HEATHER: Me and a group of friends, we're out.

We're going from party to party.

And we were doing drugs in the car

before going into the parties and then drinking

at the parties.

I started foaming at the mouth.

And the last thing I remember, he says to me, Heather.

Are you OK?

And that's when I blacked out.

My parents divorced when I was two years old.

All I really knew is Daddy hated Mom.

Mom hated Daddy.

And I was hearing from both sides

the reasons for why they disliked each other.

And it put a lot of bitterness or frustration

in my heart towards my parents at a pretty young age.

My mom was remarried when I was about 4 and 1/2, 5 years old.

When my mom married my stepdad, they really

began to strongly put their faith in the Lord and planting

themself in church.

I knew who God was.

I knew about the Bible.

I knew stories in the Bible.

But I wouldn't say that I really had a strong relationship which

is so key with God.

From the viewpoint of a kid, my dad

was just the funnest dad ever.

I stayed out as late as I wanted.

I went out with who I wanted.

If I didn't want to come home at night, I didn't come home.

If I wanted to drink, I could drink.

If I wanted to smoke, I could smoke.

Going into high school, I just became out

of control for my mom and my stepdad to handle.

And I said, hey.

I'm moving in with my dad.

And that really just led into all different types of drugs.

Cocaine and ecstasy.

All different types of pills we'd crush and snort.

And we were smoking.

It was partying every weekend.

And I just began to flush out any good influences in my life,

from family members to friends to church.

Everything I began to flush out.

And emotionally I was broken.

I was just an angry, angry hurt person.

And all of those things started to brew a lot of insecurities.

One night, me and a group of friends, we're out.

We're going from party to party.

And we were doing drugs in the car

before going into the parties and then drinking

at the parties.

And one of my good friends, he had a big bag of ecstasy.

He runs it over.

There it is, crushed to powder.

This huge bag.

So we're like whatever, we're just going to snort it tonight.

And we're just going to have this awesome best night

of our lives.

So he just starts feeding us all lines, line after line.

And the last thing I remember is my best friend

who's also with us that night.

He says to me, Heather, are you OK?

And that's when I blacked out.

I started foaming at the mouth.

The guy who had been feeding me the lines that night,

he freaked out.

He thought I was dead.

And he leaves me in an abandoned apartment.

Nobody's living in the complex.

And he just leaves me on the floor of one of the bedrooms.

I laid there for three days.

No recollection of any of that time.

No consciousness.

Nothing.

My best friend confronted that guy who'd fed me those pills

and said you need to show me where

Heather is at in a pretty strong confrontation.

They had both thought I was dead.

And the door was just cracked.

And when I heard them, I moved a little bit.

And he saw me move.

And he came in.

And he picked me up off the floor.

They rushed me home to my dad.

And that was the first time I started waking up

after those three days.

The doctors, I remember them doing tests on me

and walking in the room and saying,

we have no clue how you are alive.

You have more drugs in your system

which would kill three grown men.

You are a walking dead woman.

And I remember just breaking crying,

because I knew I should've, I should've been dead.

And so it was a moment of a little bit of me

awakening, you know, and questioning what am I doing?

My mom had the police come pull me out of my dad's house.

And so she wasn't giving up on the fight either for me.

And so some of the rules of now being at home

was I had to start attending church with them again.

Whether or not I wanted to admit it, it felt good.

And so my heart, I would just say

it just began to slowly soften.

The relationship with God.

That was a big thing that changed for me.

Not just attending church.

I was feeling just a supernatural peace that I never

experienced before.

And ultimately that was what won.

What won my heart over was that just loving peaceful presence

of God.

The Lord delivered me of drugs.

He delivered me from alcohol.

He delivered me from stealing.

He delivered me from these intense,

you know, addictions that I had that took a couple of years.

It gets easier.

There's hard moments in that process.

There's harder days than others.

And part of my accountability was my husband who I had met.

My mom had introduced us only three months after my OD.

We went on our first date.

And I told him everything.

I thought he was going to get up and leave the table when he

heard everything I'd ever done.

Coming from a person who never drank, never done drugs,

was a virgin, he listened to all of my junk

and was just filled with compassion.

We started dating.

After that, we just fell so in love.

And he really introduced me to the Holy Spirit.

I'm so grateful that God's grace honestly gave me

that second chance, gave me an incredible husband,

and I get to do what I do now.

You need to know that when you, when you receive Christ

into your life, you don't have to hold your head down low,

ashamed of the mistakes that you made.

Whether it's child out of wedlock,

whether it's divorce, whatever it is,

there are so many things that people carry around forever

and let them eat up their life instead

of living in the fullness of what God intended.

The reason why He wants to save us and deliver us is to use us.

So as long as we allow that shame, those scars,

those things to hold us up, it prevents the purpose

of why He wants to save us, why He wants to deliver us,

why He wants to redeem us.

You are unscarred.

You are made new when you receive Jesus into your life.

He fully makes you new.

It doesn't mean that I forget my past.

Because I want to forever be grateful.

But I'm not held to that.

That's not who I am.

I'm made new.