Addiction Didn't Define Me

house and ended up homeless in South Florida. I decided that I would just go couch hop and try to figure it out from there, but I was so deep into my opiate addiction that it didn't even really register until one of the days I was at a friend's house, so-called friend's house, and they asked me to leave their house in the middle of a Florida rainstorm, and if you've ever been down there, they are rough. And he gave me the shirt off his back, and you would think that would be a romantic moment, but it was anything but, and I walked over to a grocery store because that was the closest thing for cover, and I sat on a bench, and I'll never forget that nobody would even look at me. My story really begins at the age of five when I got told that if I woke up and couldn't wake up, my mom that I needed to call 911, she's always been sick my whole entire life, and she had a whole entire canister of medications, and I was told, "Hey, let the MTS know that this is, these are the men's that she's on." So I kind of grew up in a lot of fear and stress that my mom just wasn't going to make it as far as her health concerns go, and that made it really hard for her to parent as a single-parent household. When I was eight years old, someone introduced me to weed, they thought it was funny, but at that moment, did I find when escape would look like? I started selling cigarettes and various stuff by the time I was elementary school. My daughter is in the third grade, and that was the grade when everything fell apart. I was doing a lot of things I shouldn't, I skipped school, hanging out with people I shouldn't, but sometimes you just want to feel accepted and loved when you don't get it at home. I ended up developing some really bad anger management issues, and was able to find out later in life that really I was angry at God for giving me a sick mom. By this time I hit middle school, I was still dealing with anger and misuse, I was trying to get into sports because I couldn't get into them sooner due to transportation and just that single-family household. But I remember I went to go tryout for basketball, and this might sound kind of silly, but I remember just yelling at a girl, "You suck!"

And I couldn't get on the team, and I was devastated. By the time I did get on the team, people just looked at me in a negative way. They had a negative story about me, I don't know what it was, and a lot of it was, some of it I created, and some of it I didn't. And I remember an assistant principal telling me that your reputation will stay with you, and those were words that were hurtful, they were not helpful, those were not from God, but I could not decipher that when I was a child. By the time I was 16, I was actually became a drug dealer before I became a full-blown drug addict, and I went through that path while becoming addicted at the same time. I have a lot of regret from that, and a lot of forgiveness I still need to work through. I can't tell you how many people aren't alive today because of decisions that I made. People make their own decisions, but I also didn't make it easy for them. By the time I was 19 years old, I became a full-blown opioid addict, and that's what really took hold of me for the next almost seven years. As an IV opiate user for almost seven years, that's when I lost everything. Nothing was fun anymore. It was just survival mode, and I didn't know how else to live. I became obsessed with the fact of using, and getting, and anything of the sort. It was almost like I was a different person than how I knew myself to be when I grew up. I had tried many different methods to try to get help. If somebody told me it was a good idea, I did it, I did NA, I did AA, I did suboxone therapy when it first came out, medication assisted treatment. I did methadone, I went away and camped for three months in the middle of the woods in Colorado in the middle of winter, because Oprah recommended it as being the best program in the nation, only to come home and relapse within five days. I tried moving across, various areas across the state, Florida is very big, but one thing I couldn't do was move away from myself. It's a miracle to me that I even came to know Jesus Christ, because I was only introduced to him when I was 25 years old who a program in New York by the name of Hoving Home. I know without a shout of a doubt, if I didn't go, when I did, I would not be sitting here

today. (sniffles) Every year that I get to celebrate my birthday isn't in, oh, I'm getting older, it's in absolute shock and astonishment that God has chosen me. I came into a deep relationship with Jesus trying to disprove him. In the first month of my program, I read through the New Testament at least two times. I questioned everything that was said, and if someone told me that there was a scripture in the Bible, I said, "Show me," and lo and behold, when the scripture says, "If you seek me with all your heart, you shall find me," that scripture became real life for me. Whether I knew I was seeking him or not, I was. I was praying, "God, if you weren't real, tell me. You can't pray to somebody that isn't there." And God used my way of analyzing an analytical mind to be able to reach me in a desperate place. I stayed in that program for a year and got some real, real healing. I even went on to work for them, which I still currently do today by the grace of God as their strategic projects manager. Through that program, I was able to regain my life in ways that I just couldn't even imagine, I had to refine myself again, because my adulthood was all just suppressed by addiction and what that looked like. God lifted up off of me the obsession and desire to use, which I never, ever thought I could leave me. I came to meet my husband in 2016, and we've been married for ten years now. We have three children, three youngians, eight, seven, and five, and being able to show that in Christ is just the joy of my life, because I never knew the true gospel to the age of twenty-five growing up in America. So if you're just now hearing about Christ, whether you're in the church building, or you're in prison, or you're in jail, he is real. He desires a relationship with us in a deep, intimate way, not an artificial way. If you search for him, he will speak to you in a way that makes sense to you.

Today, I also get the joy of being able to help lead the food and assistance program here at New Life Church in Greenbrier, my heart for outreach, and for those to be able to know Jesus Christ through practical ways, whether that's giving a food bag and praying for them every month that they come, or helping them with a resume, or connecting them with a job. That's just the way that God's designed me. My hope is that when I get to heaven that God says, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." If God can use me, a person that shouldn't even be alive, to be able to grow in a relationship with him, to help people in need, to have a family, he can certainly use you. My life scripture is Romans 10, 14 through 15, I'm going to paraphrase because I would be sure if I tried to do a word for word, but how are they supposed to know who to call on unless somebody is sent and someone tells them about the Word of God? And I believe that to be me, I believe all missions are important, but man do I believe that local missions, where we're planning in the day-to-day actions, is where God can really show up. Everybody has its testimony, maybe you're resonated with mine or maybe your story is completely different, but the question still remains the same, and I think of it in the book of John where Jesus asks, "To a paralyzed man, do you want to get well?" You have to answer that question for yourself. There are many different programs and avenues to be able to get well, but the main thing that I believe that will give you true freedom is to experience a relationship with Christ. Only you can answer the question of, "Do you want to get well and dive into a relationship with him?" It does not mean that everything will be easy, but you are worth it, and it is worth continuing to press on and try to live your life differently than you have been. My name is Emily Rate, and I am becoming fully devoted. God bless you. I'm Emily Rate. I'm Emily Rate.

God bless you. I'm Emily Rate.