"Something in My Soul Just Cried Out" — Vicki Jarvis's Journey Through Addiction and Faith

In this deeply moving episode of the "Jesus Studio" podcast, we are introduced to the incredible life story of Vicki Jarvis. Vicki's journey is a powerful testimony of transformation from a life marred by addiction, neglect, and trauma to one of hope, faith, and recovery. Born into a family struggling with alcoholism, Vicki's early life was fraught with challenges, including abuse and a profound sense of abandonment. As she navigates through a tumultuous youth filled with rebellion, addiction, and a series of destructive relationships, Vicki finds herself at a breaking point. It is in this darkest hour that she experiences a profound encounter with God, setting her on a path towards healing and redemption.

Throughout the episode, Vicki candidly shares the struggles and triumphs of her journey, including battling cancer, facing the breakdown of her marriage, and the challenging road to recovering her children from care. Her story is not just about the hardships but also about the miraculous interventions and the steadfast love of Jesus that helped her find her true identity and purpose.

Listeners will be inspired by Vicki's resilience and her unwavering faith in the face of life's trials. Her experience underscores the transformative power of faith and the possibility of redemption, no matter the depths of despair one may face. This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking encouragement or understanding the impact of faith in overcoming life's greatest challenges.

Finding Help for Addiction: Guidance from Vicki Jarvis

In her heartfelt testimony, Vicki Jarvis emphasises the importance of seeking help and support for addiction. She provides practical and compassionate advice for those in similar struggles:

1. Acknowledge the Problem: The first step towards recovery is admitting to yourself that you have a problem with addiction. This could be substance abuse, unhealthy behaviors, or any actions that negatively impact your life and relationships.
2. Seek Professional Help: Vicki encourages reaching out to local drug and alcohol services or a general practitioner (GP). These professionals can provide guidance and connect you with appropriate treatment options.
3. Connect with Support Groups: She highlights the value of 12-step fellowships and other support groups, which offer understanding, acceptance, and peer support. These groups are widely available both in-person and online.
4. Consider Faith-Based Support: For those interested, Vicki suggests exploring faith-based recovery groups like 'Believers in Recovery'. These groups combine spiritual support with practical steps towards overcoming addiction.
5. Embrace the Journey: Vicki's story is a reminder that recovery is a journey. It involves learning to process emotions healthily, developing self-awareness, and building a support network.

Vicki Jarvis’s story is a testament to the power of reaching out for help and the possibility of transformation. Anyone struggling with addiction is encouraged to take these steps towards a healthier, more fulfilling life.

Please remember these are the views of our guest and it's important to seek professional healthcare advice for individual circumstances.

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Transcript

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

You're listening to the Jesus Studio podcast.

00:00:03 Speaker 2

I think in that moment what was left of me crumbled and something in my soul just cried out.

00:00:10 Speaker 2

I didn't know. I didn't know.

00:00:14 Speaker 2

How to connect to anything and anybody? I couldn't connect to myself and in that precise moment God spoke to me very clearly.

00:00:21 Speaker 2

It was like an audible voice and it just said I'm here for you. I've been waiting for you. And at the end of the service, people are coming up and saying hello. Who are you? What's your story? And I thought I might as well get it over and done with straight to. And I said, look, I'm Vicky. I'm a drug addict and my husband's waiting to go to prison and they just threw love at me. It was like, was there anything we can do to help? That must be really hard.

00:00:43 Speaker 2

And I'd never had that anywhere.

00:00:49 Speaker 3

Welcome everybody to Jesus studio. Today we have Vicki here, and she's gonna introduce herself in a minute and share her life. Vicky, welcome to Jesus studio. And would you introduce yourself?

00:00:57 Speaker 2

Thank you very much. Yes, my name is Vicky. I'm a 62 year old woman with four adult children and I'm really happy to be able to come and share my story with today. So thank you for inviting me.

00:01:08 Speaker 3

Thank you. Well, we'd love you to share it. And just just when you feel ready, just go for it and start start from the very beginning and and and we'd love to.

00:01:15 Speaker 2

OK.

00:01:16 Speaker 3

They have.

00:01:17 Speaker 2

Absolutely. So obviously I'm English. I was born in the UK in a place called Eastbourne in East Sussex in 1961. I know that's hard to believe and I was born at home in my parents flat above a shop on the precinct and my mum said to me that the night she went into labour, it was her 21st birthday. They'd been out to a party.

00:01:39 Speaker 2

And they came back. My dad was quite drunk and she went into labour and she was stuck on the toilet shouting for my dad, who was semi conscious because he'd been drinking too much and ended up giving birth to me in the front room of their flat. So what I didn't realise for the first few years of my life was that my dad's actually an alcoholic.

00:01:57 Speaker 2

And obviously this had a profound effect on our family life. My sister was born when I was 3 1/2, and I have no real memories. No personal memories, only things that I've been told before that time. And when she was born, I was asleep in bed. My parents hadn't told me that we were having anybody else coming into the family. My dad woke me up in the middle of the night.

00:02:17 Speaker 2

And said come and meet your sister. And that was the first thing that I knew about her arrival. So I was led into their bedroom in the middle of the night in my dressing gown. And there was this baby. And I felt a sense of.

00:02:31 Speaker 2

Fear. Shock. I didn't really know what to think. And from that moment it felt like I was quite sidelined because obviously a baby takes a lot of attention. I didn't really understand that. And my sister became the focus of everybody's world. If she lost her toys, she was given mine. I was sent to school at 3 1/2.

00:02:51 Speaker 2

To a proper school because it was easier for them to just have her at home. I just felt this sense of rejection and abandonment, but I didn't know what that was then.

00:03:00 Speaker 2

And as we got a little bit older, my parents was in the 60s. My parents were quite forward thinking for that time. My mum had a job and she drove and they were party people, so they had either a lot of people come to us or they would be out a lot of the time. And I was quite often left on my own with my sister to look after her. And I can remember.

00:03:21 Speaker 2

Sitting there thinking what happens if they don't come home. We didn't have mobile phones. We didn't have any way of knowing where they were and I just was scared that they would get into an accident, not come back and I'd just be stuck there with my sister not knowing what to do. So I suppose one of my earliest memories is just being in fear.

00:03:39 Speaker 2

And in that fear, I found some comfort by connecting to God. I had a grandmother who was Catholic, and she taught me how to pray.

00:03:49 Speaker 2

She would, when we stayed with her, she would always make her say prayers before meals before bedtime. All that kind of a thing. And she sometimes spoke to me about Jesus, so I kind of had this childish acceptance of the reality of God. And I chose to on a Sunday morning when my parents were in bed, I would get up and go down to the church.

00:04:09 Speaker 2

On the road, looking back, I think nobody ever asked me why I went there on my own, and nobody ever questioned me. Just turning up out of the blue. But I would go in and sit down as Catholic Church, and when they went up to take communion, I'd follow the adults up there and then walk off into where the children had their Sunday school. And I just felt this sense of kind of belonging.

00:04:30 Speaker 2

But I just sensed God there. I can't really put it into words, but it was just something that I knew in my soul to be true.

00:04:40 Speaker 2

But as I got older, I kind of moved away from that a bit. You know, I went to school and discovered boys discovered all sorts of other things. And my parents example of lifestyle was pretty much free and easy.

00:04:57 Speaker 2

And we didn't have a lot of boundaries. My sister and I. So I suppose I became a bit of a rebel.

00:05:03 Speaker 2

By the time I was a young teenager, I was already drinking a fair amount of alcohol and going out partying and getting involved in all sorts of different things.

00:05:12 Speaker 2

And I thought it was fun and it was for a while.

00:05:16 Speaker 2

You know, one of the early things that happened to me when I was very young, which I haven't mentioned, was that I was actually sexually abused by my grandmother, who was my mother's mother. So that was something that was very confusing because on the one hand, she was quite gregarious and outgoing and fun and funny. But on the other hand, she was also quite scary.

00:05:36 Speaker 2

And things happened which I didn't like and was never able to speak about.

00:05:41 Speaker 2

And so I didn't have any real value on myself or on my body. And I became quite promiscuous at an early age. It was as if that was a good way for me to get attention and to try and get love. And I felt a real lack of love. I felt quite isolated. I felt quite lonely inside and I think.

00:06:01 Speaker 2

By the time I was probably about 14, I had this real feeling of imposter syndrome, like whatever I did. I didn't really feel like I belonged. I didn't really feel like I was as good as everybody else, and I didn't really know who I was in any.

00:06:12 Speaker 2

Way and so that came out by.

00:06:15 Speaker 2

The going and and sleeping with boys, for example, because I felt like any attention was better than no attention and I didn't feel deep down that I deserved it. I always chose relationships with people who weren't going to treat me very well because that.

00:06:30 Speaker 2

Just confirmed my core beliefs that I didn't deserve anything different and I wasn't really good enough.

00:06:38 Speaker 2

I had a lot of friends I had, really. I had some really good friends and some of them. I'm still friends with now.

00:06:43 Speaker 2

And that probably saved me because I did have some people that I felt like I belonged with, and we did lots of things together and went to all sorts of places and did all sorts of things, and that was great. But underneath that surface, I really had this sense of not belonging anywhere and just not feeling loved.

00:07:01 Speaker 2

I think my parents did their best. This is the conclusion I've come to later on, but actually I was very neglected as a child and I wasn't taught much about self, love, self esteem. My relationship with my mum was very controlling and very manipulative, and I had to do what I was told and I had to live in a certain way.

00:07:21 Speaker 2

Could be a certain type of person, but it wasn't underlined with a sense of love, and my dad was just absent.

00:07:29 Speaker 2

So as I grew up, I think I've taken those things into every relationship I had. And by the time I was heading towards my late teens, my life was out of control. I was using a lot of drugs. I was living in Brighton, I was selling drugs. Most of the people that I'd been really good friends with earlier on had gone off and were doing different things with their lives.

00:07:50 Speaker 2

And UM.

00:07:51 Speaker 2

I suppose I probably felt lonely, but I was always surrounded by people. I literally was never on my own, even at night time, and I would often go for days and nights without sleeping or eating. I was really abusing myself and my body. I had no sense of identity. It was literally just about not feeling. So let's just carry on next party. Next thing, next drug next.

00:08:14 Speaker 2

Encounter whatever.

00:08:16 Speaker 2

And it was quite tiring. All I ever wanted when I was little, I used to watch programmes which, if you're a lot younger than me, probably won't know what I'm talking about, but things like little house on the Prairie and the Waltons. I don't know if the Kardashians is the is the equivalent now? Probably not. I don't how happy they are, but it was all about having this happy.

00:08:35 Speaker 2

Family unit with lots of children, all loving each other and interacting and doing stuff together as a family. Just innocent fun and that's what I wanted to grow up. That was my career ambition. I didn't have anything I wanted to do other than get married, have children and and be happy.

00:08:52 Speaker 2

And so as I headed out of my teenage years and into my early 20s, that was really my focus. Yeah, I spent all my time completely off my head and living a very false life.

00:09:05 Speaker 2

And then I met this guy. Somebody brought him to my.

00:09:07 Speaker 2

House to buy some drugs. He's South African. He was quite wild looking. A bit like the wild man of Borneo, actually. And when he arrived, I gave him an omelette I'd made which contained magic mushrooms. I didn't know that he'd never had them before and.

00:09:26 Speaker 2

He sunk into this sort of haze in the corner, unable to speak.

00:09:30 Speaker 2

And this is a measure of where I was at. Cause I looked him and I thought, wow, that's the man for me. He's dark and mysterious and very attractive. And I asked him to move in with me and he moved in that day because that was normal. We got married nine months later. At the time, I was a punk. I had a big black Mohican haircut. And I remember him sending his mum a photograph.

00:09:51 Speaker 2

And her being so horrified, she immediately flew to England from South Africa to come and meet this wild woman that he was married.

00:09:57 Speaker 2

And I think I convinced her that I was semi normal, probably by introducing her to my very dysfunctional family who were able for short spaces of time and come across as being quite normal. And so she accepted it and off she went back to South Africa while we sorted out the wedding and everything.

00:10:13 Speaker 2

And my memory of going to my wedding was in the car on the way, thinking to myself.

00:10:18 Speaker 2

I don't even know this man. I've never met anybody that he knew as a child or he grew up with, I don't know. He literally arrived in South Africa and been brought to my house within a very short space of time. Days if not we.

00:10:30 Speaker 2

And we'd moved in together, and that was it. And I just had this.

00:10:34 Speaker 2

I suppose arresting in my spirit, am I doing the right thing, but it was too late and there's no way I was going to stop it and so off we went and we got married and it was really quite mad. Thinking back, you know, we were living in a flat selling drugs and having this very unusual lifestyle. There was not a single thing in our life.

00:10:55 Speaker 2

It was normal at that point.

00:10:57 Speaker 2

But all I wanted was to have this family, you know, and. And that was all I could focus on.

00:11:04 Speaker 2

And I got.

00:11:04 Speaker 2

Pregnant quite quickly after we got married.

00:11:08 Speaker 2

And that was when I realised that I had a problem because I couldn't stop.

00:11:11 Speaker 2

Using drugs.

00:11:13 Speaker 2

And I was really scared. And I went to the doctor and I explained to him that I thought that I was an addict and I couldn't stop using. And he said to me, So what drugs are you using then? And I said, well, I've cut out everything apart from cocaine and cannabis.

00:11:28 Speaker 2

This was 1987. He just looked me in the eye and he said, look, I can't tell you in reasonable amounts that that.

00:11:34 Speaker 2

Will harm the foetus. That was his exact words I'll never forget. And as I left felt quite angry with the doctor because I really thought that if he'd said something scary enough, I'd have been able to just stop using drugs. I know now that wouldn't have been true.

00:11:48 Speaker 2

I'd have just felt more guilt, more shame, more fear, because I wouldn't have been able to stop using drugs, and I would have had.

00:11:54 Speaker 2

A lot more fear around it.

00:11:57 Speaker 2

That was my first thought. My second thought was, hmm, what's a reasonable amount? I wonder. So I decided in my wisdom that a reasonable amount was if I cut everything I'd do in half probably be fine.

00:12:09 Speaker 2

So I went through my pregnancy with this fear and just all the things that I dreamt of as a child growing up and thinking of this moment when I was going to be expecting my first child, it was completely the opposite. I didn't have any of that loving, warm fuzziness and, you know, going out and buying baby clothes. It was all just fear and madness and and absolute.

00:12:31 Speaker 2

And I went into hospital and my waters broke. And I didn't even go to the doctor. And I went the next day for a routine appointment and said, oh, by the way, I think my waters broke yesterday. And he went for good, dear sake.

00:12:42 Speaker 2

Get to the.

00:12:42 Speaker 2

Hospital get to the hospital and.

00:12:44 Speaker 2

So I went up to the hospital and they said yes, your orders are broken. We're going to induce your baby. And he was 3 1/2 weeks early. So this was another thing to be afraid of.

00:12:52 Speaker 2

But I just felt this huge shame. I was just so ashamed.

00:12:58 Speaker 2

And he was born and they held him up in front of me. And they said, here's your baby. Take him and.

00:13:03 Speaker 2

I just looked at him and thought, wow.

00:13:06 Speaker 2

I'll never be able to tap into that moment and what it felt like, but I also felt this huge sense of.

00:13:12 Speaker 2

I'm not good enough for this. He deserves so much more and I didn't know how to be his mum. I took him home from the hospital and my mum, who obviously had brought me up in quite a messed up fashion.

00:13:26 Speaker 2

Fell in love with my baby and I was quite happy for her to take him as much as she possibly could because I felt like he would be better with her.

00:13:33 Speaker 2

Very recently I had an experience where God revealed to me that what I actually felt in that moment was a lack of ability to keep my baby safe. I'd never been able to keep myself safe or anybody else in my life, and so that was what drove me to encourage other people to look after him and spend time with him. It wasn't because I didn't want.

00:13:53 Speaker 2

Him or didn't want to be with him.

00:13:55 Speaker 2

I absolutely did.

00:13:57 Speaker 2

But with within about six weeks of Maine having my son, Mike's husband got arrested and he had an ounce of 86% pure cocaine in his possession.

00:14:10 Speaker 2

And the police said that he's looking at four to six years in prison.

00:14:14 Speaker 2

And they took him away. And I sat down on my own with an addiction, with a baby completely alone, because all the people that had been coming in and out of my property.

00:14:24 Speaker 2

We're all people that were related to our drug use and suddenly they disappeared into the ether and I was completely alone.

00:14:32 Speaker 2

And I just something in my spirit just broke and they let my husband come home on bail. And it was two days before Christmas. So it was the day before Christmas Eve. And we sat down and he looked at me and he said, I need to tell you something. I've been unfaithful to you since before we got married.

00:14:48 Speaker 2

Well, bearing in mind that we met and moved in the same day and got married.

00:14:51 Speaker 2

Nine months later, I'd had.

00:14:53 Speaker 2

Very little of his time where he hadn't been giving his attentions to someone else.

00:14:59 Speaker 2

And I think in that moment, what was left of me crumbled and something in my soul just cried out.

00:15:06 Speaker 2

I didn't know.

00:15:09 Speaker 2

I didn't know.

00:15:10 Speaker 2

How to connect to anything and anybody? I couldn't connect to myself and in that precise moment God spoke to me very clearly.

00:15:17 Speaker 2

It was like an audible voice and he just said I'm here for you. I've been waiting for you.

00:15:24 Speaker 2

And it was such a powerful moment, and I knew it was God. But I thought if I tell my husband, he's going to think I'm insane.

00:15:31 Speaker 2

So I just.

00:15:33 Speaker 2

Quietly went out the next day and bought a Bible.

00:15:36 Speaker 2

And I started to read it.

00:15:38 Speaker 2

And it I gave my life to Jesus and I began this journey of walking into faith. I didn't know any Christians. I didn't know anybody that would give me any support or anything else. But when my husband had been arrested, been arrested with our best friend at the time, and he was still in prison, and I used to go and visit him most days, he was on remand.

00:15:58 Speaker 2

And in those days, because I'm quite old, you could actually take a can of beer every day to the prison. And so I would go up to see him and take him a can of beer. And we'd sit and have a chat. And one day I went up to the prison with my Mohican.

00:16:10 Speaker 2

Haircut sitting in the waiting room, reading a Bible and this man turned to me and he said, is that a Bible you're reading? And I.

00:16:17 Speaker 2

Was really defensive.

00:16:19 Speaker 2

So I said.

00:16:19 Speaker 2

Yeah, why? And he said. Which church do you go to? And I just looked him. I said no church would want me. I don't go to a church.

00:16:27 Speaker 2

And he'd said to me, why don't you try this church Worthing Tabernacle in Worthing.

00:16:31 Speaker 2

Worthings, the town that I was brought up in for most of my life, and I wasn't actually living there at that moment in time.

00:16:37 Speaker 2

And I said to me, Oh yeah, alright, and I sort of fold it away in my mind and within a couple of months, I ended up moving back to Worthing because my parents had a hotel there and my ex-husband had been released on bail and we moved back to Worthing to be near my family and.

00:16:52 Speaker 2

I was going to see this friend, this same friend one Sunday morning and the train went early, so I was joked now and say well, that must have been good cause when the trains go early and so I thought well Worthing tabernacles not very far from here. I'm just going to walk up and have a look and see what sort of people go there. And I had my son in his buggy, walked up the road with with him in his pram and this same man appeared in.

00:17:13 Speaker 2

Front of me and went, oh, Vicky, you're here. This is brilliant.

00:17:15 Speaker 2

And the next thing I know, I'm sitting in this church in the front row with my son in the crash, so I couldn't escape and this man came out. He didn't even have a dog collar on, and he started talking directly at me. It was like he knew my life.

00:17:27 Speaker 2

And obviously I realised no, he no idea who I was and that I was there. But God spoke to me so clearly through that man and at the end of the service people were coming up and saying hello. Who are you? What's your story? And I thought.

00:17:41 Speaker 2

I might as well get it over and done with straight away and I said, look, I'm Vicky. I'm a drug addict and my husband's waiting to go to prison.

00:17:47 Speaker 2

And they just threw love at me. It was like, was there anything we can do to help? That must be really hard. And I'd never had that anywhere. It was.

00:17:55 Speaker 2

Just it was a bit.

00:17:58 Speaker 2

But it was really lovely and so I made a decision. Right. I'm going to give these people a chance and I'm going to give God a chance. I'd built quite a strong connection with God in the time between him speaking to me and going to this church. But I hadn't connected with any people. And so I started going to this church.

00:18:18 Speaker 2

It was really healing, but there were some scary parts too. I mean, one time I was talking to them about the fact Mike's husband was waiting to go to court.

00:18:27 Speaker 2

And the pastor came over and he said to me, do you trust Jesus? I said yes. And he said, well, you know he.

00:18:31 Speaker 2

Can't lie then?

00:18:33 Speaker 2

Well, we'd spent a lot of time developing the perfect lies for him to get off this charge, and the thought of me having to go home and tell my husband who had no faith in Jesus. I don't want you to tell any lies was quite scary.

00:18:46 Speaker 2

But I went home and I said it to him anyway, and as predicted, he wasn't very happy with that. But when we went to the court a few weeks later, the whole church was praying for us. And when we got there, they turn around and they said to him, if you plead guilty to possession, we'll drop all the intent to supply charges, which with the much higher charges and.

00:19:04 Speaker 2

In this country, if you are caught with over six grammes of something, it's always an intent to supply. There's no possession. So it was quite miraculous and I knew God was in this.

00:19:14 Speaker 2

And so he pleaded guilty and they gave him a year with six months suspended, which meant that he would do three months in prison. And he'd already done 3 weeks. So in actual fact, for an ounce of cocaine, he walked out with two months and a week in prison, miraculous. And whilst he was away at the whole church praying for him. And I sent him.

00:19:33 Speaker 2

A couple of books.

00:19:36 Speaker 2

That I thought might help him.

00:19:39 Speaker 2

To understand a little bit of my faith testimonies, and he read them.

00:19:45 Speaker 2

And he came out and he said, OK, you know, I'm willing to give it a go. And there was somebody doing a big rally in one of the places in Worthing. So I took him along and this guy spoke. He spoke about his faith. And he spoke about Jesus. And then he produced a very horrific looking nail and said these were what the crucifixion nails look like. And then he said if anybody wants to give their life to Jesus, come up now.

00:20:05 Speaker 2

My husband got up and walked to the front.

00:20:10 Speaker 2

Because prior to that he'd been going out with his friends and he'd been.

00:20:12 Speaker 2

Weeping into his beard.

00:20:13 Speaker 2

Telling them my wife's gone bad. She just.

00:20:15 Speaker 2

Talks about Jesus all the time, because every single thing that came up in my life, I'd say to him, Jesus has got the answer to that and he was just sick of it and all of a sudden he opened.

00:20:24 Speaker 2

His life up to Jesus as well.

00:20:28 Speaker 2

If I could say that was the end of the story and we've lived happily.

00:20:31 Speaker 2

Ever after. Ever.

00:20:31 Speaker 2

Since that would be great. Sadly it's not.

00:20:35 Speaker 2

But for a little while, things were good. We involved ourselves quite heavily in the church, and he started working for a Christian organisation.

00:20:43 Speaker 2

And and everything seemed on the surface to be heading in the right direction for us to be the Waltons. You know, we had another child, and yeah, it was. It was all going quite well.

00:20:55 Speaker 2

But I think the thing was looking back.

00:20:58 Speaker 2

We were both still caught up in addiction for the first part of our faith, so for me there was an 18 month period where I'd given my life to Jesus and every day I wept as I used drugs. But I couldn't stop using them. And then when my husband gave his life to the Lord a short time after that, we both woke up in the middle of the night.

00:21:16 Speaker 2

We've been given about £400 worth of.

00:21:20 Speaker 2

Really good quality cocaine the night before by an old friend of ours obviously thought they were being nice and giving us a favour and we'd gone to bed. We both woke up at about 2:00 in the morning and we looked at each other and we knew that God had spoken to both of us in our sleep and said.

00:21:36 Speaker 2

Get rid of the drugs and I'll set you free.

00:21:39 Speaker 2

And he said it to both of us. So we knew we had a decision to make in that moment, and it was quite hard because even though we didn't want to be caught up in addiction and we had our children and we had our life.

00:21:50 Speaker 2

We also knew that that had been our solution.

00:21:52 Speaker 2

For all our.

00:21:53 Speaker 2

Rejection all our emotional problems, all our sadness, everything, everything in our life before that we'd hidden behind the drugs. We didn't have to feel anything when we had them.

00:22:02 Speaker 2

So our first solution to that was, well, we'll just do them all, you know, God said get rid of them. He didn't say how. Maybe if we just.

00:22:08 Speaker 2

Do them all. That would be fine.

00:22:11 Speaker 2

So that was our first thought.

00:22:13 Speaker 2

But then we thought, well, it be quite sad if we died whilst trying to set ourselves free from addiction by doing all these drugs. So maybe that's not the answer. So then I took them and I flushed them down the toilet and we stayed up for the rest of the night, praying and then we turned up at our church because we knew that our elders of our church met at 6:00 on a Saturday morning. This was a Friday night.

00:22:33 Speaker 2

To have a prayer meeting. So we went along when they arrived at 6:00, we were waiting there. It was like they knew one of them just looked at us and said it's been a long night, hasn't it? Come on in. And then they prayed for us. So there we were with our children sitting in this church having prayer from the elders.

00:22:50 Speaker 2

And we were.

00:22:50 Speaker 2

Set free in that moment from our addiction.

00:22:54 Speaker 2

And like I say, if that had been the end of the story, it would have been amazing, but I think.

00:23:00 Speaker 2

We underestimate it.

00:23:03 Speaker 2

The reality of being ourselves, I didn't know who I was. My ex-husband didn't know who he was. So all my life I've been a bit of a chameleon. You know, I could walk into any situation and assess.

00:23:16 Speaker 2

Who was there and what was there and aligned myself with that like a chameleon. So if I walked into a place where it was full of bikers, I could connect with that. I could be a biker. I could be a disco chick. I could be a punk. Whatever I could like. Italian food, Mexican food, whatever it was. I had no idea who I was. And I had no idea.

00:23:37 Speaker 2

What Vicky liked, what Vicky wanted to be, who Vicky was. I only knew what I thought. You wanted me to be, because that was part of how I kept myself safe by aligning myself with what I felt others wanted me to be, or needed me to.

00:23:49 Speaker 2

To be.

00:23:50 Speaker 2

And so I did the same thing really when I.

00:23:52 Speaker 2

Went to church.

00:23:54 Speaker 2

And I think he did too, for a while.

00:23:56 Speaker 2

I started to wear completely different clothing.

00:24:01 Speaker 2

Speak a different language. A lot of that was right because a lot of the things that I was doing before were.

00:24:07 Speaker 2

Quite destructive, but some of it wasn't right because it was literally just me trying to be you trying to be someone else, not allowing myself to believe that God loved me. For me, the person he created me to be, the person who I didn't know at all.

00:24:21 Speaker 2

And it's quite tiring and quite stressful doing that. And for my ex-husband, I think he reached breaking point long before I would have done.

00:24:32 Speaker 2

New Year's Eve.

00:24:35 Speaker 2

1992 going into 1993, we went to my parents hotel.

00:24:42 Speaker 2

With our two children and had a celebration, we got to midnight and I said to him, let's go home.

00:24:49 Speaker 2

He said he didn't want to come home, so I took the children home and he went to party with some friends and he rang me up a few hours later and said I'm not coming home.

00:24:58 Speaker 2

That was it.

00:25:00 Speaker 2

And he'd met someone else. He'd reverted back to his old behaviour of.

00:25:04 Speaker 2

Unfaithfulness, which I think was another addiction, to be fair.

00:25:09 Speaker 2

And I went into like a breakdown because in my mind I'd had this perfect happy ending. In my mind, we were gonna be the Waltons. Here we were. We were living before God. We were doing. We had every group, every prayer meeting. Everything was in our house. We were involved in every aspect of church. It was almost like we were.

00:25:27 Speaker 2

Church. Everything was perfect, wasn't it?

00:25:30 Speaker 2

And then suddenly.

00:25:32 Speaker 2

I was abandoned again and I couldn't see any sense in it, and I'd poured myself out before God, and I prayed for our marriage because it wasn't.

00:25:39 Speaker 2

The happiest of marriages.

00:25:41 Speaker 2

But I really believed.

00:25:43 Speaker 2

That it was all going to be OK.

00:25:45 Speaker 2

And I didn't know what to do and I had this a bit of a breakdown really. And obviously people in the church rallied around me and they were delivering me meals and they were coming and praying and I'd kind of disassociated, I think, from myself. It was like nothing really touched me.

00:26:00 Speaker 2

And I had a friend who'd moved to France, so I contacted her and I said, can I come and stay for a couple of weeks? And she said yes. So I took the children out there and whilst I was there.

00:26:09 Speaker 2

Reconnected with God walking around the fields.

00:26:12 Speaker 2

And I just felt like I needed to have a fresh start. I couldn't go back into the life that I had lived with my husband and carry on as if nothing had happened.

00:26:23 Speaker 2

I needed to do something different.

00:26:25 Speaker 2

I realise now actually that is quite a a common thing for addicts. They run away, they call it geographically, so I set this one up quite well. I contacted a woman that owned a house in the village where my friend lived and she said that I could rent this cottage and I gave her some weeks, months upfront and then contacted my ex-husband.

00:26:45 Speaker 2

We've moved in with this girl and said that I was moving with our children. It had only been a matter of.

00:26:50 Speaker 2

Weeks we'd been.

00:26:51 Speaker 2

Separate and he came.

00:26:53 Speaker 2

Round and said that he actually.

00:26:54 Speaker 2

Wanted to come with us.

00:26:55 Speaker 2

So I said OK, that's fine. And a few weeks later, having got somebody to rent our house and buy a couple of vans.

00:27:03 Speaker 2

We jumped in these vans and off we went and we went to France.

00:27:08 Speaker 2

Again, be lovely if that was just our happy ending. Not to be. We created the life that I felt like I wanted there. We got ourselves a smallholding. We had chickens, ducks, sheep, peace chicken. You know everything. Anything you can think of. Pigs. It was lovely. It was wonderful. It was my dream life.

00:27:24 Speaker 2

But I had huge imposter syndrome. It was almost like I was living somebody else's life, or I was just waiting for it to end. It felt like it was a bit of a dream.

00:27:34 Speaker 2

And sadly, although I still had my life and my faith, my ex-husband didn't, he'd kind of set that aside. He couldn't cope with that anymore. So we were living almost two different lives there. He was going off partying a lot. I was making jam, having chickens and doing all of this, you know, perfect.

00:27:54 Speaker 2

Kind of off the grid lifestyle and we had two more children and when I was pregnant with our fourth child, I found out I had cancer.

00:28:03 Speaker 2

It was very aggressive, so they induced her and I immediately went into having treatment. And so I had this period of time where people from the local church were coming and praying for me, and God had clearly spoken to me and said I was going to be OK and I've really firmly believed that. But he'd also said quite clearly that I'd have to go through the treatment process. This wasn't a miraculous healing.

00:28:24 Speaker 2

And so I did that. But I was very aware that I had four children relying on me, and I was really desperate for them to have a mother who was present. You know, I didn't want to recreate my own childhood for my child.

00:28:37 Speaker 2

And so when they were offering me certain types of treatment, I was saying, no, I can't do that because I need to be at home with my children.

00:28:43 Speaker 2

And I.

00:28:43 Speaker 2

Ended up it was quite insane. Some of the things that went on during my treatment, I opted to not have an aesthetic and and all sorts of things which they thought I was crazy. But I got through it and I ended up having a big operation and they removed.

00:28:58 Speaker 2

Well, quite a few parts of my body, actually. And that was fine. It was OK because I got over the cancer.

00:29:03 Speaker 2

And all was well.

00:29:04 Speaker 2

I think I woke up about a year later in the middle of the night and suddenly thought to myself, Oh my goodness, I've had cancer. I nearly died and it was just like this. Very weird, intense.

00:29:14 Speaker 2

It's scary feeling and I woke my husband up and I said I feel really scared. I had cancer and nearly died and he just looked to me and said, oh, for goodness sake, you need.

00:29:22 Speaker 2

To get.

00:29:22 Speaker 2

Over that, it was ages ago that was kind of how our marriage went. Just to give you an insight.

00:29:30 Speaker 2

When they told me I was gonna have.

00:29:31 Speaker 2

This very serious.

00:29:32 Speaker 2

Operation and they said, do you have any questions and they were expecting me to ask, I don't know what they expected me to ask, but the one question I had to ask them because he was sitting next to me was how soon will I be able to have sex?

00:29:43 Speaker 2

That shows you an insight into how our marriage was. It wasn't a question I wanted to ask.

00:29:49 Speaker 2

I didn't feel loved, nurtured, cared for. I don't know that I've ever had anybody in my life that's put me first, which is a sad thing to say, but is a reality apart from God, apart from Jesus. So.

00:30:02 Speaker 2

You know, in that moment.

00:30:04 Speaker 2

It was. It was a hard place to be, but I knew.

00:30:08 Speaker 2

It wasn't a surprise, so I started praying on a different level for my marriage and I was saying God, you know, I really need you to change my.

00:30:13 Speaker 2

Husband and he.

00:30:14 Speaker 2

Very clearly said to.

00:30:15 Speaker 2

Me. Look, I'm not going to change him. You can only you can't change him. You can only change you.

00:30:21 Speaker 2

So in my mind I'm thinking yeah, but I'm doing everything I can. I'm. I'm like the perfect one. So what I decided he meant was not about me changing anything in me, but changing my attitude towards my husband.

00:30:32 Speaker 2

So he'd go off. He'd come back a couple of days later, having partied his night away, and instead of saying to him, where have you been? And you know we need you, I'd say. Oh, I hope you've had a good time, darling. Through gritted teeth. It was it was really odd. My perception of what I thought God meant, and obviously it had no effect whatsoever on my marriage.

00:30:52 Speaker 2

A A short time after that I decided to bring the children to England from France to go to a big Christian festival that we used to go to quite regularly called spring harvest.

00:31:01 Speaker 2

And whilst I was here a couple of people gave me these prophetic words about my life and UM.

00:31:08 Speaker 2

I was mulling that over and I got a phone call from my husband to say our marriage was over and apparently he'd met somebody on the Internet.

00:31:16 Speaker 2

It was a shock.

00:31:18 Speaker 2

But also a bit of a relief, and I felt guilty about that because I really believed in my mind that marriage is for life.

00:31:23 Speaker 2

You know when.

00:31:23 Speaker 2

You get married before God. That's what it's meant to mean. And I was.

00:31:27 Speaker 2

Really determined that's.

00:31:27 Speaker 2

What it should mean, but I also knew.

00:31:30 Speaker 2

That within my marriage.

00:31:33 Speaker 2

I wasn't treated well. I don't need to go into details. You know, I'm sure there's people watching this who've been in abusive relationships in whatever form.

00:31:41 Speaker 2

And you can identify with how that leaves you feeling, and that's where I was. So there was a level of relief, but I also felt guilty about that and ashamed. And I took the children back to France. And I said, right, we're gonna pack up our life here and we'll.

00:31:54 Speaker 2

Move back to England to be with my parents in their hotel.

00:31:59 Speaker 2

So it took us about six weeks and in that time.

00:32:02 Speaker 2

My ex-husband came up with this amazing idea that we would live in the holiday home we had in the grounds of our House and he would live in the main house with his girlfriend, to which I obviously said.

00:32:10 Speaker 2

No, he then locked us in the kitchen and screamed abuse at me for a number of hours.

00:32:16 Speaker 2

And finally gave in to the fact that we were gonna leave and we drove off in, in a van, and we had to leave behind all our animals which devastated me and most of our belongings as well. But I knew I had the thing that was important. I had the children, and I had my myself. And I had my faith, you know, and I came back to my parents hotel.

00:32:37 Speaker 2

That was in June of 1999.

00:32:42 Speaker 2

August of that year my mum had been diagnosed with cancer, bearing in mind a couple of years before I had gone through that myself and got over it. At first we felt like this was just another thing we were going to see through together, but it turned out.

00:32:55 Speaker 2

That actually, she didn't have very long to live and within three months of her diagnosis, she passed away. So the 6th of January.

00:33:03 Speaker 2

2000 we saw our last Christmas and our last new year together.

00:33:07 Speaker 2

And my mum passed away and that was a huge, huge thing in my life because although my relationship with her had been.

00:33:15 Speaker 2

Difficult, not nurturing and loving in a way. But I was very codependent. They enmeshed with my mum. Most of the major decisions in my life. I didn't trust myself with even things like buying what colour carpets I wanted or she made all the major decisions in my life.

00:33:31 Speaker 2

And she was a person that I ran to straight away when.

00:33:34 Speaker 2

Thing went wrong.

00:33:36 Speaker 2

Regardless of whether or not she was the best person for that job, that's how it was. So this left a huge hole. I'd now lost my husband. I'd lost my dream home. I'd lost my dream life, and now I'd lost my mum in a very short space of time.

00:33:49 Speaker 2

And within that space of time as well, pretty much everything else that could go wrong had gone wrong.

00:33:54 Speaker 2

Two days before Christmas, all the kids Christmas presents were stolen out of my car on Christmas Day, my cat got hit by a car. It lived, but it was just this series of events that was just lost, lost, lost. And then in two weeks after my mum died.

00:34:09 Speaker 2

The 17th of January, my divorce went through and the 20th of January was my mum's funeral. So in the same week I had these two major events and in that time I was going to church and begging everybody to pray.

00:34:22 Speaker 2

For me, and it was at a time when there was lots of spirit filled things going on.

00:34:28 Speaker 2

In the world.

00:34:29 Speaker 2

You know, people were having prayer meetings where lots of people were falling over in the spirit, all sorts of things were happening, miraculous healings, all that kind of thing. And I'd be standing in these churches with people falling around full of the Holy Spirit and various things. And I was like an island of pain just standing there.

00:34:46 Speaker 2

Nothing was touching me.

00:34:48 Speaker 2

And it was horrendous. I didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't have any tools to deal with that. I've not learned as a child to have any emotions. You know, I wasn't allowed to be in as a child. I was always told to just be quiet. It was very inconvenient. I was an inconvenience and a disappointment, and emotions definitely got in other people's way, so I didn't know how to process any of that stuff. I had to.

00:35:07 Speaker 2

Try and find another way to deal with it.

00:35:09 Speaker 2

I only had one solution.

00:35:11 Speaker 2

I said to my dad, I feel like I need to go out for the weekend, so he got a new pair to come and stay with my children and I went with some of my old friends to go to a party.

00:35:22 Speaker 2

And I partied.

00:35:24 Speaker 2

And the moment a drug hit my system.

00:35:28 Speaker 2

That was it.

00:35:29 Speaker 2

I was lost. I was in relapse and it was really horrendous. This was in 2001. I would say probably to 2003. I just went into this spiral.

00:35:40 Speaker 2

Where it ended up in 2000 and.

00:35:42 Speaker 2

Three, I'm sitting in A room.

00:35:44 Speaker 2

My children were in care.

00:35:46 Speaker 2

I had no possessions, no self-respect, no self esteem. Everything was gone, and I couldn't understand how it got to that place, because if you'd spoken to me a few years before, I would never, ever have dreamt that I could be in that spot where I was in that moment, absolutely desperate.

00:36:05 Speaker 2

And I think it it was in that moment everything we cried out again, but instead of this time God intervening.

00:36:10 Speaker 2

The social worker intervened and said, do you want help?

00:36:14 Speaker 2

And I said yes, I do.

00:36:16 Speaker 2

So I began a different part of my journey. This time my addiction had to take a different form of relief and I had to go through the process of going into rehabilitation. I maintained a level of my faith through that because my initial conversion, if you like, had been so personal. It hadn't involved any people. It was direct and it.

00:36:36 Speaker 2

Was direct from God.

00:36:37 Speaker 2

That couldn't be taken away from me.

00:36:40 Speaker 2

But all faith I had in myself and in the world, I suppose, had been completely stripped away, and I was just so lonely. I was so alone, and I'd failed in the one thing I wanted to do, which was to have my children and be a good mum, that that.

00:36:53 Speaker 2

Was it? That was my lifes work.

00:36:56 Speaker 2

I also still didn't know who I was and when I went into rehab, it was quite interesting because they take you through this process of trying to connect you.

00:37:03 Speaker 2

With yourself? They made me do a collage and this collage was meant to be.

00:37:08 Speaker 2

You know who?

00:37:09 Speaker 2

I was who I am now and who I want to be in the future. Just kind of connect me to myself. What were my favourite colours? My favourite food? My favourite music.

00:37:17 Speaker 2

And just those questions petrified me because I had no idea of the answers at all. I shoved it under my bed and left it there for a few weeks because I needed you to give me a clue. If you're gonna ask me what's my favourite food I need.

00:37:28 Speaker 2

You to tell.

00:37:28 Speaker 2

Me. What you like?

00:37:29 Speaker 2

Because I didn't dare alienate anybody by saying anything that they might disagree with, I hadn't realised I was like that. I was 42 years old when I went into rehab.

00:37:40 Speaker 2

And yet I was a child, emotionally and.

00:37:44 Speaker 2

Spiritually, I suppose my connection was still there, but I felt too ashamed and guilty of where I'd gone to. It was almost like I had this illusion that by giving my life to God, I became this perfect person, and I also felt like because over the years since I become a Christian because of the intensity.

00:38:04 Speaker 2

Of the change in my life, lots of people I knew had also become Christians, or at least open their hearts to God. And I felt if I admitted to them what happened to me, they'd all desert God.

00:38:15 Speaker 2

It's almost like always, God, really. I was God's representative on Earth and everyone was going to judge God by me. That's where I was at. So it was quite a difficult place to be because I couldn't ask for help from any direction, but I decided in this rehab, I'm gonna surrender to everything they suggest and tell me to do because I've got no other choice and my whole life's work at that moment was to get my children.

00:38:36 Speaker 2

Back and to get another opportunity I knew then.

00:38:40 Speaker 2

I'd never wanted them to feel the neglect and abandonment I'd felt as a child, and yet I'd created something worse for them. They'd had a normal life as well for many years, which I hadn't had, and now it all been stripped away.

00:38:52 Speaker 2

So I surrendered to all the things that they put in front of me. I joined a 12 step fellowship and I started opening myself up to speaking to therapists and various other people about various things.

00:39:07 Speaker 2

I remember the first time I went to church when I was in rehab, and it's quite funny because I'd said to them I'm a Christian. I'd really like to go to.

00:39:13 Speaker 2

Church and they said OK, so they contacted the local church and somebody very kindly came to pick me up and a few other people said they'd come as well. So we went to this very old fashioned high Church of England church, which was full of people, probably average age, about 90, I expect. And they're all there really kind, really lovely. And they go through the service and we got to the bit where they took communion.

00:39:35 Speaker 2

So we went up to take communion and as I reached out to take the cup, somebody almost dive bombed me and.

00:39:40 Speaker 2

Went no because it was wine and I was in rehab. And so it's actually quite amusing because they now have juice in most of the churches that I go to because they've realised that that's not a good thing to do.

00:39:53 Speaker 2

But I stood and watched the vicar in that church because they believed that this was now the blood of Christ. He had to finish all the wine that was left in all these different chalices all around the church. And when he came back to finish his talk, he was very red faced and probably a bit worse for wear. And I found that quite amusing as a alcoholic addict.

00:40:12 Speaker 2

But I desperately tried to keep a connection with my faith, but what happened was where is I'd felt this true connection to God before that. Now I felt like an imposter in my faith as.

00:40:22 Speaker 2

Well, because I'd failed.

00:40:24 Speaker 2

And my life had all been about failure.

00:40:27 Speaker 2

So I was in quite a difficult place.

00:40:29 Speaker 2

But I had nothing to lose by going through the motions of everything they set, and they very early on said to me because I was in this lovely big house in the countryside. And they said you're probably gonna need to do secondary treatment now. I'd had this thought in my mind that I would do six weeks in this rehab break the craving cycle for the drugs and go back and carry on with my life. And it would be great.

00:40:51 Speaker 2

But apparently that wasn't going to be the case.

00:40:54 Speaker 2

I can see now how that didn't really make sense because I'd taken a lot of years to get to 42 years of age with the chronic addiction I was smoking crack. Like I can't tell you how many drugs I was taking before I.

00:41:06 Speaker 2

Went into the.

00:41:06 Speaker 2

Rehab to think that I was gonna smash all of.

00:41:08 Speaker 2

That in the.

00:41:09 Speaker 2

Space of a few weeks without looking.

00:41:11 Speaker 2

At why I was an addict.

00:41:13 Speaker 2

Didn't make sense at all, but to me it seemed to make sense when I got there, but I agreed to go to Bournemouth for secondary treatment and I made some demands because obviously I was charged and I said to them well, I'm only prepared to go if I can see my children every weekend and I can have acting lessons. I don't even know why I picked that, but it seemed like at the time that was.

00:41:33 Speaker 2

Going to make my life complete.

00:41:35 Speaker 2

And they found me a place that would do both those things. So reluctantly, I headed off to Bournemouth.

00:41:42 Speaker 2

I realise now looking back I think that because I was when I first became a Christian, very intent on being the perfect Christian, the same as I wanted to be the perfect everything I did.

00:41:54 Speaker 2

That I was trying very intently to be like the perfect Christians that I saw in the church. Of course, none of them were perfect. But there were people that looked a little bit more perfect at it, and I tried to be like them.

00:42:05 Speaker 2

What I learned through my relapse was that I wanted to what I needed to do was to try and be the perfect.

00:42:10 Speaker 2

Version of myself and also accept that that was never going to be perfect, which is OK.

00:42:15 Speaker 2

So I started a journey of learning about me and who I was and there was a few miracles that happened in that period of time.

00:42:21 Speaker 2

Along the way, I was in my secondary treatment altogether. I did about 3 1/2 months in treatment and probably 99.9% of the time. If your children are removed and put into care for the reasons that were stated on my children's cases.

00:42:36 Speaker 2

You would take quite a long time to get them back, and yet I left treatment in July of 2004 and by the end of August 2004, all four of my children were back with me full time. It's a miracle.

00:42:49 Speaker 2

And it was one that I wanted to.

00:42:51 Speaker 2

Live up to if you like. I knew whatever happened moving forward, drugs could never be a solution for me again.

00:42:58 Speaker 2

And I still maintain that it's now it'll be 20 years in March since I've used drugs or alcohol. I don't know when you're watching this, but we're now going to be in 2024 when that happens. So in March 2024, I will be 20 years clean and sober.

00:43:14 Speaker 2

And by the grace of God, I'll reach that. Because I'm saying this in advance, which we don't advocate necessarily in the fellowships, but part of the thing that's kept me on track when things have been really difficult and I've had some hard times as well in recovery has been the fact that whatever happens, I never need to make that choice again.

00:43:29 Speaker 2

On behalf of my children.

00:43:31 Speaker 2

They didn't deserve it before and they don't deserve it now, but I don't.

00:43:34 Speaker 2

Deserve it either.

00:43:36 Speaker 2

And that was the thing that I never.

00:43:37 Speaker 2

Really. Understood or.

00:43:39 Speaker 2

I suppose.

00:43:40 Speaker 2

Believed in any way. No part of my being. Once I came out of rehab, I very quickly decided that I needed to find a church and I went around quite a few churches in Bournemouth and there was a lot of churches that were really good churches and there was nothing that I could say made them stand out in any way from each other as far as.

00:44:01 Speaker 2

A church is concerned.

00:44:03 Speaker 2

But what I was looking for was God, to stir my spirit, and I went to the vineyard Church and God stirred my spirit. And interestingly, when I went there, nobody came over and said Ohh hi, who are you and made a big fuss of me and you know, looked after me or anything like that. It was actually a bit kind of the opposite. And yet I knew God was telling me that's where he wanted me to be. Most of the other churches I've been to, it was like I was the celebration.

00:44:24 Speaker 2

Celebrated person of the week when I turned up, they'd all gone out of their way to make me feel welcome. That did happen in vineyard. It was kind of.

00:44:32 Speaker 2

Probably God, it was a bit of an anomaly that that didn't happen, but I knew God was telling me to go there and so the kids and I started to attend.

00:44:40 Speaker 2

And I'd come out of treatment and I was doing some voluntary work in a charity shop one day a week, and they actually made me assistant manager on a voluntary basis. And then the church, having heard my testimony and my background and what I'd gone through, asked me if I would like to be part of their staff because they were a church that was committed to reaching out to people in addiction.

00:45:00 Speaker 2

So obviously This is why God had brought me there and I began my journey in this new church into a place of being able to reach out to people who were going through addiction or just at different place in their life. We started a food bank, we did ministries for single mums, all sorts of things that overlapped with my experience. You know, before I'd lost my children.

00:45:19 Speaker 2

We've been moved on about.

00:45:22 Speaker 2

Ohh gosh, a lot of times in the space of five years we've moved house, but we've been homeless a number of times as well, so I had a lot of empathy and a lot of connection with people who were in lots of different scenarios. People in abusive relationships, but deep down inside there was still something going on in me that was a bit of an imposter syndrome because the one place that I hadn't really felt that was in my faith.

00:45:43 Speaker 2

And yet, funnily enough, I wasn't really being authentic. And then.

00:45:46 Speaker 2

When I relapsed.

00:45:48 Speaker 2

I got this real feeling that I wasn't good enough for God or my faith.

00:45:53 Speaker 2

And so I acted as if I didn't believe that. But there was this journey going on inside me and I think looking back when I was praying and asking people to pray for me when I'd lost my mum and my my husband and my home and all of that sort of thing, what I really wanted was this miraculous thing where I would wake up tomorrow morning and God had just removed all feelings that I didn't have to process any grief or emotion.

00:46:14 Speaker 2

That it was all just like it hadn't happened. Completely unrealistic. What God wanted me to do was to trust him with those emotions and the fact that he was going to carry me through them and that it didn't matter what had happened. He was still there, and it would be OK. And I couldn't do that then.

00:46:28 Speaker 2

I didn't have any capacity for that, but slowly when I came back into recovery, I began to see things differently and I realised that even that relapse was something that God could use in a huge way. In fact, it's probably been one of the more important parts of my journey because it's helped me to start being me and to start being.

00:46:47 Speaker 2

In a more authentic relationship with God, because my relationship with God started from a place of true authenticity, it wasn't from another person. It was dirt.

00:46:57 Speaker 2

But somewhere along the line, it became more about the people that were telling me who I should be in God rather than my relationship with God and him telling me who I was. So I started this process to try and get.

00:47:08 Speaker 2

Back to that.

00:47:10 Speaker 2

And I'm a I'm a huge advocate nowadays of people who come to faith who come out of addiction to continue.

00:47:18 Speaker 2

Both paths on their journey, the path of connecting with God in a very deep and meaningful way, but also the path of going into the fellowships and learning about addiction and learning about the tools to help them to make the right decisions, and knowing they never need to pick up drugs and alcohol again because we're all going to have difficult times in our lives.

00:47:37 Speaker 2

And if you're somebody that comes from trauma of any sort, you don't learn to process emotions. You have to bury them because it's part of what keeps you safe. It's. It's how you survive. It's part of your survival.

00:47:50 Speaker 2

So to learn.

00:47:52 Speaker 2

To trust God with those emotions is a process, and it's a journey, and it doesn't happen in a short space of time and you need all the tools that you can be given out there. I believe that all this fellowships for me are God-given they originated, were started by Christians from the Bible, and that's really important. And the process of what I went through learning my way through the 12 steps.

00:48:12 Speaker 2

Was the same as the process of discipleship when I became a.

00:48:15 Speaker 2

Christian, you know, realising that I'd done some things wrong and that I needed to surrender that to God and say that I was sorry not just to God, but to the people that I had wronged. And to understand that there were parts of me that were a bit damaged and maybe he could help me with those parts and then to walk forward in a way that brought me into freedom by keeping short accounts and not allowing myself to mistreat.

00:48:35 Speaker 2

People all being mistreated by people, which is very important.

00:48:40 Speaker 2

But to mention those things as and when they happened in a caring way, it's never about putting anybody else down, destroying anybody else or making them feel bad. But it's about being authentic. But to move through that with prayer, meditation, connection with God and keeping a clear account of what he's done in my life.

00:49:00 Speaker 2

And sharing it with other people. That's basically the 12 steps in a nutshell. That's the process it takes you through. It's also the process of discipleship. And I think, you know, once I realised that I I was really aware that God had put me in a place for deeper healing.

00:49:16 Speaker 2

That's what's happened over the last 19 1/2 years.

00:49:21 Speaker 2

Having got my children back, I had to learn.

00:49:23 Speaker 2

How to be a mum?

00:49:24 Speaker 2

I only had the tools I'd been given and they were sketchy, you know? So I've had to learn that process and they've taught me a lot. But the fellowships taught me a lot. The church has taught me a lot. You know, I realised that our journey in church has been quite a mixed one. When we first went there, we saw happy families with two parents who were loving and caring. I saw children with fathers.

00:49:45 Speaker 2

That knew what their favourite food was that rang them when they didn't see them for a day or two that knew about them, that knew their children. My children never experienced that. I never experienced that.

00:49:54 Speaker 2

It made me sad.

00:49:57 Speaker 2

I had to grieve that and just accept that was never going to change.

00:50:01 Speaker 2

But we've got a perfect father. You know, when I connected, that cause when people had said that to me at first, I couldn't really connect with it at all. God's the perfect father. I didn't even know what that meant. But now I understand. He loves me as I am walks and all I don't have to impress him. I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not. I don't have to try and be you because you're his favourite. I'm his favourite, actually.

00:50:22 Speaker 2

That's it. So once I realised that and then I could pass that on to my children and love them for who they are and just say to.

00:50:29 Speaker 2

Them it doesn't.

00:50:29 Speaker 2

Matter. You know, I'm. I'm here. Whatever goes on, but with some boundaries because I want them to be safe.

00:50:36 Speaker 2

God wants me to be safe, and sometimes he gives me boundaries and that's good. I think I've grown up.

00:50:42 Speaker 2

This time around and.

00:50:44 Speaker 2

My faith is probably more sincere because it's.

00:50:49 Speaker 2

Got a deeper connection with God, but in a more real way. So it's Vicky that's connecting with God, not Vicki's version of Vicky or somebody else's version of Vicky.

00:51:00 Speaker 2

So do I have complete freedom from everything? No. I'm a nightmare. Honestly, if I think I need a pair of socks, I might go into 15 shops, look at 25 pairs of socks, then buy the first pair I saw. Then go home and worry for the next week that I've bought the wrong colour. Or maybe I should have got this pair. I'm, you know, I can get obsessive around anything. That's the nature of addiction. But mostly what I know is it's an avoidance.

00:51:22 Speaker 2

So if I start sitting down to do some some step work or some Bible study or some meditation or something which is a little bit difficult, suddenly I'll be completely convinced that I need to go and pick the dog poop in the garden. Anything to avoid the thing that's gonna be.

00:51:36 Speaker 2

To me, you know, and and now I realise that I have to push through that and and carry on because God's brought huge healing into my soul.

00:51:45 Speaker 2

By me and trusting him and allowing him to to show me the stuff that I need to actually process. I've had trauma therapy, which has been really helpful. I've gone to different people in different places to get different help for different parts of my experience and what's going on.

00:52:01 Speaker 2

And what I've reached now is a point in my life where.

00:52:05 Speaker 2

I've got trust and acceptance because I know things can be difficult and things might go wrong, but it will be OK. Yeah, in the fellowships, what they say is this too shall pass. And it's always the truth, you know, and I can wake up and have the happiest, best feeling I've ever had in my life. It's gonna pass. I'm gonna.

00:52:20 Speaker 2

Feel rubbish again, but the good news is, no matter how rubbish I feel, that's also going to pass.

00:52:26 Speaker 2

How did it pass?

00:52:27 Speaker 2

By handing it over, you know I trust God with everything that goes on. I thank him every day. My, my.

00:52:34 Speaker 2

Antidote for fear is gratitude. You know the bottom line. It's faith. The opposite of fear is not courage, it's faith. But it's also gratitude. And no matter what I think I don't have. I can look at what I do have and I can feel grateful.

00:52:50 Speaker 2

Here I am all these years later. I didn't even think I'd live to see 30 and I've got grandchildren who've never seen me living the life, the degradation that I was in, and I've got children who've reached their own levels of of healing and who are living what I would call fairly normal lives.

00:53:07 Speaker 2

So I always look at it like this.

00:53:11 Speaker 2

When people say to me.

00:53:14 Speaker 2

Ohh well, it's all right for you. You know, living this ridiculous thing where you believe in Jesus and Jesus gonna heal everything. Yeah, but it's a bit risky not to give it a go, you know? Because if I'm wrong, all it's ever given me in my life is healing. Freedom, a sense of who I am. A A sense of direction and a connection which I never had before.

00:53:37 Speaker 2

If I'm right, you've got everything to lose because this is eternity we're talking about. This isn't about today, you know, in the Vineyard Church, we talk about the now and the not yet where we're living in this. This in between place. Between what we have now and what's to come and what's to come is the most important because it's eternal. What we have now is fleeting. And you could look at it in a way that this is the hardest part of the journey. It's almost.

00:53:59 Speaker 2

Like the pregnancy before the birth.

00:54:01 Speaker 2

And so if I'm right and you're wrong, you've got a lot to lose. Is it worth the risk? Give it a go, you know, I know people who think they can drink socially.

00:54:13 Speaker 2

And maybe they're right. Maybe I could, too. Is it worth the risk? Because by the time I find out, I'm too far down the road to know my way back from that mistake, I'd say take the risk, give it a.

00:54:25 Speaker 2

Go. You can always get your money back if God doesn't turn up.

00:54:30 Speaker 2

I think I'll leave it there.

00:54:32 Speaker 3

I've got the mics perfect.

00:54:38 Speaker 4

That's incredible. That's such an amazing story and.

00:54:41 Speaker 4

Just one question. What would you say is the one?

00:54:47 Speaker 4

Undeniable thing that Jesus has done that just for him, for you, makes him undeniable.

00:54:55 Speaker 2

I think there's so many, you know, all the things that I've mentioned. When God intervened in my life and spoke to me, that was such an undeniable thing, and it was the turning point in my life when.

00:55:08 Speaker 2

God said to me that my cancer was gonna go, but I'd have to go through treatment. That was a a turning point in my life. But I think when Jesus.

00:55:16 Speaker 2

Jesus is like my friend my brother.

00:55:20 Speaker 2

I used to see Jesus as a bit of a scary authority figure only because I was a very big people pleaser. I needed to be what you needed me to be so that you.

00:55:27 Speaker 2

Would like me. It was part of my survival and I was a bit like that with Jesus.

00:55:31 Speaker 2

And it was when I realised.

00:55:34 Speaker 2

I looked in the Bible and I saw the person that I used to be Jesus is so authentic. You know, it's just that connection with Jesus as a real person. He went and hung out with people who were on the outskirts of society. He was homeless, he.

00:55:46 Speaker 2

Didn't have a.

00:55:46 Speaker 2

Home. He shuffled around. You know, in in the dirt with people, he sorted their basic needs. He fed them, he clothed them, but he loved them where they were at. And as soon as I connected with that.

00:55:57 Speaker 2

Jesus, that has changed everything in me because instead of being this unworthy.

00:56:02 Speaker 2

Person that didn't have anything to offer the world. I could see that I am worthy. I am worthy because I don't have to be or do anything. Jesus loves me exactly where I am for exactly who I am. And I think that was such a defining moment in my life and I don't know exactly that point when that happened because it was almost like a slow awakening.

00:56:21 Speaker 2

But the fact is, Jesus has given me, me and.

00:56:26 Speaker 2

Yeah, that's the biggest thing because I sought that in other people, you know, especially when I was being.

00:56:32 Speaker 2

I suppose in my teens when I was going out and sleeping with people and doing all these things to try and find love and to try and be lovable, I thought if you loved me, that made me.

00:56:39 Speaker 2

Lovable never worked, never worked. If I walked into a room with 100 people and 99 said you're an amazing person and you look brilliant and one person went, oh, I don't really like you in that. That's what I remember when I went home, you know.

00:56:52 Speaker 2

It wouldn't matter how many people gave me any affirmation or love, I'd remember the one person that gave me a bit of rejection.

00:56:58 Speaker 2

Jesus has smashed all of that and he's changed all of that because it doesn't matter now. I could walk in the room and 100 people could go well. Who do you think you are? It's fine. I walk out because I've walked in with Jesus. I walk out with Jesus, he loves me as I am.

00:57:11 Speaker 2

And I.

00:57:11 Speaker 2

Don't have to try and be anybody else. It sounds like I'm kind of perfect. Not at all. I mean, I struggle with that on days, you know, weeks sometime at a time.

00:57:19 Speaker 2

It's not automatically always there in me, but it's something I can go back to as long as I remember, because the other thing is I used to do a lot of this.

00:57:28 Speaker 2

And have this great idea, and I'll be rushing along. Going keep up. God keep.

00:57:31 Speaker 2

Up keep up and now I'm like.

00:57:32 Speaker 2

Take time. Just chill.

00:57:35 Speaker 2

Right. Where are we going today? God, what should we be doing? I let him take charge, you know, and that. So now I'm.

00:57:41 Speaker 2

A follower in my leadership, if you like, it's much more.

00:57:47 Speaker 2

Calm place to be.

00:57:49 Speaker 2

So yeah.

00:57:51 Speaker 3

Just one follow up question really just I'm aware that maybe people might be watching this and be really touched by your story and also maybe be struggling themselves with addiction.

00:58:02 Speaker 3

I feel like maybe you might be the best positioned to share what steps they could take to.

00:58:10 Speaker 3

Move forward from that. Like what? Maybe what? Three steps? How could they get help? Really is basically what I'm asking.

00:58:16 Speaker 2

Yeah. So.

00:58:19 Speaker 2

There's there's a few different steps that you can take and obviously.

00:58:24 Speaker 2

I had an incredible journey because the first time that I got free of addiction, God set me free.

00:58:29 Speaker 2

There and then on my own, and I can't guarantee that will happen for anybody else. But what I can say is you're never going to waste a prayer.

00:58:37 Speaker 2

But on a practical level, there's going to be services wherever you are in the world. So I actually work for a drug and alcohol service in the UK and any rare area of the UK, you'll have somebody that you can contact and connect with on that level. There's 12 step fellowships everywhere in the world, but also online. And you get lots of unconditional support.

00:58:56 Speaker 2

And from people that completely understand where you're at and they don't care where you're at in your journey, you could be smashed. You can go on a meeting, people will connect with you and help you. And there's also if you want to.

00:59:09 Speaker 2

Combination. In the UK, we've got believers in recovery, which are they're, but it says on the tin, they're believers who are in recovery and they have meetings around the country, but also online. So again you can Google that and you can attend their meetings and maybe get a little perspective of being in recovery, but also having the power of Jesus in your.

00:59:28 Speaker 2

Life and that's.

00:59:29 Speaker 2

Combination I would recommend.

00:59:31 Speaker 2

But the first thing, the very first thing to do is to acknowledge to yourself that you have a problem, because whatever level you're out of taking any substance that is going to change the way you feel, and it could be food, it doesn't have to be drugs or alcohol, could be shopping, could be gambling, anything, anything that is interfering in your life, turning you into a person that's.

00:59:51 Speaker 2

Deceiving people, do you tell white lies? Do you try and cover up your behaviour in any way? Is it affecting your life financially? Are you unreliable? Are you unable to be there emotionally for your friends and family because your head's already thinking about how you're gonna get your next fix?

01:00:07 Speaker 2

Admit it to someone. Admit it to yourself and admit it to someone else. That is the very first step in anybody's journey. Most people can go to their GP, their doctor as well, and speak to them. And I would say on that level as well that this includes things like self harming, eating disorders, all of those sorts of things which come from somewhere deep inside yourself.

01:00:28 Speaker 2

In the place of disassociation, pain or misery, get some help.

01:00:33 Speaker 2

You're worth it.

01:00:34 Speaker 4

Amazing. Just to end, could you pray for anyone that's listening to this that's been touched by your story? And just so I think you be the best person to connect to those people and just.

01:00:44 Speaker 4

Pray for those people.

01:00:45 Speaker 2

Yeah. So we just say Holy Spirit come.

01:00:49 Speaker 2

Lord, you know all of this. This is not in any way to glorify me or the journey I've been on. This is all about glorifying you. And this is about reaching out and helping people to see how you can bring freedom and healing.

01:01:03 Speaker 2

And Lord, I just ask that for the people that may watch or hear any of this my story and connect to it in any way.

01:01:11 Speaker 2

That you would speak with your small still voice into their.

01:01:14 Speaker 2

Heart and mind.

01:01:15 Speaker 2

We ask, Lord, that in this moment right now, as they're listening to this, that they would sense your presence in a.

01:01:21 Speaker 2

Very real way.

01:01:23 Speaker 2

And I ask, Lord, that you would give them an insight into the next part of their journey.

01:01:27 Speaker 2

What should they do?

01:01:28 Speaker 2

Speak to them now, Lord, in this moment.

01:01:31 Speaker 2

Lord, I pray that you would bring Christians annoyingly across their path for every opportunity, everywhere they turn. Lord, I pray that you would be there, giving them signs, just letting them know that you're there for them and that you love them. And Lord, I pray that for people who've had to keep secrets, whether it's about being abused, whether it's about violent relationships, whether it's about their own behaviour, whatever it may be, Lord.

01:01:53 Speaker 2

That we pray Jesus into the darkness to bring light in every area. And Lord, I pray in Jesus. Name that you would smash those strongholds of addiction, of of.

01:02:05 Speaker 2

Separation of feeling unworthy. Lord, we pray in the name of Jesus that you would smash that in the lives of people watching and listening to this, and bring your wholeness and your love into their hearts. And I just ask Lord that you would help them to know in this moment right here, right now, that you love them and.

01:02:23 Speaker 2

They are worthy.

01:02:24 Speaker 2

In Jesus name.

01:02:26

Amen. Amen.

01:02:27 Speaker 3

There are men.

01:02:34 Speaker 1

Thanks for listening to the Jesus Studio podcast.

01:02:38 Speaker 1

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01:02:40 Speaker 1

The testimonials and stories shared reflect the personal experiences and unique journeys of our guests. Shop our merch at jesusstudio.co.uk.