EP 79 | Tasha's Story: Trust Fall To Freedom

A head-on collision started a battle Tasha Williams wasn't prepared for: prescription pain medication that didn’t just numb broken bones, but also silenced years of buried fear, grief, and trauma. When relief feels like rescue, the line between treatment and opioid addiction can disappear fast. In this episode Tasha traces her story back to childhood domestic violence and the vow she made at nine years old to never be hurt again. 

If you need hope for yourself or someone you love, listen through to the end, then subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more women searching for Christian addiction recovery and opioid recovery can find it. 

Episode Mentioned

Ep 61 | Faith, Perseverance, and Transformation: The Inspiring Journey of Susan Binkley and Blue Monarch

Blue Monarch Website

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Tasha Williams is a 41-year-old woman who knows what it means to fight—and to win daily! After surviving the chokehold of addiction, Tasha's been walking in freedom for 8 years through Jesus Christ. She is a proud mom of two “semi-grown” kids—Nevaeh (20) and Maleak (19)—who keep her grounded, grateful, and praying a little extra. Tasha serves as the Director of Residential Life at Blue Monarch, where she has the honor of walking alongside women as they rewrite their stories—because she knows firsthand that your past doesn’t disqualify you, it prepares you. Somewhere between morning coffee and leaning on God for everything, she's learned He still restores, still redeems, and still uses imperfect people to do powerful things—and she's living proof. 

Instagram: @tashawilliams127
Facebook: Tasha Williams

About the She Surrenders Podcast:

On the She Surrenders podcast we are talking about women, faith and addiction all on the same platform. There are many podcasts for women and sobriety, but very few for women seeking information and stories from others about faith-based recovery.   

Help us reach more listeners: like, subscribe, review, and share. 

Find us on Instagram @shesurrenders_sherry, on Facebook @shesurrenderssherry, and online at www.shesurrenders.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to the She Surrenders Podcast. I'm Sherry, and my heart behind this podcast is to bring you the excellent news that faith-based recovery is where you'll discover the joy in life you never thought possible while you were in the bondage of addiction. The stories you'll hear from women and sometimes men who have walked in your shoes or alongside someone who has will inspire you to pursue the same freedom they've found. This freedom comes from surrendering not only our addictions, but also our guilt and shame to God. Matthew 19, verse 26 tells us, with man, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. I pray that today's episode brings you to a new understanding that this is true for you too. Because it is. Now, on to our guest. So today on the She Surrenders podcast, you're going to hear from my friend Tasha Williams. Now you're going to hear a Southern drawl right away, a beautiful one at that. And you're going to notice right away she's not one of my West Michigan girls, but she is a Blue Monarch girl. And if you go back to episode 61, you're going to find out what a Blue Monarch girl is. Blue Monarch is a rehab facility ran by my friend Susan Binkley. And Susan Binkley has been an amazing woman to learn and grow from is I have had my journey at Sailor House getting that off the ground. So I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode after this one. But today you're going to learn from Tasha from the school of hard knocks and prescription drugs and being told it's okay to take a pain medication. Some of the things that Tasha said, though, that I can't get out of my head that I think are going to stay with you too. She uses a phrase called, I had to take a trust ball. And we're going to talk about what a trust ball is and how she does it over and over and over again. And she um talks about being a very scared nine-year-old little girl, and that broke my heart because no nine-year-old should ever have to feel the things that started her journey. And um, yeah, her story is amazing to bring her where she is today. So listen in, you're going to be amazed at what her journey has brought her to and the woman she is today. So here's my friend Tasha. So welcome, Tasha. I am so glad you're here with us today. Hey. We just um had already quite a conversation. We had to stop and push record. That always happens. I think I start out every podcast saying that, but we always have so much to talk about because we're so excited to share. And I'm always excited to get to know the person on the other side of the screen. And our connection um was through Susan Binkley from Blue Monarchs, who she was a guest on my podcast. So if you haven't listened to that one, you should. Um Susan's an inspiration to me uh running a recovery house, and she's running um like Sail House times a thousand, as far as I'm concerned. So she's just um she's an amazing woman, and she has given me a few women to talk to to share their story with me. And Tasha is one of them. So Tasha, thank you so much for agreeing to be here and share your story with us.

SPEAKER_02 3:42

Well, thank you so much for the opportunity, and just shout out to Miss Susan. Uh part of my story, uh, the light side of it, the bright side of it, what came through her yes to start this program, um, Blue Monarch. And um, I'd love to share with you about it and also just about some of my story.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Oh, wonderful. Okay. So obviously our topic is addiction. That's what we talk about here. And um, so we're gonna just start with your story of how did you start down the path of addiction? Where did this start for you?

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Well, when when I was young, probably up until about five, it seemed like I had a normal home. My mom and dad was together, they was married, and I remember um around about nine, things was getting real rocky. Um, it somewhat started becoming an everything, uh everyday thing that my mom and dad would hide. And he was very abusive, physically abusive to my mom. And on my ninth birthday, instead of getting birthday cake and all the little cool stuff, I I remember waking up and my mom crawling into my bedroom and um he was beating her pretty bad, and there was blood running down her face, and she just she said, Hey, if he hits me again, um, call 911. And I remember, you know, back then they had the rotary phones, and I barely knew how to do it, but I got 911 on the phone and and they came and I just remember of thinking that I was going to be safe. The police was going to come and get my dad, which back then domestic violence wasn't really so much of a a legal thing. Sometimes that was accepted in marriages when I was younger, it seemed like. And dad still got to stay home. It got worse. But after that day, and he um also did some harmful things to me that day after he found out that I called the law on him. And I just remember something breaking in me then that I said, you know, to myself, and some might call it a vow. I was like, I will not let no one else hurt me like this. And so I remember just everything changing and shifting after that point as I was growing up. You know, I was a sweet little chubby, brown-headed, brown-eyed girl. But after that, I remember just trying to be tough and trying to um just really be a avoidant of pain. And if if fighting and if being the toughest girl was what was needed to be able to do that, that's what was happening. So nine years old.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Nine years old, what grade is that? I'm just trying to get a so you're like um third?

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Is it what that's why I was thinking I was third, I believe it was third grade.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

And I'm thinking, how many of what do we all remember about second or third grade? Not a ton, but you have such an incredible burden for a nine-year-old. You remember a lot, and none of it is easy. It's where you've made a hard line in the sand. No one's gonna hurt me like that, and I'm gonna have to be tough. And I'm just thinking of the terror of a nine-year-old girl that night. And I'm so sorry for that. Um, I think of me as a nine-year-old, and that was a part of my life where I was the worst thing that happened to me was I had to get glasses. You know, I mean which they're very cute. Oh, well, thanks. You know, I've had to full circle back now that I'm old, but you know, that's that's what we think of. We don't think of that as nine years old, and we're not meant to process that as a nine-year-old. So already, you know, my heart breaks for you as a nine-year-old.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

And so it well, and thank you, because it it was hard. And the thing about um traumatic things, because I remember every day like thinking this is the day that he's gonna kill her. So with trauma, it's like you remember those details. And I and I also think later on in my journey, we'll we'll talk about this. The Lord took me back to show me where it all started to walk me through it to be able to process it and heal from it. Which, you know, sometimes we want to run from the hard things, but thank the Lord that He is with us in them, and He even showed me He was with me in those moments. It uh continued, the the abuse continued, it got worse. Uh, it got worse. It could be over mashed potatoes being too runny, different things. But finally Mama got away from it when I was 11 and divorced. And after that, just to um just to pinpoint a few things, I feel like I was being, I felt like I was being parented by the music of that time and it promoted, you know, gang violence. I was looking for someone to somewhere to belong. And the culture uh during that uh around you know, 11 to 18, that I started taking on this identity that had nothing to, you know, uh involve Christ in. And I wanted to be that biggest, baddest, mean girl. And before, you know, it at 16, my my mom and dad was, you know, in poverty most of their life. The goal of our family was to get a check from the government, you know, it wasn't to go out and do great things and operate in the call that's on your life, you know. That wasn't the goal. I was rarely even talked about. And by the age of 16, I was selling drugs, I was selling crack cocaine. And it's like the more that I stepped into that identity of the world, the more corrupt, the more lost. But I can tell you this much. At 13 on an Easter Sunday, I was at church and the little preacher up front, he was like, if you know, everybody bow their heads, and if you want to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior and receive him in his heart, raise your hand. So I was one of those people that raised your hand.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Wow. And what brought you to church? Why were you in church?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

That was Easter Sunday, you know, you know Sunday. You know, holidays and and the Kool-Aid and cookies. You know, like they were they had the best cookies and Kool-Aid. I think the little church ladies put a whole bunch of sugar in the Kool-Aid back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Well, and you're from the South, as I can hear. So, and I think they do that extra well in the South, as far as I'm gonna do. The cookies are better there.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

But that hey, you know, it's crazy how some things can lead us. We have different motives. Like I can, I got there off of cookies and Kool-Aid, and I got eternal life. And I believe that day I was saved, but you know, even his sheep will go astray because even when I was selling drugs when I was 16 and taking on the identity of the biggest and the baddest, um I had this flicker in my heart that I knew that I shouldn't be living the way that I was living. And late at night it eat me up because I I seen what I was making a profit off of, and that was drugs, what they was doing to families, what it would do to people. So I for a long time, for a couple years, um, you know, I in and out of jail, criminal activity, uh sold drugs, and then when I was 24-year-old, I was in a head-on collision. A man was driving down the wrong side of the highway. He was going 50, we was going 50. And um, I broke 24 bones. I was trapped in the car for three hours, came very close to death. I've lost I lost so much blood, broke my hip and my femur. Even then, God's hand was on my life. Um, my son, that was under a year old, he out of nowhere, my sister called and said, You can drop him off at this gas station. I'm sitting right here. And then we stopped, get him out of the car, and 33 seconds down the road uh is when we got hit head on. You know, even in my addiction, and I didn't notice it while I was submerged in it, but even in my addiction looking back, he never left me. He never left me. And I am so thankful for um the site to be able to recognize it because while I was in it, I couldn't see it. And it reminds me of that picture on my granny's wall with the footprints in the sand. Yeah, while while we're in it, we don't know what's happening. But the whole time he was carrying us through it.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Yeah, it's kind of like I always think about bad things in life and how I don't have an answer when someone says, you know, why didn't God keep this from happening? Or why why did God let this happen? And the only answer I have, which is the one that I give to myself as well, is I do know this. God is walking beside me in it. He has said, I will never leave you in this. And God has never asked us to go through anything that He has not Himself. He knows every emotion and every pain that we go through. And when I learned that and looked at that later in life, I found it so comforting. Just like you look back and you look at your addiction and go, God never left me. I was the one who was leaving, you know. He's like, I'm right here, I'll wait. I'll wait. And I think of how painful it must be as a parent now, I think of how painful it must have been for him to watch his child go through this and the things that we do.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

I mean and and and to also experience on the other side um of me going through some personal things, just raising my children and they're grown now, they're my big babies, but um then we finally see what we put mama through, like my mama. Yeah. I was like, when I get to heaven, I'm gonna I'm gonna kiss her feet because I we don't we don't fully, we can't fully understand some of the things that you know how they feel until we actually have that experiential wisdom by feeling it ourselves. Um so I can say that now. And with with the car wreck, that's where my addiction um was burst, was through that. Um you know, I I had smoked marijuana, drank, uh, dabbled in cocaine, but nothing fully had a chokehold on me uh until I was in the hospital. It took me um three months in-house, three months at home with physical therapy and a nurse to learn to walk again, where I broke my femur and my hip. And I had never really taken pain medicine before, never really taken uh pain medicine. And when I was in the hospital, they had me on a morphine drip. And I remember wheeling myself downstairs with the the morphine drip, and when I was outside just thinking, I feel so great. Like I don't feel my hurt from my dad, I don't feel my hurt from the and it was almost scary in that moment because I was like, golly, what in the world is this? And here my leg, I had over a hundred stitches, it's about hang hanging off. And I just remember sitting in that wheelchair thinking, this could possibly be the answer to everything.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

And isn't that so true? You know, one of the things I always say is, you know, someone will say to me, Well, yeah, there's addiction in my family, but I'm fine. And I'm like, until you're not. Because here's the thing once your brain gets this message from whatever substance, whether it's a morphine drip or vodka, if you're hurting from anything or whatever the substance numbs out for you, all your need, all your brain needs to do is go, you know what, that works. That's working, and it's not gonna forget that. And I think that's where you were in that moment, isn't it? Correct.

SPEAKER_02 18:05

And it's like, you know, there wasn't a cocaine epidemic, there was a pain medicine epidemic. It's it's like our brains seek not to feel pain or to avoid it, is how I felt in that moment. But it wasn't just a physical pain that was being relieved, it was also all these other emotions for years that I had pushed down, and it seemed to be like an answer to all my problems, which we know now is a counterfeit. You know, so after starting to walk, first they told me I was not gonna walk. And by the grace of God, I walked again. Then the doctor came in and he signed that I wouldn't never work again and that I would always be on uh pain medication is what he told me. So, of course, my family's culture, my dad came in and with all smiles, and he was like, Boom, you got a government check right here, and you'll you'll need pain medication. So the man that I struggled with loving because so much damage he had did to my mom, I remember wrestling in my heart, like, why do I love this man? He's been so evil to us at one point in time. He became my best friend through that car wreck. I bit into the lie of what a doctor told me. You know, we we believe, like this man has gone to school, college for years. He's saying this about me.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Oh, yeah. I was gonna say, some this isn't some guy in an alley telling you this. He's right, this is a professional telling you it's okay. You need this.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Oh, and and with the thought that I had a couple weeks before, like, hey, this is the answer to everything. And then I got a doctor affirming it, I was like, okay, this is what it is. And any fight that I had in me towards possibly not allowing this to rule over my life went out the door. Because now it seemed like the right thing to do to continue to take these. And my dad from that became my best friend. He was also um addicted to pain medication that I really didn't know about until that moment, until you know, going through that. And we used together. It was um a pretty toxic relationship. I lived in the housing proc uh housing projects in Knoxville, and just the way we lived our lives was very worldly. Um, I was still selling drugs afterwards and praying to God at night. And it's like I didn't have the tools or enough word in me to know how to make the change, but I knew where the change was. As in, like I knew I needed Jesus in my life, but I didn't know how to take the steps to make him the Lord of my life. And thank and thank the Lord that He He knows that and He'll send people. But it was a process.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

It was Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

He wasn't gonna send those people while you were you know fresh out of the hospital or you know, hadn't gone through all the things that you had to go through first. Well and I'll save a little.

SPEAKER_02 21:59

And Be humbled. I had to get to my I had to get to the end of myself to be able to receive what he had for me. And you know, I can say this now. I was stubborn as a bull. I thought I knew what I needed to do, and I would try whichever avenue I had to do twice and go off in a ditch before I'm like, maybe that won't work. Because I try to stop taking um pain medication. And I was like, well, I'll smoke wheat. That didn't work. Sent me right back to my pain medication, right? Then the next time I got out of rehab, I've been to rehab four different times before it stuck, you know, it stick to me, uh, freedom because I I think there's so much of a cognitive um therapy that you need to go to through to retrain your brain. But in the beginning, I I just tried all these substitutes, and Jesus was sitting here right along with me. When are you going to wake up? And instead of a substitute, you can get the actual thing that is going to produce freedom in your life, and you don't have to white knuckle it, you don't have to go through life running from the things that you're trying to get away from, but you can get to a place where you're standing in the face of it and you know that the Lord tastes so good that you don't have an appetite for those things no more.

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Oh, that's so well said, Tasha. That is so well said. That is so well said, because I often say that in recovery, you know, when you're recovering with Jesus in your faith, the the goal, the the realization that you get to is that the the weight of the substance, and you know, if you're looking at a scale and it starts out, you know, one is more desirable than the other. It gets to the point where there is no desire for the other because you have no desire to lose what you have. And you just said that so well. But why do you think you resist as long? We, all of us. I'm your story today. So we're saying, why do you think knowing that was available? Why do you think we run for so long? I mean, I ran forever. But why do you think we want to try everything but the obvious solution right in front of us?

SPEAKER_02 24:35

I think it's just our self-will. We we are somewhat conditioned growing up of being non-dependent or independent on yourselves, even to our own demise. Like I remember um I just wanted to do what I wanted to do, right? And I wanted to get what the gratification out of it without not being told what to do. I know that sounds you know simple, but for me, I had to be handed over to my own ways to fully pour myself out to have a full turn away from that lifestyle. If I I truly believe this, if any of what I went through was left out, there's a possible um they there's a possibility that I would think I had another chance. With the way that it perfectly played out, and gosh, thank you for his hand being on my life, because some people in their own ways and their decision and not full surrender, some people don't make it out of it. And not to say that I did and they didn't, I don't know all the details. But I'm thankful that when I got to the end of myself, instead of trying to go on another run, my heart responded to him and not to the world again because I truly believe I didn't have another run in me. And and the the chaos in my mind was had got to an all high of the noise in it being loud, that it is by God's grace that when I got to the end of myself, I didn't do something to harm myself because I remember I cried out to the Lord, and this is him and his goodness. So we're at right before I came to Blue Monarch. So I had tried every way, and in my frustration and desperation, I said, Lord, my papa has a 22 handgun in his room. I said, Lord, you either provide me a way out or I can't take it no more. It had got to that point of I needed him to show up, or I could I couldn't handle the stuff that was going on in my mind. And in a in that cry, and it was a genuine cry. It wasn't, oh, rescue me from jail, I'll get out and do good. It was I'm at the my chest is ripping open and I'm at the end of myself. I can't do this no more. And the next morning, it's funny, it's funny how the Lord works sometimes. The next morning, I had forgot I had put an application in at Blue Monarch seven months before the last time I was at Buffalo Valley. And they had a waiting list during that time. So, and and I remember reading the application, and I was like, Lord, I ain't gonna be able to smoke cigarettes, use a phone, and now looking back, I'm like, that took priority over your freedom, you know. But that's where I was at. That's where I was at. But him and his goodness, I got to the end of myself, and that very next morning they called, and my dad answered the phone. And my dad, even though we struggle, sometimes he's pretty funny. He came in to my bedroom and he said, Hey, this place Blue Monarch called. I thought it was a bill collector, so I told him you wasn't here. And I said, And I said, Give me, give me that phone, let me call him back. And that was the beginning of my journey with the Lord. And it's scary for some people. I had to take a huge trust fall. I was bringing my kids to three hours away, leaving everything behind, and just trusting that this is going to be good for us. I had no money, we have one bag a piece of clothes, and out of that act of obedience, that the door that he provided, and I knew it was a door from him. I just cried out the night before. Um, and he opened that up for us, and that was the beginning of many other trustfalls after that. And you it's like you have to you have to learn to to die to your will, to that, what kept me in that chaos for so long.

SPEAKER_00 30:04

When you say trustfall, you totally just fall backwards and you're trusting someone's going to catch you because they say they're going to, you know. I think of doing that probably at a party where you shouldn't be doing that, but you know, um, not always getting caught, but um that's what you mean by trustfall. No matter what, this trust fall, if you're trusting him, you're trusting Jesus, he's going to catch you if you just keep saying, Okay, I'm in, I'll do it. Okay, if you just keep saying yes, and I love that you're calling it a trust fall.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Well, I'll I love it, I love it as a trust fall because it feels scary.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

It's not like woo, Jesus' not supposed to be like a bungee jump, like you know it's a for sure thing, you're gonna spring back up, you know.

SPEAKER_02 31:02

And you know, like once you walk with the Lord for some time, you know, even in the trust falls, it never plays out how you thought it would. 99% of the time, it's still good, but way that my mind formats you make a trust fall, you go to Blue Monarch, it is gonna be rainbows, candy, it's gonna be great. No, it was it was work, but it was divine work. It was like work to be able to heal the heart. So when when my journey started here, I had so many different things that I was working through, like criminal mindsets, I had trust issues, I had health problems. I could not walk from the woods house to the main house, and that's about a half a football field. I I had been on pain medicine for over 13 years and had got to a place of non-narcotic, but I was on nine different medications to manage. We have a shirt that we sell here, and it's recovery is not for sissies. And it spoke to me because you remember, like God will take what you formatted in the world and use it for his good. Back then I wanted to be the biggest and baddest, but under the hand of the Lord, he could make me a warrior in righteousness, a warrior in recovery. And I still get my fulfillment field in him and my confidence through him. And he took what I misused, but it was one of my desires as a child, you know, growing up in my teenage years, and he can use it for his kingdom in humility. I think that's a strong suit too. And a lot of my process was in humility, is being able to think less of myself without thinking less of myself, if if that makes sense. Um so um the criminal um uh mindset, the different things through cognitive therapy that I was able to uh work through with just most awesome teachers and leadership and just pure-hearted, devoted, Jesus-loving women around me, I was able to get to a place that I fully come off of all medications. After 10 or 11 months, I started working one day a week. The doctor said I'd never work again. So I had been what was your job? What was your first job? So I was in the granola kitchen. I started off as a granola cook.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

For those of you that don't know, Blue Monarch, the product that they manufacture, is the most awesome granola ever. And remind me the name of it, because you can buy it around here. I've seen it. Umola. Out of the blue granola. See, it's at our health food store, I think.

SPEAKER_02 34:35

Yes, and you can also order it online.

SPEAKER_00 34:38

Yeah, I'm probably gonna order, I'm probably gonna order a t-shirt too. I like the recovery of snap for Sisting. So, but yes, so that's the granola story.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

So you got so you started to work in the granola, and God in his goodness, he just put people around me that believed in me before I could believe in myself. So sometimes our heart got to catch up, right? And I'm everybody's around me telling me you can do this, you can work, and I'm over here like I'm dying, my feet are hurting, you you know, but I never had nobody to challenge me in my victimness, and that become that became a part of my identity, and so in love, them encouraging me and and challenging me at times, because I can be stubborn, it got me to a place where I was starting to see the evidence in my life that I can do more. I was like, hold up, I can do more. Oh, and that is a good feeling once you've been in bondage for so long. And before you know it, before you knew it, my my thoughts concerning myself started to change. I'm like, I can do life. I got good people around me, I can make good decisions. I have the Lord, I have his word. Like things started shifting. I started thinking different. And it's by the renewing of our mind that that our mind is cleansed, and I it it's wild and it's supernatural that every how I started to see things, how I started to respond, how my heart took things in started to change. And I truly believe that for some people, I can't speak for everybody, but that new creation, it might be downloaded or how or it might be a in a moment for some people, but it's like the more and the more that I follow the Lord's leading, the more and the more these things came to surface in my life that I was a changed person. I was a new creation. And and out of that and uh working in granola, I I just remember the day like it was yesterday. I wanted to be a part of Blue Monarch. And out of the blue granola is different than Blue Monarch with us serving the women and stuff. And I remember the day that I got offered the job to become the residential life assistant, which now I'm the director of the director of residential life, and I just knew out of that, I have stepped in a dream that I couldn't even dream before. My my dreams was limited in addiction. I just wanted to be a good mom and I didn't want to die, you know, and I remember stepping into that and I was like, this is far beyond anything I could ever dream. I'm off a disability. I come fully off a disability, fully off of government assistance. I was an IV user, fully off of um pain medication. And it's just uh a miracle, and I get to watch miracles happen every day here. And I can't the word blessed, I don't think it fully um give gives emphasis on what my heart's trying to say. I don't think there's a word that can be like, whoo, this is good.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Right, right. There's no words to describe you know, I mean, there's a lot of people that knew who you were or that saw who you were, but you know all of who you were physically, mentally, spiritually, all of the above. And there's I mean, I know the feeling. Um, every time I have a a sobriety anniversary, I think I would have never thought never in a million years my life what it used to be. And it did look different from yours, you know. Um, mine was alcohol, but I was still in a pet, I was still in the dark, and I was not serving him, I was not serving my family, and it was about survival, and there wasn't anything, there was no hope for the future, and I think what a waste of life. But if he can take our struggles, a struggle like yours, and say, you know what, your struggle is huge, so let's make life huge now. Let's just make life huge in the most beautiful way for you, for your family, for others. I mean, that's what he does, it's redeeming love at its finest. I love how you say new creation. That's what we say at Sailor House. I don't like people to say, I'm an alcoholic, you know. I'm like, no, you're a new creation every single day. Every single day we get to start over. It's beautiful. It is. And when you were talking about how you know he does more than you know, you could have ever imagined. That is my life first, Ephesians 3.20. More than you could ever ask or imagine. And it seems that's what he's doing over and over. So, how about kids? What's family look like today for you?

SPEAKER_02 40:44

Um, so Malik, that's my my son, he's the baby. He's 19-year-old, he goes to Lee University in Chattanooga. Wow, he's he's loving it. You can't tell him nothing. Maybe on the weekends you might can tell him a little something, but outside of that, what does he want to be? What does he want to do? He is majoring in business, but I'm gonna say this. He lights up when he talks about the word, and he has a reverence and a heart to understand, to research, and find the things out of the Lord. He he sometimes he tells me he was like, Yeah, me and my bros, mom, we was debating about this when it comes to the Lord and this. And I I sit there and I'm in awe because I was like, the things I was talking about at 19 and debating over was totally different.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

Oh, of course. Why God and his goodness, yeah, his goodness, and look at the direction, the new direction you took has given him a totally different outlook. So that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

So that's the baby, the baby, and and Nivea. She is my girl, and she's the firstborn. She is 21. She's currently living in Alabama, and you know, I love her. She was going to church with um me and one of my best friends, but also spiritual leader. She works here at Blue Monarch. Um, Ginny, um, just love her to death. Ginny Campbell, Navea, she's on, you know, she's figuring things out. And I I love her, but I know that sometimes we go through these things that we have to figure out our beliefs and the things that we stand on. And I I believe both of my children are doing that right now, and both of them know the Lord. And and for that, that makes my mama heart just scream with joy because for my most of my life, we might have gone there on Easter, around Christmas, but I did not have a knowing until I was around 33. I was saved. I truly believe I was saved at 13. And then at 33, everything changed in my life. Um, and thank the Lord for that. Like I don't know what's happening behind the scenes with them sometimes, and sometimes it's not like other people's stories, but I just love that he he loves me and my uniqueness. And when it comes to my children, I know he has his hand on their life and loves them in the way and their uniqueness. And he his word says you raise a child up in the way that they should go. And we forget this part. And when they're old, they won't. Apart from it. And just like me, I had to be a little older.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

Exactly. Exactly. But what your children have is they know they have this sperm rock in their mom that they can count on when they're ready or when they need you. Um and our adult children, maybe they don't always admit it, but they do like knowing we're there. I believe that. I believe that. So Tasha, thank you so much. I am so appreciative of your story and your honesty, and most of all, just your appreciation for who God is and what he has done in your life. And I don't I know that he shines through so many stories in this world, but I really think that addiction showcases him in a spot like like no other. Because I say often that addiction is it's so evil because I think that the evil one looks at it as I can not only destroy a mom, I can destroy a whole family. Or I can, you know, one person can I can take down a lot of people from generation to generation. So when one person stops, it opens up a door for the light of the Lord to fill the whole family generation to generation. And I just love pissing off the devil that way.

SPEAKER_02 45:21

So I was about to say, kicking him in his teeth. There's a saying, yeah, there's a saying that light shines the brightest on a dark backdrop. And so with like what you were saying about addiction, um, it is a gift, a highly valuable gift, that every day that I get to do my job and and give an exit plan to the people that the Lord gave me and the people around me gave me. And I get to participate in um supporting and encouraging these women to a life of freedom. That is a great reward that not many people get. And I thank the Lord every day that I get to kick the devil in his teeth because he tormented me for years. He's tormented these women for years. You know, and I I think in the beginning and at certain points we, you know, we had decisions that we made some bad decisions, but I think that what turned up the volume is them fiery darts that was sent in by the devil that we try to silence the noise and the emotions and the feelings. And now I get to participate in walking alongside these courageous women to a life of freedom, hand in hand. That is like fireworks going off on the 4th of July. It's some good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

That is good stuff, no greater gift, and that is so well said. You have my heart, Tasha Williams. You have my heart. So thank you, Sherry. Uh thank you for being here, and um, I'll make sure to um put all the information about Blue Monarch in the um show notes too, because we just need to keep people letting people know about this great facility over there and about that great granola as well. So thank you, Tasha, so much, and I'm sure we'll talk again. Yes, thank you, Sherry. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you found encouragement and inspiration from what you heard here. If you know someone who could benefit from the She Surrenders podcast, please share it with them. Let's spread the word about the miracle of faith-based recovery. Don't forget, like, share, subscribe, and leave a review. Because when you do these things, it helps get the message to those who are seeking answers that can only be found when we put down our addictions and pick up the promises of a whole new life when we walk in recovery with the Lord. Have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next time.