2016 October Newsletter – A Second Chance at Life: Marie’s Story

Three days. That’s all the time Marie had to find a new place to live before she faced losing her kids.

Life had been going well for about a year since Marie and her family successfully transitioned her of O.U.R. Family Home.  Then, out of the blue, her husband told her he was leaving her for another woman.

“My world was turned upside down,” she recalls. “My goals and dreams went down the drain.”

With nowhere to go and numb with depression, Marie took her son and daughter to stay with family.  But the living conditions there were deplorable – not that it mattered to her at the time.

“By then I had stopped caring about everything.  I had gone back to some old habits of using drugs and alcohol.  Nothing mattered anymore.”

Then came a wakeup call – in the form of a social worker who gave Marie three days to find somewhere else to live or else lose the children.

“I was so close to losing my babies.  I tried for two days to find another place and couldn’t.  On the third day I decided to see if we could go back to the Mission and by God’s grace, they had a room for us.”

As she slid her key into the door of her new room, Marie knew she had been given a second chance.  She decided right then she was going to make the most of it.

“I knew I wanted to go back to school.  The first time I was at the Mission, I earned my high school diploma.  Now it was time to use it.”

After some refresher work with tutors in the Mission’s Career Learning Center, Marie passed the admission test to Orange Technical College and enrolled in the Health Unit Coordinator / Monitor Technician program, where she recently graduated with a 4.0 grade-point average!

“I had never gotten an ‘A’ in my life before this.  It’s such a God thing.  He’s been with me this whole journey.”

“I’ve done things I never dreamed I could do.”

Marie now has a full-time job as a patient scheduler and plans to pursue a nursing degree.

Meanwhile, her kids – 17-year-old Lamonte and 14-year-old Chasity – have also benefited from the clean, peaceful environment of the Mission.

“Both of their grades were slipping and my daughter was having panic attacks.  My case manager helped my son get into a private school and now he’s on the honor roll, and my daughter hasn’t had any more panic attacks.  their lives are back on track, too.”

Marie sums up her second chance by paraphrasing Romans 8:28.

“All things work for good for those who love the Lord.  God took a very ugly situation and used it to bless us.

To go from where we were just a year ago to where we are now, it’s just amazing.”