Luci’s Story

I grew up in a small village in Romania. Life looked simple from the outside—quiet roads, Sunday church bells, and family dinners. But something in me was never at rest. I didn’t know it then, but I was already searching for a way out.

I was ten years old the first time I heard about drugs—on the radio. Not as a warning, but as something cool. Attractive. There was no conversation around addiction in my home or school. So the seed was planted.

By 14, I was smoking weed. By 15, it was pills. At 18, I was arrested for trafficking marijuana.
That’s when I was sent to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation. I thought it would be a clinical, professional environment. It wasn’t. People screamed through the nights. Some were strapped to beds. I watched a man get beaten. And then—one patient, in a full psychotic episode, killed seven people. Seven.

I left that place traumatized. I didn’t get help. I got fear, confusion, and deeper pain. Then came the darkest year of my life.

I was still addicted when I got into a car accident. A man stepped into the road and I hit him. He died. I was already on probation. I knew what that meant. I thought, this is it—I’m going to prison. And my mind couldn’t take it. I unraveled.

I started having serious mental episodes—paranoia, isolation, hopelessness. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think clearly. And then, I climbed to the top of a building to end my life.

But the prosecutor on my case found out. And instead of sending me directly to jail, he mandated that I go to counseling—because of my suicide attempt. Not just any counseling… Christian counseling.

That’s how I ended up in a quiet room across from a woman with a notebook, writing down my every word. I was paranoid. Suspicious. But she just listened.

And then she said something I’ll never forget: “If you want to change your life, it’s possible.”

No one had ever spoken to me like that before.

She handed me a book—The Race Toward Illusion, written by Georgiana, a woman who had walked through addiction herself and now led the women’s Teen Challenge center in Romania.

Then she asked me a question that stopped me completely:

“If you were 100% sure that God exists and is real… how would your life be different?”

I didn’t give a religious answer. I didn’t pretend.

I told her the truth.

“If I was sure,” I said, “it would make sense to live fully for Him.”

That night, I read the book from cover to cover.

By the time I was eighteen, my life was already spiraling beyond my ability to manage it. I was arrested for trafficking marijuana. The boy from the quiet village—the one who grew up hearing church bells—was suddenly standing in the middle of the legal system.

After my arrest, I was sent to a state psychiatric hospital for evaluation.

I imagined a sterile, professional place—doctors, assessments, treatment plans. I thought maybe this was where I would finally receive help.

Instead, I entered a nightmare.

People screamed through the night. Some were strapped to beds. I watched guards beat patients. Fear hung in the air constantly, thick and unavoidable. This wasn’t a place of healing—it was a place of survival.

And then something happened that marked me forever.

One patient, deep in a psychotic episode, killed seven people.

Seven human lives ended inside that institution.

I remember the shock. The terror. The sense that I was surrounded by chaos far bigger than my own brokenness. When I finally left that hospital, I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t stabilized. I was traumatized. Whatever hope I had left was replaced by fear, confusion, and deeper pain.

And then came the darkest year of my life.

When I saw Georgiana’s story—her pain, her addiction, her transformation through Teen Challenge—I knew immediately:

That’s what I need.

I came from an Orthodox background. My family has priests. I thought I knew God. I knew tradition. I knew ritual. I knew religion.

But I didn’t know relationship.

When I entered Teen Challenge, everything began to change—slowly, deeply, honestly.

Two months into the program, something happened that marked the turning point of my life.

Before the speaker even stood up, the worship team began to play.

It wasn’t like anything I had experienced before. The music wasn’t just sound—it felt alive. It filled the room with a presence I couldn’t explain. I had always believed that music belonged to the world, that it was something used to pull people away from God.

But in that moment, I realized music could lead people to God too.

That worship broke something open in me.

Then Nicky Cruz walked onto the stage.

A man who once stabbed someone—now standing in front of us forgiven, transformed, free. As he spoke, something settled in my heart.

He’s real. This is real.

That night, I gave my life to Jesus.

Not out of fear. Not out of obligation.

Out of surrender.

I’m a Romanian guy from Moldova. But I traveled all the way to Germany to ask her father for permission to marry her.

I was terrified.

All I could think was, What will he say to a man like me? With my past?

He looked me in the eye and said,
“I would not give her to anyone else but you.”

Today, Jessica is my wife.

And we are living a life I never thought possible—a life filled with peace, purpose, and worship.

I shouldn’t be here.

But grace found me.

And that’s why I am.