The Poison Control Center had notified the hospital emergency room staff that we would be coming in and they were waiting for us. They carried me directly to a room and began the process of removing the pills from my system, a process far from glamorous and one I recommend no one go through. I was really begging to die once the process started and the tube was being pushed down my throat. They kept telling me to swallow over and over and I felt like my throat was being stretched large enough to slide a telephone pole down it. Never in my life had I experienced such physical pain, other than having babies. I remember laughing to myself, thinking how ironic it was, my throat could be damaged. After all, the fact that I was denied the joy of singing in my church was a large factor in my being here.

I found it hard to believe that I was going through this torture so I could live when all I wanted to do was die. Where was my faith? From the moment I started my Christian pilgrimage I yearned to know God intimately. I hungered for a close, personal relationship with Him more than anything else, except to be loved. I read, studied and kept my devotional times faithfully, and rarely missed church, except for the past three months.

In the beginning, my conversion was so dramatic I was invited to share in area churches through my testimony and singing how God had saved me. Those were some of the most joyful times in my journey, but that was a long time ago, now the joy was gone. I related well to David and his prayer in Psalm 51 when he cried, "Restore to me the joy of my salvation." Where was joy?

In 1975, I was living at home with my parents. I reached a point where I was afraid to be alone, afraid of harming myself. The road I traveled for three years was dark. Drinking filled my every waking moment. I spent five days drinking myself into oblivion. When I ran out of tequila, I took a long hard look in the mirror. What I saw was scary.

My face was swollen so badly I barely recognized myself. I called the local Crisis Center and told them I needed immediate help. They referred me to a psychiatric clinic. The lady I spoke with there said it would be three weeks before anyone could see me. I needed help then. It was then I called my mother and asked if I could come home.

After going through a sobering period, I got a job working in a bowling alley. I decided it was time to take my daughter, Michelle, to church. She deserved a chance to know God. Maybe she would have a chance with Him, I had blown mine.

The loving acceptance I found in that little church overwhelmed me. The people were open and friendly. They were not like the people in the little church I attended while growing up. A hunger I thought had long since died was awakened in me.

Several days after attending the church, the organist, Johnnie, dropped by mother's to talk to her husband; he was doing some odd jobs for mother. We carried on a casual conversation and then she very calmly asked, "Are you a Christian?"

Her question blew me away. I told her I used to be a Christian and attended church regularly. I had been baptized twice. However, following my divorce, a preacher told me if I ever married again I would go straight to hell. I was only twenty-one at the time, with a small daughter, I felt doomed. Living a perfect life was out of the question for me. I told her I finally gave up and decided I would bust the gates of hell partying.

The following Wednesday, October 15, 1975, she and another lady came to our house. When mother saw them in the yard she went to the back of the trailer and told me to get rid of them. I accepted the challenge with great pride, expecting my rudeness to run them off.

As Virginia and Johnnie began to unfold the plan of salvation to me, I came back with question after question, trying to frustrate the woman. Virginia was great, with every question I asked she showed me a verse in the Bible for her answer. Two hours later I felt the only way to get rid of them was do what they wanted me to do. I prayed and asked Jesus into my heart.

I never felt so clean in my life. As I told them, I felt like a shower was beating my heart clean, inside out. These women lovingly guided me through my first year as I tried to live the Christian life. I struggled daily. I had no confidence in my ability to take care of myself and my child. Mother was jealous of my zeal for church and in her misunderstanding did everything within her power to keep me home, bound to her side. She urged me to get back with my drinking friends and voiced her disappointment when I refused.

In 1974, mother talked me into filing a petition against my ex-husband for child support. If he refused to pay, my parents would adopt Michelle. On the money I made, and me living the life I was living, I was unable to support her. After my ex-husband received the papers he drove up from Florida. He talked me into moving back with him, hoping to put our lives back together.

Unfortunately, neither of us was willing to sacrifice our selfish wants. He was either out partying or off in the woods hunting for five days at a time. His family (his mother, four brothers, a sister and her two children) lived with us. If I made a mistake cooking or anything else, I received immediate ridicule from all of them. I eventually gave him a choice, his family, or Michelle and me. I felt if we were going to build our marriage and pull together as a family we needed to be alone. He chose his family and brought us back to Birmingham.

By October of 1975, the petition regarding adoption was far from my mind. I thought mother dropped it when he and I tried to work things out. However, three weeks after my decision for Christ, mother dropped a bomb on me. After working all day at the bowling alley I was tired. When I walked in the door mother told me to sit down, she had something to tell me. She said, "Michelle is now your sister. Your daddy and I adopted her." I wanted to scream and cry, but I feared losing her and locked everything up inside me. I became her puppet.

I knew my entire family, especially mother, had problems, but at the time I knew nothing about codependency or alcoholics. Mother also had another dependency, prescription drugs. She took diet pills in the daytime and sleeping pills at night. I played whatever games I could, without going over the edge, in order to stay with my little girl.

It was these and more painful memories that scorched my mind as I lay in Intensive Care. Confusing, conflicting thoughts drifted from past pain to present heartache. The sense of future shame pervaded my every waking thought. What would I face at church and work for what I had done? How would I ever face anyone? Why didn't God just let me die and allow someone who was deeply loved, who was sick and dying, to live in my place?

I was so down on myself that I constantly apologized to the medical staff. It embarrassed me every time they came to check my vital signs or draw blood. I hated that they had to look at my grossly overweight body. I wanted to cry because of the trouble I was causing so many people, but the tears refused to come. I was emotionally dead. I wanted the nightmare to end. Where was God? If He was real, and I thought He was, why didn't He answer me?