After the deaths of her sister and her mother, Heidi thought she didn’t have much more to lose. She was wrong.
Hoping a change of scenery would help with her grief, Heidi moved to Fort Bragg in North Carolina and got married. However, the marriage crumbled under the weight of Heidi’s drug use and her husband’s alcoholism. Heidi returned to Oregon and asked her father for help. “My family is very understanding but they kind of pushed me away when I was in my addiction.”
Heidi had been through several rehab programs in the past with no success, but she knew she needed to try again. She encountered something very different at Union Gospel Mission: God. “I knew Him but I had never read the Bible until I came here. It’s amazing how recovery and the Bible go together. Every day is a life-changing experience.”
In previous programs, Heidi could never stay sober for longer than seven months. “I would always slip back into things. This time, I don’t feel like that,” she says. “It’s just amazing. Every day you wake up and you learn something new!”
After her devastating losses, Heidi now has everything to gain. She is working toward her GED and thinking about various career paths. She has restored relationships with her dad, her son and her daughter. And she has found lasting peace in Jesus Christ. “I read my Bible every night,” Heidi says.
Thank you for helping Heidi and so many troubled women find a welcoming place to recover from loss, hurt and addiction.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. – 1 John 1:7
Check out other stories of hope in our upcoming newsletter and on our blog, 365 Days of Hope.
