Finding Hope and Redemption
The unimaginable, true-life story.
Sgt. Mike McGrew served 31 years as a police officer protecting the community from the bad intentions of others but found himself unprotected from failed marriages, addictions, cancer, watching his beloved young son die of cancer and another son addicted. Then Sgt. McGrew finds hope in the chaos of his shattered life. This is a story of uncovering hope and finding redemption in the worst of circumstances.
“Mike fights crime with prayer and wins every time. His story as a cop shows how God hates crime, but loves the criminal. Now, I can imagine what it's like on the streets as a cop, revealing the obvious signs of evil at work.” – David Jahr
From the Book
Nothing Took the Pain Away: I Was Self-Destructing
In the years that followed I continued to work my way up the ranks in my department, but things were not going as well at home. I divorced my first wife, and was chasing the things the world has to offer for comfort to escape from the tragedies I dealt with at work. I used alcohol and other unhealthy behaviors to take my mind off my life’s troubles and trials, but nothing I did took away the pain or trauma.
The more I chased alcohol’s relief and fleshly desires, the more destruction I caused to myself and those around me. My own parents divorced when I was 30 and it broke my heart. It crushed me to do the same thing to my kids. My downward spiraling attempts to cope, coupled with my hectic work schedule, started to take a toll on my second attempt at marriage.
The more time passed, and the more gruesome the crimes I witnessed, the less I wanted to talk about it. I found myself internalizing a lot of the trauma I experienced. It may have been an attempt at self-preservation, but bottling it up only allowed the darkness to eat me up from the inside. I believed all the murders and deaths I had seen cost me my family, and took much of my soul.
The reality was many of my colleagues suffered from some form of post-traumatic stress injury. It would become part of my life’s mission to help law enforcement officers and veterans who struggled with the darkness they encountered on the job. But I couldn’t save anyone from a life of despair until I was saved myself.