Love and Drugs

Excerpt from chapter 5 of Redeeming Destiny. Walking back through these pages is like reading a book from someone else’s life, because my life is so different now. Writing this book was full surrender and an ego death before the term was coined or became mainstream. My understanding of “God” has grown, transformed, and expanded, but one truth remains steadfast. God is Love. Period.

Life without hard drugs was always so good for me.

It didn’t last long though. After coming home from one of our trips to Las Vegas, Dionne had met a guy in the Mexican Mafia.

We had the weed that he loved, and he had more cocaine and heroin than you could possibly imagine. Imagine holding softballs, not baseballs of cocaine in your hands. His name was Carlos, and he was not your typical drug dealer. Most drug dealers of that magnitude were hard and cold. He was the most happy-go-lucky guy on the planet, and he took really good care of us.

He taught us how to rock up cocaine for ourselves and that’s all we did for months on end, every night, because there was no shortage of our supply. Crack is an awful drug that leaves you feeling like there is never enough. The comedown is atrocious and leaves your mind and body feeling desperate for more. In order to ease the suffering of coming down we added smoking heroin into the mix. It was a miserable time, but even in the midst of it…

God was there.

I was nineteen the first time God ever revealed himself to me. It was as though He pulled back the curtain of my life for just one second to show me, He was real. He gave me a glimpse into every prayer I had ever prayed being answered. He revealed to me that He had always been with me, protecting my every step.

Growing up, I prayed to be popular. Such a silly little prayer right? He answered that prayer in the eighth grade.

Every time I hitchhiked, as a young girl in an attempt to escape the chaos of my home, He was the one that provided safe enough people to give me a ride.

I prayed for years to get out of my parent’s house, another prayer answered.

He also showed me the meaning of my name. Angela means messenger of God. Angel.

I just happened to read something that talked about God being pure love. After my brief and fleeting encounter with Him, I took the meaning of my name and that little piece of information I had read about His love, to tell others how loved they were.

Everyone that crossed my path, even while smoking crack, heard how much God loved them. Seems crazy, right? Maybe it was.

Maybe Love knew what I needed to get through a pretty dark time in my life. Had I fully believed what I was saying I wouldn’t have needed to be so high.

Thankfully, that season of smoking crack didn’t last long. Carlos had gotten arrested, which is probably the only thing that saved our lives.

My awareness of this amazing love I spoke of was just as fleeting however.

I had no idea just how long it would be, or the painful lessons that still awaited me on the journey. Looking back, I see that every path taken and every lesson learned was necessary to get me to where I needed to be, in order to fully and finally receive the fullness of love that had always been with me.

If you’re curious about how I moved from drug-addicted stripper, lost, alone, and afraid in the world, to where I am now the book is available on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578590417/