My name is Lisa. I grew up in a typical middle-class home in Central New York. My parents gave me anything I could have ever wanted to be happy. I started piano lessons when I was four, I always made straight A’s in school while on the honor roll, I went to church several days a week faithfully, and always acted appropriately in public. With a life like this, you would have been very surprised to ever believe that a girl like me could have any reason to want to abuse substances, yet alone have an addiction to them.

At the age of 13, I began a habit of sneaking out of my parents’ home with a whiskey bottle in hand, stolen from my father’s basement. This would start a vicious cycle of heavy drinking and many unfortunate consequences that followed with such a lifestyle. I mastered the art of leading a double life. I continued to fool people into believing that my life was all that it had appeared to be, but when night would fall, I would proceed to engage in the abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs in a manner not usual for a girl so young.

This lifestyle went on for 12 long years. I became a single mother at age 21, had my share of physical and mental abuse-filled relationships, as well as participated in immorality in shameful amounts. I managed to continue the façade of the professional and successful life, as I had graduated and began my career in the court-reporting field, a dream I had aspired since the age of 12. Although I was successful in that aspect, the failed relationships and stresses of life led me further into more persistent drinking binges, which led to more severe consequences.

At the age of 25, while a part of many of my business endeavors, a bright young woman shared her faith with me, which led to my becoming a disciple in 2003. Immediately I quit smoking cigarettes and drinking completely. After three years of being a disciple and after having married in 2004, I had come to the point where I thought I could handle having a casual glass of wine with my husband. I justified it because I was aware that one drink was not a sin, but there was something inside of me, when I would drink just one glass, that would scream for me to drink the whole bottle. I allowed myself to live in denial and drink a few glasses here or there for the next two years.

Within the first year of being on the mission team to Chicago, I joined the first Chemical Recovery (CR) group that was started. It was a long six months of intense emotion, personal growth, and a development of very deep convictions. I had realized that when Jesus said in Luke that if we do not give up everything, we cannot be his disciples, that what He considered my “everything” was to finally give up all form of drinking any alcohol at all. Although permissible, it was not beneficial for me. Not only could it be physically damaging to me, but it could and would have become the spiritual death of me.

I have since joined the CR ministry as an assistant and have decided to share my convictions and story with many young women who struggle with the enslavement to this form of sin that can ultimately take not only physical life, but spiritually lead the whole world astray. I have been fortunate in the last three years to see many CR graduations and lives “saved” from this horrific epidemic. The CR ministry has been a large contribution to my personal working-out my salvation with fear and trembling, and I believe that without this powerful ministry, I would not be here to tell my story today.

Categories: Testimonials, Women's Ministry
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