RESTORATION

I remember,
The days of rage,
When I felt like an animal,
Who was locked in a cage.

 

When I had to endure,
A prison hell,
As I paced up and down,
My prison cell.

 

I wanted to rip out the bars,
And smash down the walls.
And attack the screws,
And inmate fools.

 

Where rage and anger,
Almost drove me insane,
Where violence was an outlet,
For my torment and pain.

 

Where I had angry fantasies,
And wanted to obliterate,
The prison authorities,
Using my heart full of hate.

 

Where I felt frequent sadness,
And seldom felt joy,
And acted in a way,
That made me destroy.

 

I ruined so many friendships,
And broke so much trust,
And by the time I’d seen the damage,
My heart and mind felt crushed.

 

I felt so much guilt,
I felt so much shame,
That it broke my mind,
And left me insane.

 

And when I was finally released,
And surveyed the pain and damaged years,
I was completely broken,
And could only cry tears.

 

By the age of twenty-four,
I’d spent eight years inside,
I was broken in pieces,
And part of me had died.

 

And by the time I thought,
It couldn’t get worse,
I was inflicted with schizophrenia,
A tormenting curse.

 

Three nervous breakdowns,
In hospital three times,
Given medication to patch up,
The gaping wounds in my mind.

 

Discharged into the community,
And bed and breakfast hotels,
Then  a ninth-floor council bedsit,
That looked like a cell.

 

Had to learn to cook, clean and shop,
While under heavy sedation,
Occasionally I’d smash my possessions,
It was how I coped with the frustration.

 

When I now look back,
I realise I’ve come far,
My soul is now healing,
To a gradually fading scar.

 

And I now have a nice home,
And so many new friends,
Who feed me with their love,
As I continue to slowly mend.

 

And the source of this love,
Is the greatest thing I’ve found,
The one they call Jesus,
Who wears heavens crown.

 

4 Christian Poems

WHAT JESUS DID
2020

He died on a cross,
To save you,
If you repented of sin,
He forgave you,
If you pray for confidence,
He’ll brave you,
He’ll set you free,
He won’t enslave you.
Instead of war,
He’ll give you peace,
Instead of chains,
He’ll give you release.
If you’re searching for the one true God,
It’s Christ you’ll find,
He’ll love you forever,
Because he’s kind,
He healed the lepers,
And gave site to the blind.

 

THE SHEPHERD
2020

We are the flock,
You are the shepherd,
We’re guided by you,
Lord of all.
You keep us safe,
You keep us secure,
You keep us happy,
In your love.
You’re always there,
You’ll never leave us,
You are our master,

For all eternity.
Jesus Christ,
You’re the shepherd,
You’re our God,
Who sets us free.

BEAUTIFUL SAVIOUR
2021
I feel so beautiful,
I feel so free,
Because Jesus Christ,
Is living in me.
He took my sin,
And made me clean,
And now I’m becoming happier,
Than I’ve ever been.
I know Christ is with me,
I know he cares,
His love protects me,
He’s always there.
I used to be so low,
But now I’m rising high,
I’ve been forgiven,
That’s not a lie.
I’d said sorry,
For the bad things I’d done,
And when I gave my life to Jesus,
My new life begun.
He took my guilt,
He took my shame,
He took my deadness,
And made me alive again.

He’s restoring my mind,
He’s restoring my heart,
I’m rising in the light,
I’m out of the dark.

 

THE JESUS LIST
2021

Jesus Christ,
Is the one who frees us,
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who feeds us.
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who cleans us,
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who redeems us.
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who loves us,
Jesus Christ,
Is God above us.
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who hears us,
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who steers us.
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who protects us,
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who respects us.
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who forgave us,
Jesus Christ,
Is the one who saves us.

3 Prison Poems

THE ROSE
1992

Cracks within a once stone heart,
As a rose begins to grow,
But will it bloom to its full beauty,
Only time will know.

For time is the essence of my world,
For I am locked in pain,
Penal system incarceration,
Fighting to keep sane.

Oh yes, its very hard for a new born rose to grow,
Without the love and nurturing it needs,
Still surrounded by poor sad souls,
Rose thorns cause my heart to bleed.

 

NATURES CHILD
1992

I’m a child of nature,
Yet they lock me in a cell,
Creative mind so beautiful,
Yet here it rots in hell.

All alone, no one to love,
I cannot take this pain,
Tortured mind and soul in chains,
How it hurts the pain.

Free me please,
Oh hear me God,
Won’t someone hear my cry,
Locked away,
Can’t take this pain,
Just feel I want to die.

 

FREEDOM
1992

One day I will be free,
To forget the past,
And what used to be.

Walking untouched,
And unchained,
The beauty of my soul,
Free to love again.

Back to nature,
Away from steel bars,
Among high streets full of people,
Colours, noise and cars.

Back to the family,
So long I have missed,
Then one day my own,
Beautiful wife and kids.

FROM HEROIN ADDICT TO CHRISTIAN

When Deborah had her first fix of heroin, she says it made her feel whole, secure and safe. She was 15 years old. Prior to that she’d used softer drugs, like uppers and downers, and says that the drugs she used were very popular around this time in the 1960s.
It was heroin though that became Deborah’s main drug. She says it made her feel opposite to the negative feelings she felt because of bad things she’d experienced in life. Growing up in her family had been an unhappy experience. Her dad was Jewish and had had a lot of his family killed in the war, so there was a lot of sadness. Then Deborah was sexually abused by another family member when she was a young teenager. Heroin temporarily helped her to forget those painful experiences and made her feel good.
Because it made her feel so good, Deborah says, “I stole to get drugs. I sold myself to get drugs. I did lots of things. But interestingly I never got caught by the police. I never had a criminal record, which stood me in good favour later on. But it was a very tough time and I didn’t really appreciate what it was going to do to me mentally or physically.”
Deborah said that she later met a man who became her partner and they became very close and would take drugs together, but then he died and was found beside a road with his motorbike.
“Then it came to me,” said Deborah, “That drugs could kill you. I’d never thought of it that way before. It frightened me to death and I decided to come off, just like that. I was going to stop taking drugs, which of course was very stupid, because it actually sent me into a psychosis and I was admitted to a mental hospital and I was ill for quite a long time.”
While Deborah was in the hospital, one of the chaplains would often come and sit beside her bed. He never preached to her or talked about God. He would just be there to keep her company, even if they often just sat in silence and Deborah wondered what his motives were; but it intrigued her and when she got discharged it made her want to examine and find out more about Christianity.
Deborah says, “I didn’t know much about the Christian faith, but I decided to go to an Anglican church, because that is what I though Christianity was all about. And I gradually started to discover more about Christianity. I didn’t make a commitment, but I discovered more.”
Deborah added, “About the same time as this I met my second partner and we got married. Unbeknown to me he was a manic depressive and became very ill, especially after we had our first child, then we had another one, and life became quite difficult again.”
Deborah says that her husbands illness put a lot of pressure on her, but she never turned back to drugs, and while her children were very small she met up with a group of ladies who had bible study in their homes and she discovered what a relationship with Jesus was all about and she made a commitment of faith. Her spiritual life started there when she was in her mid twenties.
Deborah says, “We carried on going, Eric and I, for a long time. But it got more and more difficult to be married to him and when the children were in their teens we split up.”
Deborah felt very bad about this, as she felt that as a Christian, marriage should be for life and she shouldn’t be divorcing. So she felt like she was going against her Christianity. She also felt the pressure of being on her own bringing up two children. She then relapsed and started using heroin again, but only for a short time. She says that during this time she was in a fellowship who were very supportive, and she says, “Thank God I was able to stop quickly.”
As Deborah continued to grow in her Christian faith she says she got stronger and it became easier to resist drugs. And drugs were no longer important in her life. Though she adds that she still has to be careful, as drugs could still be a temptation.
Deborah then moved to an area in South London and started attending a lively church that she still attends. As time went on she found herself serving and doing more and more for the church. She says, “I now lead services at our little sister church up the road. I occasionally preach and I’ve got very much involved in the pastoral side of the church, caring for people.”
As this all gradually happened, Deborah also went back to work, working full time for the civil service. And she felt that she’d became what people thought was a normal person, and Deborah says, “That really its been God that held me and kept me going all these years. And without the knowledge of him I don’t think I’d have stayed clean.”
Deborah met her current husband for the first time when he blocked her in the church car park. They’ve now been married 25 years. Deborah laughed as she said to me, “We got married on the 5th of November, because we knew in our marriage there would be fireworks.”
Deborah retired from her job 12 years ago at the age of 60, to care for her husband full time after he had a stroke.
When talking about Deborah’s previous addiction and now having faith, she says, “I want people to know that you can have a life without drugs, even if you’ve used drugs. But having a life without Jesus is really not on for me now. I need my faith and I need my love of Jesus to keep me going. And I want to say to people, find out about Christianity. Find out about Jesus. If you don’t go to church, try a church. If you don’t read your bible, try reading a little bit. Learn more about this Jesus who cares about you, and he’s prepared to forgive you for anything if you turn to him. He’s prepared to help you lead a new life. And I would say, yes my life hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learnt an awful lot from it.”

GODS FILMMAKER

As a multi award winning international Christian filmmaker, Jeremy Higham’s career has had its high points and low points. 53 year old Jeremy has been to over 25 different countries and filmed in most of them. There have been times that he’s felt broken, tackling subjects like suicide, terrorism, and one film he made was about an orphanage where young girls were regularly dying of starvation.
Jeremy has also made many feature length documentaries about celebrities, including world boxing champion Prince Naseem, presenter Ulrika Johnson, and racing driver Eddie Irvine, and whilst he was making this film he got to stay on Eddie’s multi million pound yacht.
Jeremy, known as Jez to his friends, had quite a privileged upbringing. He was the son of millionaire parents who ran a business making sheets for the NHS, and his family employed four-thousand people. He grew up in a very large country house in Lancashire, with a five acre garden with a tennis court and swimming pool. Although Jez’s parents were wealthy though, he sensed an unhappiness between them.
At the age of seven Jez had been sent to a private boarding school. He found this estrangement from his family upsetting but was glad that the headmaster there, Mr Molloy, was a loving father figure, who took Jez under his wing. Jez stayed in contact with him as friends for nearly four decades, until Mr Molloy sadly died last year.
At the age of 14 Jez started going off the rails a bit, rebelling and getting very much into heavy metal music and drinking and as he got older he experimented with soft to medium strength drugs.
Jez got into filmmaking in an unplanned way. He’d failed a module of his degree course at Aberdeen university, then a friend of his suggested that they buy a video camera and make sporting videos, approaching places like ski resorts and gold clubs. Jez says that his friends enthusiasm for these ventures was contagious and really motivated him to get involved.
Jez and his friend got their first break when they were offered freelance work, making films for North Sea oil companies. They then found themselves flown out in helicopters to oil rigs, where they stayed for up to a week and Jez found this exciting, even though they were often just filming things like pipes being welded together. It felt glamorous though to be travelling and working with cameras. Jez’s passion for documentary was then born.
Jez then decided to go to London, as most media breaks happen there. He got offered a job with a company called Black Rod, which was ran by Michael Rod, who was a famous TV presenter on shows like Tomorrows World. He then made high budget videos for various companies. Budgets of up to quarter of a million pounds, for just ten minute videos. It was a chance for Jez to further learn his craft, firstly as an assistant producer and then as a director.
Break followed break, and Jez ended up in Northern Ireland, working as a director for Ulster Television. He was then responsible for making three minute productions which were screened as features after the news.
Jez was then offered a commission to make a feature length production for Channel 4, as part of The Lonely Planet series. He set off for Vietnam with four-thousand pounds in his pocket, the petty cash for the production. He was told by the producer to not come back without something special. He went on to direct a total of five Lonely Planet programs and the series was a great success.
At Channel 4 Jez later found himself working with the likes of Chris Evans, Rory Bremner and Joe Brand, to mention a few. He went on to make single documentaries where he would live with famous people and Jez had once had to wake up racing driver Eddie Irvine when he’d overslept and he’d almost been late for a Grand Prix in Malta.
The documentary about Eddie Irvine brought Jez acclaim at national level and the heads of many TV companies started bombarding him with numerous offers of work. One day he got so many offers and contacts on his pager that he had a panic attack. He was unable to go into the production office where he was working and he asked a colleague if she would come out onto the street and walk around the block with him whilst he calmed down.
The most significant film of Jez’s life was soon about to happen. A phone call from the Belfast production company he’d previously worked for introduced him to an orphanage in Moldova, in Russia. He’d been sent photos of emaciated children. When he got there he witnessed first hand that the girls were starving and dying at a rate of one a week. The girls were often in the dark and some of them were sleeping on bin liners, laying in their own faeces.
Jez then became personally involved, which he feels is always a mistake for a filmmaker. He remembers going to the house of the director of the orphanage and nearly physically assaulting him and Jez begged him to open up the food stores that the production crew had brought for the children. Moldovan law had required that every tin first be counted and labelled by officials before the starving children could actually eat it. Jez was so overwhelmed with anger that he felt like he was ready to shoot someone.
When the children of the orphanage were finally able to eat, Jez describes it as a memory he’ll never forget. The joy on the children’s faces as they stuffed themselves with fresh cabbages and baked beans.
The completed film called Convoy to Moldova was bought by the BBC and won three awards at the Monti Carlo film festival. During the making of the orphanage film Jez also had another powerful experience that would change his life for ever. He became a born again Christian.
Jez had came back to England for a while and had been to a party with a group of Christians and Jez had been intrigued by them and instantly saw them as a group of amazing people who were somehow different. He’d asked to meet them again and went to their church that was running Alpha meetings. On about the fourth week, they asked the people on the Alpha course is anyone wanted to receive Jesus in to their hearts, and though Jez felt a bit resistant to the idea he thought he’d give it a try. A young guy then stood next to him and asked Jez if he’d like to be prayed for, and Jez said yes. The man then said, “Jesus come to Jeremy.”
Jeremy then felt a weight and peace come into his body. It was so overpowering that he couldn’t stand up so he laid on the floor feeling wonderful. After a while he got up again and he went to the gents and looked in the mirror and saw that his whole face was kind of shining bright and he knew something very profound had happened. Jez later prayed the salvation prayer.
As a new Christian Jez now had a passion for God and now had the desire to create films that revealed the life changing and saving power of Jesus, but frustratingly this kind of thing was of little interest to mainstream secular television.
Because Jez wanted to tell Christian stories now though, he set up Cornerstone films with two church friends. Even though the TV world was mainly secular, he managed to get commissioned and make a feature length documentary called God bless Ibiza. The film was about a group of Christians, many of whom were ex drug users and drinkers who’d been into the rave scene, but now as Christians had a ministry evangelising to night clubbers in Spain. God bless Ibiza was shown by Channel 4 at a peak time audience slot.
Another film Jez made was called Exodus, which was a 15 minute film about a group of Russian Christian pastors who had once been drug addicts, bank robbers and gangsters, but were then saved and born again. It’s an extremely powerful film, but it was seen as something outside of mainstream television interest, even though the film was extraordinary.
Some years later Jez then decided that he wanted to be an ordained Christian minister, but was turned down by the Church of England who felt that he would bring too much creativity and spontaneity to the role. It was quite a blow to Jez to have been rejected and he spent a year after licking his wounds.
10 years ago Jez then set up his currant venture with his wife Esther, a business called J & E Higham, where they make short corporate videos for the websites of organisations, businesses and charities. Jez’s business employs 10 people.
Jeremy had become a Christian 18 years ago now and a couple of years after this he married his beautiful wife Esther. When Jez first saw Esther in a crowd of 500 people, he thought, “Wouldn’t it be amazing to be married to a women like that.”
Before Jeremy had become a Christian he’d had dozens of sexual relationships and described himself as a bit of romance addict. He never thought he’d find fulfilment settling down with one person. Not only are Jeremy and Esther married, but they’ve also spent many years working together. Esther has often been the producer behind Jez’s film productions and Esther has also worked at times as a presenter on Premier Christian radio and also on their internet TV site.
Jeremy now humbly describes himself as having been a bit of a nightmare sometimes to live and work with, but over a period of time their marriage has gone from strength to strength and got stronger and Jeremy says that him and Esther are very much in love and they are both parents to their 13 year old son Asher and their 11 year old daughter Daisyella, both of whom they love to bits.
As a filmmaker, Jez has been on a steep learning curve. Not only has he had to learn the practicalities of filmmaking, but he’s also had to learn to cope with the emotional side. He’s had to deal with some harrowing subjects and at the end of the day he’d sometimes went home emotionally drained and exhausted and sometimes he’d just cried. As a filmmaker, Jez gained a passionate heart and an empathy for human suffering and he’d wanted to use his talent to help, educate and make better in some way some of the things he was seeing.
Jez has also experienced extreme highs as a filmmaker. He’s travelled all round the world to some amazing places, worked with celebrities and other extraordinary people. He’s had experiences that will stay with him forever. But for Jez, the greatest thing he’s experienced was becoming a born again Christian.
Another significant thing that happened in Jez’s life, was 11 years ago when he moved from his house in built up urban area of Brixton, South West London, to a semi rural area of Edenbridge in Kent, and Jez describes the move as, “like being let out of jail.” They’d moved to a modest semi-detached ex council house, and they were later able to get a loan and buy the 14 acres of field land that their house backs onto, after the land came up at auction.
When I interviewed Jeremy for this article, I asked him if there was anything he’d like to say to anyone reading it. He replied these exact words.
“What I’d like to say as a closing thought will sound strange to anyone who has not experienced what I’ve experienced, but I can honestly say, the most essential part of my life now is my relationship with Jesus Christ. Everything good and worth having in it, has come from that. I can’t put it more simply.”