Latest / The HighDive / Ep. 9 | Stories of Hope | Navigating Addiction

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Ep. 9 | Stories of Hope | Navigating Addiction · The HighDive

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to the High Dive Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: This is the podcast of Calvary Baptist Church here in Columbus, Georgia.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you were just finding us for the first time, we're glad you you did.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, you're coming back for our newest episode today.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Our goal on this High Dive podcast is to go deeper in God's word, deeper into stories of life, uh, ultimately deeper into stories of God's grace that he continues to write in his people and through his people.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we're in the middle of this series that we're choosing to call Stories of Hope.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of running and coinciding with our Psalms of Summer journey that we're navigating through as a church family.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think this is probably like chapter four in our stories of hope journey.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, Quinn and Crystal, we're really, really glad that you guys are with us today.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for being a part of this.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and intentionally, you guys are here today.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: We're joined with you guys because you each have individual stories, stories of hope that we pray that uh we're all able to hear for you, particularly.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of been a story of navigating through addiction, navigating through sobriety, ultimately healing, and God's beautiful story of redemption.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really excited to kind of hear your story today.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully this is encouraging for all of us.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I think this is uh has the potential to be a really sweet, honest, maybe even hard conversation.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I mean the reality is that addiction affects a lot of people.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like uh we're maybe as just a broad general question before we even get into each other's story.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh Quinn, you use you working around addiction all the time.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like um give us an idea of the impact that you observe that addiction has on people.
• 2:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: So it it it doesn't it doesn't discriminate about who it grabs, it can be anybody, anybody can be taken in by addiction, but it's uh it's a pretty massive impact on people's lives, and all the way from the person that's actually the addict to the mom to the grandmother to the children.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_03: So it it's not just that one person, it's usually like a whole generational cycle that's been handed down and continuously being handed down.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I mean this is part of your personal story that we'll get into, but this is also kind of part of your ministry.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like you interact with this every day in your work.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you do?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you work?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: How do you engage with this?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I work at Valley Rescue Mission.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_03: I'm the coordinator of first phase men's addiction recovery, and also do all the food coordination there as well.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: But I usually get them um right off the street, right out of jail.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um, whatever scenario they're in, it's it's it's usually they're still just dealing with traumatic issues.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: And some of the issues are very current, and some of the issues happened when they were a child.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: And some of the stuff is is horrifying to hear and go through with the the men as they're trying to navigate their life and figure out exactly why did this happen to me when I was five and why did somebody I trust put me in this whole situation, and they're still dealing with that, and you're trying to break down generational cycles and and walls that people have built up, and you're trying to be somebody that's of of good character and trustworthy for them to lay their burdens out and finally say the thing that they've been holding in for so many years.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I I'll just interject kind of uh our our target audience is the people of our church, the people here in Columbus, Georgia.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're not familiar with the amazing ministry that the Valley Rescue Mission does that Quinn's just mentioned, check it out.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it'll be a great place that you may want to volunteer support, just be aware of, link arms within our city.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can Google them, or maybe producer Blake will put a link in the show notes to uh Valley Rescue Mission that people can explore more about it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: But uh kind of back to this episode, uh, we're gonna talk about addiction.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think when as we do, our stories may be unique, but I think the reminder is that it is it is not any discriminator.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: There are more and more people that are impacted.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so we'll talk about that, but uh I pray that what people hear is that this ultimately is a conversation about redemption.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's about Jesus, it's about a faithful God who is merciful and gracious that continues to heal people, uh, even out of the pit of what may seem like hopeless despair or the grasp of something like addiction and maybe teach us to sing songs again of the glory of God.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I pray that's where this conversation goes.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: So uh again, welcome.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're glad you're here.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh please click link, subscribe, follow, share, all that stuff.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: But more importantly, let's dive into this conversation.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: So uh maybe to begin, maybe if you'll each just briefly introduce yourself uh and and let's start with now a little snapshot of what's your life right now.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, um, well, I'm Crystal, and um I've been a member of the Calvary Church here about four-ish years.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I have a son, um Paxton, who is nine, he'll be 10 soon.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I pretty much was a single mom his entire life, um, up until God placed this wonderful man in our lives.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we um had a whirlwind romance and got married within less than six months of knowing each other.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's awesome.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Congratulations, thank you, newlyweds.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: You married us.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, I was there.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was a great day.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was, I will say, I will compliment you on the beauty of your wedding.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh, I mean, just straight up worshipful.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we just you know, I had a guy on the keyboard, we just sang praises to God, and it was a very Christ-centered wedding.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it was beautiful.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, Crystal, where'd you grow up?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I mean, I was born in Arizona in Tucson, and I was there for a while.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, did a little moving around within Arizona, but then I moved here when I was in uh eighth grade.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I was 14.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Military brought us here.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: My mom was dating a guy that moved us here.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we did a little back and forth.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I've ended up back here again uh my sophomore year of high school, and I've been here ever since.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I guess in 2015 I took a little hiatus and left town and uh ended up in Pennsylvania where my mom was living with her husband.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then I came back.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Gotcha.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: How and how what year did you come back to 2021.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right, great.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Quinn, where'd you grow up?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's your childhood connection and all that?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm a I'm a transplant.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: I came here from Jonesboro, Georgia, same hometown.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Jonesboro.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: I lived there until I was about 21, 22 years old, and then I moved here and I've been here since.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: We had uh a two-year thing when we went back to Hampton when I had my daughter, but uh we came down here shortly after that and I hadn't left.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: South Atlanta, baby.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I guess maybe just I don't really know where to start with this because you've got two individual stories that obviously connect now.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, ladies first, how about we start there?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um kind of how did your what kind of addiction did you start with initially, and how did it enter into your life?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um alcohol was predominantly uh my substance of choice.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I did not discriminate against other substances.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um those just I was able to kind of put those down at any given point in time.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was the alcohol that I really, it just had that stronghold on me.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it started 13, 14.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I I don't, I guess I wasn't an I was an alcoholic the day I was born, I say.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I just think that it was something that I was I was born this way, and I was bound to, if I picked up a drink, I was going to become an alcoholic.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so the first time I really had a drink was I think 13, 14.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Were you by yourself?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Were you with people?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, I was it was New Year's Eve.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was with my grandparents actually, yeah.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at a New Year's Eve party, and everybody was drinking champagne, and there was this one lady that was one of their friends, and she just kept refilling my glass.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up drunk and we had a great time.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was shooting pool and I'd like shot the best game pool of my life, and um, it just made me a completely different person, and it just opened me up a lot more.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And um I wouldn't say that I can I didn't continue to drink alcoholically like that, or you know, from that time on, it gradually kind of took a hold of me.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: So at what point, if you can go back into that experience, at what point do you realize it's now controlling you?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh honestly, it was at not till until the end did I realize that it was really a problem.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think I I always thought that I drank differently than other people.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I hung out with people that we all kind of drank the same to where it was an all-night thing and we kind of drank all the time.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that was just the people I was hanging around.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize until until after I had Paxton that it was like this is a real problem and I really got to do something about it.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it had already gotten to, I mean, to where it was a point of there was no controlling it.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I want to just kind of ask a couple of questions and and Quinn, as we get into your story, some of this may bleed over, but um, you know, I I've been very vocal uh to the church about my addiction story.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it was pornography.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um for you, you're you're talking about the alcohol.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and praise God, we can experience freedom.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: So for you though, you just just okay, it started out somewhat innocently, like I'm celebrating New Year's, okay.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you made a connection then through those examples of it's social, like I'm I'm hanging out with my friends.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Did it how quick in though, I'm imagining though it became like you started drinking by yourself?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, like how early in that looking back and that addiction timeline did it start to become it's no longer social.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm just I need this or I'm doing this by myself?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would say probably about 2014, 2015 is so how many years into that journey, uh, roughly probably 10 okay 10 to 15 years.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a little little ways into it.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh was there uh you may have just said this because you made a correlation to Paxton, but at some point then you had this wake-up call.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like you was like, whoa, I've got a problem.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of walk us through what that experience was like or what was that shift in your mind?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I was at the point, um, we we were living in Pennsylvania.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: I had him there.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And um I was at the point where I was working at a daycare center, but I was drinking before my shift.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would go, I would, I would drink enough in the morning to kind of take the shakes and kind of get me through till about lunchtime.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would drive to the liquor store on my lunchtime, my lunch break and get whatever else, another bottle, and I would drink on my lunch break to get me through to the end of my work.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then on my way home, I would get more if I needed to.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would drink the whole rest of the night.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, is this beer or is this liquor?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it was liquor.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that this is when it got, I mean, it was real bad.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now I was working at a restaurant prior to the daycare center and I lost my job because I walked out because I was drunk.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I was drinking on the job there too.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And being a bartender, that's where I was uh in the restaurant.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what everybody does when they work in restaurants, but not everybody has children to go home to.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, when I was pregnant with him, I did I did well.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't drink.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was once I had him, and I went one of my best friends actually brought me a little airplane shot while I was in the hospital after right after I'd given birth.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but the turning the day that I realized that I needed to go to rehab was um I was driving in the car with Paxton and I got pulled over.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I had just taken a shot of vodka while I was driving.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I was the cop was coming up to my car and I was fumbling around in the back seat trying to put empty bottles in his diaper bag and under the seat, put them anywhere I could so that he wouldn't see them.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And Paxton was with me.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I could have lost him that day and I didn't.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And looking back, I didn't know it at the time, but that was God's grace.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I ended up with like$500 worth of fines for I think it was speeding, I didn't have um proof of insurance, my registration, I think was at like it was just a laundry list of items.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: I got a ticket because I didn't use my blinker when it said I was actually drunk.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, in the grand scheme of things, the$500 fine was a whole lot better than having my son taken away from me.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I drew got home, drove home that day and I pulled out all of these empty liquor bottles from my room.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking just like tiny ones, like handles that I was buying, and I had them hidden around my room.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I lived with my mom and I brought her into my room and I showed her everything because she had no idea how bad it had gotten.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because she drinks too, just not in the same way that I do.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so she said, Well, what are we like?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're going to rehab.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is it.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not happening anymore.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so she did.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: She got on the phone and called rehabs and she found a place that would take me the next day, I think.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So before we get too far into the sobriety story, because that may be a bridge.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And before I come to you, Quinn.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Can I just because there may be somebody listening today that's like, that is me right now.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: I completely like what how would you describe for you um what was the mindset?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like a uh obviously you you mentioned like you'd get the shake, so you need this, but was there any part of you that was like, uh, this is probably not good, but I'm gonna do it anyway?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: Or did you find yourself justifying her?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or like uh was there any um self-shaming that was a part of it?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like, or was just kind of just roll with it, kind of get us in that mindset of that addicted personality when I'm in the throes of it.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I was very shameful of all of it.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um I had a best friend that was here in town, and we were in the throes of addiction together long distance.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would like take a shot together, and both of us like it, I would throw up sometimes just from that, and I would have to keep, I would have to take another one just to get it down because I knew my body needed it.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would have to just like force it down, and she was doing the same thing, and so I was able to justify like it's not just me, like this is happening to her too, like it's not that big of a deal.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I always was able to say, like, I take care of my son, I have my license, I pay rent, it's not that bad, have a job, it's not that bad.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what I later realized is it was I had all of the yet.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't lost my license yet.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't, you know, all of those things and they were to come if I would have kept on.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for sharing that.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I um thanks for just being open and honest about your story and that experience.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Quinn, let's shift to you.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of like um how did addiction manifest itself in you?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of how did it start?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: What was that journey like for you?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's it's uh I didn't really stand a chance when it came to alcohol.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, both my parents were heavy drinkers.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um, my first drink was actually at Wildweed Cafe off Terra Boulevard.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_03: I was eight years old.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: I know Terra Boulevard well.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: My dad was uh he was eight years old.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was eight in front of the entire restaurant, you know what I mean.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_03: He's screaming at me to drink a beer.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so that was my first, but I hated it, you know what I mean.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't I didn't care for it then.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: But uh my drinking, I I started off drinking alone.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: It would be uh Mr.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_03: Boston's and whatever cigarettes were left behind, but it was just dealing with stuff that I was too too young to know how to navigate.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like I had no idea what was going on in my life.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: But I just had a I had a life going one night, and next thing everything was upended.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: So my parents were going through a terrible, terrible divorce.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: And then uh my dad decided that he said that uh he just came in my room one night and woke me up and said that the the Lord had told him it was okay if he killed himself and that it was okay to take me with him.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_03: And he had uh a 357 Magnum, a bottle of Xanax, and a bottle of Jack Daniels, and we just sat in the living room.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: And luckily he passed out, and when he passed out, I called, I called 911, and everybody shot me, and everybody showed up, all the ambulances, and uh he ended up losing his job, and my mom you know threw everything at him.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: It was just a nasty divorce.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: And the guy that she got with next was he was terrible, you know.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_03: He he was into heroin and meth and coke and alcohol, so it was just everywhere, everywhere I went.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: So instead of going to school a lot of the mornings, I would just wake up and drink and just miss school.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: So most of my eighth grade year, I just had I had teachers that cared for me, it's the reason why I passed.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: So wow, so it you started feeding this addiction at a young age.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you said your first drink was at eight.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: About how old were you before you were starting to drink by yourself?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: 12, 11 or 12.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so was that for you if you kind of go back into that mindset?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Was it because you were trying to escape something?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was because just what was modeled in front of you?
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you think was the motivation or mindset at that point?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_03: It was definitely modeled my entire life.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_03: That if there was a celebration, we're drinking, if there's a problem, we're drinking, if it's Tuesday, we're drinking.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: My dad was a drinker.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I talk about my anxiety all the time too.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_03: Is I never knew what version of my dad was coming home because you never know if he stopped off at Hooters and got lit before he came home, if he's gonna be angry when he gets home, or if he's gonna be overly loving, you know what I mean, just bombarding you with hugs and telling you you're the best kid, and then or if he's crying about stuff that's gone on in his life.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: He uh he lost his mom, she committed suicide, and that it haunted him, you know.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't I didn't find out all the the if and like the whys until after he passed.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but he blamed himself and she blamed him for it too.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so that that haunted my dad.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and uh he was just a broken man, and then he he just leaned on alcohol and and cocaine and meth in order to get by.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't really see it at 12 that you know doing too much coke.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't really wasn't my eyes, I wasn't open to that until I was 15.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you just moved from 12 to 15.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just kind of feel free to walk us through as much of that journey that you want to share, you know, through those years and how that uh I'll ask a kind of a compounded question, like how did that addiction grow?
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: How did it start to manifest itself?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of what was the mindset?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Was there was it completely normalized?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Was it social?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Was it shameful?
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, kind of what was your mindset through about all that?
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: I never felt any shame about what I was doing then because I a lot of times I was by myself, but I did it.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_03: I ended up getting some friends when I was closer to 15.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: But 12 to 15, I was literally just at home drinking, or I was the kid that his parents were never home.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, you can come to my house and do whatever you wanted to.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there was it was a free-for-all.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: I was um unmonitored, unless.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Checked.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um, my mom would come home every now and then and put grocers in, or my dad would do it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_03: But they just kind of my house was the hub for me, and then they just kind of went and did their lives so they could stay away from each other because they were so toxic, yeah.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: You know, but they just I just kind of got left in limbo there for a while, but I was I was doing everything.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, how at what point in that journey then did you did you realize you had a problem?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Completely blind to it.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, obviously at some point in the journey though, you realize you had a problem.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: There was a wake-up call somewhere.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I I've I I flunked in ninth grade a math class and I'd never felt anything.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_03: So, but it was because I was I was smoking weed and taking chorus seeding all the time.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_03: So I mean I would be in school and like the walls would be melting.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: And that's where I that's where I was mentally.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: I couldn't, I really wasn't made of much then.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: But I had I had some decent friends, but they were doing the same thing.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I didn't surround by myself with anybody that was of of good character whatsoever.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: So take us through then this may be a a time leap, but at some point in that um that addiction obviously took you, as we say about sin, it takes you further than you ever wanted to go and keeps you longer than you ever wanted to stay.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um but as we started to enter into that sobriety journey, like what was the the catalyst to you to start that sobriety journey?
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_03: There, I mean, there have been a few wake-up calls, but I'd say the one that was the biggest one is um it was after both my parents had passed, and uh I was ready to kill myself.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: I was living and working at Motel 6 and nothing I'm talking about.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_03: There was not one happy bone in my body.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: I was done trying to trying to make other people happy so I can enjoy their their moments of happiness.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_03: I was just I was written off.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: I was done.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I just remember laying there on the floor and just puddles, all I could see is puddles looking up.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I had the gun in my hand, and it's it's literally I didn't pray anything, you know what I mean?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_03: It was literally the Holy Spirit interceded on my behalf and prayed for me.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: And uh I ended up going to the Bradley Center and having to stay there for 10 days and detoxing.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_03: And if you know anything about how long to detox, it's normally one to three days, but I was in there for 10.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_03: So you come out of the Bradley to the Valley Rescue Mission immediately to the Bath.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so what was that what was that journey of healing like for you?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: So this would have been my second time through Valley.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: So um I knew I missed something the first time.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_03: I and I I I had to put all my pride to the side.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there's a level of surrender when you finally literally you've came to the end of yourself.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um I decided that if I was if I was ready to kill myself, then I was I'd already surrendered everything, really, if you think about it.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_03: So everything I loved the most, my daughter, my son, everything was so far away.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I was I was not there for them.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like I just gotta lock in.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I gotta lock in and get everything that he'll give me.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_03: And so I just literally I I let every emotion finally come up, and I had to sit there and face every single thing, you know what I mean?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: And I had beautiful men around me that were going through the same traumas.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it was like God set Jacob right there in front of me, and it's like you two go heal.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know what I mean.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_03: And most of our conversations were this is gonna sound terrible, but it was it was finally the confessing, yeah, you know what I mean, to get all this stuff off my chest and uh to to lay my brokenness out.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I've never trusted anybody in my life like that.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, we just sat in room 11 and talked, or sat in the chapel and talked, and just it just seems like if you look back at it, we probably didn't talk that much.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know what I mean.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: But when in the moment, those 40-minute conversations felt like a lifetime.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, because it's like I'm saying the thing that broke me when I was 12 to where I didn't tell anybody what my dad did when I was 12.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: I held that in, you know what I mean?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because it was why would I go tell everybody what my dad just did?
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I had to hide it.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I had to hide the brokenness from the time I was a child.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: Like he was a baseball coach, but you know, if I didn't strike out somebody the right way, then I I mean I was catching all the way home.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: The Georgia Bulldogs lost, you know what I mean?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_03: My mom would pack us up and we'd go to Alexander City.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_03: So it was, I just finally had somebody that I could talk to.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_03: And then and having Jacob and finally saying these things, it's like you hide so much from Jesus too.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_03: And now that I'm having these conversations, like I'm just like Jesus, I don't want none of it.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's all too heavy for me.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's it's I don't know if I need this later, you know, if you're gonna build off this, whatever you want, but I'm I'm done going back and picking it up and yoking myself back up in this bondage, and I can only go so far in life.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like I've only been able to go so far, and it's like I can accomplish things, but I wasn't able to steward them.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I can get so far, but it all crumble.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I was no matter how I went, I just kept becoming my dad in one sense or the other.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like I had to do something completely different, yeah.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Completely.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and ask this question and make a couple comments to give you time to think through it.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: But get ready, Crystal, you'll get a chance to answer this question in a minute.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, clearly, I know the Quinn today.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: I did not know the Quinn then.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: And anybody that knows you, I mean, the Lord has just got a hold of your heart.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like you are passionate for Jesus.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the the question is um, and you may have just answered this, but when and how did Jesus kind of really get a hold of your heart?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um as you're thinking through that or before you answer, uh in response to what you just said, as we're reading through the Psalms, like there's so much of what David is crying out to God over he's crushed.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some you know, for for example, sometimes he used like, why am I so downcast in my soul?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or even even Psalm 51, like, created me a clean heart, because he's just he's been awakened to the severity of his sin.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I I had this uh inappropriate connection with Bathsheba.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: I had his husband, her husband killed, and I, you know, it's like, what in the world have I done?
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, but it required him getting to that, like I think he would call it contrite heart.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm naming this, I'm not hiding from it, it's just out in the open.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what I loved about what you just shared in your story is conceptually, spiritually, we get that, but sometimes we may not quite understand how, not always, but sometimes it's the community with others that helps us reach that place.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it was that that willingness for you to have those open, vulnerable conversations with your friend who's also in the same journey with you.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that that connection with others is what helped lead you to that place.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or I guess truthfully, even when we look at that connection of David, it was Nathan coming to him and calling, like, bro, you've you're this man, you know.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm so grateful for stories in my life hearing your testimony, how God has used relationships with others in that journey.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: But uh ultimately your relationship with Jesus is what shines so brightly.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Where and how did you meet Jesus in that journey?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: When did he really get a hold of all of you?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so at Crossroads, we do Holy Spirit baptisms, and it's it was an integral part of it.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I had been praying and praying like because we'd done them, and like I'd never felt anything.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I was just kind of going with what everybody else was doing.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: And this one, I was so serious and just so surrendered, and I just wanted, I just prayed that he would use me.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, like, I don't want nothing from this, I don't want anything.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_03: I just I want to be used.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_03: And when it came to be my time, I had been talking to God about all this stuff my entire program.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_03: And the man that came up and baptized me in the Holy Spirit said so much of the prayers, literally, that only me and God know.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_03: And the ultimate end of it was you were healed, you're healed.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I just truly believed in myself.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_03: I I believed Jesus at his word that I was healed.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then I had a dream shortly after, and it was Jesus, and it's so wild, so wild.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I didn't see his face or anything, but I could see his head right here in my heart, and he had a sword, and it was the puddles that I would I cried, and they're coming at me through this field.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: And Jesus is literally just slashing them, and I knew it like that was a suicide right there.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: And when he got to the next one, I knew it was depression.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: And when he when he got to the next one, I just I knew what they were when he was as he was just killing them.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I just believed, I would just woke up and I was like, I'm not gonna be that person anymore.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not, I'm just gonna take Jesus at his word.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, if if I have so many deep theological questions, which I have them, but I'm like, I'm not, I can't rest my case here.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I'll talk to him in heaven.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh he'll he'll answer all these these questions right now.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_03: So far, I just want I want to know the Jesus that healed the man at the pool that had an infirmity for 38 years, because he had all these excuses too.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that was me.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: I was 38 years old at the time.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, it's it's it's game on Jesus, you know, let's let's go.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: And he did.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_03: He took off and he just started showing me things.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: And every season that I was in the Bible, he was just smacking me.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: Some of it was hilarious, you know.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_03: Jesus, he has a great sense of humor.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_03: A great sense of humor.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_03: But he'd also, he would, he would just smack me with a Bible verse, and it would be everything that I didn't want to hear that day.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I don't want to hear that.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: Right tell me about myself, God, you know.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then I would just go through it, and it was Crossroads was such a great place to meditate and process through things.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: And he showed me how to grieve.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one of the things, if you you know how you don't really recognize that you're in the blessing until you take a quick little look back.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_03: My first program, we had a teacher, Robert Nichols, and I gave him a quick testimony of my parents, and I had a letter at the time from my mom, and I'd asked her what her thoughts of Jesus were, and hers was basically reincarnation.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if she didn't get it right on this time, she would have a second chance to come back through.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, You said you say that they live close.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Yeah, man, a mile down the road.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Give me the address.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_03: And he he went to my parents' house after class that night and led both of my parents to Jesus.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, four years down the road after they've passed, you know, now I know where my parents are.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: So I've been living this life where either I'm gonna drink because they're here or I'm gonna destroy myself because they're gone.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I was treating it like a period, like that was it, I'm never gonna see them again.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_03: You know, but it took them, it took me realizing I'm trying to get where they are.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, my parents, the version that they are now, they're they're they're not broken anymore.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, they're in the love and embrace of Christ, and they don't even know what it's like to be broken.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_03: So my mom had spinal bifida, carpal tunnel, rheumatoid, and that took a toll on her.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know, she broke a hip and she was wheelchair bound forever.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_03: So that's not the version that my mom's existing today.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so I stopped romancing and and living in this life that was just predicated on whether or not, you know, I honored them with my depression and just decided that like Jesus says to go be a new creation.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: You know, so I just I bit into what he said.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I love I love the the simplistic beauty of what you just said.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: At at you reach a place where you resolved, I don't have to have all my theological answers, the questions answered.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: I just by faith have to take Jesus at his word.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, which is that is in that's a beautiful expression of what confession and repentance is, of what surrender is.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: So thanks for sharing that.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I'm sure we could we could dig into that more, but in the in the interest of time, let's shift now to crystal.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we're picking back up in your story on uh and and you even just you you kind of touched on this a little bit of this uh we could call it an intervention, but when you willingly invited your mom in to see, and then she initiated this step toward, okay, we've got to go into some kind of a recovery.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of just walk us through that story of your recovery, and maybe as you tell that story, go ahead and interject.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like at what point in your story did Jesus just get a hold of you?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I so I went to rehab, I did detox also.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was there about a week.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I knew in that moment that I never wanted to go through this again because I had detox was awful where I was.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um there was all my roommate was super crazy.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was just it was terrible.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, why am I here with all these crazy people?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm not crazy.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm not crazy.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I was right where I was supposed to be.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the rehab that I went to, so I when my mom dropped me off, and of course she has my almost two-year-old son.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think I'm going for 28 days.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: And 28 days comes and goes, and I call her and I'm like, okay, I'm ready.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm ready to come home.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Come get me.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, nope.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: She said, your insurance has agreed to let you go through for the long-term program.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're there another 90 days.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Another 90 days.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: So wow.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: So four months altogether, not you know, not as long as some of the programs.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's a couple, obviously, his program's longer.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's a women's program here that's not the same as Valley, but theirs is about nine to fifteen months too.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, four months doesn't seem like anything, but for me, it was an eternity.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: And also because I just didn't want to be there.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that was God intervening because and doing for me what I couldn't do for myself.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would have left after 28 days and I would have drank again because I didn't, I didn't have a solid foundation yet.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um so my beliefs prior to and during addiction were I was very confused.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know, I didn't know how to believe in God.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know, I just didn't know.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I knew there was a God, um, but I wasn't real sure.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't tangible to me.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so it felt like it wasn't real.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was a lot of growing up.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um going through this extra 90 days, they put you in a smaller group of women upstairs, and you're restricted to where you can't go downstairs with the girls that have just gotten there, and your workload is a lot more, and all these other things.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent so much time trying to find God in there that I never did really.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I know now that he was with me all the time, of course.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but my counselor would just constantly throw all of these like spirituality packets at me, and then she'd throw anger packets at me because I was angry.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was so mad.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the spirit spirit spirituality part of it, I was trying so hard to find it that I was getting upset that I couldn't find it.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then your anger starts to feed the yeah.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think that's a lot of the reason of why I couldn't find God either, because I wasn't allowing myself to.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I got out of rehab um like two days after my birthday in August um of 2018.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had missed Paxton's second birthday.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and but I've never had a drink since then.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, April of 2018, and I've not had to drink since then.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I've dealt with a lot going, you know, forward with in sobriety.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, life has not been easy.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I immediately got into AA because that's what they taught us in rehab was you know, make 90 meetings in 90 days and get a sponsor and do the steps.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I was in the big book a little bit in rehab, but not enough to really get a grasp of it.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I went to plenty of meetings.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I found a home group in Pennsylvania and interacted with people, but I never got a sponsor.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was a year and a half sober before finally um someone in one of my meetings was like, he said, she needs a sponsee and you need a sponsor and put us together.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Matchmaker.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm still friends with her today.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and she's the one, the very first one that took me through the steps.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would not say that I had the greatest spiritual awakening at the end of doing the steps, but I was I was better than I was.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wasn't fully, I, you know, the fourth step, they want you to to write down um all of the harms that people have done to you when in reality it's you're looking at yourself and and the part that you played in all of this.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and to realize that these people didn't do anything to you.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like you did all of this to you and to them.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I did a fourth step and I did it as honestly as I could at the time, but it didn't completely free me.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um fast forward to moving down here.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we came back because I, in COVID, uh, when I was still up there, I sh started talking to a guy that I had been with on and off for you know a decade or more.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um we were in addiction together and um spent lots of time.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was just, it was, it was toxic then.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I thought that he was better as well.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought since I'm better and now like we can be good together, um moved down here um and realized pretty quickly that things were, I mean, it was probably a year and a half, two years of living with him.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: We got engaged and um I very, very quickly realized that he was not okay.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he he was not done doing the things that he was doing.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I had to figure out how to leave.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I wasn't working at the time.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Pax was in school here at Calvary, and we started going to church.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we started because of Paxton.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, his little five-year-old kindergarten self came to me one day and um he said he's just started asking questions about about God and about the Bible.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he because he was hearing about it in school.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't answer him.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I had no, I was like, I don't know.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so one day I said, well, let's go to church and let's find out.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um I've tried several, several different churches around before with growing up here.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I didn't know where to go.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so obviously I came here because it was connected to his school.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so um we started coming and we started digging deeper, and then I started realizing um that the situation I was in was was going to get bad.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was gonna get very scary soon, and it was just not gonna be a good situation um if things kept going that same way.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I did not have a job.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I did not have anything really except my car and the things that I brought down here with me, you know, personal items.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a group of women in AA.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I I decided there was a day that I left.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was February 20th of 2023, when I finally like packed a bunch of our stuff and I was like, I'm gonna go for a couple of days and uh stay with some friends, and we're just gonna we'll we'll figure this out later.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was the last day I ever stepped foot in that house.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it got really bad to where I had to call the cops to get him to even let me in to get the rest of our things.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he ended up putting everything out in the front yard, and I had to come and get it that, you know.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was a bunch of AA friends that helped me through all of that.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, your father.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: In law helped me find a place to live.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was able to get a job with a friend uh cleaning houses.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this house that your father-in-law put us in um or helped us get, he uh it was we had no furniture because he wouldn't, my ex wouldn't give me any of my furniture.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: I moved down here with an entire house full of furniture, washers, dryers, couches, I mean, everything.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he didn't give me any of that back.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so we stayed the night in our house the first time with absolutely nothing, um, except, like I said, some of the stuff that he gave us um that he'd put out on the front lawn.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but no couches, no beds, no, you know, any of that kind of stuff.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: And before the week was over, we had an entire house filled.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, between AA and uh it was, I think it was mostly AA people because I didn't really know people in church that well.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was they all came together, and whether it was stuff that they bought and gave to us or stuff that they went through their house and gave us, um, Paxton did have a bed because he did let me have his bed.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that is when I really leaned on Jesus because I hadn't been baptized yet.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had just started when I knew that I was getting ready to have to make this move.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, God was preparing me already because there was the um women's ministry was doing the run for God.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I jumped right into that.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't know anybody there when I got there.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Pax and I did that whole entire program together.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um through that part or that program, I ended up getting involved in the women's ministry uh mentor mentee program that we had for a little while.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a mentor that was able to help me walk through these first like beginnings of knowing God and knowing Christ.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that's what that was my turning point.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_00: And just and then I finally realized once I like broke out on my own and all of these things happened.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's one thing my mom just I just will never forget it.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: She would always tell me um when I was trying to move out and trying to do things, and she's like, Crystal, how?
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't know, but God's going to do it.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Well, how, Crystal?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you don't have any money, you don't have blah blah blah.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't know.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, is he just gonna drop a million dollars from the sky, Crystal?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, no, but like maybe, maybe it'd be that'd be awesome if he did.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know how it's gonna happen, but he's gonna do it.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I know he's gonna do it.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's when all of you know the house got filled with all of the furniture we needed and everything.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and I called her one day and I said, I told you, I told you he would do it.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: And once through all those prayers and tears and just everything, and the I mean, crying out to God in the middle of the night, and just I've never prayed so much in my life.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's when I decided to get baptized, and that was in April of 23.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I just my life has not been the same since.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um still hasn't been easy, you know.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've dealt with um I've I've dealt with my grandfather passing away.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've dealt with my mom and my grandma losing their entire house in a fire.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there's been struggles, but um I've had Jesus to lean onto this entire time now.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that he'll pull he'll pull me through anything.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because if he could pull me through that, then I know that he can pull me through anything.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as as we have said before, and your testimony just is affirming this, like the faithfulness of God in the past can give us hope in whatever we're in in the present.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh your story, you you identified a couple of key markers.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was uh you even used this word, when you got pulled over, and it was the$500 fine looking back, that was God's grace.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um when when your mom insisted that you stay a little bit longer, that was God's grace.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: When when friends showed up and helped you furnish your house, God's grace, like on and on and on.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think for both of you, I would because we we as we started in the beginning, we don't want this just to be a testimonial about addiction.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: We ultimately want this to be a a picture of redemption and God's grace.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so how has your understanding of grace changed through this story?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: God's grace is it's it's wild and it is so sometimes it's like I I don't deserve it, you know, because it's it's so much I've done, but he loves me so much.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_03: And then you get to the Romans 5.8, you know what I mean.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_03: Before I was, you know, I was still a sinner and he died for me.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_03: And I I I I built a lot of my program off that.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but his grace to to redeem me, you know, just so you know, I can tell the story of just his glory.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_03: But the grace to forgive me to the point like where you like you said, to you get to the point where you finally forgive yourself.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_03: And that's nothing but grace to get to that point.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you've you've walked through so much and you've seen him carry you through over and over and over, even though you keep making mistakes and the Holy Spirit's convicting you, and you feel like the the lowest of the low and the greatest sinner of them all, and the whole time he's just sitting there grabbing you by the hand saying, Let's go.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's taking you to something, yes, like there's yes, you're not just stuck in the mire, as is even the psalmist said, You've brought me out Psalm 40, you've brought me all out of this miry pit.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: You've set my feet upon a rock, you even use that foundation, and you've established my going.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like I now I'm moving forward with you.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's beautiful.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_03: And we and we lived that, you know, and he's modeled that, and it's like it's just another truth.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's another truth that you see it, like he is who he says he is, and he will do it over and over again.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_03: And it not not only like you've seen it in AA, I've seen it in my program, but he's not only doing it for me at that one time, he's doing it for 30 other men at the exact same time.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: So he's in every single man's prayers, actually moving you through.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever Mary Clay they've got, you know, and you keep putting them on the same foundation, and it may look different, but it's the exact same action going through.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's the story of redemption.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's beautiful.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely is beautiful.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, anything you would add to that?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: He did a great job.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: He did a very good job.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe I'm I want to kind of start, you know, I'm I'm in the final approach.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so much through your story.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: You you've you've walked us through maybe the mindset of addiction and how it started.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: You you've highlighted the uniqueness of your story, how the how the Lord has met you and shown you grace and brought you through this and uh affirmed you, established your going.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: You've shared stories of of how He has uh used other people in your story, um, whether it was guys in the program, whether it was your mom calling you out, uh, whatever it may be.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there may be somebody that's watching or listening to this that they are uh maybe in one of two places, they are in the throes of addiction and they're not willing to admit it, or maybe they're willing to admit it, but they don't know what to do.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or perhaps they are on the backside of addiction, but they're looking for some encouragement on how their story can have an impact.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say to either or both of those people?
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're so much better.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: So, in the in the throes of addiction, one of the things you're always going to tend to do is isolate yourself.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you think your your situation's unique to yourself when it's not at all.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_03: And God will have a way out for you.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: He'll he'll never leave you in a situation that he won't guide you out of.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so many temptations have come along, and and it you you bear yourself down in this in this place that you feel so shameful or depressed or whatever it is, but you put yourself in this box and you feel like you're either too dirty or you're not worth it, but you truly are.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_03: You truly are, and you're just you're blinded, you're really blinded because you're too close to your problem.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_03: You're way too close to it.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're able to step out and go to a rehab, you don't have to come to Valley, but he'll put a link at the bottom.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to, you can call me and and you can talk to people like me and my team there, and you can see that there's like-minded people that have finally seen the light, and there's people who are very empathetic, and we've seen the darkness, and it's almost taken us, and we you know, we decided to reach back in and to pull people out, and it's it's proven time after time that if you just point people to Jesus, to Jesus, that He will do the work.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: We plant the seeds and he does the watering, and it just takes it takes that, and it's it's repet repetitive, and people lose the thought of what it really is.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: But when he says the faith of a mustard seed, that's really all it takes is maybe you are who you say you are.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I'll start there.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take you at your word.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_03: I'll take you at your word.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_03: My whole life has been broken, but of course, we live in a broken world.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_03: We live in a broken world and it will it will swallow you whole and it will make you feel some way.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're emotionally led by everything, you're gonna continuously live in this dark hole where you have highs and lows because maybe this one drink did make you feel some way, but what happens when you come down?
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_03: Or you do meth and you forget about everything because you want to mentally escape from everything, but when you come back, everything's still burnt.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_03: And it's finally time for a change.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's I I pray for you.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, there's there's light on the other side, and it's it's not a version of you that you can really even envision right now.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it really is that God when it when he's when he he's his thoughts are way higher.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know, his he knows who you are.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and there's parts missing of you that you keep trying to pump alcohol or pump drugs into, or if you just plug Jesus in, he will nurture you and guide you into this love that you cannot explain.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_03: You can't explain it, but it's so real and it's so true, and it it makes you not not prideful at all, but you're so grateful to have a God that did form you and knows you exactly and can fill you with everything that you've ever needed.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_03: Everything that you've needed, as long as you just keep Christ-centered and stay stay plugged in.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_03: So if you're if you're one of the ones that went through the program and all of a sudden now you're out of it and you're like, oh, well, God's not carrying me anymore.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's because you you've set up, you've set everything down.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you thought that you could go in and just kind of go and your your soil's not fertile.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or and maybe you've put your hope in the program rather than in Jesus.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: So so much of what you said, brother, that'll preach.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I pray that that is helpful, hopeful encouragement to someone who is in addiction.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what though, if you reflect back, what are some unhelpful things uh that things that people some even God-fearing Christians sometimes say to people in addiction, even though they mean well, what are some unhelpful things that you might?
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's just alcohol.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's the worst one.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_03: Alcohol is one of the biggest demons I've ever I've ever understood.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's legal.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, everybody's doing it.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'll s I'll stop tomorrow.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or I I think you even said like uh yet.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I uh that hadn't happened to me yet.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and those yet's will.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_03: My yet's 7 o'clock in the morning.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't drank yet, and then I couldn't make it past 7 or 1.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a story of hope.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um what is now that you are where you are, you're walking in freedom, God's blessed you with this beautiful home and marriage.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what's hope mean to you?
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: It means so much more now because I I could have never dreamed this life up.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_00: I could have never hoped for it.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I did hope for it and I prayed for it.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I honestly didn't think it was in the cards for me to to get married, and I was I was okay with that.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was getting to a point where I was talking to God and just being like, okay, like if you just want me to be with you forever, that's fine too.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_00: But if there is somebody, I'm still willing, also.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I wasn't even looking.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he just dropped this man right in my lap.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_03: And I was I was in the same mindset.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: I was I was just fully committed to my work and uh trying to serve and just fill in everything with time there, but I'd given up pretty much trying to to worry about finding somebody.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but hope, like, I don't if it's hope in the Lord, you know, I'm so confident in him.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_03: You know, like I don't even I I try not to set expectations, but every single one that I've set, he's just exceeded so much.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: Jenny, you know, I mean, time and time again, yeah, exceedingly abundantly above whatever we would even ask or imagine.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, he he prepared her for me.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's like the way that we love each other.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm able to have a soft love.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's like I come home and completely wrecked from the day, and she's just as loving as can be.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the same we love each other the way that it just is so natural.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's so natural.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: The way we never experienced it or had it modeled for us.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_03: Or how fast we check ourselves.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, and that makes sense too, because you understand each other, right?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_03: I know how I know exactly how that I don't want her to feel that way.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, she's had enough brokenness.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: I cannot, I cannot put that onto her.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: Because darkness, darkness is terrible, and I don't want to push her there.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just literally swallowing the pride.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, let's go figure it out this way then.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_03: It doesn't have to happen my way and it's my time frame.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_03: But she's she's so deserving of everything that's coming her way.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_03: And to have a woman that you know while you're at work is praying for you.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_03: I've never had that.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: Everything I had before was like I had to worry because she was with Jody while I'm at work.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_03: But she's at home, you know, praying that you know my back's okay, that I'm mentally strong for the day, you know, that my heart's full of his love today, and I'm being guided by him.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_03: So when I come home, I have the joy of the Lord in my heart when I walk through the door and I'm able to lay my day down so I can enjoy her presence and be mentally there with her instead of checked out.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, my last question.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and this may be something new, this may be repetitive, but what is it from your story that you hope somebody listening and hearing today really takes away?
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_03: It can be done.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: It can be done.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_03: It just because your parents did it, or you've been doing it for so long, or it's your crutch and you don't think that you can get through without it.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Jesus is way better high than you've ever had.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's a surety.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's the thing that he's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_03: So you know you're you're gonna be a consistent person.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_03: And it can, it's so easily done.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_03: It sounds, if you're in that moment right now and you're just hanging on by a thread, it's so simple and it sounds so hard, but to surrender it, to surrender it, to find somebody that you trust, whether it's AA, another program, a preacher, somebody, and just go tell them.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_03: Go tell them where you're at in life, and just I call it verbally, just throwing up on somebody.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_03: You just let all that emotion out and everything that's just holding you captive in your life, and just trust that the Lord will lead you to the right person and that you he will take care of you.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_03: But it's it's completely doable.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: It can be done.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_03: You're not alone, you're not alone.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_03: If you if you walk through Columbus, addiction has touched so many lives.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we were even talking before we started this, like um addiction is addiction, is addiction.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: If it's alcohol, if it's pornography, if it is shopping, if it is um drugs, like the mindset is the same.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're listening today and there is some addiction that's got a hold of you, I hope you find some encouragement in Quinn and Crystal's story, like it can be done.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: Not by my own might, not by my own strength, but by his.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_03: He proves himself over and over and over and exceedingly.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that, yes, abundantly, right?
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think that story that you just described is Romans 12, 1 and 2 lived out in that that renewed mindset.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think this conversation today reminds us that the the reality is that addiction thrives in darkness, but grace uh brings us into the light.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think uh I keep going back to those markers in your life, Crystal, that you just shared as a it's a tangible reality of how the Lord pursues us.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of the day, it can be done.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh uh sobriety and victory through addiction is not about behavior modification.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: It as you just said, it's about surrender, as both of your stories have just typified.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's about community.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, it's about the the steadfast mercy of God.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh thank you.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you guys for joining us into this conversation.
• 1:03:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you guys for helping us navigate through this conversation.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you're watching today and you're struggling with addiction or in the recovery, trust the Lord to meet you where you are.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, rest in his goodness, his faithfulness, his forgiveness, his patience with you.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm grateful that we are a church that can come alongside and walk with people through this journey.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh don't hesitate to reach out to us if we can uh help in any way.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: Don't uh don't hesitate to reach out to Valley Rescue or some other, you know, prayerfully faith-based recovery programs and resources that are out there for you, but no, you're not alone.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's too bad, you have 988, which is the suicide hotline.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's always there.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: So um thank you again.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you guys for listening.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: I know this conversation has been heavy, but it's been raw and real, and I pray that it's encouraging um for you.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: So again, this is the High Dive Podcast, the Calvary Baptist Church.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, subscribe, share, and uh we'll see you next time.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I will say uh do you guys know how we end our podcast?
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: So do you want to end us out, Gwen?