Sober Living Stories
Welcome to the "Sober Living Stories" podcast, a platform built on the power of personal stories. Each Tuesday, Jessica Stipanovic, your host, shines a spotlight on individuals who have undergone remarkable life transformations to inspire hope in listeners worldwide.
Each guest shares their story giving examples of bold beginnings disguised as endings and life lessons that teach how the darkest moments often hold the key to unlocking the brightest light.
This podcast inspires positive life changes. Whether you're sober curious, living an alcohol-free lifestyle, have overcome a challenge and lived to tell about it, or support someone who wants to shed a habit in light of a new one, our episodes promise to leave you feeling understood, hopeful, and motivated to create meaningful transformations in your life.
Join us for powerful new episodes every Tuesday where the most difficult life experiences serve to uplift and inspire. Regardless of your background or belief system, the "Sober Living Stories" podcast is your ultimate destination for uplifting narratives where hope shines from the most unexpected places.
In addition to featuring our weekly guests, each month on the "Sober Living Stories" podcast, we have the privilege of sitting down with a new author, delving into their story and the wisdom they've shared in their book.
Here's the exciting part: their book becomes the giveaway for that month.
Tune in every Tuesday for brand-new episodes and your chance to win the gift of a transformed life.
Sober Living Stories
A Path to Purpose After Addiction from Christian Coach Barbie Morgan Sheffield
Join Jessica Stipanovic, host of The Sober Living Stories Podcast as she interviews Christian Coach Barbie Morgan Sheffield. Barbie shares her story of overcoming nearly two decades of drug addiction. Today, Barbie shares more than thirty years of freedom from alcohol and drugs with women all over the world.
Starting in Dallas, Texas, Barbie's life took a tumultuous turn, marked by the grip of substance abuse. This raw conversation unveils her descent into addiction, a journey fueled by a troubled past involving an alcoholic stepfather and personal battles, beginning in her senior year of high school.
The story takes a sobering twist when Barbie confronts the harsh reality of her addiction through the justice system, spending weekends in jail. It serves as a reminder of the consequences of alcoholism and substance abuse. Yet, within those confines, a profound moment of spiritual awakening unfolds. Barbie's encounters with a Christian group in jail lay the foundation for a transformative change, guiding her from despair to purpose and faith. Her experiences with divine intervention shine a bright light on the presence of hope even in the darkest of times.
As we conclude this episode, you'll be left with an unmistakable sense of possibility—whether it is for recovery, faith, or a fresh start in life.
Barbie, now the CEO of Godly Focused Hearts (godlyfocusedhearts.com) and a Christian life coach, embodies the power of redemption. You can follow her inspirational journey on Instagram at Barbie Sheffield (@godlyfocusedhearts) • Instagram photos and videos and YouTube.
Whether you're searching for guidance or simply a story of profound spiritual transformation, Barbie's journey serves as a reminder that miracles are meant for everyone, including you.
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Your story matters.
Welcome to the Sober Living Stories podcast. This podcast is dedicated to sharing stories of sobriety. We shine a spotlight on individuals who have faced the challenges of alcoholism and addiction and are today living out their best lives sober. Each guest has experienced incredible transformation and are here to share their story with you. I'm Jessica Stapanovic, your host. Join me each week as guests from all walks of life share their stories to inspire and provide hope to those who need it most. Hi and welcome to another inspiring episode of the Sober Living Stories podcast.
Speaker 1:Drugs didn't kill her and disease won't stop her. Meet Barbie Morgan Sheffield. After running from God for a number of years, he found her and at the age of 30, she was delivered from 17 years of drug and alcohol addiction. Since that day, barbie has brought her faith to four countries and continually seeks out opportunities to share what he has done in her life. She is the CEO and co-founder of godlyfocusedheartscom and, as a Christian life coach and speaker, she aims to take individuals deeper into the realization of the bigness of God. Welcome, barbie, so great to have you here today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, what a joy, what a joy.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Can you just take us to the beginning of your life, up and until where alcohol began to shape your story, and then to what it looks like today without alcohol being a part of it?
Speaker 2:Okay, yes, yes, yes, so born in Dallas, texas, so you will definitely hear an accent, you will hear normally our one syllable words, they become two or sometimes three, so you'll hear an accent.
Speaker 2:Born had one older sister and and mom and dad, you know we're doing their thing the, my mom and dad. I was born in Dallas, but my mom and dad my mom was from Illinois and my dad was from Indiana and my mom actually followed my dad here to Fort Worth, texas, to Carswell Air Force Base, and she was a secretary, a legal secretary, for 49 years when I was about six. Well, first of all, my earliest memories of that my dad, or us, chasing him and finding him and trying to find him going through the streets of Fort Worth. Because he was a what's the word for that? Jessica, he was a womanizer. My mom was divorced when I was about seven. My dad left this and Jessica we never saw him again until I was mid 40s, after my mom passed away.
Speaker 2:That year was particularly hard for my mom. She was an only child. Her daddy died, she got a divorce and she loved President John Kennedy John F Kennedy and he was assassinated in Dallas and she was supposed to be there that day. So it was really hard for her and we my granny came to live with us. And then two years later, jessica, my mom was to meet a man that would be my stepdad for the next 18 years and he was an alcoholic.
Speaker 2:But what I learned early in that was that alcohol was just a part of our lives and there was a back then and I think Al-Anon, but of course, my stepdad.
Speaker 2:I can change anytime I want to, I can quit anytime I want to, I don't need it, and so that's kind of how we lived. And you know you growing up, and I know your business can relate under an alcoholic father or parent you learn very early not to trust or not not, that you don't want to trust, but that you can't Right. And I had a horse and I can remember he would. My dad would say, stepdad would say, now, okay, when I get home from work tomorrow night, we're going to go out and we're going to build that gate, I'm going to help you rebuild the stall or whatever it was I'm going to help you with. But he couldn't because he was too drunk. You know he would get home from work. Now you could count on him like a clock getting home from work at a certain time every night, but he wouldn't stay home, he would leave and go out to the bars and I grew up, people say, oh, you know, they hear me talking today.
Speaker 2:And they say, oh, you must have grown up in a great Christian home. You know the Bible so well, or you know this or whatever. And it's no. I grew up in a bar. Truly, we didn't have a dining room table. In my house we had a bar and. I could do it. I could draw a beer with the perfect head on it, but I couldn't do math. So that's, that's how we lived, and, and I remember plus two, I'm really old.
Speaker 2:I grew up in the late 60s, early 70s, and so not only was I seeing the culture at home it's okay to drink, it's okay to smoke, it's okay to do all of this, but my culture was telling me, my friends were telling me all of this oh, you need a smoke pot. We got a pot. Well, the truth is, for me, I did LSD before I ever did pot.
Speaker 2:But, then I started drinking and I can honestly say that by the time I was a senior in high school I was a full fledged alcoholic. I mean, every time we got and of course we weren't in Texas, you couldn't buy alcohol so we would go stand outside the beer joints or the liquor stores and have the adults go in and buy alcohol for us which most of them gladly did, you know and I can remember being in school and we skipped an assembly and we went down to the beer store and bought okay, this is really going to date me Jessica Boone's Farm Apple wine.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I know it, I know it.
Speaker 2:I don't know what that bottle, how much that was, but I drank a whole one during that assembly.
Speaker 2:And I remember coming back to class and sitting behind the guy and I was almost I mean, I, by the grace of God, I did not throw up that whole bottle in front on the guy sitting in front of me and that that's where it began. And then, right after I graduated from high school, they changed the law in Texas, which did not help me at all. You didn't have to be 21 anymore, All you had to do was be 18 to buy alcohol. Oh, okay, and so that you know just, it just got worse and worse. And I got a job in Dallas and met a man, and that's a whole nother story, but it just got worse and worse, you know.
Speaker 2:And I surrounded myself and this is what's important to not do I surrounded myself with people who smoked dope just like me, they took LSD just like me, they drank all the time, just like me. And I remember I decided my friend in New Mexico, her mom had passed away, and so I decided that I knew I was in a going nowhere relationship with this man. And at that time I was in a going nowhere relationship with this man. I just I had started doing the Bible study with a guy, another guy at work, and I bought one of those dime store Bibles, jessica you know the black ones and they have the red trim around them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I decided to move to New Mexico to quote unquote help my friend. And after her mom died and my friends told me you are just running from this man, you will be back. I moved to New Mexico, Jessica. Lot of shame, a lot of shame and guilt. And the drugs just got worse, the alcoholism just got worse, and out of bars every night, every single night. And then, because I always wanted to see the world, I decided from there I would go to California.
Speaker 2:And so I moved to California again, surrounded myself with all of these people, you know. But here's the thing, jessica, I always believed in God. You can run from Dallas to LA and you cannot outrun God. And when my friend said you're just running from man, this man, the truth is I was running from God. I was running from God, jessica, and I wonder if some of our listeners, some of your listeners today, are not just running from God.
Speaker 1:That's an incredible way to look at that, because we often think we're running from ourselves, from this person, from this situation, but you're saying we're actually running from God, jessica.
Speaker 2:I got so bad, friends were telling me I needed help. I remember my friends at work and my fingernails were yellow, the whites of my eyes were yellow. I remember being in California and I had a 69 Volkswagen bug and I got so drunk one night and I just decided. I can't remember what holiday it was, but I remember thinking I've got so many days maybe Friday through Monday or some holiday I'm just going to go back to New Mexico. That's the last thing I remember thinking until I woke up in New Mexico. I think they call that blackout drinking, yeah sure, and having to call in to work because now, oops, I'm supposed to be at work today. Having to call in sick and then doing that drive back to Southern California.
Speaker 2:That was just one of many of many, of many, of many, and one of. I haven't figured it out. I'm sure I should do the math, maybe sometimes, but I don't know how many mornings are 17 years, but I can read every single morning. You wake up and I just I can't do that again. I won't do that again. So all that guilt, the weight of the world on my shoulders and that shame, and oh, I can't believe I did that. And what did I do? What did I do?
Speaker 2:And here's the thing my friend, when I was in New Mexico, her dad, me and him, we used to have this rivalry about what beer we drank. And he drank something and I drank another one. And I went back years later and went to his house and I had been I call it delivered. I am not a recovering alcoholic, I'm a delivered alcoholic. And we went out to his house and he said get out there and I got you a six pack of beer and it was the beer I drank. And I said I don't drink anymore and he's. And he it made him mad, it really did. And he was slapping his hand down on the kitchen cabinet or counter and he said get out there and get you a beer.
Speaker 2:And I said, red, I really don't drink anymore, I don't. And he said what do you mean? You don't drink, you used to drink everybody here under the table. And I said this then, jokingly, but it's true. I said that's the problem, red, I got tired of waking up underneath the table in a different state. And it was true, jessica, and it's funny and I still use it as a joke, you know, but it's good. You know, life imitates reality, right, so right. And there I remember, jessica, people were telling me I had I needed help, and I remember going and to the lady that in her whole family actually now that I think about it, that I used to get my drugs from, and she said to me Barbie, you need help. Now, how many know that when your drug dealer's telling you?
Speaker 1:you may need some help. You may need some help.
Speaker 2:So and I ended up remember that Bible yes, I had it sitting on my kitchen table and I lived in a little A-frame, what used to be a one-car garage that was converted into a little house. And when she told me that, I was like, okay, I was sitting in my kitchen table with that Bible there and it had from all the times I'd spilled alcohol on it. It had the water spots, you know. And I remember looking at that Bible and saying, okay, god, I know that you're there, I need help. And, jessica, I believe with everything in me that God has a sense of humor, because it wasn't and I don't know how many days it may have been the next day it was very, very, very soon after I uttered that, I whispered that prayer Okay, so I'm going.
Speaker 2:Where am I going? I'm down Arlington Avenue in Riverside, california, and I'm going to get me some more drugs. I get pulled over and I get a DUI. I stayed in jail for whatever four hours and I can remember laying on that dirty, dirty floor in that jail cell with cockroach parts everywhere, so I guess I slept it off and then when I got out, it was like I don't know, it was like six o'clock in the morning or something, there was no one to call. I didn't have anybody to call, so I had to walk back to my car, which was forever.
Speaker 2:I don't know from downtown to out to Arlington Avenue and but when I went to court there was that guy, that same guy that was sitting that I was in the cop car with that night.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh, there's no buddy, so we sat together and we'll just talk, talk, talk, talk. And the judge is hearing other cases and everything. And finally she says you too, this is my court. This is not a social club. I didn't know you weren't supposed to talk in court. Many times she asked me if I had a job and I said yes. So she said something, something, something and it's ordered that you do.
Speaker 2:I think it was three months of weekends in jail to pay the fine and you court ordered 12 weeks in a program. So I said okay. But then I realized I didn't. I wasn't going to be actually going out on the freeways and picking up traffic or trash. I was going to be going and reporting every single weekend into this court order to pay my fine to the Riverside County Jail. And that was an experience in and of itself of 100 percent humility, because I was always a very private person and I know some of your listeners exactly what I'm talking about. But when you get go not only once but every weekend, I had to go through this when you go in to be booked into a weekend program in the county jail, you have to strip down. You have to do all of these things to make sure that you have no drugs, not only on you but inside of you.
Speaker 2:And I'll leave it at that. And then you get these clothes that have been made by volunteers. You get handmade cotton underwear, handmade dress that five sizes too big, and you meet all these women and most of them there, jessica were. They were there every single weekend and they knew the system like you would not believe it. They knew which judge to get before, because they would send them, because in California they had and they still do, I believe the three structure out. This was your third fence, you're going to prison somewhere. So they knew what to get judge to get before, to send them to the exact prison they wanted to go to, where all their other buddies were. And they knew that they could do their drugs at that prison and all of it. So I kind of got an education, sure, but the one thing on Sunday evening a Christian group of women would come in and I remember this one night they said how many of you are Christians?
Speaker 2:I remember I believed in God, so I just threw out my hand and when I learned there that there's a difference between being a Christian and believing in God, I got through doing that and did the program. And I would like to say, jessica, that I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps and I got serious and I got sober and all of that. Well, that didn't happen. And plus, when you, when you get a DUI, they restrict your driver's license so you can only go to work and back. Well, I went to the liquor store all the time. One, this one particular night, in my little A frame, there was an earthquake and I was in a drunken stupor and I woke up with those wooden windows just rattling.
Speaker 2:I thought somebody was breaking in as I lay there and I realized, ok, the whole house is shaking and it kept shaking and kept shaking. This is an earthquake. It may have been one of my first ones, I don't know, but I just said out loud, jessica. I just said, lord, have mercy, I lay there. And then I got out. It could finally quit, and I got up to go to the bathroom and there was an aftershock. And I said it again and, jessica, god the creator of the universe, spoke to my heart. It wasn't audible. I didn't hear him say Barbara, now it was. He spoke to my heart and he said remember I had prayed that prayer. God, I know you're there. I need you to help me. He said if you make a commitment to me, I will help you. Wow, and I would like to say again I made my commitment to God right then and there I never drank again.
Speaker 2:No, it was months later that I had actually moved from that little house to a duplex in California and Riverside and I had gotten a hold of some really bad drugs.
Speaker 2:I was so sick and I believe that for all intense purposes I probably should have died that night and I was in the bathroom most you know all that's so sick, so sick, and I remember falling backwards and laying on my back. I was halfway in the bathroom and halfway in the hall and looking up at the ceiling and I believe that God's God allowed me in that moment to see a totally wasted wasted me with 100% sober mind and everything, to see how I was. And he spoke to my heart again and he said they're going to find you the same way they found Mrs Jones and Mrs Jones was my best friend and high school's mother, who was an alcoholic and she died of alcoholism. And Jessica, when they found her, they found her face down in the hall and when they rolled her over she was clutching a vodka bottle in her hands. And I knew in my knower then, jessica, that I probably wouldn't see 35. But I knew I wouldn't and I probably wouldn't see 40., but I would never, ever see the age of 45.
Speaker 1:Reminds me of when they speak about the disease of alcoholism and how powerful it is, and when you're faced with that, you know when you're at the crux where you're having to make a decision. You can either choose to die an alcoholic death or seek spiritual help.
Speaker 1:And oftentimes the true alcoholic is just isn't sure which way to go. Which to anyone else, common sense like we're gonna choose the spiritual help. But, as you're showing and you're in, what you're saying is we just clutch to that like she clutched to that bottle. We just cannot let go of that. And that speaks to the power of the disease of alcoholism.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, and you're so hopeless and you're helpless. And that's where I was. There's a verse in the Bible, Jessica, that says that it's Jeremiah. You're you listeners? You can look this up and Google it. It's Jeremiah 29, verses 11 through 14, the very first part of 14. And I love it, Jessica, because it says that I know the plans I have for you. They're for good and not for evil. They're to give you a future and get this a hope. What a wonderful promise, Jessica. I will be found by you.
Speaker 2:It's not, you know, it's not like what I used to think. God is up there saying you do this and this, or I'm going to get you. You get up there right now and do what I tell you to do, or you're grounded. You know you're standing in the corner. No, that's not God. His love is so, so much more. It's. You know, God is not against you. He's for you and even loves you, and it's. I have to ask you this because I don't know it, but it says I have loved you with an everlasting love. Jessica, how long is the everlasting? Is it six months or you know, or is it until I mess up again?
Speaker 1:Right, no, it's always, it's always yeah.
Speaker 2:And so after that night, I mean the Lord again, it's just the Lord was willing me to himself, you know. And this woman that I worked with, she said, hey, Barbie, she was one of the ones that didn't tell me how bad I was. She said, hey, we're having this class at my church and it's, you know, it's a commitment. It's nine months you got. It's called understanding God and His Covenant. So I began to do that and it was during that class.
Speaker 2:I was also, I have to tell you, part of my job was to drive all over Southern California and the woman that was in the truck before I got there was a Christian and she would obviously leave the Christian radio stations on, and it was Kayway Valley, Los Angeles, which is a Christian station, and it was almost all of the Calvary Chapel's pastor. So I was listening and and and this is again, this is the Holy Spirit drawing me, because I would get in and it would be in the middle of yes, and I was listening to all of these pastors and one of them was raw race, who was about to kill himself and his whole family one night, and he shot the TV and it came on to. I think Chuck Smith was talking about the salvation and glory of God Right.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:Okay, and and he has gone on to be a pastor and he's still so faithful preaching the gospel there in California. So she was, my friend was telling me about him. So I was listening to all of this, you know, day after day, hour after hour, in my truck, and then, plus two, I started going to that Bible study, study God and His Covenant. Well, first of all, she said it's a I think it was a nine month commitment. I never made a commitment to anything in my life.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:God said if you make a commitment to me, I that's right.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's what he said to you, and so it was during that that I was also listening to Christian TV and this man came on. His name was, it was Edith and Laverne trip, and what he made was saying about how much God loved me made sense to me, and he said it's. It's so simple, because I have to tell you something that I you need to know. I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about a relationship with God through Christ and what he did on the cross. Because religion is a bunch of don'ts, it's you have to do this, you have to strive more, you have to do more and you have to be good in yourself. That's religion and it's sadly, destroyed so many.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and thank you for highlighting that, because I think that, if I can say for my earlier self, I think a lot of listeners may struggle with that, or the hypocrisy or the, like you said, the, the shame or the, I'm not, I've got to clean up first. Or you know, when you're talking about the, you know complete acceptance and love of God and that relationship, not the, not the whole institution of what they should or shouldn't do. You know, and prior to me getting sober, I had religion but I didn't have relationship and because I cleaned up, I was able to be aware of that and that's what I was granted that relationship and it changed my entire life.
Speaker 2:Religion is do this, do more, do that, do more, do this, do more. And Christianity, a relationship with God, is done. When I was listening to Laverne Tripp that day, what he said, all you have to do, you know. He said the Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I didn't know it then, but that word sin, used in the New Testament, it's an archery term, right, and all it means is missing the mark. It just means missing the mark. You don't hit the bull's eye, it's God's bull's eye, right. The Bible says he who has the son has life, but he who does not have a son does not have life. And he said all you have to do is just say a prayer and meaning in your heart. And it's so simple. Lord Jesus, come into my heart, forgive me of my sin, be my Lord and Savior. I believe the Bible says that all you have to do.
Speaker 2:The disciples came to Jesus and said what do we have to do to work the works of God? Did he give him a long list of things? No, he said believe. Come into my heart, be my Lord and Savior, forgive me of all my sins, fill me with your Holy Spirit. That's it. How simple is that? That's very simple, and that's what I did that day and I can remember being in my living room and looking out at this big, huge play glass window and saying that prayer. The way of the world was lifted. I felt it come off of me. I felt the Holy Spirit coming to me and I don't I mean that's a whole nother podcast yes but the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulder and that's what he did. He picked me up and he's carried me all these years. Jessica and I at that moment was completely 100% delivered from alcohol, drugs. I never drank again and I did try to smoke a cigarette. I found a cigarette in my house and I did try to smoke it, jessica.
Speaker 2:Now this is funny because I always went outside and I was smoking my cigarette. I got on a note a quarter of the way through that cigarette and my chest started like. I felt like there was an elephant on my chest and I was. I got so scared, I was like I know. I went and laid down on my couch and I'm like Lord please help me.
Speaker 2:Please Help me, I'm sorry, I don't wanna die. It just lifted. As soon as I prayed that it lifted, I finished that Bible study that we were doing understanding God in His covenants. It was during that I got baptized in water, because baptism in water is a Catholic. You get baptized on your baby, but you have to come to the point where you understand what you're doing. Right, just a symbol. It's an outward symbol of an inward thing that God is doing to you. So I got baptized in water and I started going to a really, really, really good Bible teaching church. I don't have to continually go back to the past only to share what God has done for me. I will go back there.
Speaker 2:But, I don't have to. I'm not a victim, I'm a victor. There's victory in Christ, and so I want to share what God has done. Here's the thing in the simplest of terms. I'm just a beggar who's telling everybody else other beggars where I found bread. That's all it is. That's incredible.
Speaker 1:You are just a beggar telling other beggars where you found bread. That is such. You know this. You have just beautifully articulated your walk. You went from the destruction of drugs and alcohol to where God intervened in your life and Jesus came into your heart and your life was forever changed. And that is just it. You said you're a beggar telling other beggars where to find bread, and so I think this is a good place.
Speaker 1:You know this podcast. You know listeners can be from all walks of life and from all walks of faith. So there can be people who have fallen in love with Jesus, some people who are agnostic or atheist or who believe in the power of the universe. But this is your message and your experience of your life. So I wanna just pause here for a moment to give anyone the opportunity to go back and, if we can just, for a moment, talk about that weight that was lifted off of you People who are struggling with alcoholism or addiction.
Speaker 1:They are weighted down and they are hopeless and oftentimes don't know what to do. So if you could just reiterate that prayer, if they wanted to pray that prayer that you prayed to welcome Jesus into their heart, because that is your walk and we honor all of those walks here on this podcast. I'd like for you to be able to pray that again, so if people missed it when you said it before, because that really happened to you and that's an absolute miracle. And the lie that I believed before I came in and put down alcohol for myself was that I didn't deserve any of those miracles. And since I've lived my life free of those things, I know that those miracles not only belong to me, but they belong to anyone who asked for them.
Speaker 2:So if you could just reiterate that prayer so that anybody knew I would absolutely love to. There are, just like you said, there are agnostics. They believe in the power of the universe. They believe, and my thing I would say to them, asking God, if you're there, show me. And this prayer, it's just simply a prayer of asking Jesus Christ to come into your heart and be your Lord and Savior.
Speaker 2:And you know what? I know, people, that my stepdad was a perfect example. He never got delivered from alcohol this side of heaven. But do I know that he is in heaven Absolutely Because he believed in his heart and he confessed with his mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord? And I don't understand that when I get to heaven that's when I'm gonna be one of, after I follow my faith for 10,000 years in reverence and awe of my Savior and my faith becomes site, then I'm gonna ask him about that, but anyway. So it's just. The question then becomes if you died tonight, do you know that? You know that? You know that you would go to heaven? And if you do, all you have to do is just say, in fact, just you could repeat it after me if you wanted to.
Speaker 1:Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Lord Jesus, come into my heart. Forgive me of all of my sins. Forgive me of all of my sins.
Speaker 2:Fill me with your Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:Fill me with your Holy Spirit.
Speaker 2:I believe you died on the cross for me.
Speaker 1:I believe you died on the cross for me.
Speaker 2:In Jesus' name.
Speaker 1:In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.
Speaker 2:And I believe that there are people out there listening to you soon in the months to come and maybe even the years to come, that will be able to say that prayer and they can point back. And when I said that prayer, I wished that I had written down the date and the time and you know all of that and put it in a journal. I don't, I just know it was somewhere around October and it was, I believe, 86. But my point is, I wish that I had written the day and the time but it was in 1986.
Speaker 2:And I spent my 30th birthday in LA at a protest march against Universal Studios in the last temptation of Christ, that movie, so, but anyway, that's a whole other story. Now I have to tell you that's how it was. I have to tell you I got into a wonderful Bible teaching church and I had never read a book in my life, but God gave me a hunger for the Bible. You're never too old, you're never too young, you're never too old. This is the disjessica for the joy that was set before him endured the cross. Do you know what that joy is? It's you, it's me, it's our listeners, all of those people that just said that prayer. You met that with all of your heart. That's one of the things I know and I know they'll know to be true. He wants our whole heart, jessica. It is one of our religious heart, or Sunday morning heart. You know, once I get cleaned up on, he wants it all.
Speaker 1:So you, you are sitting here with 37 years, free of drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 2:One time I had come home from work and I was working night. So I got home and, like you know, a to God got off and a car in the morning and I'd had a horrible night. I had a horrible, horrible, horrible night and I was like that's it, god, I cannot do this, I am not going to do this anymore, I can't do it, I just can't. It's too hard. And I wanted to, like you know, and I said I'm, that's it, I don't have any money on me, but I'm going to go home and I'm going to get my cash and I'm going to call blankety, blank, blank, my old drug dealer and I'm going to stop, and then I'm going to go back to the liquor store as soon as it opens and I'm going to get this. Is it, god? It's too hard, I can't do this Christian life. And I got home and I opened the front door and I heard somebody talking and I'm like what the heck is that? And then I stood there because I'm not going to go into the house where there's people talking, especially my house, and it's. You know, I've been gone all night and it was the TV and it was an old preacher man named Charles Stanley, I kid you not just. I walk in and I see the TV and I look again.
Speaker 2:The first things that I've registered that he's saying is so you think this Christian life is too tough to you? It's too hard, you just can't do it, you're just going to go back to your old ways. Now, if that's not God speaking to me, I don't know what is 37 years? Does it get easier? I can honestly say that in that 37 years I've had alcohol touch my tongue twice. And one of them was at communion, and it was at a wedding feast actually, and the bishop or rabbi or whatever. It was rabbi, but he insisted that we have real wine for communion, which they didn't tell me that before. Yeah. And then one other time, at another feast, and we had champagne. I thought it was the grape juice that the kids were having, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1:So, as we as we wrap up, is there something that you can tell someone who is listening, who is just desperate there?
Speaker 2:is life after alcohol and drugs.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, Barbie, for being here today and for sharing your faith with us and your biblical wisdom. You know Barbie holds certifications in biblical counseling and Christian life coaching and you can find her on Instagram and YouTube at godlyfocusedheartscom. Thank you for tuning into the sober living stories podcast. If you have been inspired, consider subscribing and sharing with anyone who could use hope in their lives. Remember to stay tuned for more inspiring stories in the episodes to come. To view our featured author of the month or to become a guest yourself, visit wwwjesusetpanavikcom.