amazing story
Forgiveness For Former Meth Addict
By Mia Evans
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– Mia Evans interviews Heather and Josh Powers:
Heather Powers has traveled the world sharing her music, but most of all she likes quiet moments sitting in front of her piano. Her latest CD, Undone, is a moving collection of original songs.
Heather: I was singing ever since I can remember. I remember singing more than I do talking.
Heather’s childhood days were filled with making music. Her close-knit family lived in a quiet neighborhood, in Orange County, California.
One night everything changed. The peace and security she felt were stolen from her. Heather and her sister were home alone when a man broke into their home. He sexually assaulted 13-year-old heather.
Heather: He was brutal. He was beating on me. My sister was trying to beat him off of me. And I just cowered. I, I crumbled. We were able to scare him off.
Then, two years, later a boy she knew and trusted raped her.
Heather: Those two events so profoundly affected who I was growing into be. The shame and guilt was just overwhelming; I shut down in a lot of ways. I learned to live very externally and to keep pleasing, to keep being the person I felt that everyone wanted me to be, while I was drowning inside.
Mia: You married young. Was that an escape for you?
Heather: I lived in a very small town where everybody got married and it became almost a fantasy that just took a life of its own on. We did love each other, there’s no doubt about it, but we didn’t even know ourselves.
As the problems at home intensified, Heather developed chronic migraines. She added painkillers to an arsenal of mind altering drugs.
Heather: By this time I had developed a pretty strong addiction to oxycontin, vicodin, xanex and all kinds of things that would just kind of numb me out. The doctor that had been prescribing all these other medications finally said to me, “I think there might be some emotional stuff going on. That might be why you’re having such pain constantly.” There was something in me, I knew that the drugs that I was on had something to do with how numb and disconnected I felt from my whole life. And so I weaned myself off of them and in a two-week period of time I had what they determined was a manic break, which I ended up in a psychiatric hospital.
Within a few days, doctors released Heather from the psychiatric hospital. But she was still gripped by the pain from her past and her failing marriage. After nine years and two children, Heather filed for divorce.
Heather: I felt so unredeemable and so unworthy. The decisions I had made along the way, I didn’t feel forgivable. And so I felt like it was easier just to walk out. I was running from me mostly. And I knew what I was doing was wrong.
When Heather was a child, her parents taught her that God was a God of love.
Heather: I know I had experiences with Him, and I know that He was there and I know that I was saved; but there wasn’t that point where it became such a personal thing for me. He was not even in the equation at that point.
Heather continued her self-destructive behavior.
Heather: I was not afraid to try illicit drugs. I was living promiscuously, just anything to numb—for the moment—that sense of how awful and wretched I felt.
Heather’s new boyfriend, Josh, introduced her to the highly addictive drug, meth.
Josh: At that point in my life, I was at a point where I was using a lot and partying, and I kind of brought her into that with me. It’s one of my biggest regrets.
Heather: We’d go on weekend benders where we’d be up all night talking and hanging out with friends and it was a great way to totally not think about the reality of my life.
Josh: I hated the man I had become. And the way I dealt with hating the man I had become was drinking and using.
Heather: For me, one day after about a year, a year and a half, I just came to an end where I realized I couldn’t go on anymore.
Heather cried out to God for help.
Heather: God met me in such a way. He allowed me to know that even while I was in the midst of sin and destruction and the devastation of my life and that of my family’s, that He didn’t love me any more or any less than He had. He allowed me this safety to then begin to build this relationship with Him. That was my “Ah-ha” moment, that I knew He was real for me. And I knew that whatever it was that I was going to walk through, that He was there and that He hadn’t left. It was I who had walked away.
Heather immediately quit using drugs.
Josh: She was able to turn it over to God and really walk away from it and I didn’t have that. I mean, I had a hole inside of me that I could not fill. And it wasn’t until I went to treatment and the idea was put to me that I had to consider having a power greater than myself in my life.
Heather’s father began talking to Josh about the Bible, and Josh, too, became a Christian.
Josh: The most miraculous for me was the desire to drink and use was lifted from me. It was something that I battled since I was 13, 14-years-old. Praise God! It still is not there. It’s been lifted.
Heather and Josh just celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary and more than eight years of sobriety.
Heather: I was the chief of sinners. I was that harlot. His grace was so big that He came in and rescued me when I had walked so far and devastated and destroyed so many things around me. He’s always rescuing us from things, not just big things, it’s little things. He wants us—all of us, not just the catastrophes. He wants every bit of us.
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