This week, we are hearing stories of how our chosenness leads to transformation. Pati’s story is a powerful example of someone who discovered her own identity as she embraced her chosenness in Christ. Pati is part of our Mosaic community and works in a local business. If we can help you find healing through recovery, call us.
My name is Pati. I’m excited to tell you how God transformed me into the person I am today.
My father was a holy roller and my mother was sexually abused as a child and emotionally abused as a wife. That was the world I was born into. I was four months old when my mom walked out on us. After a lifetime of abuse, she’d had all she could take and she left.
It wasn’t easy not having my mom around. My dad did the best he could raising my big brother and me. He was bi-polar so he’d have rages but I don’t remember much. I mostly remember he was a workaholic. When he wasn’t at work, we were at church. I remember a lot of babysitters. I was seven when my dad heard about Hephzibah Children’s Home. He decided to put us there for stability. I remember the director of the home coming to our house and telling my father we needed stability and I’d need a woman in my life. It was a private school with a scholarship promise at graduation, and that was enough. My brother Chip and I moved to Hephzibah.
I was eleven when we saw my mom again. We didn’t stay that year, but eventually I could stay the summer with her. It was there that my eighteen year old step cousin raped me. With that event, everything changed in my life. I hated everything and everyone. I no longer knew where I belonged. I started drinking at age 12, started smoking pot at 14, and was looking for love in all the wrong places. My father’s rages turned toward me. My dad was a workaholic and a manic depressive. My mom didn’t want me. My brother was getting married soon. I was lost. I tried to commit suicide at age 14.
Then I met my husband. I thought he was my saving grace. We married when I was 16 and had our first born Zackary. Nineteen months later we had our daughter Sarah. Everything seemed great. Believe it or not, through all this I’d stayed in church. Every Sunday morning, every Wednesday night, every Sunday night. But after the birth of my daughter, I quit going to church because I could choose to go or not.
Between getting a family and giving up on God, drugs were introduced into my life. Cocaine numbed the feelings I hadn’t dealt with — abandonment, rape, neglect, empty religion. Even my dad would tell you that he knew it in his head, but didn’t have it in his heart. I was the same. I was getting further and further from God. I was invisible. No thing or person could stop me from wrecking my life. Ray and I were using and using at this point. Money started to run out, and I had to find a way to get more money to get more drugs. So I stole my best friends check book. Well, that landed me in jail. I got bonded out two weeks later, but didn’t learn my lesson. Of course, I promised my kids and my dad I was changed, but that was a lie.
I started using a few months later. That year things were worse than ever. I went on the Walk to Emmaus, and found God again but it didn’t last. When I came home from Emmaus, I found out my 15 year old daughter was pregnant. To be honest I was happy because I just knew her being pregnant would make me stop using. I was wrong. I started using again about a month after Emmaus. Again money was tight so I had to find ways to get quick easy money. I committed credit card fraud. It worked …. for six months. Then it caught up with me. When my daughter was 8 months pregnant and we were a week away from her baby shower, I got arrested again.
That one hurt. The horror on my 15-year old’s face broke me. She was going to have to do this without her mom. My granddaughter was 10 days old when I was sentenced to 2 years in prison. This was my turning point. I fell to my knees and begged God to change me. I found myself reading my Bible again. The whole time I was in prison I was in His word. I found this verse that got me through my darkest hours while I was in prison. 1 Peter 1:6 says, “So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while.”
What I didn’t realize was what my trials were going to be when I got home from prison. My son was using, my husband was using, my daughter and her little family moved to Minnesota, and I lost all hope. I hated God and hated my life. But I was still good, I told myself, because I had my sobriety. But I wasn’t good. I didn’t have God in my life. I blamed him for all the wrong in my life. Or I blamed my husband. I wasn’t the problem, I reasoned, because I wasn’t using drugs anymore.
I was wondering why I felt so empty. Again I attempted suicide. I never felt so alone as I did that night. In my childlike brain I thought that if I did this, my husband and son would quit drugs. I was wrong.
You know what did happen? Years later, I was listening to Christian radio and heard a song called Even If, by Mercy Me. I hated that song but that day, God used it to speak to me. Ray was in jail, we were bumping up against walls figuring his situation out, and this is what God said through that song: “Even if he doesn’t get into drug court, how will you feel about me?” And that’s when I realized that God had my back. That was a beginning … a turning point in my life of trusting God.
Within a month or so, I stumbled across Mosaic and went one Sunday morning by myself and loved it instantly. God started working on my heart to show me I was the problem with a lot of the wrong in my life.
Let me say that again: I was the problem! I am not blaming myself for what other people did, but taking responsibility for my actions. I started to trust God more and read his word again. Today, I am a recovered addict. Eight years! Those may not be the words you choose, but they are the words I choose. I am recovered and I am now in recovery for codependency. I’ve learned with the help of God and my Pastor Carolyn (my spiritual best friend!) that I can only fix me. So I am now on the journey of finding me and fixing me. I just started college, majoring in addiction counseling and human services. God is working in my life and the lives of the people around me. I am still learning how to surrender all to Him but I am in a better place than I ever have been.
When Paul encountered Jesus, he says he heard Jesus give him this call to the Gentiles: “I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” (Acts 26:18)
And that is God’s call on all of us who encounter Christ. He sends us out to help others just like us, so that others can have their eyes opened and their lives turned from darkness to light. Today, I can say that this is my call. And it isn’t sobriety that gives my life hope and meaning. It is Jesus.
