But at the age of twelve, Jeb’s life took a tragic turn for the worse.
“He was going on tour for about a week and stayed overnight in Daytona with us. I’ll never forget. He showed me three chords on an old harmony guitar. I wasn’t very interested in playing at that time.
“He went to Pennsylvania on his way to New England and had a heart attack. My first reaction was I wanted to go see my dad in the hospital. My grandfolks had decided against it, figuring it would upset him more than it would do him good. A couple days later he passed on.”
When the shock of being suddenly fatherless wore off, it left a burning anger and resentment in Jeb’s spirit.
“For a long, long time, I just never forgave. It was always someone else’s fault, of course, but I never forgave my grandfolks for not allowing me to go see my father. I just never got to say good-bye.
“It’s hard to describe but the sense of loss that I had… The security wasn’t there any longer."
Jeb started drinking to escape the hurt. The drinking led to drugs, and the drugs led to violence. Jeb’s life was spinning out of control.
“My temper got to the point [of] a bad mouth and outbursts. Probably in my mid-teens the drugs had pretty much taken over my attitude.
“I never really wept and grieved. Never got that out of my system. So, the hurt transposed into anger. I’d unleash it at any given point. It wouldn’t take but a drop of a hat. Escape was my only objective. Drugs and alcohol became my main priority.
“It ultimately led to getting in a real serious fight right here on the farm back in the early ‘80s.”
This time, however, the consequences were more serious, and Jeb wound up in prison for a number of years. His time there left him with one overriding thought: “This is someplace I never want to be again. Never.”
When Jeb got out of prison, he tried to do better, and in 1991 he met and married Sheryl. Together they moved back to the horse farm where Jeb had spent his summers as a kid. But it wasn’t long before he fell back into his old habits of drinking and drugs.
“He always had an undertone of angry,” says Sheryl, “but I didn’t recognize it because we both were in the same thing. I drank, he drank, and we ran with the same crowd. It was normal at that time."
Sheryl began to realize this wasn’t a healthy situation once they began having children.
“I think every woman recognizes when the kids come that your life needs to change,” says Sheryl. “After the children came he seemed to get worse.”
Even with the birth of their two daughters, Hannah and April, Jeb couldn’t control the anger and drug abuse that had his life headed for disaster. But the first ray of hope came from an unexpected place – a recurring dream.
“Night after night,” Jeb recalls. “After the fourth night I described it to my wife. I saw a figure of what I presumed to be a man with hands outreached for me. I knew that whatever this dream was, it was a significant thing in my life because it wouldn’t leave.
“And she says, ‘Don’t you see? God’s reaching out to you.’ I kinda laughed it off but on the 5th night, I said, ‘Lord, if it’s You and You’re going to come to me again tonight with this same dream, we’re going to have a talk.’
“By 2:00 I woke up having the same dream. But my heart was different. When I understood what it meant and the realness of it, I just confessed. I thought, Lord, I don’t know how I can be forgiven? I don’t understand but if I can be, please come into my heart. Forgive me. My life is no good anymore. I have to have something of substance and a constant in my life. If You’re that constant, my life is Yours.”
Jeb felt a release.
“The tears came. I woke up the next morning with a thought in my head and a desire to look in the Bible. I read Ephesians 2:1-10. My trespasses, all the things that I’ve done, are forgiven. No matter how severe, how bad, they can be forgiven. They are forgiven with the acceptance.”
Accepting Christ didn’t fix everything in Jeb’s life overnight. Those old methods of getting his needs met took work to break. But what was different was that now Jeb had help in overcoming his habits.
A short stint in rehab and lots of time spent studying his newfound faith, and now his family hardly recognizes him.
Sheryl laughs, “He’s a lot different. He used to look for ways to hurt people and now he’s changed. He’s looking for ways to help people. He’s bringing people to the Lord and singing for the Lord. It’s just remarkable what the Lord has done in Jeb’s life and mine.”
Jeb says, “I had changed. I wasn’t just clean with regards to alcohol. My spirit was clean as well. I was a different person.
“In my faith as a Christian I felt that security. This is how I felt as a child when my dad was alive. All these years I’d been seeking something to fill that void, to make me feel that security. There it was, all the time, there it was…”
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