Patricia's Story

Patricia used to think she could quit drugs whenever she wanted to. But hard as she tried, she couldn’t stay clean. It was easy enough to fall into the drug habit. 

When she was just a little girl, she was molested. Not knowing how to handle her emotions, she began to think she was becoming more and more of a problem to her parents. So she turned to drugs to feel wanted and accepted. She started by smoking marijuana.

At 15, she began experimenting with meth. Then her dad died, and Patricia says she “lost everything, lost myself, lost it all.” From then on, Patricia’s life really began unraveling as drugs took a firmer hold of her.

“I just want to die”

After her dad died, Patricia began dating the man who would eventually father her children. At first, things were good, but as long as drugs were in the picture, things kept going downhill. “I just couldn’t stay clean,” Patricia says. “I remember times I just felt like this is insane. Like, what am I doing? I just want to die.”

Unfortunately, Patricia’s troubles weren’t over. She was arrested on federal charges of aggravated identity theft and fraud. But it was in a program for first-time felons that Patricia first learned about the Mission.

“Life's done a 180”

Now, after living at the Mission, Patricia is with her kids in their own home, learning to be a mom, and getting her life back together, starting with her relationship with God. “I’ve had a relationship with God, but not like I have now,” Patricia says.

Now she thanks Him every day for the life He’s given her. She says, it’s “kind of crazy how life’s done a 180. God is really, really good. Now I’m clean and have a new way of looking at things. I wouldn’t be where I am today without the Mission.”