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My Recovery Journey

Heroin was my first love and at the age of 15 I fell head over heels and stayed pretty close to faithful for the next 15 years of my life. Jails, institutions and near death were the echoes of every day for many years.

If you saw me today, you would not believe that this was my life. Today, I have my master’s degree, am a mother of two beautiful children and I serve as the Director of a large local non-profit serving hundreds of our homeless each and every day. How is this possible? Only by the grace of God am I able to do what I do today. I live by this phrase, “there but for the grace of God go I.'' God has given me the relationships and tools to heal from the pain that kept me sick for so long and I work my program like it’s the only way to live. I had to let go of the people closest to me and learn to seek help from strangers who were in recovery so that I could live a healthy life. Those people are now my family and have loved me through some of the most difficult times in my life. Recovery is not for the weary. The experiences and struggles that I endured and overcame have become a platform for God’s work in the lives of others. I just celebrated 14 years of sobriety and as far as I’m concerned, it is just the beginning of what God is going to do in my life.

A bible verse that reflects my life is John 11:44. When Lazarus walked out of the tomb after being raised from the dead. “The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him and let him go.” I am no longer dead in my transgressions, God has raised me from the dead and I am now alive in Christ.