Before committing my life to Jesus Christ, I was extremely insecure, fearful and self-destructive. At an early age, I began to both hide and numb my emotional pain and insecurity through heavy drinking and drugs, but within a few years, I found myself trapped by the very means I had used to escape. Every choice I made was then calculated and driven by a vicious cycle of addiction fueled by brokenness.

At 24, I was married with two precious babies and although the realization of my predicament had brought on a desperate resolve to be free, deep down I knew I was still not in control and still deeply broken by all that had led me to self medicate in the first place. I was also beginning to realize that even being married and having children—the two things I had always dreamed would make me happy—hadn’t fixed the brokenness or filled the emptiness.

Then one morning, sitting in my living room flipping through channels, I stopped at a station where a man was preaching. My intention was to pause long enough to express disgust, but as I heard him explain that God demonstrated his love for me by sending Jesus to take the punishment I deserved so that I could be forgiven and set free, something totally unexpected happened. What felt like waves of the most incredible love I had ever known began to wash over and through me. Somehow, I knew it was the presence of Jesus. With all my heart I told him how sorry I was for living against and without him and how much I wanted and loved him now.

At that moment and in the days, weeks, months and years that followed, I knew I was completely free from every addiction. But even more powerful than the physical freedom I experienced that day has been the inner freedom: the enduring and continuous experience of HOPE, JOY, PEACE, and LOVE not based on circumstances but anchored in a Person, Jesus Christ, Savior, and Lord. I can’t say I don’t have any struggles or problems, but I can say He has brought about enduring and continuous changes to my heart and mind and the difference between then and now is like day and night.

So can you blame me for wanting everyone I know and love to know him too? I hope and pray that you will find out what I mean by “after brokenness.”

“We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.” Romans 5:7-8, The Message.