April 24, 2022, column from the Amarillo Globe-News:
From a life ruled by drugs to a life ruled by God
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| Kim Barlow |
By Mike Haynes
There’s a
good chance you’ve seen him in TV commercials. He’s been in a bunch for more
than one Amarillo retail company, and they usually involved some
self-deprecating humor.
His smile is
almost as wide as he is tall, but for 18 years it hid something sinister. Kim
Barlow’s life was ruled by drugs.
Barlow and
his three brothers had grown up attending church, but for him, it wasn’t having
much effect on his life. In 1990, he was in his mid-30s, married and having an
alcohol-fueled party at his house. Two of his guests had wandered into the
garage and soon, one returned to the party and said, “Hey, Barlow, come out
here a minute. We want to show you something.”
The two guys
had deposited two lines of whitish-amber powder on the hood of Barlow’s car, he
later recalled, and urged him to sniff some of it into his nose with a straw.
Thinking of
his upbringing and about one of his brothers who was a police officer, Barlow
resisted. But being called “chicken” and hearing “It isn’t going to hurt you,”
he gave in and tried it.
It was a form
of methamphetamine, and that one experiment was all it took. He loved the
energy and euphoria it gave him, and he couldn’t resist it. Barlow was on a
downward slide for almost two decades.
His book
begins with an account of another meth addict calling him at 2 a.m. one
morning, desperate for some “stuff.” Barlow, then a dealer, was out of “stuff.”
The man called him a liar, said he was coming to Barlow’s house and if he
didn’t get what he wanted, “I’m going to kill you when I get there.”
So Barlow got
his 12-gauge shotgun out of a closet and sat, waiting.
He found out
later that his meth customer did reach the house but for some reason decided to
turn around and give up on his quest. Maybe that was God’s protection. Regardless,
it brought home to Barlow the depth of the hole he had fallen – or jumped –
into.
His short
book details the suffering that addiction brought to Barlow and to some around
him. It also highlights the times when God was pointing to the direction of
freedom. The turning point came in 2008 when someone emailed him a link to a
video called “Cardboard Testimonies.”
About 20 people at a local church
walked onto a stage, one at a time, each holding up a piece of cardboard with a
negative message on the front and turning it around to a redeeming message on
the back. “Christian men seemed weak” turned into “Now I am one!!” “Sideline
Christian” became “Going to be a missionary.”
With music
praising God’s love, one young woman held up her cardboard message, “Was
addicted to METH.” She turned it over to “Now addicted to HIM.”
Barlow described his reaction as a chill down his spine and tears down his cheeks. He felt ready to listen to God telling him, “Kim, this is enough. It is over, and I will take you out of this.”
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| Kim Barlow, right, prays with two people at the Franklin Graham God Loves You event in Amarillo in September 2021. (Photo by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) |
His book
recounts an immediate decision to get rid of meth and everything associated
with it. He says that the next day, he put several thousand dollars’ worth of
drugs and paraphernalia in a box – his cardboard testimony? – and buried it in
a dumpster.
His
turnaround wasn’t easy, but he ran from his addiction with the help of friends,
family, a program called Celebrate Recovery and involvement in Walk to Emmaus
weekend retreats. And this businessman who had successfully sold retail merchandise,
then illegal drugs, couldn’t help but begin to sell the most valuable product of
all, Jesus Christ. “I’m a pretty good promoter,” he said.
Barlow says conventional
rehabilitation programs are important and necessary for many who are captive to
drugs, alcohol or other addictions. But for him, his restored faith in God was the
answer.
Barlow, who
retired from business in 2020, speaks to church and other groups – to pretty
much anyone who will listen to his story. He started a Facebook group called
“Real Men and Women Who Follow Jesus,” which has 14,600 members, and he has
4,900 friends on his personal Facebook page. He posts devotional messages every
day.
Last year, the
CBN cable network featured him on “The 700 Club” in a six-minute segment called
“My Return to the Father.” The narrator says Barlow now has a strengthened
relationship with his daughter, Dawn. Fighting back tears in the video, the
Amarillo salesman says, “Jesus is always there, and he is wanting to take you
back to have a relationship with him.”
