A year ago today, I walked into the doors of Mercy Ministries in St. Louis, IL. If you've never heard of it, Mercy is free program for girls of all ages that struggle with life controlling issues. I thought since it's been a year since I started this journey, that I'd share the testimony I wrote for graduation. I've been home about 6 months now. Before you dive in, I'd like to thank every person that supported my leaving for 6 months, and thank the people who have stood by my side over the years.
I was born Nov. 13, 1989 in the town of Normal, IL. Growing up was a challenge for me. I have two loving parents, but I never thought they were able to provide the love I felt like I needed. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl and made it my mission to cling to him as much as possible. But my dad has always struggled with anger for as long as I can remember. He’s extremely funny and sarcastic, but most times you had to catch him in a good mood to experience that. He worked a lot and was usually stressed out from that. My mom is the opposite. She has always given us kids more love than we knew what to do with. She is still that person today. My dad is also much happier today, but back then because I wasn’t getting the attention I wanted from my dad I began detaching myself emotionally from my mom which I think threw her off a bit. To add onto that I started to notice that my parents were fighting a lot. I love my parents very much, but I just didn’t feel like I could talk to them about some things. So around the age of 6 when my sister and I were sexually abused, I kept quiet. Fortunately, my sister spoke up, and even though I didn’t admit to anything we were sent to counseling. That plan backfired when the counselor we were seeing for abuse also abused us. About that same time my neighbor also abused me. Around this time at about the age of 7, my parents got a divorce. Once that happened my mom moved out and eventually started living with an old HS friend, who is now my step dad. Steve is a great guy and connected with him with our similar interests in music, sports, and video games. Due to my dad working all day, we stayed with my mom and Steve a lot. I kind of distanced myself from my relationship with my mom and Steve, mostly because I wanted to be around my dad all the time. I spent a lot of weekends with my dad. I loved going over to his house, but I always left feeling pretty empty. Unconditional love wasn’t a term I knew back then, but I thought from the way I was seeing things, that love wasn’t supposed to look like that. My parents do love me unconditionally, but I just wasn’t able to see that at that age.
I began to feel lonely and depressed. Around junior high, I started to become extremely active in my church and spent as much time as I possibly could there. My favorite thing to do there was debate with the youth leaders and kids on my views of God. I fell in love with studying the bible to understand it more in order to try and win arguments. But going to church didn’t solve my depression. It just gave me an excuse to not be at home. By this time I had begun cutting myself. The cutting only lasted a short while, but I was ready to give up on life. I wrote a new suicide note every night for at least 2 months and spent countless nights on the internet looking up ways to kill myself. I could never find the courage to go through with it, so I got into self-destructive behaviors. Near the beginning of my freshmen year I got suspended 15 days for selling alcohol to the students. By the end of that year I was drinking off and on and smoking pot daily. I was still attending church all this time, but now I was high while going. By the time my junior year rolled around I was dealing Adderall, Xanax, and pot, using both pot and Xanax, drinking, and even experimented with morphine. Pot was always my drug of choice and I was high literally 24/7. I smoked before school, and popped Xanax during school to keep me high until I got home to smoke more. Since I was dealing, I was able to keep a steady supply enough to allow me to never come down. I was using to eat, sleep, and basically function. Throughout school, my teachers knew I was using, but nobody ever turned me in. During one of my philosophy classes my junior year, my teacher posed the question, “if the big bang theory is correct, then what put those two into motion?” my need to understand everything drove me to study the question and I concluded that God had to have created me and the rest of the world. But even with this new found knowledge, I chose drugs over Jesus.
When I was 18 I met a guy and we instantly fell in love. He also used drugs, so I found myself using even more if that possible. I moved in with him when I was 19. While living with him, my life became consumed with him and drugs. We were dealing and using all day. I was eventually introduced to opium and fell in love with the feeling. Opium wasn’t used very often, but we did spend all of our time figuring out how to keep a steady supply of pot in the house. We spent anywhere from $20-$120 a day on drugs and pawned whatever we could if we were short on cash. At one point we realized some of the opium we were smoking was actually black tar heroin. I went through periods where the drug life became too much for me because I was still extremely active in the church, even if I was high. I’d go through random weeks of choosing God over drugs, and then go right back into using again. During the summer of 2010, I was baptized and thought I was done with drugs for good. But the sobriety only lasted a short while because I wasn’t allowing God into my life. I thought I could handle hanging with the same crowd and still found myself with the guy I had been with. Even though we were no longer dating, we remained best friends and inseparable. I continued to go to his house every day and hang out with our friends and his family. Over time, his family became like my family. But tragedy struck on Sept. 11, 2010 when his cousin Justin overdosed on heroin and slipped into a coma. We spent nearly a week with him in the hospital at his bedside, but Justin lost the battle on Sept 16, 2010. This absolutely crushed me. I took this loss really hard, but was never able to fully grieve because I felt like I had to be strong for his family. My life spiraled out of control and I slipped further into a deep depression. The drug use got worse and began to lose a lot of weight. My parents had no clue that I was struggling so hard, but my pastors knew everything. I was still meeting with them, but wasn’t getting anywhere because I couldn’t stop using. Every time I met with them I was too high to take anything away. Finally though in the summer of 2011, after numerous failed attempts of me trying to quit, my pastors couldn’t let me continue living this way. They began pushing me to seek professional help or rehab. Rehab was the “r” word to me and completely out of the question, so I usually got mad at the mention of it and turned them down. Eventually though I got to a place where I knew if I didn’t get help I’d potentially end up dead. So through a series of God ordained events, I was introduced to a place called Mercy Ministries. They told me it was a Christ centered rehab that was free of charge. Since I was broke and unwilling to tell my parents what I was doing, I decided to at least fill out the application. Shortly after beginning the application, I walked away for a few months because I wasn’t willing to give up the drugs just yet. I eventually returned to the application and filled it out high as a kite. I didn’t think I was going to get in anyway, so I continued to use throughout the entire application process until they told me that I had to stop using at least two weeks before I got there, otherwise I’d be sent to a detox that wasn’t paid for. I knew I couldn’t risk that, so I told God that if I quit using He’d have to help me. I kept drinking, but took my last hit of pot on Feb 15, 2012. The very next day I got the call that I was accepted into the program. It was totally a God thing.
I walked into the doors of Mercy on March 1, 2012, exactly two weeks after I took my last hit. I haven’t touched pot since. But I walked in extremely angry and reluctant. I knew I wanted help, but I was still under the impression that 6 months for a drug problem was outrageous. I wasn’t willing to admit it, but drugs were only part of the problem. I was 100lbs, very angry, and severely depressed. I was in denial of most my issues and became angry when anyone tried to approach me or tell me to do something. My first week there, while in a fit of anger, one of the staff members told me that I needed to trust her to help me. I could wait a month, or 6 months to do it, but until I began trusting someone I was going to go nowhere. I walked away so angry from that conversation, but those words have not left me since. Since being at Mercy, I have learned to trust people and that by trusting people I can ultimately learn how to trust God. I also learned a lot about submission and resistance, since I spent the first 3 months resisting the program. When I became frustrated that I wasn’t changing, it was brought to my attention that I wasn’t changing because I was still trying to do it on my own. It turns out that trying to do things on my own doesn’t allow God to do any work at all. I also learned a lot about how to control my anger and how to be angry without blowing it. (Thanks Lisa Bevere!). The biggest thing I am taking away from mercy is my ability to accept that God is my father and loves me unconditionally. Through experiencing the unconditional love of the staff at Mercy, I was able to witness that God also loves me. I had Godly people in my life before mercy showing me what unconditional love looks like, but I was never in a place to receive it because I didn’t feel worthy of it. Now, you couldn’t convince me that God doesn’t love me. It took me a while, but all of the knowledge I knew about who God is and what His love looks like eventually moved from my head to my heart.
Life after Mercy hasn't been the easiest thing in the world though. Sure I'm now drug free, but I'm also back in the "real World". I had to relearn how to be me once I got home, because the me I, and everyone else knew is gone. Most of the people I used to hang out with are no longer in my life. My best friend and I still hung out, but things took a nasty turn for the worse in our relationship when he made a mistake he wasn't able to take back. As a result, I had to let go of our friendship. Before walking out the doors, Mercy stressed that things weren't going to go the way we wanted them to. The good news is that Mercy didn't allow a single girl to graduate until they were able to cling on to the fact that even when things go wrong, God is still right there. Trusting that God will still be there to guide me has been the difference in continuing to walk in freedom after Mercy. I am confident that He will keep providing the things I need, and I am confident that He is there with me every step of the way. Life without God just isn't possible for me. Things haven't been all bad either since I've graduated from the program. I've been able to find a steady job, a car, and been blessed beyond words to live with my sister and her family until I'm able to find a place of my own. This has been the most exciting thing about being home actually. I love where I'm at. I'm learning so much, and as hard as it is to submit to my sister and her husbands rules, I'm grateful that they love me enough to keep me accountable. My life is never going to be the same after going through this amazing experience over the last year. God is a God of a million chances. I'm so grateful for that, because honestly, I didn't believe I was worth the chance I was given after what seemed like the millionth time of failing to quit using drugs and drop the lifestyle I knew was dragging me down.
