God flipped the script on Donna’s life.
After 25 years of active addiction and several attempts to stop on her own, Donna’s life turned around when God met her at her lowest point. Today, she is living proof that transformation is possible.
Her drug use led Donna to her lowest point, landing in jail, awaiting charges, with no options to get out. She was experiencing withdraws from drugs and she was at a breaking point. While trying to call a friend for help she ended up talking to his mom instead. Not knowing what else to do, Donna asked for prayer.
As her body went through painful withdrawals, she reached a breaking point. Desperate for help, she tried calling a friend but instead reached his mother. In that moment of despair, Donna did the only thing she could think of: she asked for prayer.
“I called her just sobbing. And she said, what can I do for you, Donna? And I’m like, will you pray for me? And she stopped everything that she was doing. She said, absolutely. And she just prayed that I would have, you know, an encounter with God where he wrapped his loving arms around me and that I would have an experience so real that I would have no choice but to believe that God was there with me.”
The next morning Donna woke up different. God had entered her life, and Although she grew up knowing about God, she’d never had a personal relationship with Him before. Inspired, she started digging into the Bible and several recovery books and envisioned how her life would be different.
“I started making a plan. You know, like, this is what I’m going to do next. I know that I don’t want that life. I don’t ever want to feel that desperation again. Now that I’m on this side of it, I don’t ever want to put my family through that again.”
Gratitude became her foundation and from that she was able to start undoing the damage her previous life had caused. Two weeks later she began to mend broken relationships with her parents and her kids. She entered treatment for the third time, but unlike her previous attempts, this time she was able to stay in and stay clean.
Upon finishing treatment Donna knew The Well was where she needed to be. She had heard about Well Works several years earlier from a friend who had gone through Works before. It was the perfect place for her to get the community and support she needed for transformation.
“I’m not perfect, you know, and that’s okay. I’ve learned to be gentle with myself. I’ve learned to repent… I’m not bound by it anymore. I know how, how to identify it, and I’ve learned that here. The Well has been my foundation.”
As Donna will say, she’s ‘flipped the script’ all the things in her past that could have turned against her have been opportunities she has learned from and overcome, and she has overcome a lot in her year and a half in Well Works.
Now she has graduated from Well works and has returned to nursing. She has her own apartment and is celebrating 2 years sober. Her life is already an inspiration to those around her. Most of all, Donna wants to encourage anyone who is struggling with addiction that recovery is possible with God.
“It is possible. I mean, walking out of 25 years of active addiction. I don’t have anything monetarily, but I have everything. I feel like a millionaire in so many ways(...) I tell everybody that, everybody who’s coming out of any kind of storm in their life. I’m like, focus on God, everything else will fall into place.”
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To volunteer with Well Works: https://thewelliowa.org/volunteer/
