From early childhood I knew God loved me. But it wasn’t until I danced with
the devil and fell into the pit of hell that I came to understand the depth of His
love. A love that snatches up the lost fleeing from Him.
I began to run from God shortly before my 16th birthday when my older sister who
everyone adored, was killed in a car crash. I wasn’t intentionally avoiding God and
still attended church and Bible studies, but I lived life on my own terms.
I convinced myself that to be liked like my sister, I had to be the life of the party.
But the person I actually became wasn’t like her at all. I allowed alcohol and risky
behavior to cloud my moral judgment. Many times my soul fought for
righteousness, but I justified my sins with lame excuses.
After I married and started a family, I still allowed God in my life whenever I felt it
was needed. I led our boys to Christ in the back of my 4Runner when they were 5
and 7. I raised them in church.
But I had a secret. For a while I allowed alcohol to be my coping mechanism for
life’s hardships. It became my dependable crutch, but I was still functional in my dysfunction.
Then I lost my father in 2011. Slowly, a mixture of anti-depressants and alcohol
left a deep chemical toxicity in my brain. After 18 months of barely existing,
nearly losing my family and ending a 15 year career in corrections with numerous
admissions to the ER, my secret was exposed.
One day, after hours of lying dormant on my bed, barely able to breathe and
trembling too much to form words or make sense of the noisiness in my head, I
desperately cried out to God. And He listened!
His strength pulled me off the bed to the floor, where I dragged myself to pack a
bag of clothes. I called 911. It would be my fourth trip to the ER in 6 months. This
time I spent 5 days in cardiac ICU. My organs were disintegrating and my life was
on the verge of death.
But God heard my cry and miraculously saved my life – body, soul and spirit.
I took my last drink on July 7, 2015. Unbeknown to me, God knew I needed my
sanity and sobriety to endure the next chapter in my life.
In the summer of 2016, we moved to another town, excited for a new beginning.
Less than a year later, my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The battle was
short and brutal.
But this was a time where God showed up in mighty ways. His strength replaced my weakness. As I grew in my faith, depending fully on Him, He became the calm in the storm, my true Father and eternal Husband.
He’s now my best Friend.
He has held my hand firmly over these past four years as a widow. He has poured
blessing upon blessing over me and my boys. Blessings that leave no question it’s all from Him.
God graciously restored my brokenness and gave me wings to soar in His
presence. It is here I’m finding a life truly worth living.
And all I had to do was ask...