‘Holidays Were Terrible’: Lisa’s Transformational Thanksgiving

When Lisa* was a little girl, Thanksgiving meant ordering fast food while family members got drunk and fought. Her traumatic childhood led her to decades of dysfunction, drug abuse, and jail time. During those years of chaos, Lisa had five children.  

When Lisa hit rock bottom in 2019, she checked into a Christ-centered residential recovery center in Charlotte, North Carolina. By the grace of God, Thanksgiving began to look a lot different for Lisa and her children. Listen to the story of God’s faithfulness in her life on this episode of GPS.

*Name has been changed for privacy.  

Connect with us through email at gps@billygraham.org or on Facebook at Billy Graham Radio. 

If you’d like to know more about beginning a relationship with Jesus Christ, or deepening the faith you already have, visit FindPeacewithGod.net.

If you’d like to pray with someone, call the Billy Graham 24/7 Prayer Line at 855-255-7729.

Transcript

MUSIC STARTS

Lisa*:
00:00:00 Memories of holidays were terrible. Nobody really cooked, so Thanksgiving we would always go like to a family member’s house that we didn’t really know and we would be really awkward there, but as far as our family, my grandma would order like chicken from KFC and we would all eat in separate rooms.

Jim Kirkland: For some people, Thanksgiving with family is one of the best times of the year. For others of us, though, it can be stressful or lonely or awkward. For Lisa, holiday get togethers were downright traumatic.

Lisa:
00:00:31 So this whole time all this is going on, my mom is raging alcoholic, so there’s episodes. Every holiday, she’s knocking over the tree. Her and my grandma are getting into it, throwing things at each other. Me and my sister—I’ve got a sister at this point too—we’re 10 years apart so, you know, she’s seeing my mom and my grandma fuss and just … holidays were not a good time for us … at all.

Jim: It took Lisa a long time to face her past, which involved addiction, abuse, and some very, very deep heartaches.

We spoke with her while she was staying at a recovery center for women and children a few years ago, and to respect her privacy, we’re not using her real name. But we think you’ll find Lisa’s very real story to be one that shows that with God, there is hope, even in the ugliest of situations. You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories., an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I’m Jim Kirkland.

Phil Fleischman: And I’m Phil Fleischman. A little later in the episode, Billy Graham looks at Thanksgiving and the cross of Jesus Christ.
Billy Graham:
00:01:36 I must bow in front of that cross and say, especially on Thanksgiving Day, “Thank You, Lord, for not sparing Your Son. Thank You, Lord, for saving my soul.”

Phil: Because Jesus Christ died on a cross 2,000 years ago, you can live with God forever in Heaven. We can tell you more it at this website, FindPeaceWithGod.net. That’s FindPeaceWithGod.net.

And you’ll hear more from Billy Graham about thanksgiving and God’s love for you a little later in this episode. 

Intro: GPS: God. People. Stories.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Lisa:
00:02:18 I was born to two alcoholic parents that loved me, just didn’t love theirselves very much. They were both very young.

Jim: Lisa was born in 1987 in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

Lisa:
00:02:29 I had a lot of trauma happen in the first eight years of my life. I’ve seen a lot of things I shouldn’t have seen. I experienced some accidents that were—some physically harmful and … some of them just scary.

Jim: For example, when Lisa was just 4 years old, she was riding in the car with her mom, who was already battling alcohol and drug use at that time. They got into a wreck that threw Lisa from the car and severely injured her mom.

Lisa:
00:02:56 She was in a coma for three weeks after that and got severe brain damage. I was flipped out of the car the first time it flipped and I just had a broken arm, so God was with me during that and … I just always seen my family blame everything on that one accident, like they lived in that accident. Everything went back to that ’cause my mom had severe brain damage after that. So when you added the brain damage in with the alcohol and drugs she was already using, she was a completely different person because the brain damage made it even worse. So … my whole life, she just blamed it on this wreck and she never moved out of that situation.

Phil: Lisa’s parents split up when she was 4 and Lisa lived with her mom until she was 8. It was four years of utter chaos.



Lisa:
00:03:44 Her drinking was very heavy, plus the brain damage, and … she would have seizures all the time. I would witness those … really scary; men in and out, a lot of partying, but I still can remember that excitement of that freedom of being in a hotel room, jumping on the bed or, you know, just being up eating whatever I wanted to eat any time I wanted to eat it, not going to school half the time, like I remember that freedom and it was comfortable for me because that’s how my life went.

Phil: Lisa was taken away from her mom and she went to live with her dad and stepmom. She says her dad was a functioning alcoholic who tried to give Lisa the structure that she’d been lacking. 

Jim: Part of that structure involved going to church each Sunday. One morning, Lisa sensed her need for God and made the decision to invite Jesus into her life.

Lisa:
00:04:36 And it was just something, you know, that tugged to go up to the altar and I knew … I couldn’t be what I needed to be. And felt like a desperate need for God and I can just remember all over my body just this amazing feeling and then I went on to get baptized and I had a change happen then.

Jim: For a little while, Lisa was doing pretty good. She was going to church with her family and getting a fresh start at a new school. But then her dad left his wife and moved Lisa back to her old stomping grounds, including her old school. That led to a downward spiral that would essentially last for the next two decades. 

Phil: Lisa says her dad was very strict, but when she was about 10 years old, he started allowing her to go to her grandmother’s house on the weekends. Things weren’t so strict there, and Lisa saw an opportunity to start sneaking out.

Jim: At first, it was just sneaking out to the skating rink, but pretty soon she was taking bigger risks. And by the time she was a teenager, Lisa was openly rebelling against her dad.

Lisa:
00:05:37 He was a man trying to raise a teenage girl so it was really hard on him. He was actually doing the best he could, you know. I couldn’t see that at the time. And he also had a drinking problem. So eventually, 14, I started experimenting with marijuana and alcohol. Very quickly took off. I didn’t hide it. By the time I was 15, I was smoking marijuana every day. I was drinking at least five or six times a week. Well, four or five times a week, let me say that ’cause I would be sick the other days, recuperating. I had taken pills when I could. I mean, at 16, I started doing cocaine and at 15 I had left home, and my dad didn’t come to look for me. He knew where I was but he didn’t come and get me. I think that hurt too.

Jim: Lisa was running around with a guy who shared her taste for alcohol and drugs. For a while, they lived at a house where they paid their rent … with drugs.

Lisa:
00:06:32 So the landlord was all strung out and everything in it was stolen. We went on people’s porches and took their couch if we needed a couch; their window unit out of the window, like bad things to learn at the age of 15. 

Phil: By the time she was 16, Lisa was pregnant. She had a baby girl and planned to raise her with her boyfriend.

Lisa
00:06:52 He had never hit me, nothing like that. Two weeks after I had her, I was at his brother’s house and he—a girl pulled up and he got out of the car and she got out and he kissed her. So I just started flipping, like, How could you do this to me? And he beat me up extremely bad and that was the first time he had ever put his hands on me. I … like it done something to me. It broke me. I never thought he could do that, you know, and it … it changed my whole life … because it got to where, you know, I didn’t have any self-esteem. I had a baby. I felt like I was stuck with him. You know, I didn’t have my dad anymore. I didn’t really—my grandma always let me do what I wanted to do so that really didn’t feel like somebody that … I mean, she always had my back, right or wrong, but you want somebody to tell you when you’re wrong, like we crave that discipline. So I didn’t … you know, he was all I had and I have this baby and I just went really hard into drugs. I didn’t trust him and he shouldn’t trust me after that. I wanted to hurt him as bad as he had hurt me and that was my motive a lot of the time and just to stay numb.

Phil: The outlook was pretty bleak. Lisa had dropped out of school in tenth grade. Whenever her family got together, her mom’s addiction and health problems always took center stage. Holidays were especially memorable—and not in a warm and fuzzy way.

Lisa
00:08:15 So this whole time all this is going on, my mom is raging alcoholic, so there’s episodes. Every holiday, she’s knocking over the tree. Her and my grandma are getting into it, throwing things at each other. Holidays were not a good time for us … at all.  Memories of holidays were terrible. Nobody really cooked, so Thanksgiving we would always go like to a family member’s house that we didn’t really know and we would be really awkward there but as far as our family, my grandma would order like chicken from KFC and we would all eat in separate rooms.

Jim: Lisa and her boyfriend had another baby … and then another. During this time, she was still doing drugs and getting into trouble with the law. In fact, she says some of the best seasons in her life during this period were actually spent behind bars.


Lisa:
00:09:03 Every time I would go to jail, I—everything would be quiet enough where I could hear God and I would know He was calling me out of this, but it just wasn’t time, you know. I wasn’t done, I guess. I needed to be here today, but I learned about Him, you know. I learned and I would go to jail and I would walk with Him and I didn’t really have a choice but I could have chose to just sit around and not do that and like the other women but for some reason, I always went to Him, you know, in those desperate times. It was always just the desperate times though.

Jim: When Lisa wasn’t in jail, it was all too easy to go back to her old ways. The noise of a chaotic life and the demands of addiction drowned out God’s voice.

Phil: At one point, Lisa and her boyfriend started selling drugs. That put them on a path that led both of them to prison. Lisa spent about 15 months in federal prison and says it was one of her most spiritually fruitful seasons … but it didn’t last. She kept going back to her boyfriend and ended up getting pregnant with twins. They were born in 2014, making Lisa a single mother of five.

Jim: If you haven’t struggled with addiction or an abusive relationship, you may find yourself wondering why did Lisa keep repeating the same mistakes? One of the earliest followers of Jesus, Paul, addressed this very thing in the book of Romans, chapter seven. He said: “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep … doing.”

Lisa:
00:10:38 I knew that I was veering off the track, you know. I knew God was telling me, ‘No, this way, this way,’ and I just continued. I went back to their dad again and was right back in the same of selling drugs and doing drugs and I was still on federal probation.

Jim: While Lisa was on probation, she lost her mother. Admittedly, their relationship had been difficult, but that didn’t make the loss any easier.

Lisa:
00:11:02 We loved each other very, very much and she died … in February of 2018—[crying]—She already had cirrhosis of the liver but I had been doing drugs with her, giving ’em to her, selling ’em to her, and it kept her up for like three days and because she had that brain damage, she had seizures a lot and she didn’t eat or sleep and she ended up having multiple seizures and hitting her head and died. So it was really tragic, you know, the way it happened and I was living with her and I blame myself because I wasn’t home. I blame myself because it was the drugs that I gave her. I blamed myself for a long time.

Phil: Life spiraled further out of control. Harder drugs. More jail time. Then Lisa lost her home … and she lost the only family member she had consistently counted on—her grandmother.

Lisa:
00:12:16 She died and that was it. That was the hit that knocked me out. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was so down. I was so lost—[crying]—I was so lost and I just … I had heard about this place in jail when I went for my federal time. It always stuck with me that I needed to be here and I didn’t have anywhere to run. You know, I was out of options … so it’s crazy to look back and see that these two people that I love so much had to die for me to live.

Phil: The place Lisa had heard about when she was in federal prison is called the Dove’s Nest, here in Charlotte, North Carolina. It’s a free residential recovery program for women and their children—and it’s part of the Charlotte Rescue Mission, which exists to transform lives in the Name of Jesus Christ.

Jim: When she finally hit rock bottom, Lisa went to the Dove’s Nest with three of her five children. The oldest two had been living with a family friend. Lisa was hesitant and anxious about walking away from her old life. Brokenness was all that she had ever known. She says only God could have gotten her to go to the recovery center ... and stay there—but that’s exactly what she’s done.

Lisa:
00:13:43 I didn’t know how to live. I didn’t know how to take care of my kids. I didn’t know how to have a conversation.

Jim: Lisa went through an intensive four-month recovery program for substance abuse. There she learned how to break the cycle of abuse through the power of Christ. She’s also learning how to be a mother. And her 9-year old boy and two 4-year-old twin girls are learning what a loving, functional family looks like.

Lisa:
00:14:09 Here, we sit down at the table together. My kids, they got here, they wouldn’t even—they couldn’t even understand sitting down and eating. They were running all over the place and screaming and crying about everything and now they enjoy sitting down at the table and eating and just spending time together and knowing that when they’re hungry, I’m going to fix them something to eat today. They don’t have to beg me for something to eat. They don’t have to get yelled at. You know, they’re safe now.

Phil: Self-centered—that’s how Lisa would describe herself before the Dove’s Nest. After seven months there, though, she’s focusing on loving God and loving others.

Lisa:
00:14:49 It’s not a pretty sight at all to have to look back on who I have been and how many I’ve hurt, how much damage I’ve done, but it does give me a push in the direction of trying to put something into the world instead of continuing to take, take, take, take, take everything I can.
Phil: It’s a process. Lisa is sorting through a lifetime of heartbreak and sin—sin that was committed against her and sin she committed herself. And that’s why Jesus died—to take away the sins of the world. By His grace, Lisa and her family are finding forgiveness and healing—and it came just in time.

Lisa:
00:15:30 If this didn’t work, I probably would have came up with a plan to kill myself. There was no point in me living. I was finally seeing myself, you know, for what—everything that I had done. So these people just … they’re amazing here. They love us. They love us until we love ourselves.

Jim: We’re getting ready to celebrate Thanksgiving. And we’re happy to report that this year won’t look anything like it used to for Lisa. On Thanksgiving Day, she’ll be having dinner with all five of her children. And then, they’re having a second Thanksgiving at the home of a family they’ve met since arriving at the Dove’s Nest.

Lisa:
00:16:06 We’re going to just spend quality time with family and have a nice meal for Thanksgiving. And then the day after Thanksgiving, we’re going to a friend’s house here that we’ve met who, you know, we’ve got a family here now in just a short time. We’ve only been here since April 22 and we have a family’s house to go to for Thanksgiving. It feels good to fit somewhere. I think my whole life, that’s what I wanted. I wanted to fit.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Jim: We praise God that Lisa has found what she was looking for. What about you? You might not be too excited about Thanksgiving or the Christmas season that follows. Maybe you’re feeling like you don’t belong. We want you to know that you can be part of God’s family—forever. And you can have the peace Lisa has found. Start by visiting FindPeaceWithGod.net. That’s FindPeaceWithGod.net.

Phil: We will be back in one minute after a message from Billy Graham and then Lisa is going to share one of the most important things she’s learned about God.

Voice-over: You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories., a production of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

MUSIC STARTS

Billy Graham:
00:17:31 More than 150 times the Bible either calls men to thank God or tells them how to give thanks.

Voice-over: Billy Graham …


Billy Graham:
00:17:39 In Old Testament days, God designated a special offering of thanksgiving for His people. More than 30 times in the Psalms the psalmist speaks of giving thanks. Jesus taught us to give thanks as He gave thanks and broke the loaves and the fishes to feed the multitude. But more than any other spiritual or material blessing is the blessing of God’s offer of salvation through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. When I see Jesus Christ hanging on the cross and I remember that ”God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” to take my place on the cross, I must bow in front of that cross and say, especially on Thanksgiving Day, “Thank You, Lord, for not sparing Your Son. Thank You, Lord, for saving my soul.” He can give you peace and joy and hope in your heart today by trusting Him. 

Phil: You can learn more about trusting Jesus Christ, about beginning a relationship with Him by visiting this website: FindPeaceWithGod.net. We have a link to it in the show notes.

Jim: Before we wrap up here, we want to give Lisa a chance to share one more thought—and it’s an important one for all of us to grasp. It’s about how her view of God has changed since getting sober and turning her life over to Jesus.

Lisa:
00:18:59 I used to feel like He was mad or didn’t want to have anything to do with me until I got better … until I stopped everything. And I’m learning now that that’s not the way He works, that He’s never disappointed, that He already knew everything I was going to do before I done it and that He loved me anyway and He brought me here for this purpose, you know, to be talking on this microphone right now, you know. And He wants to be my friend; He wants to be my Father and my husband, my brother, all these things that I crave and I’ve looked for in all these other places, He wants to be all of that and He is. He is today. I talk to Him like I’m talking on this microphone right now. I’m still 
learning, you know, to instead of worrying, just talk to Him instead of worry, you know, things like that. Walking down the hall, talk to Him, and I’ve got this relationship and it’s amazing. 

Phil: Another relationship Lisa is thrilled to be working on is the one with her earthly father. He’s a follower of Jesus and he and Lisa are walking through the healing process one step at a time. We want to thank Lisa for sharing her story with us. And we want to thank you for listening. I’m Phil Fleischman.

Jim: And I’m Jim Kirkland. It’s our prayer that God uses Lisa’s story—and all the stories that you hear on GPS—to help you grow in your faith. GPS stands for God. People. Stories. It’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association—Always Good News. And, Happy Thanksgiving.
CLOSING MUSIC
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