MY STORY TO FREEDOM

After being addicted to drugs for fifteen long years, I was free in an instant. 

I was the youngest born into a broken home life. Although we were Christian, we were not raised up in church. We celebrated Christmas by singing hymns and reading the story of the birth of the King Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, and I loved what I knew of Jesus with all that was in me!  I loved it when the Nativity set came out! I would spend hours playing with the little pocket-sized plastic baby Jesus in the manger and I would carry it my pocket with me everywhere! 

My first experience with God was at 8 or 9 on a vacation when we got lost at night and stopped on the side of the road to sleep over night in our trailer. I had gotten out of the car and began to walk in the opposite direction in the pitch black and about 20 feet away, I felt unseen hands on my shoulders stop me and a voice said, "Stop." Alarmed, I ran back to the trailer. I woke up the next day and in the bright morning light, I saw that at the same place where I stood the night before was a cliff edge with a drop of about 200 ft. to the bottom. I knew then that God was real and wanted me alive for some reason, but I would not find that reason for many many years to come! 

My teen years were filled with much seeking for validation in all of the wrong things. I grew deeper in darkness trying to fit in and seeking peace in a bottle, a drug, sexual relationships, even religion. Every attempt only brought me closer to hell on earth. I went from one relationship to another, thinking a man could fix me and I ended up pregnant and then married. 

By the time my 3rd child was born I was a frazzled mess, worn out and depressed...spinning my wheels in empty and vain repetitious efforts to save myself through religion. I plummeted into a serious and deep depression after the birth of my first son. They called it the baby blues and I was put on series of 8 different medications in the period of one year. It was a roller coaster of dramatic ups and downs, the end of which I attempted suicide multiple times as an effort to escape the mental and physical anguish that I was enduring.

I sought death but could not find it. In my anguish I turned to more serious street drugs for escape. However, I did not get the relief that I hoped for and instead found an even deeper hell and torment to my depression. I cried out to God for help and found no relief. I was seeking the wrong god, but this god of a dead religious system! All I wanted was true freedom and peace!

My husband abandoned me in a rehab in an unknown city and I lost my beautiful children. I tried desperately to straighten up and be "good" again. I tried to stay clean and sober but I was hopelessly addicted crack cocaine. For 15 years I was on a never-ending course of getting high, getting clean and then relapsing; endless rehabs and a program of works, but always failing in the end. I went from bad to worse to WORSER…if that's a even word. I went from living in a home with everything a woman could want to living on the streets at times, with nothing. I went from relationship to relationship seeking something or someone to save me.

I got married again twice, and had two more children. I continued to struggle with addiction and depression. I loved God so much and had a serious desire to serve Him throughout all of my life...even through the worst of it. I would even preach Jesus to the other addicts in the streets in the middle of my addiction, and Satan continued to strive for my life.

In 2007 after a night of using, I suffered heart failure and fell to the floor with no strength in my body, as I had no blood pressure. I felt myself leaving my body and called my two young boys to my side told them I loved them and to be good and read their Bibles. I was saying goodbye forever! It was at the moment I was telling my 2 year old goodbye that I felt a righteous anger rise up inside me, and I SCREAMED OUT LOUD, "NO!!"

SOMETHING WAS TAKING MY LIFE FROM ME AND  I WAS NOT GOING TO ALLOW IT!!

Right then I felt myself come back to my body! The ambulance rushed me to the ER, and in the ambulance my spiritual eyes were opened and I saw a black swirling vortex open up directly above me and I knew it was the gateway into the eternity, and according to my deeds it would have been the entrance to hell. It was dark and black, very foreboding!

I made it to the hospital where all systems failed and I went code blue. I was put on life support and my family was told that I would not make it. I would never revive and leave the hospital. This was the experts final words to my family. "SAY GOODBYE! 

Thank God I had just began attending a church that takes the Bible at face value and believes in the healing powers of Jesus. My husband had called my worship pastor and he and other believers came and prayed the Word of God over me and commanded my complete healing in the name of Jesus Christ.

24 hours after I was put on life support I woke up and saw seven doctors standing in a circle holding up two different x-rays of my lungs. One was completely black and the other one was completely white, WHICH MEANT I GOT A BRAND NEW SET OF LUNGS OVERNIGHT because the white screen meant my lungs were completely full of fluid and the other was completely clear, which I was told was not medically possible. The doctors were arguing because they didn't believe that they were the right x-rays. They said they had to be confused with somebody else's and that they needed to be retaken. They had been retaken! It was the second time they had been retaken because of their disbelief!

The next exam taken of my heart revealed that my heart was completely normal, instead of the enlarged heart with floppy valves that only hours earlier had failed only hours before.                              

I HAD A BRAND NEW HEART!! ANOTHER MIRACLE OF HEALING BY JESUS CHRIST!!

I laid in that hospital alone, with tears streaming down my face and I asked God,

"Why?" Why had He saved me when I did this to myself? Why God?!!

I didn't expect what I heard next....

"Because you are going to write your life story and share it with the world and I will receive all of the glory!"

I'd like to say that things got better after that, but I continued to struggle with addiction for another four years, but in 2009 I finally was able to stay completely sober for 9 months! My husband was mysteriously sentenced to four years in prison for driving on a suspended license and I was now on my own, FOR THE FIRST TIME! I rose up and dealt with specific fears of providing for myself and got a job. Life looked like it was getting better for me. I was doing it. But that was the problem!! I WAS DOING IT! And so I fell back into drugs. I fell and I began struggling daily again.

Then one day I was in someone's house and I saw a book that intrigued me. It was called,

"A Divine Revelation of Hell." I asked if I could borrow it and I took it home and read it every night until I was done. IT SO IMPACTED ME, that I cried out to God telling Him I DIDN'T WANT ANYONE GOING TO HELL! Not even my WORST enemy; not that I had one.

A month later I was lying in bed after work, and I was channel surfing and I stopped on a strange show called The Great Awakening. It was church, but not church as usual. There was something about this that was entirely different. They laughed, a lot! They shouted and praised God, a lot! They fell and shook under the power of God. Normal people got up and told stories of their lives changing. Mostly they spoke about going out into the streets and leading people to Jesus! SOUL WINNING, they called it! They spoke with power! They spoke with authority! They spoke with boldness! Little, tiny girls bellowed out grand "Amen's and Hallelujahs!"  They spoke of laying hands on the sick and seeing people get healed immediately from serious diseases, AIDS and cancers; and people getting up out of wheel chairs!

They spoke about people getting set free from drug addictions!

Hey!! That was what I wanted more than anything! Could this be for real?

I continued to watch...every night, for 6 hours! It would be on for 3 hours in the evening and then replayed in the midnight hours for another 3 hours. I watched all 6 hours every night.

I was so hungry for something real!!

I decided to call in their prayer line in hopes that I could get set free. I called, they prayed, but the next day was using again, much to my dismay! I tried again the next night!

I DIDN'T GIVE UP!!

I called in and someone else prayed for me. I described to him my desperate plight of aggravation. Why couldn't I get free?! He prayed for me, but I just cried and cried in desperation! He did something very different! He told me to sing to Jesus and LIFT HIM UP! 

LIFT JESUS UP IN MY DESPAIR?!   WAS THIS THE KEY?

He sang with me over and over, the words to "I exalt Thee," and he let me go to continue singing on my own. He told me to come to the church...it was in the same city that I lived. I did some time later. I continued to watch, but continued to occasionally fall. For 2 months I watched every program.

THEN ONE NIGHT, I decided to change the channel…as I was getting high this night. I had something else on…some scary movie. All of the sudden I felt consumed with by the most evil presence I had ever felt! I felt as if I was going to die right then, as this demonic presence hated me and wanted me dead. I could feel him there, but I could see nothing. But this presence was even more real to me than my eyes could see! In my fear, I quickly grabbed the remote and changed the channel and even though the Great Awakening channel was 20 channels away, in one push of a button it was on and  I SCREAMED OUT LOUD THE NAME OF JESUS AND IN ONE MOMENT,                                                                 IN WALKED THE TANGIBLE PRESENCE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST 

and in one moment as He walked in through me, every chain of addiction and depression was forever broken and some unseen hand knocked the drugs and paraphernalia out of my hands! I was overcome by the power of PURE LOVE!  It was stronger than any power I've ever felt before, even greater than the time I got shocked by the electrical outlet without a cover on it! That knocked me off my feet, but this was more powerful than that and it felt amazing!

I was LOVED by the MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE!!! 

I flushed the drugs down the toilet and never looked back, COMPLETELY SET FREE!

The next night I watched, I felt a heavenly presence descend from above at mach speed and it exploded in me filling me gloriously and I began to speak out the most beautiful language I have ever heard. I couldn't speak in English for 3 hours, but only in this beautiful heavenly tongue. For three hours, by tongue wasn't even in my control, but I was definitely a willing participant!! It was the tongue of angels. I felt so set free and so full of joy!! I had never before felt like this in my entire life! 

AFTER YEARS OF TRYING TO CHASE A HIGH TO FILL AN EMPTINESS, I REALIZED THIS WAS WHAT I WAS SEARCHING FOR MY ENTIRE LIFE!! THERE WAS NO HIGH LIKE THE MOST HIGH!!!  I was complete for the first time in my life!! 

Then next night I went to the church that was on the Great Awakening, and told the woman at the door what happened to me and she got so excited. The next thing you know, she sent someone out to get me to share my encounter with Jesus and I was up on stage giving my testimony to the world on the live broadcast of the very show I watched every night!

The pastor prophesied to me that I had a call of God on my life and that God was going to use me mightily and that if I wanted to go to Bible school that he was going to give me a free scholarship for every year in school!

AND SO IT ALL BEGAN....my life changed! My life of ministry! My life of serving God! My life of soul winning! Almost five years later, I can look back and see that this past five years has been a wonderful road and I have changed so much! This is what I was born for! I am now complete! MY JOY IS FULL! God has made the crooked paths straight and the rough roads smooth, and even though many things have happened that have rocked my world, JESUS IS THE ROCK ON WHICH I STAND AND I CANNOT BE MOVED!!

I HAVE A PERSONAL AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE ONE WHO CREATED THE UNIVERSE!

HE LOVES ME AND I LOVE HIM! He is alive! He speaks and He speaks to me;

and He will speak with you if you if you will slow down your life and allow Him in!

Spend time here and I will show you how to have a life of peace in Jesus!                                                                 ​There is nothing more awesome!!