Even when we’re in the bottom of the pit, God’s stars still shine.
God saved my life. You could almost say that He saved my life so I could give it back to Him, because that’s what I have chosen to do. It took a very hard fall to knock some sense into me. But it was completely worth it because it has changed my life as nothing else could have.
I was killing myself slowly with methamphetamine. That drug is truly the tool of the devil. I hadn’t eaten in days and was hallucinating from lack of sleep. I had no job, no faith, and no income. What little money I did have, I intended to use to buy more drugs to sell and make up the money I needed for my rent. I was drenched in sin and wanted nothing more than to drown in it.
But something stopped me. Something in me finally clicked. A picture of my son and something someone had said caused me to stop and think, I can’t lose my baby. He’s all I have. Then I remembered another Parent who had “lost” His only Son. He gave up the One He loved most for me—a drug addict who lied and stole and cheated.
I suddenly realized that I had to give up my son, if for only a moment. Just long enough to realize that I needed to get better for myself before I could get my son back. That was my new my goal.
The first thing I did was to drop to my knees and pray, for suddenly I began to see everything with new eyes. I saw books that shouldn’t be in my house. I saw pot pipes that I no longer thought of as beautiful. And I started a pile in the middle of my floor of all the things that I wouldn’t want Jesus to see in my house. Those things that I had put so much importance on I would later burn in a cleansing fire. I was crying and begging for forgiveness the whole time I was collecting the things I needed to discard. I started to look at all the sin in my life and asking for forgiveness for all of those things too. It was amazing to me to see all of the sins that earlier had just seemed only unfortunate events in my tattered life.
As I was getting rid of all of the “sin” in my house, I came across one of my son’s books that said I Eat. I knew it was God telling me to find something nourishing to put into my body. So I went to my cupboard to see whether I had any edible bread. I was shocked to see that none of the bread was moldy. Keep in mind that I hadn’t eaten in days and hadn’t bought bread in weeks.
Suddenly I wanted to break bread with Jesus, and I rededicated myself right then and there. I broke into tears again as I heard a voice saying, “Eat this in remembrance of me.” I opened my refrigerator, and there in the very front was some grape jam. That made me laugh. It’s funny how God knows exactly what we need when we need it. So I ate my bread-and-jam sandwich. Then I went into my bathroom, and with the water from my broken pipe, I “baptized” myself. And from that moment I started my new life.
Today I’m a former drug addict. I say “former” instead of “recovering” because I don’t believe in that term. Instead, I would say I’m a “reborn” addict. I have begun again. Instead of drugs filling the hole in my heart, I’ve asked Jesus Christ into that space. For the first time I can see the lies that sin had put in His place.
I see now with the new eyes of the born again. Instead of the God up somewhere in space, He shows Himself to me daily, and I realize that I am important to Him. No matter how many times I have shut the door on Him, He has insisted on knocking. This helps me to realize that He has a job for me to do, though I don’t know what that job will be.
I also realize that we are also so important to Him that He will keep knocking on the door to our hearts—even little lost drug addicts who pushed Him aside for “more important” things, as I once did.
Kathy Hardman writes from Shelby, Montana.
