Monica Craft

My name is Monica, and I come from a large family. Growing up, I had a loving father, but he was dysfunctional. He was a drug dealer. I really wanted to have my mother’s love, but I hurt her by stealing jewelry from her to support my drug habit. For most of my life, I have felt like an outsider. I have always believed there was a God, but I still found myself seeking love from all the wrong places. It was hard for me to feel God’s forgiveness because I couldn’t seem to forgive myself. When I was raped, I beat myself up about it. I dealt with it by harming other people in other ways. I even tried to harm myself by attempting suicide 3 different times. This forced me to stay in the hospital for a few weeks. It was there, that I really experienced God and was saved again. No longer was I seeking relationships with other men. I learned to seek God’s love and let Him love me. I have been healed from the inside and am able to live God’s way in the world. All of the bad relationships that I have had in the past, God has removed from me; he has removed a lot out of my life. Today, God helps me with my needs like no other man could. I can’t change the things that have happened in the past, but I know that God loves and forgives me. Now I am trying to love my neighbors and love myself. I am so grateful that I have come this far and that I can start over again. For those of you who don’t know God, I pray for you. I know that God will show you what you ask for, even if they are things that will be hard for you to see.

I am a changed person. I am clean now and am working to stay out of that darkness. I am proud to call myself a believer and to able to say “I love Jesus”. I have come to find out that everything in the Bible is true and I realized that I cannot have life without Jesus. Once I was emotionally depressed and felt unloved, but today I know God’s love, which makes me say “Thank you Jesus for loving me.”

Shauna Legrand

6 months ago, I met Jen at Miryam’s. She gave me a book when she was sitting down here teaching me how to read and write (she did a good job). I mean she’s a sweet woman who is nice. She’s the kind of person who is trying to help and not harm nobody.

The book [Boundaries] was about God and how to keep yourself together. It also talked about knowing who you are and what you want to do in life. It also shared what you could do to keep yourself out of trouble. What I liked most about the book is that it helps keep me from screaming out on people and fighting. It just calms me down in letting me know that my actions were based from the fact that I didn’t know who I was. But I know who I am now; a child of God.

God, is a wonderful man. My relationship with God means that I get on my knees 24/7, and I know I can do better with him in my life. I don’t have to worry about somebody saying I did this or that I did that when I didn’t do it. And I know that I can stay away from drugs and can stay focused in school and when I come down to Miryam’s. I now have some beautiful friends who love me and aren’t going to hurt me. I have a stepmother who is really nice to me. She comes to me and talks with me. She always tells me “Shauna, don’t let them get to you. Don’t let them pull you out your square. As long as you let them pull you out your square you ain’t going to get you no where.” And that’s exactly what happened. I was always depressed and crying and wanting to fight, but now I’m focused on me and nobody else. Today, I’ve been clean for 18 months. I was on drugs, I was on everything, but now I’m clean with 3 beautiful boys [18, 19, 23]. I’m also in my last year of school to become a chef. God is working His plan in me.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is seeking to better know their identity. One of my sons and I read this book together and he helped me better understand some of the words that I didn’t know. He would read it to me and I would sit there and listen and write things down. Then something hit me. I realized that I would never get anywhere without listening to what the book says. That was the same thing I thought when Jen first came down here to do the group. I thought to myself that this was phony and it’s not going to help me. But then when I kept hearing her say it, something told me ‘you better go over there and listen.’ Boundaries changed my life. It helped me understand that if someone else can do it, then I know I can do it too. This book has given me something I can share with other people so that it can help them like it helped me.