Summary

SummaryIโ€™m Amy, and I want to share how my life felt broken from the very start. Growing up, my dadโ€™s anger loomed over our homeโ€”heโ€™d lash out at my mom, and I remember feeling terrified as a little girl ๐Ÿ˜ข. When I was four, they sent me to preschool hoping Iโ€™d be safe, but that day something inside me shut down. By eight, I tasted a sip of whiskey Coke, and suddenly I understood a numbness I couldnโ€™t get enough of ๐Ÿ˜”. By age thirteen, I was already drinking heavily. My family only went to church on Christmas and Easter, and those stories painted God as angryโ€”flooding the earth or sending fire from heaven. To me, He felt like my father.

In my early twenties, I was diagnosed with Crohnโ€™s disease, and the constant pain made opioids easy to come by. I grabbed my dadโ€™s pain pills on Christmas Day 2008 and swallowed as many as I couldโ€”I just wanted to be done. But when I woke up in the hospital, my friends from Lincoln were there, telling me about Jesusโ€™s loveโ€”that He wasnโ€™t angry or judging me ๐Ÿฅบ. They showed me it was safe to hand Him my brokenness and walk through the pain together.

It wasnโ€™t an overnight fix; recovery took years. With women from Celebrate Recovery who never judged me and truly reflected Jesusโ€™s grace, I learned what it meant to surrenderโ€”not just my addictions, but my anger toward God. Now, Iโ€™m filled with joy, stepping into real friendships and finding freedom from the chains of pain and the need for any more โ€œfixesโ€ ๐Ÿ˜Š. Itโ€™s glorious freedomโ€”this Christmas, I have hope because of Jesus ๐ŸŽ‰๐Ÿ™.

Amy has struggled with substances for most of her life, but when she least expects it, Christ finds her.

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Time Chapters
ย 
00:10 Troubled Childhood & First Drink
02:34 Opioid Addiction
03:31 Awakened by God's Love
04:17 Stepping into Recovery
05:46 Embracing Joy
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Lincoln Berean
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