by: Cris Corzine-McCloskey
Today is the 12th anniversary of my passing from death to life. 12 years ago I was in a cell facing 10 years in prison, and I was going through withdrawal. The withdrawal was relentless and felt like a fingernail digging at the back of my brain. I was in on Federal charges of Conspiracy to Traffic and Distribute over 500 grams of Meth. I was an angry, foul, burned out, waste of a human being who had been a meth addict for 11 years, and a poly-substance addict for over 20.
One of my cellmates said, “if you think this is bad, wait till you see hell.” I thought of all the things my parents had said about Jesus. How I would laugh and scoff at His name. And how, as a bartender, I would make jokes about their Jesus. A good joke always upped my tip. In that jail cell I thought of those things and felt ashamed and afraid. With nothing left to lose, I began to pray. I reached out to the same Jesus I had made fun of for years.
It was not as much a prayer of faith as a cry of desperation. I asked for forgiveness; I got so much more. The fingernail stopped. For years that fingernail had been my god. It would start its relentless clawing on my brain, demanding to be fed. Its favorite food was meth, and its appetites had been my pied piper for as long as I could remember. It stopped because a new God had moved in. Where my false god had fed on my diseased and decaying soul, my new God brought my soul to life.
12 years have passed since that moment, and I never felt the fingernail again. I was healed of a lifetime of addictions the moment Jesus became my Lord. Since then, Jesus has taken immense pleasure proving His power to this former mocker and scoffer. My new life has been an ongoing display of His grace and mercy. And what a ride it has been!
I did have to do some time. 9 months and 8 days to be exact. Yet, I went in a free woman and came out on fire for the God who proved Himself so faithful during my incarceration. I discovered you will never know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you’ve got. He has taken me on a journey from inmate to becoming Christian therapist, and Director of Caring Counseling Ministries. But while the career is awesome, the life I feel inside is the true miracle.
The thing about being dead is you have no way to help yourself. It’s over. That was me. I was helpless and hopeless. The true walking dead. Then I met a man named Jesus who brought me to life, and I will never, ever, get over it. So if we meet, don’t be surprised if I rattle on about the lover and restorer of my soul. He is everything to me. And that puny, false god who tried to destroy me…well, the joke is on it! Turns out addiction didn’t stand a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness I know now as grace. Thanks, Jesus! You have taught my soul to sing!
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