When 27-year-old Destiny thinks back to last Christmas, the main thing she remembers is spending the day without her kids.
She’d come to Hope Ministries Center for Women and Children the month before, desperate for the help she knew she needed after watching her whole life fall apart.
“I lost my children due to my addiction. I went to jail, lost my apartment, lost my car, lost everything,” she recalls. “After I got out of jail, I couldn’t stay sober and I needed more help.”
Destiny’s struggles with addiction stretch back to her early teenage years. “I had a lot of trauma growing up,” she says. “I just had this empty space, so I started experimenting.” The experimentation started with smoking, then drug use, then alcohol.
She’s no stranger to homelessness either. “Before coming here, we were homeless for a year. It was miserable,” she says. “I just wanted to give up. I thought nothing would ever change and that I was just dragging my kids down with me.”
Destiny’s breaking point was losing custody of her sons. “That was my wake up call that it was time to get sober,” she says. “I cried out to God, asked that He would change my life and then He brought me here.”
For Destiny, coming to Hope Center was about more than safe shelter or three meals a day. It was about breaking the harmful cycles in her life so she could become the mom her children needed.
To re-earn custody of her sons, Destiny completed parenting classes, attended court dates and took her sobriety seriously. And today, her sons are back in her life! She has custody of Angelo, 5, and Mateo, 1. Her oldest son, Jaxon, 6, lives with Destiny’s grandmother but she has visits with him on weekends and is looking forward to him living with her full-time once she graduates from our life recovery program.
“I’m so grateful my kids have a place to heal, to learn about Jesus—and that I get this time to figure out who I am. There’s no other program like this.”
Destiny
Destiny has reached milestone after milestone during her time at Hope Center. In September, she earned her high school equivalency degree. She’s begun paying off debts and has been thrilled to see her credit score improve. And on November 8, she reached one year of sobriety!
But she’s not done setting goals. Destiny has hopes of eventually returning to her previous job and would like to have her own home in the future. “And I hope that I can be the parent God made me to be. I hope that we just live with joy. I don’t need riches or fame. I just want peace and happiness, to have a relationship with God and for my kids to know Him.”
For now, Destiny is excited to know this Christmas will be full of family. “This year, I get to wake up on Christmas morning with my kids,” she says. “We’ll wake up in our PJs, drink hot chocolate and celebrate the true meaning of Christmas together.”
And to the donors who have helped restore her life, Destiny is grateful. “We have so much support, so much help. That wouldn’t be possible if there weren’t donors. What a blessing!”
