The Story Behind Day One of Sobriety - Birthed out of Miracles
The Beginning
I’m pretty much an average Jane with my own share of ups and downs. I grew up in a household where drug and alcohol abuse were normalized. My mother was loving and full of tickles one day, but could be explosive and angry the next. I learned what it meant to walk on eggshells at a very early age. I vividly remember standing barefoot & in my pajamas in our driveway as the ambulance took my mom away to the hospital. I was 8, my sister 10, and my brother 4. This would be the first of several trips to the psych ward.
I know that my mom and dad truly did their best for us, but as young adults warring against their own demons, raising three feisty youngsters was a challenge. Their marriage could be turbulent with periods of peace in between. Money was tight and caused added stress whenever my dad was laid off or between jobs. They’d separate and threaten divorce, but then would try to repair the breach. They likely coined the saying, “I can’t live with you, but I can’t live without you, either.”
My childhood and adolescence are best summed up as inconsistent and always unpredictable. Rather than affirming in me the kind of woman I wanted to become, I learned what I didn’t want to be. I developed a people pleasing personality, a need to control my circumstances, and always strived for perfection and acceptance. These traits served me well throughout my high school and college years, well into the early years of becoming a wife and a mother. But then the wheels began to fall off the bus.
It’s not sustainable to please everyone, control every circumstance, and perfection is unattainable. As I began checking off the boxes of adulting, one box that remained strikingly empty was labeled - happy.
I thought a career, a family & home, material possessions, and friends were meant to bring happiness into one's adult life. There were many good times, but no lasting happiness or sense of contentment. As does happen, the stressors of life grew and grew. After my first child I remember visiting the doctor with “postpartum blues” and leaving with a prescription for Prozac. I was hit heavily with the realization that I was following in the footsteps of my mom, something I vowed would never happen.
Over the subsequent years I struggled quite a bit with depression & anxiety. In my thirties, I enjoyed a drink to unwind after a long day's work, but by age 40 I drank almost every night to numb and distract from my internal turmoil. At 42 I attempted suicide to escape the shame and condemnation of where my life had ended up.
I didn’t know that the devil orchestrates such devious plots to destroy humankind and he had me in his crosshairs. But God stepped in!
I’m going to share three powerful truths:
God is real and performs miracles still today!
The devil causes generational curses but they can be defeated
Generational Blessings are within your reach - and I can show you how to get them!
Truth #1: God is real and performs miracles still today.
This is my powerful & true testimony of God’s redemption. I used to be a Type A personality – on steroids. And remember I mentioned that I’d become a control freak. Well that meant I had even planned the perfect suicide. Letchworth State Park was a place we visited regularly as a family. There was an old railroad trestle bridge over the high falls that I was planning to accidentally fall from it. An insurance policy would provide for my two son’s care and education.
I sat on the plan for nearly a month, crushed under the weight of feeling like a failure. Finally I set off on a late Sunday afternoon for Letchworth. I had spent the day cleaning house, doing laundry, and even grocery shopped for the week. I left no note. My sons were out with friends and my husband simply thought I was going for a drive.
After nearly an hour's drive, I arrived on the outskirts of the state park. I pulled into a small parking area and drank a few beers while contemplating and gaining courage for my next move. The signage told me I was approaching the Perry gate - one of the four park’s entrances. As I traveled down the beautiful fall road, I strangely found myself back at the intersection leading to the Perry gate. “Strange,” I thought to myself. I must have missed a turn. Turning left again, I headed to the gate only to find myself back at the intersection. It had been a bit of time since my last visit and I began to wonder if my memory failed me. I decided to turn right instead and work my way towards the Mount Morris entrance. After a short drive I found myself full circle back at the intersection.
Fully frustrated now, I was aggravated to see my husband ringing my cell phone. I ignored the call. What was happening? I turned right yet again, concentrating on each cross road as I drove past. My husband called again. This time I answered, concerned something might be up with one of the boys.
Within minutes we were arguing, which had become standard practice over the past two years. I’d reached a breaking point and told him I might not be home that night. I needed some time away. He sensed I was drinking and pressed me further about my whereabouts. I wouldn’t give him any details which both enraged and concerned him. Shocked to find myself back at the intersection for the fourth time, I hung up on him since he was obviously the reason for my break in concentration.
After several more unsuccessful attempts to enter the park I decided to just head home. I was deflated – I was such a failure I couldn’t even manage to pull off my plan. Unknown to me my husband had called the local sheriff’s office concerned about my mental state. There was an APB out for my car. Only 4 miles from home I pulled into the parking lot of a favorite pizza shop. I didn’t want to go home just yet. A state trooper drove by and recognized my car. He pulled in, lights flashing, and just like that I was arrested – ticketed with a DWI (even though I was in a parked car) and taken in for a mental health assessment. I was dead, but not by suicide.
As an educator in the local school district, the news picked up the arrest and it appeared in the papers and on tv & radio. Educators were held to a high standard and this truly showed lack of moral judgement. If I felt broken before, I now felt truly crushed. Lower than low.
Becky, our school district’s social worker, called and asked if she could come to the house for a visit. That’s the day I learned how real God is and that He’s still in the miracle business. I was surprised to learn that Becky didn’t come to visit in her capacity as a social worker. Instead she came to share with me that she’d woke up on Friday morning with an assignment from God. She was to go to Letchworth State Park and pray. She didn’t know why but she was obedient. She played hookie from work and enlisted the help of her daughter.
They spent the entire beautiful fall day in the “Grand Canyon of the East,” the nickname for Letchworth State Park, praying and worshiping God at every overlook, picnic area, and pull off. Through some supernatural discernment I didn’t have the capacity to understand, Becky knew this God assignment was connected to me, and now I understood why I had been unable to enter the park that Sunday. God, Becky, and her daughter Kelly had placed a blood covering over the park to thwart the plan of the devil to take my life and rob me from the Kingdom work God had planned for my life.
Becky prayed with me and invited me to come with her that weekend to a women’s retreat her church was hosting. So broken and full of shame I didn’t think I had anything to lose. That was 16 years ago and began the most beautiful God trajectory that spun my life 180 degrees.
Truth #2: The devil causes generational curses but they can be defeated
At the women’s retreat that weekend I learned about a God who loved me and wanted a personal relationship with me. I had gone to various churches throughout my childhood & even attended youth group in high school. I knew of God, but I didn’t truly KNOW God.
As I began to attend Jubilee Christian Church, many amazing women began to pour into my life. I learned about the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of darkness. I learned how the devil operates and that he’s known as the master of lies and deception. I learned how demonic curses such as alcoholism, drug abuse, and depression have plagued my bloodline for generations, but that I could be the chainbreaker, stopping the curses from impacting me, my children, and future generations. I was truly delivered from demonic oppression. I was set right with God and set in motion God’s blessings to work in my bloodline, defeating the devil’s curses with the blood of Jesus Christ.
Truth #3: Generational Blessings are within your reach
The transformation didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen. The cornerstone of this transformation was the renewing of my mind.
Remember my DWI and mental health arrest? I was mandated into an 18 month out-pateint rehab program. I took a leave of absence from work and resolved to get the help I needed to heal and be the mom my sons deserved. At the end of the program I understood how my childhood and adolescence had shaped my destructive personality and choices. Unfortunately the program didn’t provide much support for moving forward beyond prescriptions to manage my depression and anxiety.
Doctors told me I had damaged parts of my brain through alcohol abuse. Their report was truly bleak and didn’t hold a lot of hope. No wonder people relapse, I remember thinking. I no longer had the vice that distracted me and numbed my pain and yet here I sat on a mountainous pile of revelation of how my past had screwed me up.
Jeremiah 29:11 had become an anchor scripture for me. I knew God’s plans and purposes for me were good, to give me a hope and a future. I still struggled with maintaining my sobriety. I tried AA meetings, but they just weren’t the right fit. I knew there had to be more to this Christian life I was trying to carve out.
One day while browsing the self-help section in a Barnes & Noble bookstore I came across the work of Dr. Caroline Leaf. I held open her book, Switch On Your Brain, and read the scripture from 2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” She talked about how toxic thinking leads to toxic choices, but that through neuroplasticity, we can rewire our thoughts to produce new habits and patterns of behavior. I felt like I’d struck gold!
I was well aware of God’s instructions in scripture to renew our minds & to take all wrong thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. The truth was I didn’t really understand how to do this.
In essence, Dr. Leaf’s work showed how science proved the scriptures correct, and her Neurocycle Program provided the framework I needed to rewire the thoughts and memories from a broken past into a new and vibrant future.
The devil is a masterful liar and uses our past sins and the sins of our bloodline to shackle us and keep us from walking in the freedom found in Christ Jesus. Scriptures tell us his main goals are to steal, kill, and destroy. He was successful in stealing my peace and happiness; and had convinced me my children, friends, and family were better off without me. He was almost successful in killing me and destroying the lives of the people I loved dearly. Only God knows how devastating it would have been for my sons to lose their mother at ages 10 and 14.
The truth was I struggled to find and keep sobriety because of lies I was still coming into agreement with. I knew God loved me and that He had wonderful plans for my life, but until I renewed my mind and came out of agreement with the lies the devil had programmed into my thoughts, I wouldn’t be able to walk in authority as an adopted child of the Most High God.
When I gave my life to Christ, my salvation unlocked a full benefits package I had yet to tap into. It’s like I inherited a fortune but didn’t go to the bank to make a withdrawal. With the help of the Holy Spirit, I began to replace my toxic thinking with the truth of God. I was loved, I was valuable, I was capable of doing impossible things because Christ lived in me. As I remained securely attached to the vine like the scripture describes in John 15:5, my life began to produce love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Where I once lacked happiness, now I truly had abounding joy no matter the circumstances.
Healing in my soul – my mind, will and emotions, had released God’s blessings to operate in my life in ways I never thought imaginable. Fast forward to Father’s Day 2021. In the early hours of the morning I awoke from a fantastically vivid dream. Everyone dreams of course, but I’m not very aware of my dreams and rarely do I remember them. This one was different and kept replaying in my mind.
I decided to get out of bed and write the dream down. I opened up my laptop at 4 AM in the quiet of my living room. In the dream I had a ministry called Day One of Sobriety. As I wrote out the details, typing out Day One of Sobriety became cumbersome. I decided to write it as an acronym, and as I typed out D-1-O-S, the font I was using made the #1 look like a capital letter I. There I sat and looked at D-I-O-S – DIOS – the Spanish word for God. It was then it struck me like lightning that I’d had a dream from God. I would one day start a mind renewal ministry to help others experience the transformative love of God to break free from limitations and step into their God-given identity and purpose.
That day is here and God is using me to teach thousands of people the scientific and biblical mind renewal solutions that break destructive habits.
Addiction isn’t about drinking and drugging, it’s about idols. What are you using to distract or disengage yourself from painful thoughts? Well before I got caught up with drinking, I was addicted to comfort food, shopping, and online games. All had become idols.
Sobriety isn’t about abstaining from alcohol, but rather sobriety is a sound and disciplined mind, full of self-control. When I go through turbulent times now, I turn to God as my source of peace. He provides guidance and strength when I am weak, worried, or in fear. He sustains me and is a permanent solution, not a temporary bandaid.
Well - there you have it! My turbulent childhood that led to destructive adult choices has been redeemed and restored through Jesus Christ – He’s taken the ashes of my testimony and created this podcast to bring healing and wholeness to others. Won’t you join me on this journey?
I invite you to head over to our Mind Renewal Solution Made Simple Facebook group. I’ve pinned an interview I did recently with Dr. Caroline Leaf called “Healing Addiction.” You’ll hear more about my journey and why I decided to become one of Dr. Leaf’s 10 world-wide trained Neurocycle Facilitators. I’ve also posted several key scriptures on mind renewal along with the science that proves it can be done!
DISCLAIMER: The Day One of Sobriety blog is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult your physician or doctor for all medical advice.
