I had it all. At the age of 31, I was an international banker; the senior vice president of a Canadian bank, overseeing the multi-billion dollar portfolios of nine U.S. financial institutions. I was on top of the world and could make and break the rich and famous with the stroke of my pen. Until, that is, my wife announced over drinks and dinner at our favorite restaurant just as the sun was going down over the purple bay that our love was a lie and our marriage was over.

Then I received a phone call from the bank telling me that they had filed for bankruptcy. I lost everything-my beautiful wife and two precious daughters, my prominent job, my flashy black car with the tinted windows and my palatial home near the sea-it all disappeared before my very eyes, like a pencil line on a piece of paper quickly erased. I became a homeless vagabond overnight. I came in contact with The Salvation Army when I was living on the streets. They were serving bag lunches to homeless and needy people like me five days a week.

Soul Burning Down

Once a person of sober responsibility, I began wandering from place to place, drinking like a very thirsty man and smoking enough cigarettes to burn down my soul. Then in the dead of night, as the cigarettes and cheap booze oozed from my pores and I felt what I can only describe as perfect misery, I considered ways to end my life. But a still, small voice seemed to say, “If you just prevail, someday you will feel perfect joy.” I held onto that promise; I held on tight …

Throughout all those hard scrabble, knock-about years on the street of broken dreams, I stayed in libraries during the day and seedy bars at night and slept in old cars or on somebody else’s couch. I lived a million different lives, in a million different ways, trying to forget, trying to remember, trying to forget again. I tried my hand at all kinds of trades, too, and sometimes worked three or four odd jobs all at the same time that always led to the same old, dead-end street.

I was a faceless man without an identity … I tramped a million miles to hell and back, ever-searching, never finding and forever running away. I was a good-for-nothing, broken-down money machine trying to figure out how to become a living, breathing human being. So I read countless books looking for answers to questions that I didn’t even know how to ask.

Invisible Friend

I recognized early on, though, that there was this invisible “something” taking care of me; and after a series of chance meetings with The Salvation Army, whose members, at first, seemed to me to be certifiably nuts, I began reading the Bible and praying a lot. Eventually I came to the realization that that indefinable “something” was the person of Christ.

About six months later, I surrendered my life to Him and God gave me a heart for the homeless and a gift for writing; but I was so broke that I used those stubby, yellow pencils they had at the library I hung out at; and I wrote my stories on the back of colorful flyers that were red, yellow, green and blue, just like beautiful balloons.

I began typing and submitting my work to publishers from a smoke- filled, cockroach-infested halfway house for the homeless reeking of pesticide that I called my home away from home … And my work was getting published!

Some years later, I discovered, much to my surprise, that I could draw; and within a year, my art was appearing in galleries. And, if that’s not enough, all by the grace of God, I’m also now a songwriter/singer and radio broadcaster. And my life story has been dramatized by the “UNSHACKLED!” radio program and heard around the world.

In time, I came to realize that even though we might have big homes, fancy cars and important jobs, we’re just like homeless tramps on the inside because we have poor, hungry souls. I want to tell the world what Jesus Christ has done in my life, to help the countless people wasting their lives pursuing those foolish, superficial dreams like I once did, trying to get what I had but lost. God will never leave you or forsake you and His promises are faithful and true. This is a story which must be told; so now, I’ve told it to you.

Dominic Mance attends The Salvation Army in Redondo Beach, California.

Reprinted with permission by The War Cry, USA