Katelyn's Story
"I’ve been a member of the Dillon community for my entire life. I grew up in Lakeview with a brother and two very hardworking parents who tried their best to raise me right. But around my teenage years, I found myself going down a very self-destructive path. I was rebelling. It just wasn’t a good time.
Fast forward to 2014. I was involved in a very terrible car accident. So, with terrible accidents come severe injuries, and with severe injuries, severe pain, and a prescription for oxycodone. Once a day for 30 days, they say… or 2,556 days if you become addicted like I did. For seven years, I was caught in the grips of addiction, compromising my morals, my standards, myself. But God never left me. Despite how undeserving I was of his grace and his mercy, he saved me.
Fast forward a bit, I’m two weeks home from my second rehab attempt, and an overdose sends me to the hospital. I wake up to a nurse. She’s looking at me and says, “Well, hey there. Good news is you're not dead. You're also pregnant. Congratulations.” All I could think in that moment was, I wish I would have died. Because, you see, of all the things that addiction takes from you, I believe hope is its best deal.
Full of anger and hopelessness, I was sent to jail for the next 60 days because of my overdose. There I spent 60 whole days fighting with God and with myself, trying to justify all the reasons why I should not keep this baby. How could I care for a baby when I couldn’t care for myself? How was I going to learn to be a mother?
My mother had passed away. It’s too hard. I’m just going to mess it up. Babies are blessings, and I am so undeserving of a blessing. So back and forth I went.
It was nearing my release date, and I remembered something my mother had told me a long time ago. It was,
“If you ever find yourself not knowing what to do, just do the next right thing and you wait on God’s direction.”
That’s what I did. Man, I tell you, once I made that decision, doors just opened in the form of Mr. Ronnie. I had never met this man before. I’m coming home from jail, and he meets with me. He just looks at me and says,
“I just want to know if you will let me help you. That’s all I want. And if you’ll just fight just a little bit for yourself and for your son, I will fight with you.”
Man, did he fight. It’s been one of the best years of my life. He has done so much for my son and me. But I believe one of the most impactful things that he did for me was introduce me to the TPC here in Dillon.
I had never heard of it before. I’m still amazed at just how gracious and how much love I was given, paying no mind to the circumstances that had led me to their doors. I was prayed for. I was prayed over. I was prayed with. Through their courses, I gained a sense of confidence. As I was trying to transition into motherhood, as well as fix my life, they really helped me gain that confidence.
The TPC has a point system: Earn While You Learn. You can take those courses and earn points that you can use to buy items for your baby. And since I didn’t have a job, that really was such a way for me to gain some self-esteem and self-confidence, because, as a mother, you want to know that you can provide for your child.
And the TPC just gave me so much hope that I could do this, that I could be a mom. I have been a mama for the past year now. My son is not only healthy and happy, he’s thriving! And I just celebrated 20 months of sobriety and recovery.
I honestly just don’t know what I would have done without The TPC or without God’s relentless love for me.
