An only child of an alcoholic mother and an absentee father, the example set for me was simple: “the only solution to a problem is to run from it”. A couple secondary examples were “If they don’t hit you, they don’t love you,” and “leave before you’re left.” These were the guiding principles in how I lived my life. I picked up my first drink at 11, a crippling eating disorder at 14, a drug addiction by 21, and was divorced twice by 25. I left two children behind in my first marriage, and my dignity in the second, being pimped for money and drugs. By 30, I was addicted to everything but fulfilled by nothing. I was afraid of life and yet completely shameless. As a 32-year-old new mother, I sold my body to support my drug habit, promising each time was the last time. In a line pulled from a journal entry in 2020 I state, “Life is just hard for people like me. I live my life hanging off the side of a cliff, holding onto a branch with my weak hand.” An astute observation for someone living without much clarity.

It’s not that I didn’t try. Through a decade of addiction, I was thrown into jail and treatment combined over 15 times. I was given a lot of opportunities to get clean. And I did, for a while. But each time the fog cleared, I found myself staring into a dark abyss. A void. Something was missing, and it was a loss far more painful than that of addiction. I never stayed clean longer than a couple of weeks, finding myself running, yet again. From what? I didn’t really know.
In a line pulled from that same journal entry in 2020, I write, “P.S. I don’t know if there’s anyone out there, but if you can hear me, I don’t want to do this anymore.” I didn’t know that would be my first prayer of many that changed the direction of my life. Prayer was the only avenue I never traveled down in my 30-some years of chaos. It was a last resort…everything else I had tried, failed.

My life changed that day. The next morning, I was accepted into a rehabilitation center for women and children and two months later I moved into Treasure House, transitional housing for women and children coming out of crisis. I often revisit that journal entry from February 2020 because the Power and Miracle of Jesus is so clearly evident. The Light and Love of Jesus completely devoured that dark abyss I had faced so many times before. It was that day that I started to learn a new guiding principle for my life: Jesus is the only solution to my problems.

Over the next two years, safely housed in Treasure House and lovingly supported by Re-Fined, I underwent a massive transformation. And not just the kind of transformation that happens when a person gets sober from drugs. The kind of transformation that uproots every core belief one has about themselves, empties them of their self-hate and self-destruction, and replaces the darkness of trauma with an intrinsic light that shines from the inside out. The kind of transformation when someone dies to their flesh, their sins nailed to the cross, and their life thrown at the feet of Jesus. The transformation that happens when someone is born again.

The last two years, I have not only stayed clean and off the streets, but I have also maintained full custody of my son and have begun the process of reconciliation with my older children. I am gainfully employed and semester away from receiving my Associates Degree. I mentor other mothers in recovery, providing hope and encouragement from the perspective of someone who just two years ago was a completely lost cause. I got baptized and have held tightly to Jesus’ hand. And I never wonder what would have happened if I had reached out to Jesus sooner. I know it took that exact amount of time, that exact amount of hopelessness, and that depth of rock bottom for Jesus to be able to carry my lifeless body out of the pit of despair.

And it is programs like Open Door Ministries and Re-fined who were the hands and feet of Jesus to wipe dirt off my face, get the gravel out of my hair, and link their arms in mine as I walked down the new path of redemption and eternal life.