What the pit looked like for me

When I talk about “the pit,” I’m not talking about one single moment in my life. My pit was built over years of pain, brokenness, addiction, shame, and choices I made while trying to survive things I didn’t know how to heal from.

For a long time, I thought being strong meant handling everything on my own. I learned early in life how to survive. I learned how to keep going when things hurt, how to take care of other people, and how to push my own pain down where no one could see it. But buried pain doesn’t disappear.

Over the years, I tried different ways to escape what was happening inside me. Drugs became part of my story, and later alcohol became the place I went when I didn’t want to feel. What started as something I thought I could control eventually began controlling me.

The pit became deeper. There were times when I knew I needed to change but had no idea how. I carried shame over things that had happened to me and things I had done. I wanted freedom, but I kept reaching for the very things that were keeping me trapped.

From inside the pit, it can be hard to imagine that life could ever look different. But God could see what I couldn’t.

He saw beyond my addiction. He saw beyond my mistakes. He saw the hurt underneath all of it. And even during the years when I wasn’t looking for Him, He never stopped pursuing me.

Today, when I look back at that woman in the pit, I don’t see someone God had given up on. I see someone He was preparing to rescue, restore, and eventually use.

My story didn’t end in the pit. And if you’re in one right now, yours doesn’t have to either. This is only the beginning of the story of how Jesus led me from the pit to His purpose. ✝️