God blows me away with the friends I have today. Because you see there was a time in my life when I didn't have a friend, but Jesus. I was born to a mother who lived in absolute terror and fear of my dad who was a raging, violent alcoholic. I loved my dad but he beat my mother daily. There was screaming and fighting and tension in the air from my first memory on. He would get drunk and beat my mother up and leave. When I was three he left for good. He left my home and he left my mother and my mother had no choice but to put us kids on the train and send us to San Antonio. She didn't go with us. She sent us with some train lady to watch us and we got there and my grandparents whom I had never met picked us up at the station.

About three years later she showed up and said, "This is your new dad. His name is Bob." And so he raised us for a while and there was a lot of unhappiness in our home. There were some problems with my step dad. He had some problems with my sister and me; he thought we were his wives. There was a lot a lot of abuse, a lot of neglect and an extreme amount of verbal abuse because it was a very unhappy home. My mother had entertained the thought of having an abortion when she was pregnant with me because of the circumstances she lived in. Not that she didn't want me and didn't love me. It's just that she was under a bad set of circumstances. She was not able to get the money to have me aborted, thank you Jesus. And so I am grateful. Today I have a close relationship with my mother, as close as it can be and I am very grateful.

When I was nine I started doing drugs. I started smoking marijuana and drinking a little beer here and there. My parents didn't care what I did and I couldn't make them care. I tried every way in the world to get their attention, to get them to pat me on the head and they wouldn't do it. And stuff kept happening; neighbors and uncles, men kept getting into bed with me when I was a little girl and it scared me and it made me feel along with the things that were said, rejected, unwanted, dirty, stained, not good enough, never could be, never would be; all kinds of curses were spoken over me. Now, did they know what they were doing? No, absolutely not. Have I forgiven them? Yes, because they don't even realize what they said and the effect it had on me. I was the oldest of three children, actually four but one was stillborn. I started doing drugs when I was nine out of rebellion. Smoking a little marijuana, drinking a little beer with kids a little older than me and staying out and stuff and my mother didn't notice. I couldn't make her notice.

When I was nine years old my mother allowed me to go to vacation bible school, the only time in my life I ever got to go to church. I got saved out of absolute fear. Some preacher looked at me and said, "You're going to hell! For your sins!" I was a nine-year-old kid; I didn't know what a sin was but I was sure I had done it. So I walked up front and I was crying and shaking and I met Jesus out of fear and still my heart cried out for him. My heart wanted to know this Jesus because I heard in vacation bible school that Jesus loved me and no one had ever told me that they loved me. I was a nine-year-old kid who was starved to hear those words. Anybody could have told me they loved me and I would have followed them anywhere. But they told me Jesus loved me and I believed them and I got saved.

My mother only let us go that six weeks and then we moved out into the country and I got involved with some wilder kids. So when I was thirteen I was out at an all night drug party with kids who were a lot older than me, high school kids. The next morning I called a girlfriend of mine to come get me. She came to get me in her brand new car, she was older than me and a drunk man ran a red light and hit the car where I was sitting. It knocked a hole in the side about as big as a ____. I was unconscious when they cut me out of the car with a cutting torch. I don't remember any of it to this day. They sent a care flight helicopter to pick me up, take me to Parkland Hospital and they pronounced me dead on arrival. That was at one o'clock in the afternoon. On the six o'clock news that evening my parents and my family and friends heard that I was dead on the TV, on the news.

All I know is what the doctors told me and the papers that I have but at some point, some doctor came on duty between four and six. After being pronounced dead I was issued a death certificate and toe tagged. This doctor comes on duty and it had to be God. I want you to see the faithfulness of our father. I was not living for God, had no room for God because of all the pain and the rejection and the hurt. All I wanted to do was to numb it with alcohol and drugs and run. And I ran, honey. But when this wreck happened and I died in the wreck, this doctor comes in--God's grace is so great and his mercy is so wonderful--this doctor decided--and it had to be God--to run one more cat scan on me, on my brain. He found one little bolt of electricity. I'm still unconscious, got all these internal injuries, seven skull fractures, brain concussion, crushed pelvis, crushed left arm, every muscle and ligament on my right side was torn, from my head to my toe.

The doctor care flights me from Parkland to Baylor because they had a head trauma unit there that was the best in the state at the time.

When my parents came to claim my body, they sent them to Baylor. They were confused, naturally. The doctors came out--my mother still cries when she tells about this. They told her, "She's going to die. She's not going to live through the night. You can go on home and come get her body tomorrow." They told my mother that for about a week and after a week they said, "Well you know she might live, but she's going to be a vegetable and a quadriplegic and she'll have no quality of life." After thirty days they talked my mother into turning off the machines that were keeping me breathing and she signed the papers thinking it was the merciful thing to do and it probably was.

But I kept living. I was unconscious for three months in intensive care in Baylor Hospital. When I came to I didn't know where I was at, how I got there or what happened. There was a doctor--and the only reason I knew he was a doctor was because he had a long white coat on--standing at the end of my bed with his arms crossed. Come to find out he's one of the top ten neurosurgeons in the country at the time. And he was standing at the end of my bed and he said, "If you're ever able to get up out of that bed, you better get on your knees and thank God because there is no medical way on earth that you should be alive. Now for years I thought that man was mad at me because he said it real sternly and I was trying to figure out what I'd done. I couldn't talk or walk or anything at the time. With months of therapy they taught me how to talk again, taught me how to walk again, taught me how to remember again. Someone could walk into my room and say, "Jack and Jill ran up the hill" and walk back out and come right back in again and I wouldn't remember them being there. I t took two and a half years and seven specialists and a lot of drugs. They gave me all kinds of drugs. And I didn't know it at the time but it was feeding this need in me. These drugs were masking the pain in me but the depression got worse and worse and worse. I was a thirteen-year-old kid who sat in a dark closet at home and shut the closet door and screamed and cried. So depressed that all I wanted to do was die because I couldn't go back to the way life was before. And I would cry out to God and I'd say, "Why don't you just make me normal again? Just make me normal again."

Eventually I went back to school, made up all my schoolwork from the year I missed--I'd missed nearly the whole year. I'm in school two weeks and because of my injuries I can walk a little bit and I fall a lot. They had to let me out of class five minutes early to get to class on time. The school decided I was too much of a hassle. My skirts were a little too short because my mother couldn't afford new ones and she'd already let them out as far as she could. So they just put me out of school. I'm fourteen years old by now and they put me out of school. I went home and told my parents and my mother went to talk to them. My step dad never got involved. When she came home she said to me, "You have thirty days to either get a job or get in school." Well, I didn't have any money. And they weren't going to let me back in that school and I couldn't get a job though I tried.

In the meantime I met a man who was nineteen years old. I'm fourteen. He's a heroin dealer. He's in college, he's going to premed, and he's going to be a doctor. He wanted to be a psychiatrist. Extremely intelligent guy, good looking and all that stuff. And he said the magic words. He said, "I love you." I'd never heard those words before from anybody. So I latched onto him like a tick to a dog. He said I could move in with him so I did. Meantime I'm strung out on heroin. Shooting heroin every time I can get it. And he had it all the time. So I told him after thirty days, I said, "I can't live with you if you don't marry me." See that religious spirit was in me. Even though I didn't really know God I knew I had to be married. And that was a mistake in hindsight. But he married me and my life turned into utter hell.

This man beat me on a daily basis. I'd work three part time jobs a day: a doughnut shop, a telephone soliciting job and throwing newspapers to support him so he could go to college. He was cheating on me, brought women into my house. I'd come home from work and there would be some woman in my bed and I'd throw a fit and he'd get up and beat the you know what out of me. And that's the way it was for two and a half years. Every time I left him he came after me with guns and other men. He'd never come alone. He'd bring five or six of his buddies with him and they'd get good and high and get their guns and come find me and beat up everybody around me and kick my butt and then take me home. "You're my property."

Finally after two and a half years I got out of the house one morning after he left. Soon as he left I climbed out the window. He pulled the coil off my car whenever he was gone so I couldn't start it. But I pushed out the screen in the back window and packed a little bitty suitcase, climbed out and crawled on my hands and knees for a good quarter to a half mile in the weeds. Scared to death he would see me. Scared to death of this man. After crawling through the field I stood and ran to a public phone and called my step dad. I didn't have anybody else to call. By this time he'd beat my mother up and choked her and scared her to death. She'd left him and she was with another man by then. My step dad was living alone in Irving. This man, this husband of mine didn't know anything about my step dad so that's who I called. And he came and got me, took me to his house. Of course he wanted favors for me staying with him. You know, and he got those favors because I was that scared. I never felt right about it and I was always ashamed but I had to do what I had to do to live, to survive. At the time I thought I didn't have any other choice. I stayed there for a couple of weeks and then I got brave and went out on the streets because I was dope sick and my step dad wouldn't give me enough money to stay well. I got braver and braver and when I got out to the streets I started selling my body and of course you've got to have a pimp. You can't work without a pimp. They'll kill you.

One thing led to another and I had pimp after pimp after pimp for thirty-one and a half years, each one of them worse than the one before. The beatings got worse. The horrible things that happened to me: the getting robbed, the getting sent to jail, the getting set up, the getting beat up, the getting raped. I went to jail fifty three times. I went to the penitentiary twice. I wound up in places I'm ashamed to tell you, I did things I'm ashamed to tell you I did. But Jesus has forgiven me and washed me. I was looking for somebody to accept me and for somebody to love me and I would have done anything to get that. And each one of these men would tell me that if I'd just work for him and pay him, he'd love me. And you know I was stupid enough to believe them. See, when you're broken and shattered and rejected, you got that root of rejection in you; there is nothing you won't do to get accepted. I promise you that. Because it eats your insides out. And all that time what I needed was to be accepted by God. And I was but I didn't know it.

I'll show you how the enemy works. There were several times during my drug use, during those thirty-one and a half years when I would wind up in places that would scare the ever-loving hell out of me. I wound up in witch covens. I wound up in Satanist groups. I even wound up among some Zen Buddhists. Did I ever partake in any of this? No. They never let me in. But I always ended up around these people. White witches, black witches, warlocks, you name it, from all over the world. I'd run into these people and they'd take me in and they'd have drugs. I'd do the drugs and party with them and then they'd do their little witchcraft and I'd see demons and stuff. But they wouldn't let me in the circle and it was God's protection is what you don't understand. See, at the time I was wondering, "What's wrong with me?" Even though there was something in me that knew it was wrong. It was God's protection over me.

There were people that beat me with car jacks until you couldn't tell if I was a man or a woman. And the police showed up in time to save my life. I got stabbed in the main artery next to my aorta and this black lady that I didn't know from Adam saved my life. She rushed me to the hospital. I was there three months. I got shot. I got shot at a lot. Stabbed. Beaten. Now I was no angel, I'm going to tell you. I did whatever I had to do to get the money to get the drugs. But there was a limit to what I would do. I was never comfortable with stealing. I'm not going to tell you I never stole because I did. But I was never comfortable with it. There were certain things I tried to avoid but there were a lot of things I did do that I was very ashamed of in the pursuit of drugs. And the drugs were a mask for the pain. Then it got so bad that the drugs wouldn't help the pain anymore. And it didn't matter how much I did because every man that I had was a dope dealer besides being a pimp. So there were lots of drugs. And I made money and bought drugs and bought his drugs. Anything to keep that numbness going and it quit working.

The nine men that I was with in the course of thirty-one years died living that life. They all died in different ways in the lifestyle. In fact I was watching everyone around me die. I counted up to sixty-six so-called friends that I walked with on a daily basis for a pretty good length of time that died, some of them standing right next to me; some of them in my arms overdosing and me trying to save their lives, some of them getting shot while they're standing right next to me, some of them stabbed. And I watched all these people die and I kept crying out to God. I kept crying out, "I'm in all this torment and I just want to die. Why, why don't you just let me die?" And I never got an answer. I was the biggest sinner on earth but I cried out to God every day. Every day I walked down the street and I prayed. I didn't believe that he heard me and I didn't believe that he cared because the enemy had lied to me, you see.

When I was a little girl I had had dreams and seen visions. It scared me. When I talked to my mom about it she didn't know what it was and told me it came from the devil, my father. This curse was spoken over me unintentionally and I believed I was doomed for hell. I believed I was born under a bad sign because I was told that. I believed my father was a devil because my mom told me he was and that was why I saw these things. It was a prophetic gift but I didn't know about that and I sure didn't know it was from God. When I grow up I'm walking down the street to make money for drugs and I'm crying out to God and God's showing me visions and dreams and I'm thinking it's the enemy. And the enemy is saying, "See there, God don't care about you. He's not going to hear you. You're a piece of crap. God wouldn't listen to you for nothing. You're doomed, you're mine." And I believed those voices but I would still cry out, "Have mercy on me, O God. Help me break this cycle. Please help me stop." I would be around people who did things that were inhuman to other human beings. Sometimes I was one of them. I would see their hard hearts--and me a dope fiend--I would pray, "God, please don't let my heart get hard." Now, how did I know to pray that? I'm trying to paint you a picture of the love of our father. This is not about me. This is about a God who never ever left me, never ever gave up on me, never quit protecting and watching over me. A lot of bad stuff happened but he saved me from a lot of bad stuff too.

I was on parole and I had managed to make my parole officer hate my guts. I'd been off and on probation and parole thirty years. I'd been locked up more times than most of y'all are old. And I'd done a lot of time. My parole officer had had it up to here with me. I had lied to her, conned her, cheated her, ran from her, switched UA's on her. I'd lie to her and say I wasn't using drugs, then use somebody else's sample to pass the test, somebody who was clean. Finally she got hip to me and it made her mad. I had to give my own sample one day, because she was watching that close and it was dirty, it had heroin in it. I'm shooting heroin everyday, all day long, seven to eight hundred dollars worth of heroin and cocaine every single day. If I had to work twenty-two hours a day and sleep two hours I wouldn't go to bed till I got my dose in me. I took methadone everyday, a legal drug for heroin addicts that is twenty-five times more addictive than heroin and I shot a lot of cocaine to keep me going.

I was totally zitzed out; I had no sense at all. It's a miracle I could put one foot in front of the other. I lived on Hershey bars and Dr. Peppers. Never drank water, never ate a balanced meal. Often I went days without eating. It's the grace of God that I continued to live and could put two words together is what you don't understand. This parole officer gets the dirty UA and she puts a blue warrant out on me. A blue warrant means that you're going back to the penitentiary as soon as they catch you. And there's no way you can make bond on it. I already know this woman is as mad as she can be at me. The police are looking for me. The dope dealers are looking for me because I owe them all. I'm scared to work on the streets in the daytime. I have no friends left; nobody will help me anymore. I burned every bridge I had. I was a dope fiend, OK? I was no good. There was nothing worth saving in me. So I decided to kill myself.

That had to be better than going back to the penitentiary. I went in six different dope houses in the course of a four-week period and I shot enough heroin all six times to kill me. And I did it on purpose because I was too big a chicken to stab or shoot myself. I had this thing in my mind that if I killed myself I'd have to face God but that if I accidentally killed myself he might have mercy. So I accidentally shot enough heroin to kill me. I went out all six times in six different dope houses and six different dope fiends saved my life. I promise you that does not happen. Ever. When you die or OD in a drug house they take everything of value off of you including your clothes and shoes, stuff your body into a dumpster in the alley and run, even if they know you. These people didn't know me. They shot salt water in my veins, pumped my heart, breathed for me until they brought me to, stood me up, walked me around and poured coffee down me. I kept saying, "God, why don't you just let me die? Let me get out of this pain I'm in." And he wouldn't answer me.

In my dope fiend mind the answer was to find something that would surefire kill me with nobody there to save me. I figured it out, you know: an eighteen-wheeler. I decided to walk in front on an eighteen-wheeler and in my mind that was the best thing to do. So I'm walking down this street I walked down every single day all these years unless I was out of town and I'm looking for an eighteen-wheeler to walk in front of. It's going to kill me and I'm going to go to hell. Hopefully I won't feel it when the truck hits me. It will end the threat of having to go back to the penitentiary for the rest of my life.  It will end the torment of the drug addiction and the hell I had for a life. It had to be the best thing to do, in my mind.

So I'm walking down this street I walked down everyday for thirty years. Henderson Street in Fort Worth, if anybody knows where that is. There is a huge Baptist church on that street that I had never ever seen. Isn't it funny how the enemy can blind us to the things of the light when we're walking in the darkness? So I'm walking down the street, I don't see the church, and this vision opens up. I'm looking for a truck to throw myself in front of and this curtain sweeps aside. I look into the heavens and I see and I smell and I touch and I feel the heavenlies. The colors were unlike anything you have ever seen on this earth. The air was so thick with moisture and sweetness it just enraptured me. But you have to realize I'm in this state of mind where I just want to die and this vision only distracted me for a second. Then I saw a marble threshold and I heard a voice say, "Step through and live or stay on that side and die." I don't remember making the choice to live or to die. To the best of my knowledge I did not make a choice. I was that despondent, discouraged, depressed and condemned.

The next thing that happened, my arm went out with no pre-thought, no thought at all, grabbed a doorknob, turned it and it opened. I had never seen this door before even though I'd walked by it at least a hundred thousand times. My first thought was, 'this is a setup. The law's in here and their going to get me for breaking and entering.' So I look around for the police and there's no police. I got curious and brave and I walked around and there was nobody there. It took me a while to even figure out it was a church. I go into one of those little rooms on the side with an accordion pull-door, a Sunday school room, I guess.  It had a pulpit and some little chairs. I fell on my knees and I said, "OK God".  I started crying, I was so broken. I said, "OK God, you don't like me, you don't love me and I don't blame you. The only thing I'm asking is that if you are as merciful as I once heard you are then I'm asking you to let me walk out that door, let an eighteen-wheeler hit me and let me die instantly. I don't want no more pain. Don't let me feel it, just let me die. And send me to hell because I'd rather burn in hell than spend one more minute here. I cannot do anymore." And all I can tell you is that the next thing I heard--I'm still on my knees crying my heart out--I heard a voice behind me and nobody's in this church. I heard a man's voice behind me say, "OR REMOVE THESE DESIRES."  Very loudly. I turned round and said "Who the hell said that?" There was nobody there. Later on the Lord revealed to me it was the Holy Spirit.

OR REMOVE THESE DESIRES. I'd never heard that, never read that, never seen that, never thought that. All I can tell you is that before I got up off my knees all the desires were removed. I no longer was dope sick, no longer had a drug habit, no longer wanted nor needed drugs, no longer wanted to go back to the street and do the things I'd done, no longer wanted to go back to anything I'd come from. I didn't know what else to do--you've got to remember I'd been doing this since I was thirteen. I didn't know how else to live. So I threw my arms up--I'm sorry, y'all I'm very graphic, I'm going to tell y'all the truth and I'm not going to lie and I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I threw my arms up and I said, "OK, now what the hell do I do?" And God showed me a sign. He gave me a vision. Back in the fifties they had these neon signs made with tubes with gas inside of them that would light up? I saw four strands of white gold light that formed the words 8^TH AVE. Period, underline. 8^th Avenue. The only thing that my dope fiend mind could connect with 8^th Avenue was an AA club, an Alcoholics Anonymous that I used to run and hide in when the police were on the stroll over there. When the police were around I'd run in there and hide and then as soon as they left I'd go back out. I didn't care nothing about AA. Didn't know nothing about it, didn't want to. You know I had heard all that stuff in rehab and it had never helped.

God led me to walk to this AA club. It was February 10^th, 1998. I walked into that AA club so ashamed, so beaten, so broken. Looking like I was ninety years old and feeling like death warmed over. I looked awful. I really did. Weighed ninety pounds soaking wet. I was thin and ashen and so ashamed. But I knew the Lord told me to go there and I knew he'd change me. So I walked in and I prayed. I said, "God, please don't let anybody notice me, don't let anybody say anything to me, I'm too ashamed." I walked in and sat down at the back. I kept my head down and didn't say anything to anybody and nobody said anything to me. I sat there all afternoon and evening through three meetings. At ten o'clock they go to lock it up and I walked outside. I lit a cigarette--I had a pack of cigarettes, two dollars and twenty-five cents to my name. There was a flea bag motel I owed two days rent on and where I couldn't get in that had a black garbage bag full of dirty clothes in it: that's all I owned. I couldn't get to it because I didn't have the money. I had a little puppy dog that somebody had given me that I paid this schizophrenic man to keep for me so I could come by and visit him and pet him. That dog was an object of love, you understand, some kind of love. So I have nowhere to go. All I know is that I can't do what I used to do. And I have no idea what to do instead. So I go outside this AA club and light a cigarette and I'm standing there going, 'OK, now what?' You know, no idea.

This wild looking woman pulls up in an old Volvo station wagon. She's an Apache Indian full blood. Hair all sticking out, you know, just wild, just a really strange looking woman. She gets out of her car and she runs in the club just as they're shutting the door and she comes back out a minute later and says, "Hey, can I give you a ride?" And I went, "No, no thank you. She said, "GET IN THE CAR!" I obey orders real well, so I got in the car. We're driving down 8^th Avenue in Fort Worth and she said, "Where are you going?" "Well," I said, "I guess I'll go to Russell's and get my dog. There's this guy down here, he lives in these apartments on this street and he's got my little puppy dog but I owe him two packs of cigarettes and I've only got two dollars and twenty five cents. But if you'll take me there I'll see if I can give him this to let me sleep on his floor tonight." She made a U-turn immediately, real fast, in the middle of 8^th Avenue. Scared the living heck out of me. I reached for the doorknob because I thought I'd got in the car with a maniac. I thought, "Oh God you saved me just so I could die?" This woman was crazy. I mean she even didn't look and she sure didn't slow down. So I reached for the door.

 Jumping out of cars was not new to me. I'd been doing that for years. When someone would pull a gun or a knife on me I'd jump out the car and hit my head on the pavement. It was better than getting shot. And I did that a lot, OK? All over this country and it saved my life many times. So I tried opening that door and the door would not open. And I tried the lock but it wasn't locked. I'm really scared now and she don't know it because I don't want her to know and I look over at her and I'm like ahhhh! She pulls back up at the AA club; she gets out and says, "Don't go anywhere." I said, "Yes, mam." She walked in and came back out about ten minutes later. She handed me forty dollars. And I'm like, "What do you want for this?" She said, "I'm going to take you to Motel 6, I'm going to rent you a room, I'm going to feed you. What else do you need to do?" I told her about the dog and I told her about the dirty clothes. She took me to get the dog and stopped and bought two packs of cigarettes for Russell. Marlboros, I'll never forget. She took them in there to him and said, "Give me her dog and stay the hell out of her life." You know when I'd pass him on the street after that he'd never say anything to me again.

Then she took me to the motel. That man wouldn't have given me any grace for nothing; he'd heard every story in the book. He wasn't about to let me have them clothes without me paying him for two days so I wouldn't have even tried. She said, "Never mind, I'll take care of it." She got out and she wasn't but a little skinny thing but she was tall and wild looking and you just know, OK, you just know she'll hurt you. I'll never forget her. She says to this motel manager dude--and he's crooked as he can be, "Here's the deal bud. I know what your running here and I'm fixing to do a 911 on you unless you give her her clothes. And I don't want no trouble out of you. You won't never see her here again and you won't never see me here again. But if you don't give back her clothes, I'm going to cause you some trouble."

He gave her my clothes. Nicely. She took me to Motel 6, bought me something to eat. I snuck my dog in--I shouldn't have done that but I did. She gave me a roll of quarters and said, "These are for the bus. You be at every meeting at that AA club." I said, "For how long?" She said, "Until." I said, "Yes, mam." And I was there, three meetings a day for thirty days. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me ever. Fed me, got my dog, my clothes back. I didn't understand this. She didn't know me from Adam. But that's God, you see.

Thirty days later I'm just beginning to talk and start looking human again. After that night in the motel I started sleeping under this park bench down the street from the AA club because I was too ashamed to ask anybody to help me. Too much shame, too much pride. One night I'm under that park bench, been there about two weeks. I'm going to filling station bathrooms and cleaning up. Bought me a little toothbrush. I'm begging cigarettes but I won't beg for food. Now, I mean, how stupid is that? But that's what I did.

The second week I was under that park bench one night about midnight a Hispanic gang, about ten of them, came through and back in those days they used chains to whip each other with and knives and I knew them. They came through the park and I promise you there is no way on earth those guys could not have seen me. I'm under a park bench, fixing to go to sleep. I saw them and I was utterly terrorized. Because had they seen me, they would have raped me and killed me. I promise you that's what they did. I'd seen them do it to other girls. You couldn't fight them, there were too many of them. I knew for sure they had killed two girls and was scared to say anything to anybody for fear of my life. You see that kind of stuff on the street a lot. Lot's of stuff happens that you don't dare speak of. I prayed, "O God, please hide me. Please don't let them see me." And all I can tell you is that God hid me. The Holy Spirit hid me. Cause they had a beeline to where I was hiding on all fours not knowing whether to run or to cry. If I'd ran they would have seen me. But I prayed and I couldn't move I was so petrified. It wasn't that dark, there were park lights out there. There was no way they couldn't have seen me but they didn't see me. God hid me.

The next day I had enough nerve to go up and ask somebody if I could clean their house, clean their toilets, watch their kids, wash their car--anything I could do to get a place to sleep. I'd have slept on their back porch and sometimes I did. And I slept on some floors and some couches. I did a lot of work for it and I was glad to do it because it was honest and I got honest decent food for a change. Maybe just a hamburger but that was still a lot better than I was used to. And I was treated with some measure of respect and care, more care than I had ever known. And God purposed for those people at that AA club to be the first ones to welcome me and to care for me. They did not judge me, they didn't ask me any questions. I lied to them about what my name was because, remember, I still got a blue warrant out for me and I'm still scared of going to the penitentiary. Scared to death, OK? But God had changed my life. Why was I afraid of going to the penitentiary? But I was. I didn't want to go. I'd already been there, thank you. Didn't want to go back. Ever.

The thirtieth day I was in AA a lady walked in and I looked and by the spirit I knew she didn't belong there. I said to myself, 'What is she doing here?' Actually, she was a missionary who'd got her heart broke, became depressed, had a couple of drinks, thought she'd fallen off the wagon and come to AA. She came straight to me, God sent her to me and a couple weeks later she invited me to a ladies prayer group. The ladies prayer group was from a big church and I started going there. Now, these people talked to me really bad. It was the purpose of God because he didn't want anything in me to please people just to be accepted.  Because that was in me. I wanted acceptance so bad I would have done anything. So he made sure they didn't make it easy for me to feel accepted. I started walking with them, with them kind of pushing me away. In fact they asked me not to come back. It was because I was prophetic and I didn't know when to shut my mouth. But I learned.

About six months down the line I'm staying at this one guy's apartment and he's at work and he let's me sleep on his living room couch. He was an alcoholic and I led him to the Lord and he fell so in love with Jesus he quit drinking, quit falling off the wagon. He let me stay at his apartment for a month for me to keep it clean and make his lunches and wash his clothes and he stayed in his bedroom and I stayed on the couch in the living room. I was watching Christian TV every day and I was praying; I was reading the bible and God's making visions of the scriptures and they are coming to life for me. I knew the bible in a way I had never known before. You have to realize I didn't really know anything about the Word but God is opening it up to me and it's just blowing me away. He's showing me absolute movies of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Micah and Zephaniah and Zechariah. They are being instilled in me and it's just as if I had lived in these movies they were so real. And what it was was prophetic experiences and prophetic visions. I was too dumb to doubt it.  I just believed God. I didn't have enough sense in me to be skeptical. And that's a good thing. I believed God and he changed my life a lot in that six months.

Well this guy I was staying with got saved and he was filled with the Holy Ghost and he was at work one day and I was on the floor in the middle of the living room on all fours crying my heart out. And the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to me as plain as you're sitting there, in the Spirit. And he said, "What's the matter Della?" And I said, "I'm scared." He said, "What are you scared of?" I said, "Of going back to prison. I don't want to go back. Please don't make me go." And He said, "What's the next right thing to do?" And I said, "Turn myself in but I'm scared." I was so petrified my heart was just shaking. And he did this--I looked up at him and he put his hand out and he said, "Take my hand and I will walk you through it." And when he said, "I will walk you through it" something in my heart changed. I don't know how he did it or what happened. All I know is that my heart totally changed and all of a sudden I became overwhelmed with sorrow for the way I had felt. All of a sudden I was instantly more in love than ever with him and I said, "Jesus, I'll go the penitentiary for the rest of my life and I'll tell every woman there what you did for me. Send me. Let's go."

The next day I turned myself in and as God would have it my parole officer, who hated my guts wasn't even there. I had called the night before and told her I was coming. She didn't believe me, praise God. So I turned myself into this other parole officer. He calls the police and they handcuff and shackle me. They got me sitting in this chair waiting for my parole officer to come in because she's got to walk me into the jail. I'm in the parole office, she doesn't show up so this other parole officer who knew me because he had been my parole officer before--see, I had been on parole quite a bit and they all knew me, I was famous with them and that's not anything to be proud of. But he said to me, "Della, why did you come down here?" And I said, "I want to get this crap cleared up. I want to make it right. I don't want to run no more. I got a blue warrant out." He said, "But why did you turn yourself in? They would have caught up with you sooner or later anyway. Why didn't you just stay out there?" I said, "I've got to do this. I've changed my life, I'm trying to do the right thing." He kind of shook his head, he didn't understand. He was used to the criminal mentality. He dealt with it everyday and that's the way the world thinks.

So the police came, they took me to jail and I set in jail six weeks and they took me to my parole hearing.  I don't have a lawyer. I don't have any money. My parole officer asked for twenty-five years.  I had three dope cases and some other cases too. She moved to file a Habitual Criminal on me which is an automatic twenty-five years. Either that or two years in Safe P, which is a state funded penitentiary drug rehab. Honestly, I would have rather done twenty-five years than gone through that because they really treated you bad in there. They beat girls up and poured water down them till they couldn't breathe. They did a lot of stuff they shouldn't do and I knew about it. I didn't want to go there: I was afraid I'd die. I'd already told the Lord, "I'll do whatever you want me to do" so I'm at peace and I'm thinking I'm going to get the twenty-five years.

Well, eight people from this ladies prayer group show up. I did not know they were coming. One by one they came in and testified what they had seen the Lord do in me. None of them lied, they told the truth of how much they'd seen God change me. And they said they knew I was a miracle. They didn't know that much about me, y'all. Just one of them had taken the time to talk to me and get to know me and she's still one of my best friends in all the world. I thank God for her everyday. After the fifth person testifying for me my parole officer said, "That's enough, that's enough. I don't believe this crap. Get out of here." I'd been telling her what Jesus had done and she looked at me and she said, "I don't believe nothing you're saying." I said, "That's OK, I love you Karen." She got madder than a hornet and I pretty much knew: twenty-five years.

So I went back upstairs to the jail and waited six more weeks. Finally she called me out of my cell, out of the tank and into that little room with the speaker and Plexiglas window. "I don't know how this happened," she said, "I ain't never seen nothing like this in my life. I've been a parole officer twenty-one years." "What is it, Karen?" I'm laughing by now because I know Jesus has come to my defense. "I asked for twenty-five years or two in SAFE P and the parole board overturned my decision." Now the parole board always goes with the parole officer. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time they go with what the parole officer advises because the parole officer knows the parolee. The convict. She said, "They overturned my decision and they're sending you to Wackenhut." Now, I'd been to Wackenhut for three months the year before. It's a parole violator's facility. When you violate your parole instead of sending you back to prison they send you there for three months. Each time you violate it's three more months. You can only go there four times.

Karen told me they were sending me to Wackenhut in San Antonio. "It's six months," she said. I'm like, "Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus. What a mighty God I serve! Thank you, Lord. Thank you." And I said, "You know what, Karen? I am really, truly sorry for all the times I lied to you, cheated you, conned you, talked bad about you, connived against you switched UA's on you, and ran from you. I am very, very sorry"--and I was weeping by now--"I want to ask you to forgive me." She looked at me and she said, "I don't believe a word you're saying and if it's the last thing I do I'll bury you under the penitentiary one day." I said, "Yes, mam but I love you. And Jesus loves you too." And I smiled at her through my tears.

I returned to my cell and had to wait. The total amount I did was five and a half months in the jail before they pulled chain. That's when the bus goes that goes to where you're sent to, the penitentiary or wherever. I went to Wackenhut. I was in Wackenhut three months. They made me a trustee; let me outside everyday with no guard. They made me a trustee right off and I had never been a trustee, OK? Never. I got to walk around and police this city block around this jail. Pick up trash, talk to strangers. No guard anywhere in sight. It was an honor and they made me that the first week. I did that for three months and they told me I was going home, I said, "No sir, no it's a mistake, I got six months." He said, "No, mam you get out of here we need this bed for somebody who needs it. You're too rehabilitated." And they bought my bus ticket and put me on it and sent me back to Fort Worth.

Well, me and my smart self, instead of sitting before the Lord and asking him what to do --this is a trick of the enemy --my soul got involved and I figured out that I needed to go to bible college or something like that. Well, I didn't have any money or any education so that wasn't going to happen. The next best thing was what this lady I knew from the ladies prayer group got me into. Teen Challenge, if you guys have ever heard of that. I was so excited because I thought I was going to get to go learn about Jesus. But I didn't ask the Lord. Big mistake. I was in there from somewhere between three weeks and six weeks and it was absolute hell. Those people started telling me who I could talk to and who I couldn't talk to. They weren't teaching me about Jesus, just telling me what was wrong with me. They were talking about me openly, not in a good way. My friend from the ladies prayer group who got me into Teen Challenge came to see me. But they told me I couldn't see her or talk to her anymore. They asked her, "What did you bring us anyway? Where did you find her?" I thought this program was supposed to help people like me. I wanted to learn about Jesus, I wanted to learn how to live.

It was an eighteen-month program where you finally get a job. I thought that was the way to learn to know God. I sit up all one night crying in my closet. The girl who shared the bedroom with me, she didn't appreciate me at all. I stayed in the closet talking in tongues, talking to the Lord and praying and crying. The Lord finally said, "Della, if you will obey me I will bless you. I said, "I will obey you, what will you have me do?" He said, "Leave." I said, "Yeah, but God, I don't have no place to go and I don't have any money, and I don't want to go back to the streets, I'm afraid I'll go back to drugs." The Lord said, "What I have done cannot be undone by man. Trust me and I will bless you."

Next morning I pack my bags. These people had given me all these clothes because people come there and donate them and you go through them and you pick out what you think you can wear and you get to keep them. I was like, "Wow. That's cool." So I packed these suitcases and sacks with all these clothes they gave me. I set out on the front porch, not a clue what to do. And then it popped into my mind to call this old drug counselor who'd been a friend to me years before. I called her and she said, "Well, you can stay at my house, on my couch, one night." She was married and didn't have an extra bedroom. And it's just not done in the counseling community that you let somebody like me come in your house. And she didn't know I had changed.

I set on the porch all day long with no food and no water, from eight o'clock in the morning. She finally showed and the next day all these people from the prayer group came to get me from her house and take me back to talk to the people at Teen Challenge. Teen Challenge forbid those people to ever see me again or talk to me. I'm not knocking Teen Challenge. But it was the Lord. They all came down on me and told me I needed to come back or my life would go down the tubes for sure and I'd never get another chance. I'm facing all this fear, but God said, "Leave" so I left. I didn't have any place to go so I called a halfway house. Miracle of miracles, they let me in that day and my life has gone from there. I got a job working with a bunch of Hispanic people in a tin building with no air. Welding. For six dollars an hour. And I was the happiest person on earth riding the bus back and forth to that halfway house. I got a roof over my head. I got clean clothes, got food, three meals a day. I got a job, an honest job. I can't speak the language but there's people around me who aren't spitting on me and beating me up. Right? I don't have a habit; I'm not shooting drugs. I'm happy. I'm going to church every time they let me. I was happier than I've ever been in my life. Thirty days later they kick me out because they need the room for somebody who was coming off drugs. I didn't have no place to go and God opens up a door. Door after door after door.

Six years ago I was working in a drug rehab. I got fired for talking about Jesus and praying with clients. Of course they called it something else but that's what it was. They threatened me and told me to quit talking about Jesus: "Say higher power." But that's not what he is. He's Jesus. OK? God told me--he arranged for me not to get mad--he told me, "I want you to sit before me and pray and hear me and go where I tell you to go and do what I tell you to do and I will take care of you." I rebelled and I looked for a job every day for a year and got told, "No" at dishwashing jobs, at Jack in the Box, at McDonalds, at cafes, at everywhere. Carwashes. Nobody would hire me. Now part of it was my record, which is as long as I am tall. But the main part of it was God.

Since then God has taken me to South Africa, to France, to Brazil, to England, to Honduras and all over the place here, and used me in ways that just blow me away. Now it doesn't have anything to do with me. No mam, no sir. Except that my heart is yielded to him. I have watched God heal people's bodies. I watched God give an African boy the English language in a matter of seconds. I watched him--looked inside--and saw him remove a big old cyst off a boy's bronchial tubes. I've watched God do things and change lives and remove strongholds and break barriers and break witchcraft. In Brazil the witchcraft's so strong there I almost couldn't stand it. But I watched God change people's lives. I ate stuff y'all wouldn't even look at. I slept in places in those countries where it was so uncomfortable that even I was uncomfortable, OK? But I was grateful. I didn't have a dime--God paid for it all, God did it all and I watched him change lives. Now you're looking at a girl who has no education. I have an eighth grade education. I got a GED in the penitentiary when I was forty years old. Out of boredom. God taught me by his Holy Spirit. He would not allow me to go to bible school. He would not allow me to get involved with the institutional church. He's brought people into my life from all over the world. I talk to people on the phone weekly in countries that I've never even been to. How did they find out about me? Word of mouth. Because we're connected, we're all connected, not that I'm anybody special. We are all connected by the Spirit. God wakes me up in the middle of the night, shows me a face in another country, gives me a vision or a sense of what's going on with them and says, "Pray." And I go, "Pray what? What do you want me to pray?" "Pray." Sometimes he'll tell me what to pray; sometimes I'll just have a sense of what to pray. Now if he does that for me, he'll do that for you and you and you, for all of you. The places he's telling me I'm going next are kind of scary. But I'm going. And I'm going in the power and the might of the Holy Spirit.