Living by faith

There were times when I had no self-esteem. The men that I chose were abusive, drug addicted and with little or no education comproble to mine. I wanted the white house with the picket fence and the two happy children playing in the yard. What I got was no where near what I had aspired for myself. Thus began the downward spiral of events that lead me to one of my weakest points in life. I am the mother of 7 adult girls, and 1 male adult. I placed emphasis on the word adult because they too think that they have a firm understanding of life and they are after all adults. Through my drugging and drinking days, I drank heavily in front of my children and I drugged (crack cocaine) behind closed doors. They knew what was going on even when I tried to hide it because everyone who smokes crack has some type of "tick" that is quite noticeable once they have taken a hit. (i.e. looking on the floor, peeking out of the windows, hiding behind furniture, or freezing). One thing that I do know is that I became tired of drug addict routine. I asked the Lord one day in despair to take the taste from my mouth and He knew that I was sincere because I just so mentally and physically tired that I was unable to go on any further. By this time, my children had been removed from my home, not because of filth, but because I failed to pick them up at the designated time and the person keeping them called Child Protective Services. This is when the really heavy drinking began and I drank to keep from thinking about the situation and the more I drank the sicker I was becoming. About 7 years ago, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and diabetic neuropathy. I also had  extremely high blood pressure and hepatitis C. For a brief time during my drugging, I had done intraveneous drugs so from that point in time I was infected with hepatitis C. When I went for the physical for social security, the physician stated that I had two years to live and he walked out of the room. I also had been diagnosed with sclerosis of the liver. I walked out of that office and cried and said you  know what, if I only have two years to live then I'm going to keep on drinking. Why stop now? There is nothing that can be done to reverse it. So I kept on, until one day one of my younger daughters came to me and said that the church that she was doing community service at up the street wanted her to attend service that Sunday and would I go with her because she didn't want to go alone. I said yes. It took an unbelieveably amount of time to reach the church walking because I was so weak and actually needed to be hospitalized, but we made it. When I walked through the door I felt a peace that the bottle, the drug, the men had never been able to give me. I was asked to come back and I returned and returned and finally I joined. The drinking and drugging and the desire to do those things or even to be around people participating in those things is gone, but not forgotten. There are times when things get stressful and in the corners of my mind the thought appears, saying just one drink won't hurt or you could go buy some crack and smoke it because you live alone and no one would know. But I would know and surely God would know and I made a vow to the Lord and I won't take it back.