My Why | Jessica Brackett

Shining the Light that God Shone for Me | An HIA Impact Story

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This story is from Jessica Brackett, who works as a Senior Recruiting and Outreach Coordinator for Hope is Alive and who recently celebrated three years of continuous sobriety. 

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My mother and father were only 16 years old when they had me, so I was raised mostly by my maternal grandparents. I actually had a great childhood: we went to church, were involved in the community, and I played a lot of sports. He is a tribal council man and was on the hospital board, the water board, and the school board (I always said he was on every board but surf or skate). My grandparents instilled a lot of really good morals and values in me throughout my childhood and showed me a lot of love and affection. My biological father was absent and my mom did the best she could, but my grandparents were my stability.

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I found a lot of my identity in competitive cheerleading, and we traveled the US for cheer competitions constantly. What I didn't realize is that, when I started cheer around age 7 or 8, I used how much I could excel as a way to distract myself from my feelings. It seems harmless, but this addictive trait of having the desire to change the way I felt evolved over time into something much more insidious.

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My mother remarried when I was 12, and when we moved away from the stability of my grandparents and cheerleading, life as I knew it came to a screeching halt. I started to rebel. Soon I found myself curious as to what this "other world" was. I saw people were drinking and smoking weed and it looked to me like they were having a good time. My family never had conversations with me about what consequences of this might be...

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I started smoking weed and drinking alcohol and at 14, it was clear to me that I drank "differently" than those around me. They drank for fun; I drank to forget. At 15, I went to a Halloween party with some friends and was given a date-rape drug. Three men raped me and recorded the incident. The videos went around the school like wildfire and everything changed.

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My inner dialogue changed, the way I saw others changed, the way I saw myself changed, and I began a long and dark journey straight into the pits of my addiction. I didn't know how to cope with this trauma, nor did I care to. I carried so much shame and guilt for what happened that I began experimenting with other drugs such as meth and heroin.

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This continued for 16 years.

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I was on an endless search for SOMETHING, ANYTHING, ANYONE to ease the pain I carried. I didn't love myself nor did I think I was worthy of being loved so I surrounded myself with people who were never looking out for my best interests. There was a lot of domestic violence, shootings, wrecks, and near-death experiences, all wrapped up in this big box fo death and tied with a dark black bow called my addiction.

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My family had no idea what to do with me. They tried many different things like putting me in jail, begging me to go to treatment, or threatening to take my children from me, but nothing got through UNTIL I found myself in a place where I began to isolate. My tolerance for all these hard drugs was too high and they just weren't working anymore (looking back now, I see they never did).

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I found myself hopeless and desperate, and thoughts of suicide were nearly constant burden. With nothing left, I cried out to God and God began to move on my behalf. He did this by prompting my grandparents, who had never been able to set boundaries with me, to put a restraining order on me. I could no longer come home, call home, ask them for help… nothing!

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I have hit many "rock bottoms" in my life, but this one was THE ONE! I was not only hopeless, desperate, and suicidal, but now I was in a drug-induced psychosis with no one to call and nowhere to go, so I checked into a psych ward, where God opened a door for me to get to treatment. I spent 30 days at a state-funded treatment center in McAlester, Oklahoma, during which Hope is Alive came to do a presentation.

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The people who came talked about God and about the healing and restoration they had experienced, but what I saw that day were people who loved one another in their most broken places and I thought to myself, “I want that!”

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I applied and was accepted into a home, coming into Hope is Alive on August 2nd, 2021. The women loved me in my brokenness until I could begin to love myself, and then it dawned on me that THE WHOLE PROCESS was God working on my behalf! I had never given God a chance before, so I surrendered my life to Christ (though I didn't know what that meant fully), and it is by HIS grace and MERCY that I stand here today, three years sober. My relationships with my kids have started to be restored, and my family who has no reason whatsoever to trust me, trusts me today.

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I answered a call to help others at HIA find that same restoration, healing, and freedom just the way I did, and today I serve on the Regional Outreach Team. I can meet people in their most vulnerable state and light the way out of their darkness by shining the same light for them that God shone for me.

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All of this is now a song to be sung for his Glory!