To say that life following Jesus is my passion would be an understatement. When the Lord put it on my heart to create this community, I was nervous, scared, and apprehensive, but it is something I wish I had as I went through my journey of sobriety and radical transformation through faith. 

So, let’s dive into a little more about who I am. I am 55, a mama of 4, and in recovery from alcohol addiction. My story with alcohol isn’t short and simple, as most of our stories aren’t. I grew up with an alcoholic father. A lot of good memories, a lot of traumatic memories and, if I’m honest a lot I’ve blocked out, and have no memory of.  I started drinking in my late teens, and I drank for decades. There were countless times when I believed alcohol served a very special purpose, mainly to numb feelings I didn’t understand and couldn’t cope with. In reality, alcohol did not serve any purpose whatsoever.

I found genuine joy and happiness in my life being a mom and a wife. I also found a lot of peace in my faith in God throughout my life, but this peace was only peppered into times in which my heart was broken enough to let God in. Though I was in a toxic marriage that also affected our four children, my relationship with Jesus was very inconsistent. I now know that it was this fractured connection that allowed alcohol to take the place of the hope and promises available to me with Jesus. I couldn’t see it then. I didn’t feel worthy, so I separated myself from God. 

Alcohol addiction is progressive. For me, as my kids got older and needed me less, and my marriage wasn’t getting better, I didn’t know who I was, so I drank more and more, and the consequences were worse and worse. My addiction took me to a dark place. 

 

So, how did I finally stop drinking? I started praying. I prayed and prayed and prayed to the God I knew loved me but whose love I had rejected. I literally heard Him say “you have to stop drinking “every time I prayed. I knew that He had been chasing me and that I had been running the other way for far too long. I was tired of running. I turned toward Him and stopped trying to change on my own. For the first time I felt that a better life was possible. That was the beginning of my sobriety and a renewed faith in Jesus, my saving grace, my Savior.