I Was Facing a Lifetime in Mental Institutions
I grew up in a loving middle-class family in Lubbock, Texas, a farming and ranching community famous for raising cotton, corn, peanuts, and cattle.
As a five-year-old, I experienced severe trauma while walking to school with a classmate after eating lunch together in my home. Stopping by my friend’s house to say hello to her mom, we were shocked at her mother lying motionless on her bed. She was dead. Several years later, my best friend in fourth grade died of cancer. Because of these tragic events, I carried an unhealthy fear of death into my young adulthood.
At some point between ages nine and ten, I began experimenting with pot and alcohol. Serious Texas-style partying followed in high school. On weekends teenagers hopped into pickup trucks and drove along back roads to homes, barns, and fields away from town. We drank and laughed, danced to country music, and got high on cocaine.
During my first ASU semester, I joined the uncontrolled world of sororities and fraternities. I drank hard liquor daily and did ecstasy and LSD. The new freedom away from home and the cool social life excited me.
For a few hours at a time, ecstasy provided feelings of euphoria, high energy, intense happiness, and peace. Any constraining inhibitions melted away. Many times, I would pass out and wake up in different places the next morning, not remembering what had happened the previous night.
At a frat house Halloween party, I almost overdosed after a bad hit of ecstasy. In and out of consciousness, I hallucinated and woke up hearing evil voices saying, “Kill yourself, life is not worth living, you are worthless.” Over the next few months, the voices in my head trapped me in cycles of hopelessness.
Meanwhile, I stopped attending classes. While I was home for Christmas break, my parents received a letter listing my failing grades and revealing that I was officially on academic probation. They were livid.
Even though I had grown up in the Bible Belt—and made a public show of getting saved and resaved, baptized and rebaptized—whatever personal faith I had was dwindling close to zero. I still believed in God, but I was miles and miles away from him.
With no money and no permanent place to live, I quit college the following January. Any hopes I had for my future had vanished. The next three years turned into a nightmare.
After pawning all my jewelry, I still needed more money to live and to pay for drugs. I found temp work—secretarial and receptionist jobs and waitressing. However, I would often get fired after staying out all night and not showing up the next morning. Or after drinking alcohol at my desk and falling asleep.
God delivered me from the crazy voices in my head when the staff encircled me, praying and reading Scripture over me. Yet I continued carrying a lot of baggage. I had a strong-willed, independent spirit—a prideful inclination to go my own way rather than yielding to God’s control. And I was still grieving over the wasted years.
At one point about three weeks into the program, I broke down, thinking I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I learned, however, that deliverance from bondage takes time. The Holy Spirit provided the power to overcome the next phase of my journey, a prison term for a bank fraud conviction.
I spent the next eight months in the women’s high security unit at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky, now a men’s facility. Fortunately, the judge shortened my sentence, which could have been much longer.
Prison life was lonely, but I stayed away from trouble by reading the Bible in our pod, spending time in the prison library, and attending chapel services.
During my prison term, I received a letter from someone who invited me to join the Hoving staff as an entry level associate. I accepted and left prison with a one-way bus ticket to New York.
I never tire of telling my story to our residents. When I see women struggling, I try to encourage them and pray with them as I walk through the facility. I recall meeting a recovering addict plagued by voices in her head. I told her how God had touched my life and delivered me. She completed the program and now leads a homeless ministry in her church.
These and many other deliverance stories have left me in awe of God’s redeeming power. The only reason I do what I do is because Jesus saved me and enables me every day. I trust Romans 8: There is no condemnation for me in Christ Jesus. And only through him I am more than a conqueror.
Also Read:
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Nehemiah’s Leadership Playbook: Discretion
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Just A Box of Crayons
Testimonies
When I Opened My Bible, God Gave Me a Magnifying Glass