Growing up, I didn’t know who my Dad was. I met my Dad when I was about eight. He had run off when I was in the hospital. When I met him, it was a surreal moment. I remember wondering if that was really my dad. After that, we couldn’t seem to stay in contact with one another. He was a very busy person. I would call and maybe he didn’t answer, or if he would call, I wasn’t there. We couldn’t seem to get in contact with one another.
My mom…I have a wonderful mother. She worked very hard to give me a really good life. She worked two jobs throughout the year to give me a great Christmas. But she had root issues of her own. She had a drug addiction, so by thirteen I began experimenting with drugs, and that became a common way of life for us. I found it to be normal. That was a normal thing to do, so by eighteen I was addicted to meth. From high school, I had a full-ride to college opportunity. I didn’t take that. I chose to do what I wanted to do. I just went out into the world and started doing drugs, so it was just a downward spiral.
At twenty-two, I had my first real God encounter. I remember hitting my knees and just crying out to the Lord, just telling Him, “If you’re real, I need your help. I can’t do this on my own.” At that point, I knew He was real. I went home for three months, and I got cleaned up for three months. That’s when I began speaking in the name of Jesus. I found there was power in His name.
After the three months, I got back with the same boyfriend and got around the same old friends. I just got worse and worse and worse. I went down the path of destruction. I found myself in a house for about five days, and I was so desperate and tormented in my mind. I cried out to the Lord again. I knew where to go. I said, “Lord, if you will get me out of this house, if you will get me away from these people, I will never go back.”
So finally I get to where I can drive home, and I’m going down the road, and I’m going, “Okay I have made this promise, now how am I going to keep it? I’m not going to go around these same people. I have made these same promises before.” So I go home and tell my mother that I need help. We found Women at the Well. God has used Women at the Well to drastically change my life forever.
For a period of time there I didn’t get to talk to my mother for several, several months. During that time, I had to really learn how to cry out to Him and how to lean on Him for all of the things that I needed to fill the void of the father that I had in my heart, to fill the void of the mother that I had in my heart, to take every need and want and to come to Him with all things. He’s restored that relationship with my mother and now I get to see her. She’s doing great. She began going. Through my growth and restoration and through her seeing what God is doing in my life, she has been able to start going to meetings of her own and seeking out help for herself which has been great. She’s doing so much better. God’s just…I can see His hand in the midst of it all. He is just restoring that relationship. My father, where we never had a relationship before, we talked once in a while, and I saw him a handful of times, when I have seen him since I have been here, I have found that he truly loves me. I talk to him about once a week, and God’s began to restore the relationship that we never had before. I can say for the first time in my life that my dad truly loves me, and I have never been able to say that with full confidence before. I know now that he loves me.
We don’t look a lot alike. He has a northern accent, so I was like, “Are you sure? Are you sure this is my dad?” But he is my dad, and I love him, and I’m thankful that he is my dad now.
Discussions