I will start with the fact that I was brought up until age 15 in Sunday school at the neighborhood First Baptist Church. Mama used to go with me and was a Sunday school teacher during my toddler years. That was while Daddy was overseas for nine months at a time. When he was home, she didn’t go with me any longer and by age 15 there was no one in the ninth-grade class so I also quit going. Besides I never understood what they were saying about Jesus and I didn’t understand the bible. I hold the teachers responsible for that. A good teacher can teach a bad one cannot. (For information’s sake, I want to specify that I grew up in a ‘Leave it to Beaver” household. My parents were not drug addicts, nor alcoholics. But I did find my way down that path that my biological family had done. All ‘who’ could be wrong was showing up in my life, without me ever knowing them.)

I lived my life from the age of 17 as if there was no tomorrow. I started failing in grades at school and quit going all together, although I would leave the house daily to go drink or get stoned. This went on until I was 39. But my drug and alcohol use were intermittent. There were many times I would just quit and clean out my system but in the long run the hole in me was never filled with anything but self-medication. I tried rehab a couple of times. Once it helped for a while and I was very well off in a 12-step program I.e. A.A.

Eventually I returned to my bad habits. Which also included many boyfriends and the self-medication also with cigarettes. When my kids got to be teenagers they wouldn’t stay home, and it caused me to be sad and feel out of control as a mother. There was nothing I could think of to do that would change the situation, so I gave up and let them do as they pleased, and I started going to bars. I was extremely shy and fearful and couldn’t even walk in a bar without having a couple of beers before I went to the bar, probably at home.

In 1999, I was 39 years old when I lost everything my oldest daughter tricked me by moving out without saying anything to me, my middle daughter was kidnapped by her father for longer than our agreed time that she was to visit. I was left with no money, my youngest daughter and a needle habit. I went to rehab for the third time in my using career and my parents took my youngest daughter, she was about 14 or 15 years old and my family turned their backs on me. This I wasn’t sure was fair for months before that I asked my parents if they would care for my daughter for only 28 days so I could put myself in rehab, but they denied me. So, I was left to ruin my life a bit more, as this was something, I was responsible for.

While in rehab for my addictions I went to church on Sundays. They allowed me to leave rehab for church. I met the pastor while still in rehab. After I was out of rehab, I bought my daddy’s bicycle that was 30 years old, for ten dollars. My parents took my car away and turned and sold it to my oldest daughter. Addiction or not, it is not biblical to steal one’s things. They also went into my home that I was evicted from and retrieved many items that my mama would tell me they belonged to her now. She wouldn’t give me my own things. I know now things are unimportant to have, but they are important to care for when things may be a blessing, but things are not important anymore. Having addictions and self-medicating is not wise; and people, even your family, will steal and hurt you because you need help. Instead of helping, they turned on me.

I continued to attend church on Sundays, bible study on Sunday nights. College preparedness class on Monday nights and an addiction class on Fridays and sometimes bible study on Tuesday nights at someone’s home. I did similar studies throughout the next seven years. I became knowledgeable about the bible as well as knowing the fullness of the holy spirit and Jesus was my one and only friend. For I had no friends and no boyfriend or husband during that seven years and my daughters were no longer my reason for being, they lived lives away from me.

I only owned, in the beginning, what would fit into a backpack and I rented rooms from people that refused to be friendly and nice to me and they didn’t want to be friends. I studied hard. Never went anywhere without my bible and notebook. I would ride my bike great distances to stay away from the people. (I later was diagnosed with social phobia). In the beginning if I had anything it was stolen from me by bad people that got to know me from the bars. So, it left me with almost nothing, my clothing was not even mine and I can say nothing fit me and it was close to rags, but I never let that stop me from attending bible lessons.

In the year 2000, on May 23^rd, I was baptized for the first time in my life. This came after about a year after pastor Horton had prayed the holy spirit into me. I’m telling you that’s when my life changed. It took a long time to learn all I needed to know but after the rehab stay, I realized that Jesus could heal me totally from my addictions, bad habits and save me from bad people if I behaved well. I was also treated to two lady’s retreats during the first three years and there is nothing more spiritual than having experienced such a retreat. I attended teas with the women and more bible studies. Which the church helped me afford my workbooks because I had very little money, barely enough to live on. They were very good to me.

Well after seven years I got extremely lonely and I got on my knees in tears and prayed that my ex-husband had been made well and that God would reunite us. Sure, enough my daddy was in the hospital for heart surgery and there was my ex-husband who showed up because he had brought his mother to the hospital to visit my daddy. Wow! Did God answer my prayers or what. I spent the next two to three years doing drugs again in the ghetto. Unfortunately, my ex-husband was using, and I had gone and shared a trailer with him. I used with him and I was so habitual in my behavior that through those years with him I never put down my bible and still attended church on an almost regular basis. I survived and so did he.

The days of drugs, alcohol and self-medicating, meaningless relationships and my behavior immediately changed on a Monday in October of 2006. After my daddy passed away which my ex-husband was with me to support me. I was sitting in my kitchen on a computer asking God what I do. I didn’t have the rent money, my ex and I had a big fight and he went to jail although I was just as much at fault, but he had the rent money in his pocket, it went to jail with him. I went to talk to the manager of the ghetto trailer park as God had directed me to do. I knew if I stayed there, I would die, and my ex would too. So, God had told me to pack up everything that was worth anything, a bowl, a plate, silverware for one and a cup with a few staples to eat. I then moved into my car. Which belonged to my ex but was in my name for his had legal issues from his using drugs also. I lived with my kitty, baby in that car for one month and sat up for a month even while sleeping in the car. In the daytime, I would try to find a park to lay flat in. That was the only relief I could find. My ex-husband’s mother and my mama both lived in large houses and neither of them would even let me take a shower or park my car in their driveways for my safety. So, be it. Trust me, there is no tough love in the bible. It’s wrong to treat people in that manner. Although I deserved nothing but death my family could have been supportive of my staying clean and moving on with my life. When my ex was released from jail, I picked him up and the rent money he had. The first night with him we stayed in a motel room, it was like heaven after living in my car for a month. Then we purchased a tent and stayed in a campground for almost two weeks without paying the fees, but God bless the rangers because they realized we had no money and never confronted us at all. I think in that time we paid for two nights. God was already beginning the blessings. Now my husband to be, again, was not a believer yet. He had some biblical reading under his belt but that was it at that time.

My ex-husband took out a loan to rent a nice two-bedroom apartment where we both had our own rooms, for I was heavily convicted to obey Gods expectations. In time, I moved into his room but then we decided to remarry after a couple of years of being clean. I attended a nearby church that I could walk to and continued reading the bible and would share with my ex the things I learned. While still living in that apartment we got remarried, he also got baptized and put down his will for God’s. It’s a miracle when he was baptized with little knowledge, he made a huge change that only I witnessed. He was transformed. From that time on we were blessed all the time. Even with little things and big things. We both were new people walking with the lord. We became best friends again as we were also husband and wife once again due to blessings from God.

We left that town and headed back to where my mama lived, she was taken ill with dementia which was bad. I cared for her even though my sister had put her in a home that was proven to be cut rate. No good for mama. She became more ill with each time she became injured. While my sister kept her locked up in these homes, I was the one that would go visit her many times in a week the more ill she became the more I visited. I make this part of my testimony because I was clean and sober and healthy and well while I was blessed with taking care of mama. With dementia, she never forgot who I was and never hurt me or hit me. During her last four months of life I would try and go every day I knew her time was short. I feel blessed because my daddy asked me to take care of her before he died. That’s what I did. If I hadn’t been made well by Jesus’ grace and the holy spirits guidance and God’s will I never would have had that blessing. I also cared for daddy while he was alive driving him around and riding my bike everyday 19 miles round trips to see him in the hospital.

I can tell you a trick I learned from the beginning. It was ‘WWJD’. If anyone is familiar with that is means ‘what would Jesus do’. This helped me to change my behavior and become a believer in Christ Jesus and learned to walk the way he desired me to walk in his name. I praise the lord for all the good and know full well the author of evil. I learned total and unbridled forgiveness in my years of training. Jesus forgives us in a total way with the desire to rectify any relationship that needs forgiveness. As humans, we mostly fall short of that. In my circumstance though for me to grow in the Lord’s ways I had to forgive totally the way Jesus does for us to allow us to enter heaven.

The things I did and didn’t do and the drugs after becoming a believer is nothing but wrong, but I had good reason to go back into the depths of a disheartening lifestyle but in the end, God saved my husband and me in the end. No, I was NOT ‘trying’ God. This only happened for I never put that bible down, I preached to all who came across my path and I didn’t give up on praying. Without Gods guidance, I would have died in that trailer part and so would have my husband. Each time we are blessed I know it’s a miracle that we are even here to see the blessings. Praise God and Jesus name for there is power in the name of Jesus and to the holy spirit for filling my soul and that hole I always had and had filled with evil of drugs and bad relationships, many of them.

Today my husband and I have been married since 2009 even though we were together again from 2005. My husband and I are now members of a nearby bible teaching church where he donates his time and works for the church helping keep it up and remodel at times. Our pastor is great, he is also the chaplain (pastor) for our local police department. Yes, there was a time when the police were not my friends and now we live in a small town on a small island in America where the police are great, they stick to the law, but we are addicts any longer and it shows in the treatment we get from our local law enforcement.

I invite you to go to my page that I’m working on and see the testimony video of the pastor that baptized and taught me everything. I was blessed to have known him; he was a very wise teacher. The church we go to now really is a small version of what I was brought up in. They taught me not only the milk of the word of God but also the meat of the word. There is so much more to the word of God that people just don’t now for no one teaches them anything but the gospels. Where they are important I can only stress to dig deeper. The blessing is what you will receive in the end. A blessing of being healed and well in health. The miracle that anyone like me could have survived all that I put myself through. Please understand this is my testimony for the sake of showing you the blessings of walking with Jesus and knowing ‘WWJD’ to help keep my behavior in check. My faith was great, I was hungry for the word, I was in awe of the lord our God and respected our holy spirit as he should be respected for, he is God in the TriUne.

Blessings to all and to all praise God! Amen!

“Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end”

 The bible is the only book whose author is always present when it is read.