I have a rather long testimony, it starts when I am 14 yrs. Old.( I am 46 now) I
was raised a catholic and came from an upper middle class home. Up until I was
14 I was going to be a nun. My family was so excited about it (beings that I am
Italian) this just made it better. Well, my mom sent me to spend a weekend with
some nun's from my church and when I came back I was not going be a nun any
more. I really was a free spirit and that way of life was not for me. I started
to run with some of the wrong crowd. I started smoking cigarettes and then came
the drugs.
The first thing of course was the pot. I was seeing a guy who was 18 yrs. Old.
My parents didn't know that he was doing drugs they thought he was really nice
and they were happy because he was Italian too. Well, he got me into other
drugs. I was taking speed every day, this was the pharmaceutical stuff, really
strong. Then I started acid and did a little bit of drinking. When I was 15 I
started going with a guy from school and I got pregnant. We were broke up when I
found out and already going with another guy. I didn't tell my folks until I was
6 mos. Along. I told my folks and they sent me to live with an aunt. My mom
realized that she couldn't shut me away so she had me come back.
I started seeing the brother of the guy I had been going out with just as
friends. He was 8 yrs. Older then me and my mom hated him. Dan was really good
to me and when I had the baby I had to give him up for adoption he was there for
me. He rode in one of the first biker gangs in Tacoma, WA. So now I was riding
with the gangs. He was still really good to me and then 3 months later I am
pregnant again. I couldn't go and tell my folks this so I had an abortion. That
night he beat me and I had to go home with all these bruises on me. (You see I
was lying to go out and see him) I had told my mom that I was staying after
school with some friends and going to a ball game and at the game I got jumped
by a bunch of black girls I was having problems with. She believed me. ( My poor
mom is so awesome even to this day and she is 81.)
Well I continued to see this man with my mom wanting him dead. It was really
hard. 2 months before I turned 18 he said that I was going to get pregnant and
this time I was going to have the baby and get to keep it. He was still beating
me up and I was to scared to leave him. Back then they didn't make it easy to
turn some one in for domestic violence. A month after I turned 18 we got married
with out my parents knowing. I only married him to keep the baby, he only
married me to get back at my folks. The first month was great, he treated me
like a queen and then he started going out and staying out all night and then
coming home and beat me and rape me.
My dad disowned me but my mom was still in touch and taking me to the Dr. So I
told her one day to tell my dad I wanted to come home and when my husband went
out that night I would call. When I called my dad was there in 15 mins. I got a
divorce and had the baby. A 8lb baby boy. Oh, by the way I didn't do drugs with
him. He is 28 and has 2 girls and a boy on the way.
Anyway, I was living at home with my folks so when the baby went to sleep I went
out and started partying again. When my son was 11\2 I met this really nice guy
and we moved in together and I got pregnant again. We got married in the church
but it never should of happened. The wedding was called off by him 3 times in a
month and when he showed up at the wedding he was high on mushrooms. Well, we
stayed married for 5 yrs and had 2 boys (they are 25 and 23). I was into drugs
again but not that bad. My dad died in 77 and it about killed me. We split up
and I left my boys with him. He said it was because my dad died that I had a
break down. Maybe so but he was cheating on me also. I wanted to party and not
have to worry about them getting hurt and I couldn't afford them, He could. I
started running with bikers again and met up with Neil and we were a great
couple, we were always broke but we got along so good. I started doing more
drugs and that was before the crank was so full of poison and I was doing a lot
of that and cocaine and still smoking pot. I got in a car wreck and with the
insurance money I bought him a bike. He started cheating on me the next week. I
had had enough of him cheating on me and once again my mom hated him. I had a
really good job so I left.
I hadn't been in church for years but I would stop and pray now and then. I
prayed that if God wanted me to be with anyone He would give me a blue-eyed,
dark hair man who rode Harleys but would put me first and treat me right. I
wasn't really looking when I met Rick. He had just gotten out of prison and was
looking good. It turned out that I went to school with him and had been in love
with him for years. We started out as friends. I was still working. We started
going out and I didn't even know his last name. When I found out I knew God had
heard my prayer.
He was blue-eyed and had dark hair. He didn't have the Harley yet but what the
heck. 2 out of 3 isn't bad for someone who asked God for something but wasn't
giving anything back, right. Anyway, I had stopped doing the hard drugs and was
just smoking my pot. Rick had a history with heroin and other I.V. drug use but
he wasn't using then. He was going to court ordered u.as and n.a meetings. I was
still smoking pot and he started to sell it to make money since he wasn't
smoking it we did make money.
Well the reason he was in prison was for burglary and we ended up robbing a guy
for $3,500 that we were selling pot to. We bought a Harley. He never went
anywhere without me on the back and that showed me that he wasn't like the other
guys. He was really good to me in so many ways. He got off parole and didn't
have to do drug tests any longer so he started doing drugs again. I had never
done heroin because I didn't want to use the needle, so he told me that I didn't
have to do it that way. So I started snorting it from the needle (Thank God I
didn't know that when I was younger) I got strung out on it and kicked it 7
times in one year. Rick got really bad and I threatened to leave him many times
but just couldn't. I really loved him.
I had told people before when they asked me if he started using again what would
I do and I said I would leave him. Well, I joined him instead. We became
homeless stayed in abandoned house or house that should of been. Rats running
around. I didn't see my mom through all of this and when I finally did she
didn't even know who I was.
We sold drugs on the streets of down town Tacoma. This was things I thought I
would never do but drugs will make you do things you never thought you would. I
started staying with a friend that sold crank, at this time I was strung out on
that.
One night Rick was in the bathroom and noticed a board in the wall was lose so
he took it off and found hidden money. He thought it was around $10,000. He told
me about it and said he was going to take it so we could go to Ca. To be with my
boys. I told him not to take it because I didn't want to be looking over my
shoulder for the rest of my life and my boys were going to be moving back. Well
a few days later Rick was gone and so was the money. Not $10,000 but $40,000.
He had his sister in law call me 2 days later to meet him the next day and I
said no. The person he took the money from was on the other phone ( I didn't
know it) and when I hung up she was there she knew that the money was gone but
until that time didn't know that he had taken it. From that point on my life
became the worst it ever was. She was friends with a couple of the bike gangs
around and I was kidnapped. My life was threatened daily I wasn't allowed to go
anywhere that someone wasn't with me.
She had wanted posters made up with a $10,000 reward for him to be taken alive
and had me on the streets with them passing them out. Rick's mom had told him
that I turned on him and that I was trying to get the reward money. She also
told the person the money was taken from that I had done it and I was just
setting Rick up for it. She was not a very nice person but that is another
story. For 2 weeks I was held. I got maybe 2 hrs sleep that whole time.
One night the person that was supposed to keep an eye on me told me he believed
me that I didn't know where Rick was and that I should go while I had the
chance. He was going to go to sleep and that I should just leave. I did. I went
out to a friend from grade school. And of course he was in to the crank also so
for the next 4 weeks I was running from the people that were after me and again
didn't get any sleep.
I had convinced Rick's brother that I didn't have anything to do with trying to
get Rick caught and if they heard from him please tell him and give him the
number of where I was at. 3 weeks after that I went back to their house to find
out I just missed him and they gave him the number. The next morn. He called at
7 am and had me go to 5 different phone booths before he was sure I wasn't being
followed. I meet up with him and we took off.
He said that he knew his mom was lying and he had to come back to get me. He
didn't know what I had been going through because she never told him whenever he
called her. We ended up staying all over the place in the trailer he had bought.
He didn't have hardly any of the money left because he had bought the trailer
and the truck and put everything that I had ever said I wanted as far as
household things in the trailer and the rest he spent on drugs.
At one point when he realized that he had lost me he was trying to kill his
self. We ended up at the ocean and got jobs in a motel. We got married.( that
was in 1990) We actually ended up taking over management of it for 2 yrs. The
people found out we were there and sent some one down to get us but we found out
from Rick's brother. The owners of the motel found out what was going on and
fired us. We were still doing crank and smoking pot but we were able to do our
jobs.
We ended up going to Moses Lake for 3 months but we couldn't find work. Rick's
cousins lived there and we did a lot of partying but for the most part we didn't
do a lot of drugs still smoking the pot though. We came back to the beach and
started doing crank again. And this time we really went into it. We were able to
get jobs and keep them for a year but when we lost them we started selling. We
were living in our trailer on a dead end street and we had drugs in every house
there. There was a crank lab right next door and boy I thought I was in heaven
we were getting it for free.
Rick would run to Tacoma sometimes and get heroin. He would hardly ever leave
the trailer other wise. I was always on the go and he started thinking I was
cheating on him. We started fighting and we never fought before this. I left him
one time and only came back because we had wolves and pups that I knew needed
food. It took him 4 hrs to convince me that we needed to be together and get off
the drugs.
He had started to read the Bible and he told me that God was talking to him.
When he was little his grandmother was a Christian and had taken him to church a
lot. He told me that God gave him a vision that 3 men were going to show up
pretending to be our friends but they were going to try to kill him because of
the money thing. I thought oh yeah right, but you know what? It happened.
A guy that he knew from years before and was at our wedding had turned against
him and showed up with 2 guys we didn't know. They had these steaks that they
had bought and wanted to have a BBQ. We were hungry but since Rick didn't know
these guys and that the steaks were unwrapped we didn't trust them. Rick told
his friend to leave, that he knew better then to bring strangers around us and
also they wanted Rick to go to Elma to help rob someplace. They left but they
left the steaks we didn't even feed them to the animals we threw them away. It
was really hard to do but we didn't know if they had put poison on them or not.
Anyway, since what Rick had said the Lord told him came true he was more
convinced that God was calling to us.
A few days later he told me he was going to take a shower and go to the nearest
church and go where ever God wanted him to. He didn't think I would go with him
that I wanted to keep doing the drugs so he said he was going leave everything
to me and go. Well I just couldn't see my life with out him so we went to the
church and ended up giving our life to the Lord. We were still living on the
dead end street and the church moved us into a cabin that they have on the
property and we lived there for 5 yrs. That was 71\2 yrs ago. We are still
clean.
We bought a house 3 yrs ago. God has been so good to us. My husband came down
with hep-c while we were still at the church and the lord healed him for about a
year and then he came down with it again. He has not been able to work for 2
yrs. We have almost lost our house But with God and the wonderful church we
belong to we have been able to hang on to it. Tomorrow 6\5 we go see his Dr. and
hopefully she will tell him that he only has to take the treatment 1 more month
and then he will be able to go back to work. We still go through trials and
tribulations but I just give it to the Lord and he takes care of it. We have
brought a few of the lost to the Lord. We go to the Union Gospel Mission once a
month and give our testimony ( not this long we only have 15 mins. LOL) You know
with out the Lord working behind the scenes all those years we would surely be
dead, but he had a plan for us. For those of you reading this and feel there is
no way out for you think again. We had people wanting to kill us, we were doing
drugs that should of killed us. But most importantly God wanted us alive, and he
wants you and anyone you know who is caught up in drugs or any of Satan's lies
to live too. I pray for you all and if this story brings just one lost soul to
him I have done with my life that God has wanted me to do. PRAISE HIS NAME ON
HIGH!
Patty Main machrsean@yahoo.com
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