Celebrating Recovery
Celebrating RecoverySarah’s Story
By Sarah Grindstaff Miller
Mitchell County
Before I tell you about my story I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself for those of you who don’t know me. My name is Sarah Elizabeth Grindstaff Miller. I’m 31 years old. I come from a very loving, Christian family that I love dearly. I recently got married to Nicholas Charles Miller on May 26th of last year. We have a 3 month old son named Roman Joseph Miller. I also have a 14 year old son named Jonathan Garrett Yelton. We are proud members of Bethel Baptist Church. We have a house and 3 vehicles. I have a job that I love with a great work family. No one’s life is perfect but compared to the life I had until a couple years ago in my opinion it’s more than perfect. But I want to explain to you how my life was before and how it has changed into a life I’ve always dreamed of.
As a child my family and I always attended every church service. I was brought up to put God first in your life. I had a really good childhood for the most part. At age 11 is when I got saved. I was listening to a Ray Boltz CD and hearing the words of that song “At the foot of the cross” a feeling came over me like I’d never felt before. I knew I was lost and going to hell if I didn’t ask God to save me. I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest, and I burst into tears. I felt so ashamed and unworthy. Then at that moment I begged God to forgive me of my sins and to save my soul and I truly believe He did that day.
But It wasn’t long after that I let the devil deceive me and I gave into my flesh. The first time I was 
introduced to drugs I was also 11 years old. The first drug I ever tried was Meth. The Worst, most addictive drug there is in my opinion. I was a very hyper active child and craved attention all the time whether it was good or bad as long as I was noticed. I stayed in trouble at home and at school. I was constantly being grounded and disciplined when I did things I wasn’t supposed to do. But It seems like the more I was punished the more I would act out and rebel. I hated being told what to do.
It wasn’t long till I ended up getting pregnant at the age of 15. My family was devastated at first. I was pretty much a baby myself getting ready to have a baby. So, I thought getting married to the father of my baby would fix everything. I thought It would make up for all the hurt and disappointment I had caused my family. So, I quit school and got married to a man I thought I was in love with, but in reality I barely even knew this man. We were both young and dumb and didn’t realize what we were getting ourselves into. After we got married we moved about 45 minutes away from my family. I had no car, no phone, no TV. I had no friends at the time and no neighbors that were close enough for me to talk to. My husband would work long hours. Even after he got done working he would usually go to his parents or his Grandmother to help them with different things. I have never been the type to like being alone so this caused me to become very depressed. We eventually moved not far from where we lived at the time. We had a neighbor who’s name I will not mention because she is deceased now. But this is when I started doing meth almost every day. Eventually after a few years my husband got another vehicle for me to drive but by this time I was already using meth on a daily basis . This didn’t help the situation because then I was able to meet new people that had drugs and It made my drug habit even worse. My son wasn’t even 2 years old yet, when I realized I was addicted to this horrible drug. It had made my depression go away at the time and I felt invincible after using. I could do everything a normal stay at home Mom could do in less than 2 hours. When in all reality it should have been an all day job. I would stay up for days at a time and my husband didn’t have a clue that I was even on drugs, probably because he wasn’t around me enough to tell. My husband and I started arguing more and more. I was completely miserable and felt so alone. After I got to the point that I realized I couldn’t live like that anymore I planned to leave and to take our son with me. I didn’t even know where we’d go. I thought about trying to go to my Grandparents or my Mom and Dad’s, but I wasn’t exactly sure. So, one night I packed two bags. One for me and one for my son. The next day my husband came home early and knew something was wrong. Then he noticed the bags near the door, and he knew exactly what was going on. This caused a really big fight between us. As we were arguing I was trying to take our son with me, but he was determined to not let that happen. My plan had back fired on me. I still left that day but without my son. But I thank God that my plan didn’t go like I expected because I was in no shape to be raising a precious little innocent boy. I needed to try to help myself before I’d be able to help my son. I was absolutely devasted because I didn’t have my son and my whole family was so disappointed in me. The only thing that would help numb the pain just for a small period of time was using drugs. I lived from place to place with whoever would take me in. My family would have let me come stay with them, but I would have to give the drugs up and I truly believed in my mind that I couldn’t live without them.
Eventually I got put into the system. I can’t even count the times that I’ve been put in jail. There was a few
times I called and begged my Grandparents to come get me out. I promised them that if they would just pay my bond and come get me that I would come live with them and I’d stop using drugs. Every time that they did this for me I couldn’t even last a month at their house before I’d leave with the first person that offered me drugs and a place to stay. I did this over and over breaking my family’s hearts. When you get so far in addiction you don’t care about anyone or anything. All you care about is getting that next high. It’s so sad to say but I chose drugs over my son, my family, and a happy life that I could have been living.
The more I did drugs the more I hated God. I blamed Him for every wrong thing that had happened in my life. The more I hated God the more I hated myself. I tried over dosing numerous times. I would cut my wrists in hopes that I would eventually bleed to death. I didn’t care if I lived or died at this point. I would do anything and everything I could to get high and try to just forget about life. I put myself in horrible situations where I’ve been beaten , raped, thrown out of moving vehicles, left on the side of the road with no place to go and no food to eat, just feeling hopeless and empty. Some of these things still haunt me to this day. I have nightmares about them and wake up scared to death or crying. It’s only by the grace of God that I’m alive today to be able to tell you this story.
Even after all of these things I had gone through I still wasn’t ready to trust God. I tried to run as far as I could from Him. I spent years and years living this lifestyle and It led me to 4 different prison sentences. My last prison sentence before I was released my Grandparents asked me to come live with them again. But I knew it wouldn’t last long because I had no intentions of trying to straighten up. I knew I would end up leaving like I always did. But to my surprise this time was different. I remember waking up one morning and going outside on the porch. I could see my Grandparents from the kitchen window. I immediately burst into tears thinking of all the heartache and pain I’ve put them thru. These two wonderful people were still praying for me and they were determined that one day I would let God turn my whole life around. I then felt the presence of God come over me. In my heart God was telling me that my past didn’t matter that if I would just ask Him to forgive me He would do so. I then asked God to please forgive me for all the wrong things I had done and said. I’ve never had such a feeling of relief and peace in my life. God truly touched my heart that day. All those years I spent being miserable and running from God was all changed in a matter of minutes. God gave me the will power to quit using drugs without having to go to a rehab. God gave me the desire to want to go to church and to want so badly to make my family proud. After I made things right with the Lord that day everything started falling into place. It was only a few weeks till I found a job that I love. I was able to start seeing my son every other weekend and talk to him on the phone daily. I also started gaining my family’s trust back day by day. My life was so happy now but the only thing I desired to have that God hadn’t already granted me was to find a good, Christian husband that would love me and love my son like his own. I thought surely if God can bless me with all these things that I’ve always wanted then surely He would send me the man that I’m supposed to be with. I prayed and prayed night after night for God to send me someone. After a while I was starting to lose hope, but everything is in God’s timing not ours. Right when I was ready to give up on finding a husband a handsome gentleman messaged me and asked me if I’d like to go to Celebrate Recovery with him. For a man to ask me to go to a church event with them as our first time meeting I was very eager and excited to get to meet this man. We started going to Celebrate Recovery every Thursday night and seeing each other on the weekends and attending church together. I’ve never been so truthful to anyone in my life except for God. Even when I had told him about my past, it didn’t bother him at all because he said “your past is your past, you can’t do anything to change that. All that mattered now is that you don’t make the same mistakes.” This made me respect him even more.
We both had a past but now we were trying to live right and obey God. We both prayed and prayed about our relationship, hoping it was God’s will for us to be together. I knew in my heart that God had sent me this man to be my husband. We eventually got married. Then God blessed us with a miracle, a beautiful baby boy. When I say he’s a miracle I literally mean a miracle because my husband was never supposed to be able to help conceive a child. Numerous doctors had told him this and I never thought I would be able to bear another child. But our God is a Miracle worker. Through many prayers and God’s work, He granted us that blessing, a beautiful, healthy baby boy that has already been dedicated to The Lord. God has turned my whole life around. I have the life now that I’ve longed for all my years. I never in my wildest dreams thought that all this would be possible for someone like me, but God showed me different. I owe Everything to him.
So, if you’re out there struggling with addiction and you’ve given up on having a happy life, please just look at how God has turned my whole life around. If He can do this for me, trust me He can do it for Anyone. If you are saved but you’ve somehow drifted away from God, all you have to do is ask God for forgiveness and He’ll do it. If you are not saved all you have to do is believe in God. Confess your sins and ask for forgiveness. Believe He sent His son “Jesus” to die for your sins and that He rose from the dead and then ask God to save you. It’s as simple as that. It’s the best thing that could ever happen to you. I’m not saying your life will be perfect after you get saved. You’ll face many battles, but God never gives us more than what we can handle. Sometimes He will put you through certain situations to draw you closer to Him. I beg of you if you are not saved to please think about where you’re going to be spending eternity. Would you rather go to Heaven, where there’s no sorrow, no pain? Everything will be perfect. Or would you rather choose to be tossed into the lake of fire burning forever and ever with no escape? Think about your family. There’s going to be young and old, son’s and daughter’s, brother’s and sister’s, mother’s and father’s, grandparents. It says in the Bible that only a few will enter the gates of Heaven. I really hope you think about all these things and don’t forget it right after you read it.
