‘God Made a Way’

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by Diana Bean

I never dreamed my testimony would include a period in prison. I should really not be surprised since I had been running from God and fighting against Him. When asked, I told others I was a Christian, but who was I kidding? I only deceived myself, not God, and I reaped what I sowed. I blame only myself; I definitely do not blame God. He didn't cause all of this. He never left me nor forsake me. I was the one who left Him. Nor can I blame my environment or my upbringing. I was raised in a middle-class home in a good neighborhood by both parents whom were and are dedicated Christians. I don't blame the justice system, as a first-time offender I would've never been sent to prison. 

Thirty years earlier, I was being home-schooled, with my older sister, by our mother while our father worked hard to provide for us all. My family attended several different churches for different reasons including my father’s long hair and dangling earrings. I asked Jesus into my heart at the age of five with my sister and mother. 

I continued to be home schooled until my 6th grade year when my sister and I decided we wanted a public education and more friends. Our parents then allowed us to attend the public school in our small rural community where I then heard my first cuss word. 

The following year, a neighbor kid introduced me to pot and cigarettes. I then went to a Christian school until my high school years. There, I smoked a lot more pot, smoked cigarettes, and drank. 

My high school years started off great. There was a coffee house that opened up where all the Christian kids hung out, including myself. I had a blast there! I was called "Missionary girl" on campus at school carrying my Bible around during the week and dancing the zoot suit riot on the weekends at the coffee house. I was riding dirt bikes with my dad every Saturday morning and that really helped me stay out of trouble. I was also growing in my relationship with God. I was going to youth rally's, church camps, Christian concerts, and mission trips in Mexico. I was speaking in tongues, speaking for National Day of Prayer events, and openly bringing others to Christ. I had everything I could ever want, including a great relationship with my Lord and Savior. 

My junior year in high school began a slightly different path. I was an overzealous Christian girl unwilling to deny myself any pleasures. I began trying other/harder drugs due to boredom perhaps or to win the approval of a boy I liked. I began again with weed, tobacco, and alcohol. Cocaine, acid, ecstasy, meth and mushrooms were not too far off and I always had a great time being the life of the party. Now if I had just called it quits right there, I believe I would have been okay. 

But after graduating from high school, I started working at Walgreens Distribution center and I met a fun outgoing guy whom I fell in love with and he became my best friend...not God. Soon after we had started dating, he got fired from his job and I did as well soon after. We had a great time getting drunk and slowly began a downward spiral into drugs, every drug. If you could smoke it, snort it, or eat it... I tried it. I would soon be in a bit too deep for my liking.

In 2004 I got pregnant by a guy I was dating. We had met out on Rend Lake; he was on a boat and I was on a jet ski. We had only been dating for a couple of months before I woke up one Saturday morning, bought a two-pack pregnancy test, and sure enough... positive. One year after our daughter Kadence was born, we got married in the mountains in Tennessee. We drank, but not a lot. We both had good jobs, started going to church, and then in 2007 we got pregnant again. This time we were not finding out the gender because we wanted a surprise, and a surprise we got. At 24 weeks, I awoke in the middle of the night with contractions, went to the hospital, and was rushed to St. Louis in active labor. They held off my labor and delivery for a week then gave birth to a tiny 1-1/2-pound baby boy. Two days after his birth, I held my precious son as he was unhooked from all the machines one by one and he died in my arms. 

After that devastation, I began taking pain pills to numb some of the emotional pain. 

I stopped using pills in 2009 for the next pregnancy, then started right back up again. I then gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Rhythm. I was having a blast living in a small house in the country, starting a family, riding four wheelers, and playing with my kids. But I really had a void in my heart for the child I buried and nobody to really talk to about it. 

Since my husband and I had not grown closer with all this, we grew apart. He wanted a younger wife and I wanted someone I could talk to. After a very messy divorce, things got bad. I had experienced addictions to alcohol, cocaine, gambling, sex, and pornography. For many years after our divorce, I was deeply depressed and often contemplated suicide. There were even a few failed attempts, including shooting myself in the leg. I was, at one time, walked out of a house to my car while I had a pistol pointed at my head. I was a spiritual, mental, emotional, and financial wreck. 

As I was going through my divorce in court, I was in a relationship and found myself pregnant. He was a good, hard working, and drug-free man, but I didn't want to go to court in front of the judge pregnant, I was very selfish. We decided to get an abortion. He drove me to east St. Louis one Saturday morning and I walked out no longer pregnant. 

I was afraid to talk to anyone about it because I knew they would judge me. I thought that my folks would kill me, my friends would start rumors, and I wanted to keep whatever reputation I still had left. In spite of everything I tried, nothing filled the void I had inside my spirit. I felt dirty, unworthy of love, and over time, had pushed away every friend and family member I had. I was without hope and without God in my life. 

I will say, the despite all I had put my parents through, they were always there for me and never rejected me. They never knew exactly what I was doing or how deep into drugs I was, but I did always know that they loved me. I felt I would only disappoint them if I were to tell them. I realize now that I should have been open and honest, but drugs do a crazy thing to you. God doesn't want to leave you like you were before the addiction. He wants to bless you and introduce you to a whole new world of grace and opportunity. 

I started using meth pretty regularly in 2004, but I kept it under control. Only using once in a while, then when my husband was at work, and then when the kids were gone somewhere. It slowly and abruptly took over my life. I had felt like a failure and that God could never use me because I had gone too far to ever come back. I was convinced my life would never get any better. To me, my life was over, but a merciful and loving God had a plan for my life. I have broken all 10 commandments and God still loves and forgives me. 

Now I was not quite done wrecking my life yet. Remember the guy from Walgreens? We started hanging out more often again, but this time we did harder drugs...he had bath salt. This ultimately took his life in 2016. For some reason I thought my reality was so bad that I wanted to escape as far away as possible from it. In February 2015 he shot me up for the very first time, and it was bath salt. So, I continued my downward spiral into a deep depression and self-harm. So, for the next five years I was shooting up dope. Sometimes it was bath salt, sometimes it was meth, and others it was a deadly mixture of both. I was not in a good place, instead, I was in a very dark place. 

In the summer of 2015, I got pregnant again by a gentleman I was dating whom surprisingly didn't do drugs. I had somehow convinced him I was clean as well. Anyway, I was mostly sober during that pregnancy and in 2016 gave birth to a healthy baby boy whom the father decided just hours before delivery that he no longer wanted this child. While I was in the hospital with my new bundle of joy, I was contacted by a guy named Marc. We dated for a while and I managed to hide my drug addiction from him as well. Life was going okay! We had gotten married, bought a house, and had all three of my children at home with us. All that changed in the summer of 2017! I wound up taking too many pills and made a suicide post on Facebook, big mistake! 

That is when my life took another trip spiraling down deep. Soon after that, my ex-husband got custody of our kids, then ages 13 and 9. Not long after that DCFS got involved with my then two-year-old son. My life looked really hopeless then and I just knew that nothing would ever get better. So, I did what I had always done in the past and numbed the pain with drugs. I went a little deeper and a little darker with each trip to harm myself. I would stay gone from home for days at a time going back to sexual immorality and perversion. 

I had met a guy whom I thought I wanted to be with instead of my husband. We would drink, we would get really high, and he would abuse me bad. He would beat me up, break my stuff, rob my house, and leave me broken. I had finally had enough one evening and in a drunk and high rage, I took out my pocket knife and stabbed him in the side. After that bit in county jail, it would be minor things that would continue to land me back in there off and on again for the next two  years. Until finally one day I got sentenced to prison. I got a four-year sentence on an aggravated battery charge and got to prison in January 2020. I honestly believe it was God telling me that I needed to stop the path of self-harm and drugs because He had a plan for my life. There was no way to get my attention any other way. I can’t change how my story started, but I can change how my story ends. I needed to humble myself and submit to God. Now I didn't "find God" in prison. He wasn't lost, I was and He found me! 

My first act of submission was to get my Bible sent in and read it. I was a bit hesitant at first to openly read my Bible and go to chapel services. I had realized that was my rock bottom. I couldn't get any lower than I was. When I finally surrendered to God and cried out in true humility and utter brokenness, He heard me. He lifted me out of my hopelessness and despair. He placed my feet on His solid rock. I re-dedicated my entire life to Him, alone inside prison walls. This was May 15th, 2020. 

God gave me a voracious appetite for reading! I never enjoyed reading books at all, but God laid it on my heart to read. In 14 months, I read more than 135 Christ-centered books, and plenty of books on the Beatles. I read some books on prayer which really opened my eyes to how God wanted to start communicating with me and how I should be initiating it. 

While I was incarcerated, I read a book by Steven Furtick called  "Sun Stan Still" and the Holy Spirit laid in on my heart to start a ministry. I tried many different names and came up with RPM and the stood for Ramen Pantry Ministry. I bought 72 Ramen noodles every time we would shop and that would give me enough to hand out 1 to every 20 inmates each Friday. At first, I was handwriting Bible verses out to pass out with each noodle. Then, I talked my dad into printing me out verses and mailing them into me. He got tired of doing that pretty quickly, so he found business card size tract to send into me to hand out, some were holographic and everyone wanted those. But I ordered 100's of those tracts and handed one out with each noodle. God laid it on my heart that I was able to reach people that would never hear the gospel any other way. I would be the only Jesus they would receive in there, and perhaps, in their whole life. So, I was known as the RPM lady. 

Anyone needing prayer, came to me and I prayed with convicted murderers and put my arms around convicted child molesters and cried with them. Now, I don't know how many seeds I planted in there, but I do know people held on to those Bible verses. Some women pasted them on their walls with toothpaste (that's the only adhesive you get in there), some mailed them home to their kids, and others just used them as bookmarks. I don't know what Gods plan for my life is yet, but I do know that wherever He wants to send me, I will go.

I was released from prison June 21, 2021 and my dad told me to hit the ground running, so I did. I was baptized that Sunday and found a CR group that following Friday. I now pray boldly, directly, humbly, and selflessly. God has given me another chance at life. God is giving me another chance with my kids and is slowly restoring my relationships with them.

Within six months of getting released, I was off parole and DCFS was out of my life. I now have my 7-year old-son 100 percent of the time whom i get to home school this year. I have a relationshipwith my 18 year old daughter,  and still going through the court process to regain a relationshipwith my 14 year old. I have a relationship with my parents, sister, and her family. God has restored my faith, people now trust me, and I am able to keep my commitments.

After much prayer, I initiated the divorce process with Marc in January of 2022. We had gotten together while I was in my active addiction and never realized or cared that we were never able to consummate our marriage. Our divorce was final in March. I had no desire whatsoever to be with anyone or date after that, but God's plans are not our plans and it's ALL in His timing.  I am still praying Gods guidance and provision over this.

I still struggle with some things, but God freed me of any desire to ever do drugs again. God has also opened the door for me to be a drug recovery Navigator through Americorps starting next Monday. I will be helping people who are getting out out halfway houses and just getting out of their addiction be able to find housing, meetings, and any resources needed to get on the path to recovery. When I thought I was not hirable due to my background, God made a way.

I started attending Celebrate Recovery meetings at Whittington church in July 2021 and I have been faithful in my attendance and feel like God has used that as a tool in my recovery. I have people there that I am able to call any hour and any day. These people are my family and I am eternally grateful for them. I have finished my journey through the 12 steps and I know this will also be very beneficial to me and those around me. God has also opened the door for me to be a leader at a new CR meeting that is still in the working. I have learned to have an attitude of gratitude in my daily life and I give God all the praise and glory for it.

God is answering all my prayers powerfully. He is opening my eyes to what He has planned for me. What the enemy meant for evil, God is using for good. The self-destruction I was choosing for myself, God halted! God has a way of showing His strength in my weakness. The more time I spend seeking after God, the more hopeful, joyful, and excited I become. When you learn to listen to what Jesus says, then you are strong, not in yourself, but in Him. I had to make a deliberate and determined choice to let my past be my past and I will NEVER look back!