I have an amazing life encounter to share with you. I would say it was a story but that implies it’s not facts but just a mere tale to share
About a year ago I heard an amazing woman of God share her testimony on HLE Radio. My heart was touched deeply. I imediatley went and friend requested this lady on Facebook. Her name is Julie Keene.
Julie was an addict and is now an overcomer. She suffered with addiction for over 20 years. After her father commited suicide in 1992, Julie went on a bender that seemed it would never end.
I was blessed to interview Julie and I hope her encounters help you encounter Drinking From His Well!
FROM DRINKING FROM A BOTTLE TO DRINKING FROM THE WELL
At what age did your journey with addiction begin?
I was addicted to approval from a very young age. My father committed suicide when I was 15 and that very weekend I tried alcohol for the first time, to the point of making myself sick for days. That didn’t stop me. My life began a downward spiral from the get-go and I found that I could escape into the recesses of my heart when I was intoxicated. I loved the way it made me feel, the instant courage I would have, and the solitude it offered. I began using designer drugs while attending Louisiana Tech University in order to fit in with the crowd I ran with. My mother was in a horrific car accident that nearly took her life only one month shy of my graduation from college. I used that as an excuse to get away to the big city of Shreveport, LA and running from me and my circumstances then became a new and improved way of escape. My addiction really took a turn for the worse in the big city and I began living two lives, Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde if you will. I took on two personalities, one that helped me survive in the ghetto when I was trying to score, and one that I had to survive the work force and the demands of being a wife and mother, both for which I was completely unprepared. I was addicted to MORE, to everything, to anything. My addiction took me places I never belonged, designer drugs were traded for hard core street drugs when the high was no longer satisfying my desire to run from myself and the depression that wracked my entire spiritual being, it cost me more than I could pay, and kept me longer than I wanted to stay. I was stuck and saw no way out, so I used that as an excuse to stay checked out of life as well. Hindsight is 20/20 and looking back I can clearly see the lies that entered my spirit long before I ever took the first drug or ingested the first drink. Excuses are the bricks that build a house of failure and I was full of them. More was never enough. I was putty in the hands of the enemy, but not anymore!
What do you feel triggered your addiction?
My addiction was triggered by my inability to cope with life in general. I had a desire to feel accepted from a very young age. My dad had gone to prison when I was in the 5thgrade and needless to say, my entire life as I knew it was thrown up into the air and landed back on the ground not even resembling the way it was before. It was a nightmare of epic proportions in the mind of an intuitive adolescent girl who thrived in controlled environments. The spirits of rejection and abandonment took over my life and my being. The thing is I realize now that life is all about choices. Was I able to make choices about my future at such a young age? No. Was I able to grasp the reality of what was taking place in the peripherals? Absolutely not. Was I able to truly handle the deceit of the person I trusted the most? No way. However, I was able to make decisions as I grew older, and I feel like “triggers” are just another pretext used to check out of life. I made my own choices. I stepped in my own holes. There is no real justification for why I chose a path of self destruction, other than I just did. To place blame on ANYTHING would be completely unfair. I stood there for the majority of my adult life, blame-thrower in hand, ready to fire. I triggered myself. I praise the Lord God Almighty for setting me free!
Along your path were there people who reached out to you to help you with overcoming the addiction?
I was a tornado, ripping through the hearts of every “city” that I came in contact with. Each “city” represents a person, their feelings, and their love toward me. People came, and people left and they left due to their own inability to weather the storm. They saw the warning, they took cover, and they made it out, sometimes not fast enough before I tore through their homes. Destruction followed in my wake and I would be left standing alone and using that as yet another reason to stay stuck in my behaviors. Abandonment, rejection, fear. I lost a marriage to a great man, I lost my children and haven’t seen them or spoken to them in nearly 3 years, I lost friendships, relationships, loved ones, and now another broken marriage. I bounced in and out of 10 detox centers, mental hospitals, rehabs, and the like over the course of 10 years before finding Jacob’s Well Recovery Center in Poplarville, MS and finding people who would never leave, due to the love that Christ has for the brokenhearted and the lost. I was finally home, I was finally found, and I was finally free!
Who would you say has most influenced your life to become an overcomer?
I love the Lord with all my heart and soul. He is everything to me, my all in all, my lover, my friend, and my strength. He walked this earth and died for me so that I could walk in freedom. Without Him, I am nothing. My mother is my greatest inspiration. That woman spends her life on her knees in prayer to God over her family. She has lost a husband to prison, the same husband to suicide, was forced to raise two teenage daughters alone, nearly lost her life in a car accident, yet the woman still sang praises tothe Lord through it all. She shines with the light of Jesus in a way that draws people to her, including myself. She has been my biggest supporter and has shown me love, even when I was unlovable. The other people who have influenced me the most in my desire to find peace through Christ Jesus are all of the people attached to Jacob’s Well Ministries, to include Mandy Haynes, Asa Haynes, Susan Haynes Brogan, Pastor Charlie Haynes, Pamela Haynes, Clarence Tilghman, Teresa Tilghman, Linda Bosh, Megan Ezell, Lisa Thrasher, and countless, COUNTLESS other souls who have poured into my life on a daily basis since first stepping across the threshold of the beautifully anointed place that I now call home. I love them as if they are my own family. We minister together, cry together, laugh together, and LOVE covers a multitude of former sins and regrets. I am blessed beyond measure for the sacrifice they make on a daily basis that helped set me free. Obedience sometimes feels like sacrifice, but because of their willingness to be obedient, they were able to gently guide me back into the presence of my Awesome Creator.
How did you hear about Jacobs Well?
I moved from Virginia to Mississippi after a horrible relapse and another stay at another treatment center where I knew all the answers in order to get by and get out, quickly. I did what I always did best and separated my head from my heart and ran. I ran away from responsibility again and justified every single step that I took that would get me further away from the truth of who I was. There was a reason for me to move all the way to Mississippi, but it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Geographical cures do not work because the enemy is always waiting at the front door of every new location, unless you are carrying Jesus with you, and I wasn’t. I found myself on the street again, living in abandoned houses or sheds, giving myself away, piece by piece, in order to get the next high. There was a street in Meridian, MS that I called home and every day as I walked my beat I passed an abandoned house that seemed like the perfect location to get away, to use my drug of choice without interruption, to sleep when able. However, every time I passed that house and went to step foot on the property, I was pushed back by some unseen force that wasn’t familiar to me. I would like to call it “fear”, but it was much deeper than that, the feeling that I got each time I went to defile that old house. I pondered it time and again as I walked, watching it from the other side of the street. I left the streets of Meridian, checked into rehab number 10, and tried again to find hope in a “Higher Power” in anonymous rooms. I left Meridian and traded those streets for the horrific ghetto of Hattiesburg, MS. I died on the street in Hattiesburg after several vain attempts to secure myself a bed at a place called Jacob’s Well Recovery Center for Women. I was penniless, hopeless, and completely lost. I had heard about Jacob’s Well from a counselor at a treatment center that kicked me out because I had no insurance. I had only been there 2 days when they found out about my dire situation and sent me back out to the streets that consumed me. Several days later, as I lie on the ground in the middle of the road from an overdose, my heart slowing its beat, I lost my life as I knew it. When I found myself walking down the street again, I was overcome with fear. I truly believed I was in hell and if I were to turn around, I would see my own lifeless body lying in the road. Circumstances changed and my spiritual eyes were open to the truth from the front porch with no electricity and no running water which I called home. I walked away from that porch, from that street, and found myself the very next day walking across the doorframe of Jacob’s Well, by the grace of God. After graduation, I saw a picture on Susan Haynes Brogan’s Facebook page that stopped my heart yet again. It was a picture of an old abandoned house, on Royal Road in Meridian, MS. It was the house where the Holy Spirit came through the Haynes family like a flood and their lives were changed. It is the house where their lives ended and a new life with Jesus began. It was the very same house I used to cruise by. There are no coincidences in this life. Every single step is guided by God and the way is prepared, even in the darkest moments when we see no end to our suffering and our pain. He is always with us. I am now a staff member of Jacob’s Well, a lifelong friend and family member to the Haynes, and a trusted servant of God Himself. I am honored to work beside such amazing people who love God more than their own lives. I am blessed to have such an awesome family to come home to everyday, and I am humbled by the things I get to do for the women in the program as I counsel them and minister to them out of my own painful past. God brings everything “full circle”.
Julie’s Website click here to learn more about “Coming Full Circle
In your journey at Jacobs Well, we’re there times you wanted to give up? If so what did you hold onto to keep going?
There have always been times that I have wanted to give up, and at one point, I did. It was a brief moment when I allowed the enemy back into my clean, swept house. Today, giving up isn’t an option, I have no more excuses. Jesus is at the absolute center of every single decision that I make. I had to come to the realization that I am not perfect, nor will I ever be until I see Him face to face in heaven. I had to loose myself from old ways of thinking and fully surrender everything in my life to Him. Today, I hold onto promises. I hold onto truth. I hold onto hope. In the eyes of the world, I will always be an addict, I will be labeled as a terrible mother, and I will be rejected by a society that lives in shallow boxes, but God…
God says that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. He says that I am the head and not the tail. He says that He will never leave me, nor forsake me. God says that He will repay me for all the years that I have squandered, the years the locusts have eaten.
He says in His awesome Word that I am worthy, I am loved, I am blessed, I am equipped for His service, and I am FREE!
What scriptures do you stand on to that help you to remain an overcomer?
I have so many, so choosing is a bit of a struggle, but I love to stand on the Word of God and the words that Jesus spoke in His short ministry on this earth. I am moved by the Living Word and I make it a part of my daily meditation, to allow Him to speak to me and to give me the promises that He has in store for my life. I am patiently learning patience, and His timing is always PERFECT!
John 8:36 – So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
Amen and AMEN!! There is so much TRUTH to this scripture. I don’t have to go backward. I am FREE!
Jeremiah 29:11-14 – For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
I was in exile. I was lost. I was captive to my own depravity and my own circumstances had me bound to the floor by chains that I put on my own limbs and attached to with locks so tight I couldn’t move. Today, I seek God with all my heart and I find Him EVERYWHERE! My future is bright and I do have hope!
Isaiah 43:1-7 (NIV) – “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead. 4 Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life. 5 Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. 6 I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth – 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
He will bring my children back to me. He will gather them to me and restore our relationship. It feels some days as if I am walking through fire. It hurts when I feel as if I am drowning under the weight of past regrets, but I am precious and He wants to give me the desires of my heart. He knows.
Genesis 50:20 – You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
My favorite verse, my mantra, the reason I do what I do. I desire to see more people come to know Jesus in an intimate way. I long to see the light come on in eyes that were so veiled that brilliance no longer shone from them. I want to see people free from the bondage that so easily entangles. I have a purpose and it is to be part of the Great Commission. I am ready and I am able!
Today I am so thankful that Julie is drinking from HIS WELL!!!
Thank you so much for sharing your heart with us Julie.
To learn more about Jacobs Well check out their website below.
Dream Catcher 3:20
Cassie G
