“Sierra and I would spend our weekdays scrounging up change to afford a motel room on the weekend so we could be with our daughters,” says Joey.
When the weekend ended, Joey and Sierra’s daughters would go back to living with their grandma. And Joey and Sierra would go back to sleeping in a church parking lot.
The couple was working as hard as they could to be fit parents. But ten years of heavy meth use and unimaginable grief left them feeling like they could never catch up, no matter how hard they tried.
“… we didn’t know how to grieve, so we just spiraled into addiction.”
Joey and their older daughter were hit by a drunk driver. “I was in a coma for two weeks, and our daughter was killed instantly,” says Joey. Miraculously, Joey woke up from the coma and left the hospital completely recovered.
“We should have noticed that as a gift from God,” says Sierra. “But we didn’t know how to grieve, so we just spiraled into addiction. After losing our daughter, we lost ourselves.”
Joey and Sierra were at their worst. All their money went toward drugs, their marriage was on the rocks, and they couldn’t give their two daughters a secure life. “Co-parenting isn’t an easy thing to do, especially when you’re on drugs,” says Sierra.
Joey and Sierra knew they were going the wrong way. Desiring to fix their life together, they came to the Rescue Mission.
“Everything we need, the Rescue Mission has,” Joey says. “We don’t have to worry about food or work, like we did in all the other programs we went through. Here, I’m able to fully focus on rebuilding my life and relationship with God.”
The security Joey and Sierra found here is equipping them to take steps toward lasting stability. “The family we desired to build always felt so close yet so far,” says Sierra. “But now, we’re actually able to give our kids a future.”
“We’re actually able to give our kids a future.”
Through counseling, recovery programs, caring community, and closeness with Jesus Christ, Joey and Sierra are finding healing no drugs could offer. Both of them are nine months’ sober and looking forward to the future with confidence and hope.
Sierra says, “We know that God is capable of changing our lives when we surrender all to Him and are willing to do what needs to be done.” Your help to make restorative services possible at the Rescue Mission shows that you, too, believe in God’s miraculous ability to transform lives like Joey’s and Sierra’s.
