Where It Began

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I was born in Twentynine Palms, California, on August 20, 1980. I am the oldest of two children born to my parents, with a brother five years younger than me. My parents married right out of high school, both wanting to escape homes affected by alcoholism. Growing up, I knew about God, but I didn’t know Him. My mom was a Christian, my dad was an atheist, and church wasn’t a part of our lives.

For the first seven years of my life, I had the perfect childhood. Then one day my parents sat me down and told me they were getting divorced. My dad, who was the person I loved more than anyone in the world, was moving out.

When Life Changed

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Eventually, my dad began dating my mom’s 17-year-old younger sister. They later married and had a daughter, who is ten years younger than me. Meanwhile, my mom had man after man coming in and out of our lives. By that time, my mom was heavily involved with drugs and alcohol, and although I didn’t know it then, my dad and aunt were struggling with drugs as well.

I had the choice to live with my dad, but I chose to stay with my mom because I wanted to protect my little brother, who was innocent in everything that was happening around us.

We moved constantly. I rarely attended the same school for an entire school year, and once I went to three different schools in one year. I was painfully shy, and constantly being the new kid made me hate school. Even though I was a straight-A student, I often played sick just so I wouldn’t have to go.

After a failed marriage, my mom began dating a man with an extensive prison record. I witnessed him physically abuse her, sometimes so severely that she ended up in the hospital.

When I was 12, my mom took in a roommate. At the time, there were several other relatives and their spouses living with us in a two-bedroom apartment, so my mom thought it would be best for my brother and me to sleep in the roommate’s room.

What she didn’t know was that for six months, this man was sexually abusing me and giving me cocaine to keep me quiet. At the same time, he was giving me the father-like attention I desperately craved.

Eventually my mom found out, and he was sent to prison. But the damage had already been done.

Filling A Void

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I fell in with an older crowd and soon started smoking marijuana, and before long, it became part of my daily life. I began seeking attention from older men, and at 13 I started dating the man who would become the father of my children and my husband. He was 20 years old.

My mom allowed him to move in with us, and after being evicted from our apartment, my mom, my brother, my boyfriend and I moved from Northern California to Arizona, where my grandparents lived. Soon afterward, I became pregnant with my first daughter. I gave birth to her six weeks before my 16th birthday.

We married when I was 18.

As a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a doctor—an obstetrician, actually. But suddenly I was beginning adulthood with a 2½-year-old child, a new marriage and no idea where my life was headed.

Because my husband didn’t like working, much of the responsibility of supporting our family fell on me. I did whatever I could. I actually joined the U.S. Army hoping to build a better future, but circumstances involving my husband caused me to leave. Later, I went to school to become a CNA and worked 12-hour shifts.

When my daughter was five, we had our son, and for a short while life seemed pretty perfect. Then a year later, I became pregnant again.

My husband wanted me to have an abortion. I refused.

From that point on, he completely ignored the fact that we were having another baby. I wasn’t allowed to buy things for her or even talk about her. Although our marriage wouldn’t officially end for another 20 years, looking back, that was the beginning of the end.

The next two decades sometimes feel like a blur.

The Pit

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In 2006, when I was 26, I became addicted to methamphetamine. That addiction lasted about a year and a half, six months of which I was separated from my family and living with another man. My husband obtained a restraining order against me, and I couldn’t see my children. They were only 2, 4 and 9.

It was the worst time of my life.

I knew I didn’t want my marriage anymore, but I also knew I couldn’t live without my babies. So, I returned to California, where my husband and children were, got sober on my own and went right back to being a PTA mom. During that time, I was also running from felony warrants in Arizona, but after a year and a half, I faced those too. I never wanted anything to separate me from my children again.

Marijuana had always been part of our marriage. It was the one thing my husband and I did together. Around 2013, however, it began causing me anxiety, so I quit smoking and turned to alcohol instead.

That foolish decision began what would become a 13-year battle with alcohol.

My drinking made an already broken marriage even worse.

In February 2020, I finally decided I could no longer stay in the marriage. I took my youngest daughter, who was 16, and we moved into our own apartment.

I had tried to leave several times before, when all three children were young, but I never had the means to do it. Now I did. I was working long hours as a FedEx driver, and my daughter was old enough to get herself to and from school.

And it was at FedEx that I met this goofy guy who was always pestering me by talking about God, which I didn’t really care for. Sometime later, we did become friends.

I had absolutely no idea at the time how important he would become in my life.

For a while, things were good. But then old habits returned, and drugs took hold of me all over again. I became addicted to cocaine, and my drinking grew worse.

My life began unraveling.

I lost my apartment. I ended up moving back in with my now ex-husband, and I started going back and forth to my mom’s house in Southern California, desperately trying to get sober.

God Met Me There

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Then, in March 2023, on my fifth attempt at getting sober at my mom’s, something happened.

My mom, after recovering from her own addictions, had started going to church. Being the good daughter that I am, I didn’t want her going alone, so I started tagging along.

And that is where everything changed.

Ezekiel 36:26 says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

God used a little church in Twentynine Palms, California, to open my eyes and soften a heart that had spent a lifetime learning how to survive.

For most of my life, I had been trying to fix everything myself. I had gotten sober before, but I had never truly been free. I could change my circumstances for a while, but I couldn’t change my heart.

But Jesus could.

The next two months were crazy because my life did a complete 180. I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I was baptized. I started dating and married that goofy guy from FedEx. And most importantly, I began building a relationship with God.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t just learning about God—I was beginning to know Him. I began to understand His love, His grace, and His forgiveness. I learned that I didn’t have to clean myself up before coming to Him. He wanted me exactly where I was, and He loved me enough not to leave me there.

As my relationship with Jesus grew, things that had controlled me for years began losing their hold on me. I started seeing myself differently. I wasn’t just the things that had happened to me. I wasn’t my addictions, my failures, or my worst decisions. I was a daughter of God, loved and forgiven, and through Christ I was being made new.

From the Pit to His Purpose

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So where am I today?

I am happy.

I am healthy.

I am sober.

In the last three years, by the grace of God, I have overcome addiction, walked through cancer, read the entire Bible cover to cover, completed a 12-step recovery program and started Bible classes online. And now I have my eyes set on taking the Bible and recovery into jails and institutions so that others can know the same hope I found in Christ.

There was a time when I never could have imagined the life I have today. God restored what was broken, gave me hope when I had none, and showed me that my past did not have to determine my future.

Matthew 19:26 says it perfectly “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

My story started with a little girl whose world fell apart at seven years old—a little girl who spent years looking for love, security and acceptance in places that could never give them to her.

But that is not where my story ends.

God met me there.

He took a life that I thought was too damaged, too complicated and too far gone, and He began making something new out of it.

I can’t change what happened to me, and I can’t change the choices I made. But today I can look back and see that God never stopped pursuing me.

And if there is one thing I want people to take away from my testimony, it is this:

No matter how far you have gone, how many times you have fallen, or how broken your life may look, you are never beyond the reach of God.

The little girl who once felt lost has been found. The woman who once lived in bondage is free. And the life I once thought was beyond repair has been redeemed by Jesus Christ.

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