Sins from Past Forgiven

“I would roll the homegrown joints and I would sell them to people at school for $5. I mean, we were so poor. I would do anything to try to bring money home,” said Mellisa Jackson. 

It wasn’t for herself; Mellisa Jackson was trying to support her drug addicted parents and her siblings. “And then I got expelled my freshman year. And my parents use to let us drink and use. My friends got to where it was cool to come out there. But I was mortified, I live in a campground with no bathroom, I’m a freshman, I was just mortified and ashamed.” 

But it wasn’t just poverty that brought on the shame. At 10-years-old she was raped by a neighbor. It just confirmed what she felt about herself and God. She said, “And now I was stained and God was never going to be able to love me because my virtue was something I thought I had control over. And that was one thing nobody could take from me. And unfortunately, they did.”

So, after getting expelled, Mellisa decided to dig her way out of poverty. She moved in with her friend’s family and enrolled in an alternative school to get job training. Within five years she was married, had two children, and moved up quickly in the corporate world. It was the perfect life she’d dreamed of. 

Mellisa said, “So I was making good money, owned my own home, had our cars, the kids both went to really nice daycares, and we really had a good life. And from the outside everything looked perfect. But in here I didn't know how to let somebody love me. I just didn't. I was so scared of people. I was scared of letting anybody get close to me. Everybody I'd ever loved had hurt me in one way or another.” 

Then, Mellisa’s perfect world would begin to unravel. In 2006, months after being diagnosed with lupus, Mellisa had a hysterectomy. Before long the opioids that helped with the pain became an addiction.  

“So, I'm trying to get off this medicine and I was so sick I just couldn't even function. So, it was just this vicious cycle. And being that I had set myself up to being the perfect family with no problems. I was trying to get off the opiates and maintain my career and be a mom and I just couldn't do it.” 

Finally, in a desperate cry for help, Mellisa downed a bottle of pills. The apparent suicide attempt landed her in a treatment center. There she met a man and had an affair. Soon after, her husband divorced her and took full custody of the children. She would rarely see them in the coming years. 

Mellisa said, “It just destroyed me. It just ripped my whole world apart. I know I made a mistake, but I never intended to hurt my children. I mean the condemnation just flooded me.” 

Then, she lost her job. For the next 6 years Mellisa moved around, picking up jobs here and there, in and out of relationships, relying on drugs and alcohol to dull the pain. “My mom was getting calls, me passed out in ditches because somebody had beat me and left me there,” she said. “I mean, just horrible stories. Waking up in places I didn't even know with people I didn't even know. It was just horrid. It was a living hell really.”

Then on Christmas Eve 2018, she was at her mom’s house for one of the infrequent visits with her kids. After they left with their father, Mellisa broke down in tears.

“I was just sobbing, and it was like this perpetual sorrow that I had always! But when I used drugs I could stall it, kind of ignore it for a little bit,” Mellisa said. “Then I’d see the kids and it would all come rushing back. And I just dropped to my knees and I begged God, 'please, please, please.' As I was doing that, I heard this thing in my head, 'You're still My child.' And all I could think of was my kids, if they made a mistake like that, I would never want them to torture themselves over it. I always still love them. So, He feels the same way about me. And I don't know, it just gave me a little bit of faith. He hasn’t given up on me, He’s still here. Even when I'm at my lowest, He's still here. So, He’s obviously here for me and it gave me a little bit of faith.” 

Inspired to get help, Mellisa went to a drug treatment program and started attending a daily worship gathering at Faith Foundry in Roseburg, Oregon.

She said, “And with those songs and that worship, God just started loving me. And these people loved me until I could learn how to love myself. And I just heard that through the music so strong that I don't have to keep punishing myself. Like I can be forgiven, I can forgive other people, and I can be forgiven.”

At 35 years old Mellisa committed her life to Christ, accepting God’s forgiveness and forgiving all who’d hurt her. “He just really started undoing all of that, that trauma and it's like all the scars. He just started healing just over, and over ,and over. He's just removed that shame, and guilt, and condemnation because it's no good. It's not from Him,” Mellisa said.

Mellisa is now married to Matt, spends time with her grown children, and is living life fully in Christ. “He says that I'm wonderfully, perfectly made. I made in His image. I'm a woman of dignity. I'm a woman of worth. I'm a woman of God. And I am valuable.”