Free Meal at Church Changes Drug Addict’s Life

CBN.com - “I remember being up in our big window, and my mother telling me, ‘Michelle, please come down from there. Daddy’s not coming home.’”

Michelle Spier was only four years old when her parents divorced. Her mother later remarried a Christian man who took the family to church. “I just did what my parents told me to do. If the church doors were open, we would be in church,” Michelle says.

Growing up, Michelle was caught between her churchgoing parents and her biological dad. He was an alcoholic and encouraged her to live life by her own rules. “I remember having a lot of anger, built up anger. Not seeing that they were trying to do for good for me, you know. I was seeing it as ‘they don’t care about me. They just want to keep me under their roof. They don’t want me to have a life,’ It just made me rebel more.”

At seventeen, Michelle moved out and embraced the party lifestyle. But when she had sex one night, her fragile self-image was destroyed. After that, Michelle decided nothing she did mattered. “It was a breaking point in my life where I just –I thought less of myself, because it was important to me to save myself for the man that I was going to marry. I ended up being promiscuous throughout years because I thought, ‘Well, I’ve already done that. So I guess if I’m going to be a part of whatever this world has, I’m going to have to just go with it.’ So I drank a lot. I had to drink to relax to fit in with the crowds that I was hanging around. I started smoking pot occasionally.”

Michelle went from one relationship to the next. “I’m looking for that little white house with the picket fence and the family, that perfect little family that I never had.”

Her search always ended in heartache. Over the next ten years, Michelle had four children with four different men and put one son up for adoption. “I knew I couldn’t afford to keep this child, you know, I couldn’t—I didn’t feel that I was going to be able to provide him a good life. That’s the hard part. When you have that beautiful baby in your hand and you hand it over. And you give that child to the person that’s going to be taking care of him for the remainder of his life. And that alone, in itself, is unexplainable.”

Michelle used alcohol to deal with her grief, but adding to her depression, she had also gained weight. So when someone offered her a pill that would help her lose weight, she took it without question. “That’s what I thought it was, a dietary supplement,” says Michelle, “but it was methamphetamine in a pill form.”

Michelle was addicted instantly and soon began smoking meth. Feeding her addiction became all she cared about for the next eight years. “I wanted more and that’s all I wanted. And I didn’t care how I got it. My bills weren’t being paid after a time. Next thing you know I’m being evicted, putting my stuff in storage. It took everything from me. My soul; my children; two houses; a couple cars; I mean, every time I would reestablish or try to reestablish, it would be taken away from me.”

Michelle’s kids stayed with relatives and friends.  Then Michelle’s parents filed for custody of her daughter, Valerie-– and won. “After my parents took my daughter, I ran real hard,” says Michelle. “I was just running from everything--everything within me, myself and everybody else. And I was so empty and broken and I remember being up for I’d say about five days.”

Michelle went on a meth binge and was coming down from her high when her oldest son, Anthony, found her. ”He said, ‘Mom, get yourself together,’ and I just looked at him and that disgust in his face, and I’m thinking, ‘this is my baby boy, you know? This is my firstborn child, and he sees me a mess.’ So at that point, he helped me pick up whatever was around. And I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to try this, you know, I’m going to go to sleep and get myself together.’”

Michelle sobered up so she could try to take care of her boys. The first thing was to feed them. ”They said, ‘Mom, we need to get some stuff to eat.’ Then all of a sudden it came to me. I thought, ‘Wait. I can take them to Faith Assembly Christian at their Celebrate Recovery and feed them free! My parents are both leaders there. I can get a chance to see Valerie real quick.’”

After they ate, Michelle’s daughter convinced her to stay for the worship service.  Michelle’s first impulse was to run. “I so remember everything going through my head,” says Michelle. ‘Why are you here? Why are you even attempting this? What are people going to say?’ So I sat there in that pew and fought it and fought it and fought it.”
  
Finally, Michelle decided to stop running. “It was like the second song and I just remember going up, walking up to the altar. I thought, ‘You know what? This is my chance. This is my chance for change.’ And at that moment is when I said, ‘God, You have to take this from me. You have to take this from me. This addiction, my friends; I surrender it all to You.’ And at that point, that was where my life was changed. I walked into a church for a free meal, but I left with eternal life.”

Michelle completed the Celebrate Recovery program and is still drug-free. Today she’s happily married to John, reconciled with her children and finally has the life she dreamed of. 

“God has really restored everything, not only with relationships but within myself. All’s I had to do was just say, ‘God, take me, I’m Yours, you know?  I need You.’ And the truth of it is, is that God knows our heart. When we’re ready, He knows our heart.”