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         This is someone who has been using "Overcome Addiction by God's Grace" within their ministry.

My name is Jodi Williams. I am from Deridder, Louisiana, and this is my story…

Like so many others, I come from a broken home. My parents separated when I was around 7-8 years old.

After that, my mom, brother, and I were in our household. My brother is a couple of years younger than me, and after my parents separated, I became our main caretaker. My mom did not handle this new season of her life well and completely checked out of life. She began to live a lifestyle of partying and was in and out of bad relationships. She abandoned her parental role in every way. She also became very abusive towards me, using guilt and manipulation as the main tactics to puppet me into doing whatever she wanted. This would continue throughout our relationship. Early on, I learned that people could not be trusted, and love was given only in exchange for what you did for them. I also realized I was better off caring for myself and being self-sufficient. I was living an adult life in a child’s mind and body—not because I wanted to grow up, but for survival.

At the age of 13, my mother began a new relationship with someone out of state. She told me and my brother to pack our belongings and dropped us off on my dad’s doorstep. The anger and bitterness I had developed through the years of abuse would take on a whole new meaning from this point forward. I became full of hate and rebellion. There was no room for anything else. Even though we would no longer have to worry about whether we were going to have our next meal or where we would sleep the next night, nor would I have to worry about physical abuse, there is something about a child and their mother. No matter how bad the conditions are, a child always wants their mother. I had just been completely abandoned by mine and had no context or understanding in processing what I had been through.

At age 15, I left home. At age 16, I was pregnant and married. By the time I was 18, I was a single parent. Between 18 and 19, I began reciprocating that party lifestyle my mother introduced us to all those years back. My mother was in my life at this time, but the relationship was toxic and in constant turmoil. From cuss fights to fist fights, this was our daily normal. We also began going to doctors together to get low-level drugs.

At the age of 21, I remarried into an extremely abusive relationship and had two more children. The pressure of my childhood and present hood began to take its toll. I was beginning to be crushed underneath the weight of it all. Because I had to figure life out on my own for all those years, how to even begin to deal with any of these things was completely dark to me. As the abuse escalated, my inability to cope did too. I left the low-level drugs for more potent ones. I began using pain pills to just exist in the chaos and madness. Within a very short time, I was a full-blown drug addict. What started on the weekends to help me “manage” my life was now an unmanageable daily addiction.

In 2006, I met a man by the name of Andy Williams through a drug deal. At the time, I knew I was completely unstable and sensed he was too. He was the most arrogant human I had ever met, and I decided I did not want to have anything to do with him again. Little did I know, that would not be the case. 

In 2007, at the height of my addiction, I was taking over 30 10 mg Lortabs a day, along with Xanax bars sprinkled in throughout the day as well. I overdosed that year and lost my children to the state. The state set up a plan for me to “work” to get my children back. My distrust for people was so high that I would not let anyone in to help me, so I only checked off the boxes to get back the only thing in my life that I felt genuinely loved me without pretense—my children.

In 2008, my children were returned to me, but because there were no real changes made, in 2011, we repeated the process. This time, I was arrested on a possession charge. But this time would be different. The Lord met me in the darkness of that small cell and spoke to me. He told me if I continued in my sin, I would be swept away. I didn’t have any Christianese to speak to Him, so I simply said, “I suck at doing life, and I know You are telling me if I keep going this direction, this is what will happen, but I don’t know any other way.”

A short time later, a book was circulating through our cells and landed in my hands. It was a book on forgiveness. In this book, there was a section with a simple prayer you could insert someone’s name and repeat. I felt the Lord was urging me to insert my mom’s name. I thought of a thousand other names but resisted inserting hers because I didn’t think I had anything against her. That’s the thing with unforgiveness: it’s always hidden from the one holding it. But at the persistent urging of the Lord, I inserted her name and prayed this simple prayer, and in an instant, I was set free of 10 years of drug addiction. As tears rolled down my face, all I could say was, “It’s over, it’s over.” I knew I had been set free and would never be the same.

From that day on, the Lord began teaching me how to live as a new creation. He began restoring my life in ways I could have never imagined. He gave me a career, he brought my children home, and he provided transportation and enabled me to buy my own home. He also led me to start a jail ministry that I served in for seven years.

More recently, He brought someone back into my life as a best friend who would later become my husband. Remember that arrogant, unstable, drug addict, Andy Williams, that I didn’t ever want anything to do with again? He was now a man set free from his years of bondage and was serving the Lord with his whole heart. He has been such a bright light in my world and is teaching me how to trust and love in ways I have never known. He is teaching me the true meaning of what it means for a man to love his wife as Christ loves the church. God has also equipped and enabled us to serve in ministry together, working to bring freedom and hope in Christ to others.

But most importantly, the Lord has kept me steady in my relationship with Him. The year 2023 marks 12 years since I was set free and began walking with the Lord.

During these 12 years, the Lord also allowed my mother and me to walk through some seasons of a restored relationship. While she had not changed, I had. I began learning how to love her while keeping strong boundaries in place and breaking away from the toxic patterns between us. It was extremely difficult most of the time, but I chose to work at it because I loved her—despite her difficult personality.

After working to stay in a relationship with her and some seasons of restoration, this past year we suffered a major fracture, and she cut me out of her life completely. She had been suffering from a medical issue for some years, and the fracture in our relationship took place just as her disease began to rapidly progress. She continued to keep me out of her life. I prayed to the Lord and asked Him if there was any way possible to please give us a chance to make some type of amends before she left this world, even if it wasn’t a fully restored relationship. I did not want her to leave this world and enter eternity with unforgiveness gripping her heart. I also did not want to be left here with question marks, could-haves, or regrets.

On my birthday, December 7, 2022, we had a small but sweet conversation, and she had my favorite flowers delivered to me as a birthday gift. It would be the last conversation we would have where she was fully coherent.

On January 3, 2023, I received a text from my brother saying he did not believe my mother would make it through the night. Andy and I drove to Texas to be with her, my brother, and his family.

A short time after we arrived, my brother and his family went to bed. I went and sat in the chair beside my mother, lying in her hospital bed. I whispered where she could hear me that I loved her and had nothing towards her but love and prayed she felt the same way. Her breathing had been shallow and rapid until this point. But as I said those words, she took the deepest breath, like a sigh of relief. Caught off guard by the deep breath, I watched her a little longer and then dozed off in the chair beside her. I woke up with a deep gasp and a knowing that she was leaving this world. I got my brother, and we sat together as our mom took her last breath. It was God’s gift to us. While we may not have had a great start, He made sure we had a perfect and restored ending.

He is not just the Author and Finisher of our faith, but the Author and Finisher of our lives as well. We can trust that, while everything that happens to us may not be good or even right, He knows how to make the broken pieces whole. In His way and in His time.

I don’t know where you are in your walk with God and others, but I know He who began a good work will see it through to the end. And He will make all things beautiful in their time.

— Jodi Williams