Akron Life December 2022

meetings and sitting outside, never going in, trying to fool loved ones into thinking he was trying to get sober. It worked, and he regained privileges to see Amelia, so he got on the road — but he didn’t make it to her. High behind the wheel, he fell asleep while at a red light. He woke up to a concerned pass erby thinking he was dead. “I’m like, No, I’m not dead, ” Lambert says, adding that he began driving again since the light turned green, just to get pulled over by the police about 200 feet later. “I remember telling them, Thank you. ” That time, with his prayers answered, he was truly ready to change. He went to get treat ment at Parkman Recovery Center, now First Step Recovery, in Warren, away from anyone he knew who might tempt him to use again. “I was fully willing to learn everything, learn how to live a new life,” he says. “The hardest part is the work, putting in the work to make you a better person. … You can be content, like, I think I’m a pretty good person. … Then you just slowly decline back to who you were, who you don’t want to be.” After completing treatment in summer 2018, he began mentoring kids at First Glance Student Center in Kenmore and started repairing strained relationships. He now co parents Amelia, who lives with him part-time in his Kenmore apartment, and has rebuilt his relationship with his parents, who Lambert says raised him in a loving Christian home. “When he was doing rehab … he did turn back to God,” says his dad, Kirk. “He prays about a lot of things, and he just waits for God’s answer, instead of going out on his own, like he always did before, doing, a lot of times, the wrong thing.” Lambert says he used to avoid his dad, and whenever Kirk would ask him for help, he’d agree and then not follow through. After treat ment, Lambert started being more present in his dad’s life and focused on treating him with the kind of respect his dad raised him to show. Kirk says it took about a year of Lambert stay

ing sober to regain trust in his son. “The whole first year … people just didn’t want to set expectations,” Lambert says. “Once I started stepping up and being a good dad, holding down a job, … he said he could feel that it was more serious. This was gonna be the time I actually stayed sober.” Lambert has been sober for over four and a half years. He talks to Kirk every day, and Kirk volunteers at Just A Dad events and appreciates how involved Lambert is in Amelia’s life. “He spends as much time as he can with her,” Kirk says. “He’s turned around like 100 percent.” Above all, his drive to be a good father keeps him on track. “In active addiction, I knew I was not able to be the dad I wanted to be. I was not able to be the dad that I was raised by,” Lambert says. “If I don’t put God first then I can’t stay sober. If I can’t stay sober, then I can’t be a dad.”

29

D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 2 | a k r o n l i f e . c o m