Its Just a Dream, Until You Believe

Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.

Jeremiah 33:3 English Standard Version (ESV)

When I was still in the world, strung out on drugs, every day I would say the same thing, “Today is my last day, I’m not going to use tomorrow.” I said that for years, continually failing to quit.  My determination was at an end. I was defeated, broken… dreamless. I gave up and tried to end those dreams with a bottle of vodka and a lot of barbiturates. After I woke up in the ER, I was distressed and consumed by angry thoughts; I couldn’t believe I was alive.

“Death doesn’t even want me!” I thought; so, I spent the next year putting myself in dangerous situation and trying to get myself killed.

I almost succeeded when the FBI raided my drug dealer’s house. I walked into the door and they made their move, taking me down first because they feared I was going for a gun. They pressed me to the floor and yelled, “Make a move and I’ll blow your brains out.”  

“Please, blow my brains out! Help me to end this miserable life,” I thought! Afterword, the Sergeant called me to the fire escape and I figured he was going to let me have it. Instead, he let me go. I was furious! I tried to convince him that he needed lock me up. I showed him the many key chains I’d collected from joining treatment programs, but never finished. I weighed 80 pounds and had the look of death in my eyes! However, he said there’s something better for you. I just shook my head in disbelief.

The next day, I was back on the street, sitting near a laundromat. I watched as a car drove straight towards me over the curb and up the laundry mat stairs before someone pushed me out of the way at the last second.  It was one of the drug dealers. He was furious, thinking I set him up with the FBI. The drug dealer got out of his car with a gun and a friend grabbed my hand, running me down an alley trying to save my life. We took a quick right and ran over a small garbage dump.

Time moved in slow motion.  I could hear bullets flying around us and imagined my mom getting a call from the coroner. “Your daughter was found lying in a garbage dump with bullets in her back.” After wanting to die for so long, that thought awakened in something in me. That something cried out for life.

I had no clue what was going on, or why anyone would want to kill me. I’d later find out my dealers thought I had set them up; in reality, God set me up. That near death experience brought me to NLFG, a Christian discipleship home.

Again, I had no clue what was going on. They prayed over me in what sounded like Spanish and began to prophesy what God was going to do. How he would use me to save others. All I could think was, “Save others from what? I can’t save myself.”

It took time, but I began praying. While I sat on an old, raggedy chair, God instilled in this hurting woman a dream. A dream that grew day by day, leading us to plant ICCM Life Center.  It took 8 years of preparations, from the day that God put that dream in me to when we realized it: but, if God can use me, he can use anyone who dares to be used; anyone who dares to dream.

11 For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11  Standard Version (ESV)

And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God To these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.” So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.

Ezekiel 37:3-14 ESV