amazing story
Sandra Butler: An Unlikely Home
By Cindy Savage
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– In the words of Sandra Butler:
“I started parking in the park. I had a screwdriver in one hand and a hammer in the other. I had to defend what I had, because I had nothing else but my car.
Sandra Butler’s home leaked oil, had broken windows, and an interior daytime temperature of 104 degrees; but it was home. Sandra ran away from home in her early teens. The streets were all she’d known for years.
“I started going off in the wrong direction with other friends, drugs and alcohol and all that. That was when I was hooked, addicted. I loved it. It was my life.”
Sandra’s single mother did not look for her runaway daughter. Her absentee father showed little interest either.
“They didn’t come look for me, because the truth is, I had said, I didn’t want to go back with my mom. So my mom said if I didn’t want to go back, then she didn’t want me back.”
At 15, Sandra stole a car with a friend and was put on probation. When the probation officer called Sandra’s mother . . .
“I heard my mother on the other phone. I heard her, and she said, ‘I don’t want her to come back.’ And that right there pierced my heart.”
Sandra’s next big mistake came several years later.
“So, I ended up getting married to this guy that I thought I loved. I’m thinking he was someone who would take care of me. It was a very abusive relationship.”
They divorced within two years. So Sandra began looking for another caretaker. She remarried quickly. Her second marriage was not as abusive, but it ended the same way.
“We got into an argument about my skimpy clothes that I was wearing. He got onto me so I told him to get out of my life and he did.”
Sandra found it more difficult to find friends or family who would take her in.
“I was a mess, drinking and partying. I was like some people would say, a mean drunk. I was bad, not just doing bad things; but bad and hateful, angry - get in your face. I could shoot you, stab you. I believe my family - they were frightened of me, because they knew me. I was an alcoholic and so I said, I’m not going to drink anymore, and they said, no, we don’t have any room for you.”
That’s when Sandra’s car became her home. She spent sleepless nights clutching weapons to defend her turf.
“And that’s when I started parking outside the church; because I remember the church. And so I said, I’ll be safer there.”
At night, Sandra slept in the church parking lot. By day, she pawned her remaining jewelry and clothes. She picked up pennies on the ground to buy food.
“I’d pick up pennies and I’d get 25 cents to get a bag of potato chips; and that would be my food because I was hungry.”
One day, Sandra ventured inside the church for refuge from the heat.
“I’d go in there with my daisy dukes and my provocative tops. I wouldn’t care who was looking at me, why they were looking at me, because I was there for one thing and for one thing only. Because I remember I said, ‘I’m not going to be out there on the corner begging. If I’m going to beg anybody, and if there is a God, I am going to beg him.’”
Sandra had heard about God in her childhood, she had even prayed the sinner’s prayer. Now, with no friends or family and a broken down car as her sole possession, Sandra was ready to get serious with God.
“I would go up to the altar and fall down on the stairs, and just look beyond that little statue on the cross and just cry and cry and cry to God. I remember asking the Lord to save me and to forgive me.”
Sandra says she knew her salvation was sure. Her addictions disappeared.
“When he saved me, he took away everything. I didn’t want to drink. I didn’t want to do drugs. God took it away from me instantly. He healed me - from all my past hurts, bad relationships.”
In the next several months, Sandra found a minimum wage job. She started attending church with an old friend, still dressed in her “daisy dukes”
“We were embraced by the church, the pastor, the staff, the congregation - everybody just received us very well and loved on us.”
Sandra was reconciled with her mother before she died and the family that used to close the door on Sandra
“When before they would close the door when they’d see me coming - they open the door. They roll out the red carpet. They prepare food. They want to hear what I’ve got to say about the Lord. And they listen now. But it’s not because of me. It’s all because of Him.”
Sandra has been happily married for 10 years to a man she calls her best friend.
“I look at my husband and think that God must really love me for giving me such a wonderful man - the best man in the whole world. No matter if you are homeless, or a drug user or an executive in a tall building - if you don’t have Jesus, you don’t have nothing. You are empty inside. That’s the way I was. Now God has given me life, life more abundant. I have it. I have that life and I just pray that the whole world will come to know Him; not just know about him, but know HIM.”
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