"It was God, definitely, because I was flooded with peace; I was overwhelmed by it. I couldn't resist it at all," he said. "I hadn't been at peace for years and here I was engulfed in it. It was as if God were saying, 'Yes, I'm here. I'm real. Put the knife down, don't hurt yourself.'"

As he recalled the story, Enderby's eyes seemed at once calm, knowing, painful from the past and peaceful in the present; as if he were a young child leaning on his father's chest hearing an eternal heartbeat of love.

"I think God really knew I needed that experience," he said nodding, his eyes indicating he's still listening to the heartbeat. "It would have been all over for me if it wasn't for the love of Jesus that night. I was prepared to close the door."

The night on the couch was the end of one Cory Enderby and the beginnings of a new one. Now it was his choice to walk the new trail or not.

It turned out he was still deciding.

When he was growing up in San Angelo, Texas, the oldest of four children, Cory lived in apprehension of his father, an all-state athlete in basketball and football who later became an alcoholic. When asked to recall something about his father, Cory was pensive.

"He missed my first football game," he finally said. "I don't know if he was drunk somewhere or not. He never talked much. He drank a lot and the tone of the household was a kind of fear."

While many Texas youth grow up in a mandatory church environment where they learn something about God and basic doctrines of faith, Enderby's family never went to church except on handful of occasions. Cory didn't know much about God at all.

"My father never read the Bible, he never talked about God, he never went to church," he said. "I never really knew if God was real. It's one of the reasons I ended up living the way I did."

His father did have some expectations for him, he said.

"I was athletic like my father wanted me to be, but I was an artist too," holding out his hand to show a wedding ring he'd fashioned himself for his June 15 marriage to New York artist Jennifer Contini. In the Enderby's temporary apartment before a planned relocation to New York City, is Cory's workbench that contains woodworking tools and some skateboards he's striped and refinished.

"We are artists through and through," said Mrs. Enderby. "Everything is art to us and Cory feels things deeply and shows it in his songs and craft-making."

After the couch revelation, Enderby was convinced God was real, but was caught in a decade-plus pattern he found hard to break. At 15-years-old a high school friend introduced him to the legal high a kid could afford - cough syrup.

"It was cheap, it was legal, I could drive after taking it. I mean, I didn't have alcohol in my system or smell like pot, and it was always available in almost any store. It was perfect for a kid." It was also addicting.

"By the time I got out of high school I was thoroughly addicted to cough syrup," he said. "It's not the alcohol in it so much; there's a chemical, too, that's the problem. When I started traveling around, I got into all kinds of other drugs - you name it and I did it. But the cough syrup was always there. If you drink enough of it, it's like a constant buzz in the background and it doesn't really go away."

The waves of peace had knocked the knife out of Enderby's hands but he still reached for the cough syrup when distressed. It was in 2005 that he experienced what he calls "the vision."

"I was still on that background buzz of cough syrup and I had, well, a vision," he said. "It was of hell." He paused as if to consider what he'd just said.

"I've found out since that a lot of people, even a lot of Christians, don't believe there is a hell," he said, "and I don't know if I believed there was one until this happened."

Again, Enderby said, the presence of God usurped his state of mind that day.

"My thinking was vague probably from continued use of the cough syrup," he said, "when suddenly my mind became sharp, serious and clear. I was very alert and could think clearly. It was a stark contrast to how I'd felt moments before and I could see my end."

The non-churched believer in a God who'd met him with waves of love didn't like what he saw.

"I feel like I was showed that there actually was a hell and that there were people there who didn't make it because they never changed. God hates hell. He never created it for human beings. But I think my own father was one who didn't make it and God showed me I was headed there too if I didn't stop doing what I was doing. That was enough to lead me to repentance."

The "vision" clinched it for Cory Enderby. Finally cutting out cough syrup, or alcohol of any kind, he checked into God Tel, a Nacogdoches-area rescue mission where he eventually became part of the staff. He dove into reading scripture, his songwriting art and restricted himself from "trigger" activities that could easily lead to the habits of his past.

"At night, I'd go to my room and just read the Bible," he said. "I took down everything from my walls. I had nothing but bare walls, my bed and my Bible because I didn't know what else to do. I just prayed to God for a plan to follow and a way to change my habits." Rather than risk going out and falling into old patterns, Enderby said he retreated into sleep.

"I didn't know what else to do so I slept until I got strong enough to resist what I was weak towards," he said. "One of the songs I wrote then, "Your Hands," said, 'sleep is the new pill I swallow' and that meant going to sleep was better than blowing it again."

The song also pleads to God to show him a plan for recovery. A passage from Isaiah 1:18-20 became especially significant to him. "That scripture says, 'Come let us reason together,'" said Enderby. "'Though your sins are scarlet, they shall be white as snow ... if you are willing obedient you will eat the best of the land, but if you resist and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.' That penetrated to my innermost being. I saw it as a stern rebuke and a wonderful promise."

Meeting and marrying fellow artist Jennifer Contini a few years later was a dream come true for Cory. To marry him, Jennifer willingly gave up the cheese and wine social scene in New York City where she'd maintained a studio and that typically came with the art shows displaying her work.

"I'd known Jennifer for a long time and I honestly told her that I just couldn't marry a woman who drank," said Cory, looking at his smiling bride across the room. "So she gave it up. I know it was hard for her. She gave up a lot that the world values."

Now Jennifer would like to put up an artistic billboard in Times Square about God.

"You see everything else in Times Square," she said. "Why not God?"

Today Enderby is employed by the Better Business Bureau and attends the contemporary styled New Life Worship Center in Tyler. Cory and Jennifer are also helping underwrite an orphanage ministry in Haiti where they are planning a trip in November.

Cory plays in a self-described "hard-rock" band called Chosen To Rule with three others musicians who each attend different churches. He and his artist wife have sung in rescue missions in New York City, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas. They'd like to sing in a rescue mission in each state and have a huge map of the U.S. in their living room to inspire their goal. Cory's background gets attention at the missions, said Mrs. Enderby.

"The homeless people in the missions don't respond so well to "I love Jesus, la, la, la," she said. They know it when the person talking to them has been homeless. That's why we go there. They listen and they respond and that's what it's all about."









http://www.tylerpaper.com/article/20090808/RELIGION/908070352