Wild
Unkempt palm leaves are slumped over; dead brittle bones. Thick trunk husks litter the steep ravine like a dry swamp. Make your way through. Sprawling vines’ growth from the creek floor scale the cylinder block wall. No one cut them back. During the night touch living scavengers and squatters brush by their creepy leaves. Some get relief here by brown smack or draining the lizard. Others look to black magic or astrological wizardry. Somebody has taken an arching whiz; fountain of youth.
Down the way, along the gigantic wall standing parallel to the 90 Marina Del Rey Freeway, masked men accomplish their task of throwing up bubble letters. Its design like the creases of balled up bubble gum. They just spit it out in a hissy fit. Their names are creative given by the paint not the parent. Sometimes there is a single smiley face. The faded grey, rough asphalt bike path like the hidden concrete sewer tunnels empty into the Pacific Ocean. This is what the world comes for from the ends of the earth. This is where the wild things are.
Andrew ran into a black man with combustible skin. If your route is passing through McConnell Avenue then you’ve mined his story or kept to your exercise regiment. Mind your own business the vast majority would advise. He sits along the chain link fence where runners and bicyclist fly by. His eyes are totally glazed over like warm Krispy Kreme donuts; nobody looks long enough to give the tray a lick.
The hunger from these drugs could easily down a baker’s dozen. He doesn’t really communicate; some say frozen. Dope of some sort has kept his tongue from exercising. When you try to talk with him he just looks, smiles and nods his head a little bit—no matter what you’re saying. Andrew told the man, “Jesus can forgive you. There is hope.” Smiling was his response. Andrew was compelled to pray for him so that he would be free from being demonically kept in an isolated place. The moment his hand touched his shoulder the twitching became more profuse. The man asked, “Are you going to pray for the man whose standing behind me too?” Clearly there wasn’t a man standing behind him, but it was his tormentor. There are strangers all around here hidden from civilian view. The danger zone is where we need to go with compassion.
“He seems like a sweet guy. If all these things that were bothering him both the spiritual and the practical like drug abuse and living situation was dealt with he’d be a totally different person. It’s hard to look at someone in this position,” said Andrew. There are layers and layers of other stuff getting in the way of his glimmering personality. Andrew can instantly identify with the soul of this coal man.
Playing the guitar for Andrew Fregeau at the base of the hidden from tourists porch started in the whimsy fog covered redwood forest of Humboldt County. His growth out of the treacherous terrain of the Triangle presses painful notes of calloused beauty.
Andrew said, “The most important thing is God can rescue someone irregardless of how far down the road they’ve gone. Andrew’s life has been marked with significant seasons of rebellion. The road led to a hopeless place where there’s no foreseeable way out. It’s not easy. By the grace of God there’s always hope.
He’s an intense guy about things. All or nothing, if he’s going down a road it’s going to be everything. During the seventh grade, the Lord first spoke to his heart. He got baptized because he wanted to serve the Lord. If Jesus Christ is real, he’s demanding everything. The thought of this was overwhelming. He couldn’t bare it. It started the rebellion and he turned away from it.
Andrew chose a different path than his siblings and peers at the beginning of his high school years. There was something alluring about musical idols such as Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain. The alternative drug use and doing things their own way lifestyle impressed him so much like how a guitar fits into its velvet case. He found himself most comfortable around skaters with Mohawks, teenagers who wore trench coats, musicians and artists. Anyone who smoked cigarettes and took drugs made an easy acquaintance.
Right off the bat acid became his experimental drug of choice. In bed, he woke up one day and saw a book with blank pages. He wondered what he was doing with his life. One blank page would turn to another blank page. There’s nothing written. There’s nothing there. There was emptiness and nothingness reinforcing the empty shell with no soul. The onslaught of deep self-hatred made these years very dark. He gave himself over to these powers. The acid dosages steadily increased the tension between reality and hallucinations.
Blank pages were filled with text marked by invisible destruction. Each tab upon the tongue leaped forward with voiceless movement. The lab repeatedly distributes the refills for consumption. The reputation of the user could get written off as a dead head, but the savvy mind crosses states of alteration.
Isolated trips extend to mainstays of substance abuse. The frequency of use asks the question: when will the next time be. Before it’s known, the followed road is swallowed by a sinkhole; earth removed by despair. Quick routines here and there for the fix tricks the addict into believing it’s only for a season. The sensors revealed it’s the majority of life. Days pass into years. The reaper holds an exact amount although there’s a lie in our censorship.
By 20 years old, Andrew descended to nearly to the bottom of his life. Hard drugs were routinely injected into his blue-green veins. The ability to identify with his soul was easily lost like the tip of the razor sharp needlepoint. Within a year or less, his marriage began and ended. This is it. For the first time in his adult life Andrew genuflected in repentance. The other path he ran from for seven years was revealed in solemn meditations. The bedside rewards were like receiving service in an air b and b. Andrew believed he was born to serve the Lord. There was peace, soft light and ten-dollar gourmet jalapeño blueberry jam.
A young and malleable Christian, Andrew was thrown into a large-scale ministry. He led worship for thousands strumming a tuned six stringed guitar. The band looked solid accompanied with the keyboardist, bassist and drummer. His character wasn’t prepared for the showmanship without discipleship. Congregation members popped big questions like: How big will your ministry be? When will you make a CD? Immaturity tipped the vessel over. The seawater couldn’t put out the burnout and church wounds. Back then, his girlfriend at the time and him were kicked out of the church for being together between the sheets. Andrew by this time stamped Christianity with red rejection.
The high energy and high output can only be sustained for a certain amount of time before it ends. He couldn’t do the mega-church scene anymore. The misconceptions about how God treats His children and what the church is were skewed with dark patches. Andrew leaped down the dark road again toward rejecting the Lord. Gravitational pulls from alcohol and hard drugs hit hard like the horns of a four thousand pound bull. Good days were deadened with mind-numbing misery.
The conviction of the Holy Spirit was still there saying, “What are you doing? Do you not know who I am? I am Holy and I love you.” The church experiences couldn’t be reconciled with what God had told Andrew at the bed and breakfast. He didn’t know how to trust and not use the experiences as a filter of faith. He blatantly rejected the voice of the Holy Spirit. The clear bag of methamphetamine in his clutch caused rabid declaration amidst the conviction: “I want you out of my life. I don’t want to hear your voice, and I don’t want to feel your conviction because you’ve let me down and it’s too painful. I want you to leave.” The highly destructive substances were the method of the madness. Exploring the tunnels behind these nasty doorways made lies readily available for anyone who questioned his erratic behavior. You become someone else. It’s not sloppy you’re still living life. There’s a falsehood in the personhood.
God allowed Andrew to experience what he wanted: God not speaking to his heart. This is what it looks like. Dark voices were speaking to his mind like the first time in his early twenties that lead him to repentance. A demonic presence lurked around everywhere he went: a spirit to take him down. It talked to him all day long. At first, Andrew thought he heard his neighbor’s thoughts. It was weird. How is this possible? A couple of times he went over to his neighbor’s front door and knocked. “Whatever is going on between us needs to stop.” The response was “We have no clue what you’re talking about. You’re crazy.”
Everyone looked at Andrew at the bottom of the spiral like he was schizophrenic. Nobody had a clue what he talked about. It was awful. The voice said, “You’ve been rejected by the kingdom of God. The gates of heaven were closed on you. There might be a chance for you to get back. I’ll tell you how to do it.” Andrew continued to listen solely to this voice without biblical detection. “Go to the police station and confess every sin you’ve ever done.” At three in the morning, he found himself at the police station…”when I was ten years old I stole this…” The police officers took notes and recorded the conversation. They looked at him with disdain. Andrew tried to work his way back to the kingdom of God by listening to this dark voice. Overtime the voice said, “You belong to me, I’m going to destroy you and take you to hell.” Horrific visions of tearing out his own eyeballs plagued his mind. Three hours inside his vehicle driving in circles Andrew decided no I need to turn around.
He didn’t know how to escape these events that spanned for months in Redding, California. So he headed home to talk with his parents in Humboldt County. Near his childhood home, he decided to stop his car on the side of the road and fell out onto the street prostrate. With the hands made to shred a guitar clawed at the asphalt road to repent. Not knowing how long his face was down when he looked up a group of police officers surrounded Andrew. A long line of traffic backed up behind the scene on a backcountry road. The police officers told him that they’re going to transport him to the hospital to get a medical check-up.
There was a police officer stationed to watch over Andrew as blood work and tests were run. The hospital staff insistently asked, “What are you on? What are you on?” Andrew replied, “I’m clean. I haven’t used in a month or so.” They didn’t believe his response. He’s crazy! The voice told Andrew, “Here’s how it’s going to go down. If you don’t die by 5 p.m. (The clock on the wall read 4:10 p.m.) Your whole family is going to hell because you cursed them. The only way for the curse to be lifted is by your death.” Andrew said, “Okay.”
Andrew’s plan was to attack the officer and take his gun. There would be a shootout and he would allow them to shoot him. He knew the only way the police officers would shoot him is if he had a weapon. Andrew sprung out of the hospital bed and punched the police officer assigned to guard the room. The police officer was stunned. Andrew went for the gun held in a holster on his left hip. He didn’t succeed. The cop pile drove Andrew back onto the hospital bed. He said, “That was not a smart thing to do.” Andrew didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t realize these were felonious acts because of the hard drugs effects. He couldn’t eat, sleep or use drugs. He was living in a different world of full-blown schizophrenia.
They say crashes happen within five miles of your home. The same was true for where Andrew ended up at the rim of outer darkness. Andrew waited like a burned out metal shell inside a solitary confinement jail cell for two weeks. Finally his parents bailed out their son. He couldn’t talk to anyone except the intensified dark voice. The deep end rewired his thoughts. The Jaws of Life was the only means of rescue from the living inferno.
The question remained in his mind. How does he get back to the bedside where he devoured the word like breakfast? Alone in the jail cell all Andrew could hear was a demonic voice baiting his next move. A yearlong criminal justice trial followed his release.
Andrew took steps toward regaining control of his behavior regardless of what the dark voice commanded. The submission to what ‘he needed to do and when to do it’ according to the multiple voices has not worked out well. The taskmaster nearly killed him and landed him in jail. No matter what the new normal was just down the path. Early in the morning Andrew begged God to remove the voices from his mind. Different accusatory characters were like a running commentary about his life. Freedom was paralyzed.
Maybe a fast will work? Andrew saw a glimpse of hope and resolve four days deep into water fasting. The voice changed from a patronizing male to a female and then to a deceptively nurturing female voice. Andrew for a time became complacent with what’s in his head. It’s just there. There was a relationship and he needed to break up with it. So he told his boss he’s going to go home early. On the way home Andrew told the voices he’s not going to obey anymore. Andrew had a genuine praise inside his soul for God while lying on the living room’s carpeting floor. Deliberate worship ensued for several minutes. For the first time in a year since his vocal rejection of God there was silence in his mind. God delivered his coal soul. Andrew wept.
Andrew wrote a song called, “You Are Faithful” during his early twenties before the levee broke. His involvement with a mega-church surrounded Andrew with highly talented and semi-successful musicians. Andrew and his girlfriend pursued God. After their engagement they moved away from Humboldt County to Redding, California to be by the church. By the end of two years the relationship broke apart. He was bummed. The conditions were right to write while sitting in his bathroom. Inside the tiled room the acoustics are bouncy and bright. There’s no soapy residue. He played the guitar in utter solitude as the chords accompanied the song’s central theme: you are faithful. “For I know you are faithful my God.” The lyrics, verses and other stuff made the song connectable, yet personal. The relationship separation sparked inspiration to write about the burning faithfulness of God. A smashed heart created a sharp rawness in the song. Andrew desired to glorify God wasn’t rebelling.
Andrew debuted the song at church one Sunday. Right off the wooden guitar the congregation responded: “Ahh I love that song. Will you play it again?” Momentum was created. Interestingly, Andrew did a recording of the song not long after it was written. In 2003, Andrew was asked if he could put the song on a compilation CD. The project didn’t do much. It was weird. There was no money to be made off the labor. The only person who financially benefited off the project was the music producer and not the artists.
Five years later, he was long gone from Redding, California, the church and his relationships. Andrew worked on the United States of America’s largest floral farm in Humboldt County. His life was completely different. Out of the blue, he received a phone call. Jesus Culture asked, “Would you mind if we published “You Are Faithful” on one of our upcoming albums?” Andrew agreed. Jesus Culture sent him all the paperwork forms and contracts. It all seemed like a random occurrence after years of absence. For Andrew it became a reminder of God’s faithfulness. The song he wrote five to six years earlier had an opportunity to reach a large audience. It became an incredible blessing not predicated on any expectations. The irony is that’s what the song is about. God’s faithfulness transformed a human relationship into an eternal one. “It has to be God. This is the only song that ever took off. I’ve tried hundreds of times.”
Anytime you go into a Safeway, Von’s, Ralph’s and/or Pavillion’s and view their flower section: tulips and irises etc. they come from this flower farm. It’s massive. It’s agricultural slave labor. They don’t pay overtime. Monday through Saturday, ten hours a day, flower laborers planted thousands of tulip bulbs. Andrew loved working side by side eager Mexicans. The overseers stopped the work hours just before sixty hours. 59.8 hours so overtime wouldn’t be paid. It was the only job available with a criminal record, DUIs and little to no education. The flower company was so corrupt. Illegal immigrants were the majority of the workforce.
The flower farm owner, a multi-millionaire moved to Northern California from Holland to start a business. Holland is affectionately called the flower shop of the world. The Dutch love tulips since they were imported from Turkey centuries ago. His farm was busted twice for using illegal immigrants as day laborers. As a result of the sting, Andrew and others were hired on. ICE had shown up twice within a month window on the vast property to remove several hundreds of illegal workers. The owner bought his way out of prison time with tens of millions of US dollars.
The flower company wanted to work you as much as they could for as little payout as legally possible. Andrew was driven to succeed on the job. He lead a planting crew on a planting machine. They shattered previously held company records by planting a 110,000 lillies. Andrew thought he’s going to get out of the dirt and become a manager. After the feat, they told Andrew that’s incredible. “Could you do this consistently on a daily basis?” There was no promotion or raise based on their performance. They worked for months and months to get to that high figure. It was a desert season, with one day to rest.
Definitely, Brian Johnson, was a solid guy Andrew looked up to at the church in Redding, California. He’s a prolific songwriter. The son of the pastor wasn’t nearly as successful as he was when Andrew knew him. Brian wrote songs with legends like Tim Hughes and down the list. He didn’t do this for a lot of people, but Brian noticed Andrew’s guitar playing abilities. Brian sort of took Andrew under his wing. That’s how I got involved in worship at the church. Andrew at the time was characterless and immature as a Christian, but arguably his guitar performance was primarily what got him on stage. He had a big impact on Andrew’s life. Andrew wanted to conduct a band and write worship music as well as Brian had consistently demonstrated. Brian has been a worship leader his entire life so it’s dialed in.
Brian Johnson would get summoned during a busy calendar month to lead worship out of town so he’d send Andrew. He felt honored and stretched by filling the opportunity. The media from this church blew up not long after Andrew left the church. Now they’re doing these big things. If Andrew didn’t spiral out of control he would have been apart of the rapid growth and the life that accompanies the expansion. He’s not bummed out. Andrew has a different view of ministry now so he is grateful to be where he’s at now. Even if he were successful as a worship leader and semi-famous as a songwriter it wouldn’t help him. He’d rather be unknown and good character. He has let go of these ambitions. That’s the lesson he’s learned in life. It’s been humbling to embrace it. He wants to love his family and community well. It doesn’t mean that God can’t do whatever or however in the meantime.
Andrew views worship music differently than he did before. Sacred and choral music are now the stirrers to his soul. It’s truer than the rock, worship-rock available today in his opinion. The wild things continue to grow whether or not they’re groomed or left alone with no one to cut them back.