October 23, 2015 Show with Jenny Reese Clark on “A Meth Lab Operator & Drug Felon’s Journey to Christ”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 23rd day of October 2015 and I'm very excited to have for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron, Jenny Reese Clark, who is a living testimony of what true faith in Jesus Christ can bring.

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As a multiple felon of various drug charges, including unlawful manufacturing of methamphetamines,

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Jenny is no stranger to breaking the rules or suffering their consequences and we're going to be hearing today about her journey to the cross of Jesus Christ and also to her subsequent marriage to her current husband who is an army chaplain at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.

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But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to the Iron Sharpens Iron program,

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Jenny Reese Clark. Hi Chris, how are you? I'm doing great, Jenny, and it's great to have you on the program with me, especially as many of my listeners know,

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I am somebody who was rescued by Christ from addiction, having been an alcoholic or a drunkard, which is probably a better way of phrasing it, in my early 20s and then spending 18 years in sobriety as a born -again believer, but then unfortunately and tragically lapsing back into that for a number of years and a very serious level of addiction that probably surpassed anything

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I experienced in my early 20s and teens. And so I have a heart for people who are spreading the word and warning of the dangers of addiction and its consequences.

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And well, first of all, Jenny, let our listeners know something about your upbringing, where you were born and raised, and what kind of faith background, if any, that you were raised in.

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Well, thank you for having me on the show, I appreciate it. And yes, I was born in Van Nuys, California, lived in Northridge, my very first church was

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John MacArthur's Church. Amen. So I was exposed to truth very early on, a good sound doctrine early on in my life, and had a family that was very loving and very kind and very nurturing, nurtured a faith, nurtured a healthy lifestyle as far as my upbringing, being fully supportive emotionally and mentally and physically, and they were just there for us.

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And we didn't stay in California long. My father actually moved us to Montgomery, Alabama, and he had actually met my mom when he was actually stationed from Maxwell Air Force Base.

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So we kind of came back to where her family was and that's where we were raised. So I was raised in the South, raised in church, of course, definitely dedicated to biblical study.

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I mean, I remember on Saturdays having Bible studies and people over at the house.

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It was just a very wonderful experience growing up. It's everything that every kid would ever want in life, you know, a fully supportive family, healthy into sports, good attitudes.

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We kind of grew together as a family, so it was wonderful. So obviously people are question marks floating over their head, then what the heck happened?

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Absolutely. And that is a question I get so often, you know, as a matter of fact, in my later life, people would look back and say, they would kind of see the family

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I came from and go, now where did this happen? How in the world did this transpire?

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And really what it was, in 1999, I was ejected from a car through a car door in a motor vehicle accident, which was very severe.

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I hit one car, had eight people in it. I ended up breaking my pelvis and calf, fracturing it in five places.

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I broke L5 vertebrae in my back, my tailbone. I lost five and a half pounds of blood through my femoral artery.

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I'm a blood to death on the ground, on the interstate. They ended up taking me to a local hospital, of course, but that local hospital was transporting me to Birmingham, where the doctor's skill level was a little more advanced.

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I actually became a case study at UAB in Birmingham and was fortunately placed with a trauma doctor that was well -renowned in the area of pelvic trauma.

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And he invented a custom external fixator for the pelvis and put it in me. And I healed abnormally fast from that.

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But it was one of those types of injuries, but it wasn't, here's a ball of pain pills, you may need them.

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It is, inject her every 15 minutes with morphine prolate so that she can, her blood pressure doesn't skyrocket through the roof.

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It was one of those types of things, so it really wasn't an optional, optional thing. It was for general.

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I mean, I wouldn't be able to sleep without pain meds and just, and I would sleep for very small time periods.

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And so I actually recovered very, very fast from that, having been an athlete all through out my younger years.

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And it was very beneficial in terms of how fast

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I recovered and was able to kind of get back on my feet and get going again. But, you know, it kind of did something to my mind and my heart when

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I went to go do the things that I was accustomed to doing prior to this accident. And then all of a sudden, my body not really responding the same way it did before.

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It kind of stirred up a little bit of rebellion there. So did this, before you became an actual operator of a meth lab, were you actually a drug addict?

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I was. You know, I didn't just wake up again. I wanted to manufacture methamphetamines.

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It was kind of a long road to where it came about. After this car accident and everything that kind of happened in my life, like I said,

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I kind of rebelled in spirit. And it wasn't that I, you know, didn't believe

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God existed or anything like that, because of course I was brought up and I was found, I was found that Jesus Christ was the

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Son of God and He was my Savior and He is the only way. And I knew that was my head.

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I was just kind of upset that He chose this for my life. And so I kind of rebelled in spirit, not even really aware that I was kind of rebelling.

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But what happened is, you know, I didn't then turn to Him and ask

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Him for direction and guidance from that moment forward. I kind of just wanted to do my own thing. I was trying to balance and thinking that, you know, my pride was basically blinding me.

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And I just kind of, you know, I want a family. So I went out and got a family. Unfortunately, carrying children on a pelvis and a frame, which is mine, did a lot of damage.

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And I ended up getting hooked on prescription painkillers. And that kind of what started my drug use, my drug dependency, all stems from this traumatic injury that I suffered in 1999.

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You were even in a wheelchair for a little while, right? Yes, I was. I was in a wheelchair for about two and a half months.

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While I had the external foot failure, you could not bear weight on that left side. So I had a walker and a wheelchair.

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And like I said, but I healed abnormally fast. Instead of having to have a full body cast, which is very typical for the type of injury that I sustained, this doctor kind of, you know, used the halos that are on people's heads when they break their neck to kind of bolt the screws into their actual spine.

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They did the same thing, but they did it to my pelvis and my sacrum. And they just kind of, they put two five inch long pieces of strap metal and four three inch long screws, bolting it together and then turn around and screwed four more rods that would go, that would screw actually into the sacrum and then they would be exposed outside of the body.

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And then in between those was another rod kind of were all screwed to each other so that it wouldn't frame, it wouldn't, my frame would move, but it would not actually move that, move the bone itself.

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And what that does is it allows your muscles not to atrophy like they would if you were, you know, unable to move for six solid months while your bones would heal.

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You know, because once you're not moving your muscles, now you've got two things that you have to heal, not just your bones. Now your muscles have to get back to where they're strong and everything to be able to carry it.

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So I was very fortunate that I was placed there by given gift at the time.

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And, you know, like I said, when I, when I have kids, when I bore kids on top of that frame that was kind of freshly broken, you know, it just continued to push, put stress on those bones that weren't, you know, completely healed.

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And I ended up causing more stress fractures and everything. And there increased my narcotic analgesic intake.

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And was this a previous husband to your current husband? Who's the army chaplain?

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Yes, yes, of course. I was actually when I was 17 years old, I had, it was 1236 on a

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Sunday afternoon, and I was leaving church and I was headed to my boyfriend's house at the time.

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I graduated high school a little bit early. And I had met this guy along the way.

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And I was actually headed to his house after church to spend the afternoon with him. And I was looking for makeup while I was driving and my vanity then caused this accident.

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I lost control of the steering wheel on the road. I wasn't paying attention overcorrected when

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I did, you know, jerk the wheel too hard. And I went right down the median came up the opposite side of oncoming traffic and hit somebody's head off.

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So it was actually I was on the way to this boyfriend's house at the time. And that's who

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I chose to marry. Like I said, I became rebellious. And it wasn't okay, Lord, who is the suitor that you have in mind for me?

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Who is my helpmate that you have brought up for me? It was Oh, your work. He loves me.

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He kind of take care of me. Because during this car accident, he did stick around and he was very nurturing and very kind of like that Florence Nightingale effect of advice person instead of the soldier, you know, falling in love with the nurse that takes care of them, you know, it was kind of,

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I kind of fell in love with this guy. He was very genuine and nurturing at the time. And, and so, you know, like I said,

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I didn't consult a good Lord on those decisions. It was all in his plans, all in his plans.

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Yes. Yes. Did he profess any faith? Yes, actually, he did, of course, you know, in my mind,

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I was still very arrogant and prideful. But there were certain things I didn't want to go against. And one of those things in my upbringing was, you know, you do not marry, you know, you're not, you're not unequally yoked.

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You don't get, you don't get hitched to someone who doesn't have the core faith values as you.

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And he did profess to be a Christian. And we did, we actually, when we got married, you know, we prayed together every single night.

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Things started to go very well in our marriage during the first year. So we had actually, by the time we ended up marrying, we'd already been dating for a couple of years.

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And so, you know, we thought, we've got this together. I ended up getting pregnant, like four or five months after we got married.

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So it was very early on, we didn't really have that marital, you know, strength there.

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And, you know, we kind of got, we kind of got complacent, kind of like, well, we're good where we are, you know, and our prayer life just kind of dwindled.

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We stopped thanking the Lord for where our blessing came. And so, you know, anytime you leave

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God out, you're going to be in trouble. That's exactly what happened to us, you know, it allowed for temptation on both paths, perhaps, you know, to come in if you're not being strengthened, and you're not, you don't have your, you know,

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Ephesians six, your armor on, you know, you're going to get attacked, and you're going to fall victim to whatever evil, you're just not strong.

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And we weren't, we weren't. And like I said, I was in the midst of my rebellion. Yeah. Well, your first pastor,

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John MacArthur is one of my modern day heroes, actually. I've actually had him on this program.

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And Phil Johnson, who is his executive director has been on many times. He is well known for a book called

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The Gospel According to Jesus, where he basically set out to prove biblically that just because you profess to be a

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Christian, that does not mean that there's an inward reality of truly being born again. And the dangers of those who teach that coming to salvation in Christ is just a matter of repeating a prayer or something.

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Do you think that at this time in your life, you were a genuine born again Christian? Or is it just because, like many in the

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Bible Belt, just like just like many in the Northeast and other parts of the

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United States who are Roman Catholic or members of mainline denominations, they think that they're

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Christians because they were brought up in those denominations. And in the Bible Belt, you have people who are just raised generations, you know, from generations of Baptists or Pentecostals or what have you.

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And they think that they're Christians, but it's really just a cultural thing. What do you think it was with your situation?

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I should have known that you would bring that topic up. I should have known you were going to ask a repeated question, which is commendable, bravo.

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I have had this conversation with my pastoral body, which at one of these

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Aptos in Montgomery, Alabama, which has got about 10 on their body. And you know, you have different things in the

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New Testament that are the marks of a true Christian, the perseverance and the truth that are manifested in one's life.

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And, you know, and I tell them, you know, I was raised in the church. And it seems like when someone has asked me the question, when was it that you became a

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Christian? You know, I cannot pinpoint the moment that it occurred for me.

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Because I was raised with the truth, the real truth, inerrant truth.

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There was never a time that I felt like I didn't know Jesus Christ. There was never a time that I didn't feel like he was alive and well and doing what he, you know, saving people.

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And, you know, it's one of those things that, you know, even in the midst of my drug use,

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I recently got married, and there was not very many things that survived the chaotic life that I lived.

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However, there were some books that were stored in my old Bible from during those times in the midst of my drug use.

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And you can actually look back in the midst of my drug use and see Bible studies that I did and prayers that I wrote throughout the

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Bible. And, you know, it's just hard for me to believe that I wasn't a believer then.

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However, I do know there's a marked difference from what happened to me in the last, you know, five to eight years of my life.

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And that's when you go into, you know, is it a personal relationship? You know, are you truly trusting on the

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Lord? Are you truly believing in the truths that are written in Scripture?

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And are you leaning on the promises of this faith? You know, so I should have known you were going to ask that question.

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I should have known it. I should have just prepared to have this great answer for that question.

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But that is a very challenging, very challenging question, especially for me, because like I said, I have had the best sit down with me and say, well, now

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Ginny. Well, now you've brought us to the place where you are addicted to prescription pain medication.

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When did it go beyond that? And what was your drugs of choice, or what were your drugs of choice after that?

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Okay, well, you know, I ended up getting hooked on these narcotic analgesics. And I realized very quickly that my body began to physically change and be altered.

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Its chemistry became dependent upon this opium to release, you know, my natural pain relievers in my brain in order to combat my pain.

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And when I didn't have these pills in order to release it, I didn't produce any, which means

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I felt horrible. And I realized very quickly that my body is just addicted to this.

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I need this. I have to have this to wake up and do all the things that I need to do in life. But they began to scare me, because what happened is

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I said, well, I'm not going to be addicted by anything. And I kind of put it down, and I didn't do so well.

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You know, it seemed like I couldn't put it down. And I would try real hard. I'd go a couple of days, and the pain was just unbearable.

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The sickness was intolerable. And I just, I would pick it back up. And I realized that this was absolutely not good.

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This is not good for me. I need to fix this. And so I began to look at, you know, medical journals and trying to find things that could help me with this.

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Instead of just humbling myself, the fog played a huge role in the downfall, the downward spiral in my life.

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Instead of just going to my family and saying, hey, you know, I don't know what happened, but somehow I'm addicted. Instead of doing that,

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I kept thinking, I've got this. And that's kind of the pattern that you would see in my life. Because when I got married, there it was.

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I've got this. I don't really need the Lord to, you know, thanks, Lord, appreciate the marriage. You know, thanks,

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Lord, appreciate this. It was kind of, I want, and thanks for giving it to me. And then it got to be just,

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I want, sort of, thanks for giving it to me. And then it just kind of dwindled to nothing. And that's what was kind of happening here.

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Again, my pride was just, you know, killing me. I didn't go to my family. And I began to read about different types of drugs and what different types of drugs could offer you.

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And whether they were street drugs, street narcotics, street drugs, or whether prescription narcotics.

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And the different benefits to both and what they did to the body and what they did. And so I began to take,

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I began to look at these street narcotics that had noning agents in them. And they did not, but they did not have physical addictions around such as cocaine and methamphetamines.

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Neither, both of those have noning agents in them that will actually none if you have pain. But your body does, your chemistry doesn't change to adapt to those two particular narcotics, two particular drugs.

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But they're opium does. And I thought, well, you know, I'm going to be a smart addict here. If there was ever anything ever,

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I was going to implement a few that had noning agents in them and decrease my opium intake so that I could slowly wean myself off because stopping the drugs cold turkey was not working for me.

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I wasn't able to do that. I wasn't able to tolerate these drugs. So that's what I did.

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What ended up happening is now I'm just addicted to both street narcotics and prescription narcotics.

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And, you know, I don't know what I was thinking. I just, you know, brilliantly stupid type thing.

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And the Lord just kind of said, okay, we're going to let you go down this road because we have a lesson for you to learn in this.

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And boy, I learned a mighty hard one. Yeah. Well, how does a person who is raised in a all

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American wholesome Christian home, who first develops an addiction to prescription drugs, then begin to venture out and buy drugs on the street?

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How would you even know where to go? Well, I should have known you asked me that too.

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You know, I share my testimony quite often.

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And there are certain details that sometimes I just kind of skim over. Well, the story is just so dynamic that there's just so many, you know, parts to it.

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So sometimes I do that. But sometimes I do that out of respect for certain people that have done things in my life.

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I will tell you this, because, you know, being a Christian is about being bold. And, you know, it wasn't just me.

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You know, my husband had his struggles. Because I've got this personality that's kind of loud and bold.

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And, you know, I think my drug use kind of just began to influence him.

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You know, he wasn't raised in the same type of family that I was. He didn't have the mother and the father that took him to church every

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Sunday and Sunday night and Wednesday. As a matter of fact, his father died when he was five years old.

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So he was raised by a single parent. There was other brothers and sisters in the house.

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And, you know, she has a disability. And so, you know, we came from two totally different worlds to begin with.

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He knew much more as far as what addiction was, the people who used drugs, where you could find them.

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And, you know, like I said, I was aware of them, but not to that degree.

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Once I began to use narcotic analgesics and abuse them, one of the things that kind of happened with me is once you begin to run out early, because that's natural, that's typical for an addict, you're going to start abusing your medication.

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You're going to run out sooner than later. And you've got to come up with ways to get more. Some people doctor hop.

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Some people take prescriptions. Some people go and buy them off the streets.

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A lot of that starts with conversing with people, talking with people, mentioning your issue, mentioning your problem. They say birds of a feather flock together.

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If you're in a doctor's office and you notice that certain people are there and they're always there when you're there.

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And they're also there for painkillers. Sometimes you swap numbers and you end up meeting people.

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One thing leads to another and you find yourself around a group of people that don't necessarily have your best interest at heart, really don't have their own best interest at heart, because now you're swapping pills and you're getting introduced to people that you otherwise wouldn't.

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Hey, this is so and so. He gets his prescription on the 20th. Hey, this is so and so.

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He gets his on the 25th. So if you run out before, you know, you can call him. And he does, you know, he takes pills, but he also sells this, you know, a lot of drug addicts are entrepreneurs.

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I mean, a drug, you know, distributors, distribution, sellers, whatever.

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They're entrepreneurs. They're out to make the money. They're not really out for your best interest. And so one thing led to another in the course of my addiction to prescription painkillers.

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I met a group of people, you know, I met people that, you know, were addicted and abused them. And then, of course, through them,

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I met them more. And, you know, it was just, it was kind of a combination of things, but I ended up knowing them.

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You know, I'm a networker. I like to meet people. I like to learn from people. So I speak up, speak out and talk to people.

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And, you know, that kind of played a, you know, good and bad. Well, this was one of those times that that good thing kind of propelled my sinful life very fast forward, very quickly.

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How was your husband, your first husband at this time? How was he reacting to this? You know, there was a lot of issues.

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You know, like I said, he wasn't perfect. He did some of his own things. But he was, since he was raised and he did see it,

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I think what happened with him is he began to notice that this was kind of out of control. And he began to try to control the circumstance through many different measures, some healthy, some very unhealthy.

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And so then I was exposed to a very unhealthy controlling environment.

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And it was just basically because I think that, you know, he lacked that father that kind of would say that, you know, would show him how to lead.

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You know, he was desperate to find a way to try to save this, his marriage and save this circumstance. And, you know, it just wasn't happening.

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That guidance, that instruction was not there for him. And so he was kind of, it was, it was bad.

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We ended up getting divorced in 2005. But he actually still lived at home with me during that time.

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If that doesn't sound dysfunctional, it is. It's exactly dysfunctional. But of course, everything was, you've got, you know, some, you know, addiction going on in the household, there's drugs, you know, there.

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Nothing is going to be good when you add that to the picture of any equation.

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It's never going to be, it's never going to be great. So, like I said, he was kind of struggling.

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And then by the time 2007, we realized that there, you know, we're not going to be able to reconcile.

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We're not going to be able to pull this back together. We've seen too much. We've been through too much. There's been a lot of pain.

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There's been a lot of things said. There's been a lot of things done. And, you know, like I said, it's a really dark time, time period in my life, because we had two sons together, and neither one of us believed in divorce.

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When we got married, you know, we both professed Christianity, and this was, none of this looked like a

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Christian household. None of this was an active Christian household, you know, so. Yeah, we're going to pick up right where you left off after we return from station break.

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If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Jenny, our email address is

28:07

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

28:15

Please include at least your first name, the city and state where you live, and the country where you live if you reside outside of the

28:23

United States. And please at least give your first name, but we do understand if this is regarding a personal or private matter that you're asking about, perhaps regarding your own addictions or the addictions of your children.

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You may remain anonymous if it makes you feel more comfortable. That email address again is

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

28:48

Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with Jenny and her story.

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32:26

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32:34

Again, 717 -254 -6433 to learn more about the

32:40

Thriving Difference. Welcome back.

33:04

This is Chris Arnzen, if you've just tuned us in. Our guest today is Ginny Reese -Clark.

33:10

She is the author of Field of Influences, which is a novel we're going to be having her explain in a little while.

33:18

But she is also someone who is a living testimony of what true faith in Jesus Christ can bring as a multilingual.

33:26

As a multiple felon of various drug charges, including unlawful manufacturing of methamphetamines,

33:34

Ginny is no stranger to breaking the rules or suffering their consequences, and we have been discussing for the last half hour her testimony.

33:41

And we are going to continue doing so for the next 90 minutes, with also some time to talk about her book, and also some time to respond to some of our listener questions.

33:54

We already have some waiting for us, but I will start reading those in a little bit. I just want to get more background on Ginny's journey to the cross of Christ before we get to those questions.

34:09

So you have reached the point in your journey where you and your husband, your first husband, were divorced but still living together, and you are someone who has gone up the level in addiction from prescription drugs to buying drugs in the street.

34:33

So I'm assuming, was this predominantly still prescription drugs you were buying on the street, or was it something else?

34:41

Well it definitely started as prescription drugs, because at that time, like I said, I was very prideful and arrogant, and I wanted to be a healthy drug addict, right?

34:49

And the FDA approved their narcotics that they prescribed, so I didn't want these toxic things, these toxicities that came in street drugs, in my body.

35:00

You see how arrogant that is? So of course I sucked into FDA prescription medications that you could still illegally buy on the street from people who either had prescriptions or it was so -and -so's prescription or whatever.

35:15

But of course, you know, in the times that you begin to use drugs and you're under the influence, your boundaries, the things that you said you would never ever do, you start to cross those.

35:27

And like I said, I began to do some research and found that some of these things could still ease my pain, my physical pain that I was having, these chronic pain problems that I was having, and began to use those too.

35:42

So one thing led to another, and before you know it, I was kind of the middle man, kind of making transactions.

35:51

It's very expensive. Being a drug addict is not cheap, especially if you're buying FDA drugs on the street.

35:59

And so one way that I found to make money, because I really didn't want my husband to know to the degree that I was addicted.

36:07

And so I couldn't say, hey, I need a few extra hundred bucks this weekend.

36:12

No, I can't tell you what that's for. So it was one of those things where in order to feed my habit,

36:18

I began to kind of be the middle man, sell for this person, offer up the transaction here, make a little profit off of it, take that profit, turn around, invest it back in, build, or buy larger quantities at one time and get a discount, that type of thing.

36:34

Somehow I became this dealer back and forth in order to supply for my habit. So it wasn't that I set out to make money or doing this.

36:43

I basically just kind of did that to feed my habit. And during the course of doing those kinds of things, like I said, you are introduced to people that you would otherwise never have met.

36:54

And I ended up, like I said, in 2007, we realized that there were just too many things that happened in our marriage to kind of bring it back together.

37:04

That's how we felt at the time. And we just kind of left it be. And he moved out in 2007, and by 2008,

37:14

I had my very first felony drug possession charges. How did that occur? Well, you know, because he had moved out, we were doing the whole,

37:26

I would watch the kids one day, he'd watch the kids one day, I'd watch the kids one day, he'd watch the kids one day. And for a little while there, he kind of did his own thing a little more often, and then

37:38

I would have him for a little more. And then I guess I ended up bringing someone in my home that I shouldn't have, and they kind of took from me and stole from me.

37:52

And after kind of experiencing a few of these things and asking my husband to kind of,

38:00

Hey, I need you to kind of help me out, fix the door, fix this, fix that. And there was some issues there, because obviously those were big warning signs for him.

38:09

You know, kind of danger, danger, what's going on here, what kind of people are you having around, that you're now getting broken into, and these things are, you know, worrying you.

38:18

Now that those were kind of happening and brought back into my life,

38:26

I ended up saying, Okay, you know what, you can get the kids,

38:34

I'm going to kind of take some time away and just think about all the things that are going on, because if you're not going to help me.

38:40

And in that way, you know, I kind of worked in my thinking. I ended up, you know, taking the kids to him, and I think for a couple of weeks,

38:49

I mean, I don't even remember exactly what all transpired in those two or three weeks, but it was like one of those time periods where I actually just kind of stripped my hands, and it was like, you know,

38:58

I don't even care. I've tried really hard to get off this. It's ruined my life. My dependencies ruined my life, and I'm just going to kind of let it go.

39:05

And whatever happens, happens, and guess what? It happened. It happened. I was riding in a car with somebody.

39:11

I had drugs on me. Also, I also had a concealed weapon, because by that time, like I said, someone had already broken into the home before.

39:20

I felt the need to protect myself, so I got a gun. I look back, and I'm listening to myself tell you what happened during that time period of my life, and I'm just, you know, it just turns my gut.

39:33

It turns my gut, because it's a lifestyle that I try to forget, but I don't go into much detail about, because, you know, it's just, it's really dark.

39:43

You know, it's just dark. It's things that I would not ever really want people to kind of go, oh,

39:49

Jenny, oh, yeah, she's that girl that did, you know? Right, I understand. Yeah, and I know that, unfortunately, there are many, many, many cases of people glamorizing their sinful lifestyle before conversion, and, you know, purposely titillating the imaginations of individuals, and obviously, we have an important story to tell through your journey from addiction and also being a drug felon to a strong relationship with Jesus Christ and eventually even marrying a chaplain that we want to be of help to people, but I understand what you're saying, and we try to avoid as much as we can, but without sanitizing also too much of what the story is of your life.

40:45

And, yeah, it is interesting. Obviously, we are born sinners, and we have a sinful nature even when we're sober, so taking drugs or being drunk is only going to make your decisions worse.

41:07

You're going to be less likely to resist sin, and it's going to escalate and all that kind of thing.

41:12

Now, this arrest, this initial arrest, was this before you actually started manufacturing methamphetamines?

41:19

It was. It was before I began to manufacture methamphetamines. This was the first real trouble that I had ever gotten into as far as legal trouble, and I did have a possession of cocaine and a possession of ecstasy and a concealed weapons charge.

41:33

And so I ended up getting incarcerated, and I remember praying just before, because, like I said,

41:39

I knew where the answers would come from. I didn't know how to surrender to him, like follow my sword and allow him to control my life.

41:46

I still had this little control, like I still had this clutch, like this cling. I just needed this little bit for myself.

41:52

And I remember praying to him, because I had let go, and I had my hands wide open in full rebellion.

41:59

And even in the midst of that full rebellion, I knew that I was doing wrong. And so I asked the

42:04

Lord, help me. You know, stop me. I cannot stop myself. Stop me. Help me, you know, find, you know, because I was feeling the guilt and I was feeling the shame and I was feeling disgusted at the decisions

42:17

I was making in my life. Obviously the fear inside of me was growing. I had to go get a gun. I mean, that's how fearful

42:22

I was of the things of the world that I was surrounding myself in. And I remember praying, and then

42:28

I ended up getting arrested like three days later with these charges. And I cried out in jail, and I was like,

42:33

Lord, this is not the kind of help I thought. This is not what I wanted from you. And so it turned out to be one of the very best things that the

42:42

Lord ever did for me, because the problem with me withdrawing on the street was not that I didn't want to get sober.

42:47

I didn't want to be addicted to drugs. I hated them. I just had to have them to kind of feel normal after a while.

42:53

And then after I lost everything from abusing them and using them and buying and trading and selling for them,

43:01

I'd lost everything, and then I just used them to cover up the pain because it was just so intense and so great. And so, you know,

43:07

I had these two things that were just kind of nagging at me that hindered me from being able to get off of them by myself on the street.

43:13

And the Lord put me in jail and said, okay, you can't get off of them, and you've had to get off of them more than once, and I'm just going to leave you here, and you're going to get off of them.

43:22

And so I went through full -fledged withdrawal in Montgomery County Jail, and it was horrible because the guards usually, you know, they've seen it so much.

43:33

They're always picking people off the streets. You know, you've got prostitutes, and you've got thieves, and you've got this, and most of them are under the influence when they're doing all these things.

43:41

And so they become very callous to the fact that people are going through withdrawals and people are throwing up and people are, you know, complaining, and it's just typical.

43:50

You know, it just happens every single day, all day long. And so I was going through these things, and I was crying out, help me, and they were like, oh, we'll be there in a minute, and they would just never come.

43:59

And I went through these horrible withdrawals and this incarceration for a couple -month time period until they brought me in front of the judge to where I could be sentenced.

44:10

And I was very, you know, but a grace to God. He brought me in. He said, the judge said, you know, you were not raised like this.

44:18

You do not come from this type of background. You're educated. So, you know, maybe it's just a fluke, and we're going to, let's try to, we're going to give you two years

44:26

DOC, one year county. Pamela, this is Linda Bowne, all the way to probation. We're going to give you some outpatient rehabilitation classes, and good luck, and, you know, do good.

44:36

And, you know, if you do well for a whole year, I'll let you off probation. And so I felt like, you know, okay,

44:43

I was finally clean for the first time in some years because, you know, I had been off of opiates for almost 90 days, and while that is not long enough to start seeing clearly again, the fog does begin to lift some, and I began to get excited about the fact that I was finally sober again, and this was the first time

45:02

I had fought so hard to get off of opiates that I was ever off of opiates, and I will say this. I went back out.

45:07

You know, I ended up going to my brother's house. He generously allowed me to stay in his rental home while I was trying to get back on my feet, and I did well for about six months.

45:19

On my six -month tox screen, though, I tested positive, and what happened is after about four months, five months,

45:28

I became very lonely, and because I was sober, I was beginning to feel the weight of my consequences that I don't have my kids, and my marriage just fell apart, and I have no career, and I have a disability, and I have these things, and basically,

45:42

I felt so far behind the line, and, you know, you ruin relationships along the way, and I couldn't really call up my good friends growing up.

45:52

You know, I was friends with all three church members. They don't really want to hang out with somebody who just got drug possession charges.

45:58

That's really not somewhere they want to put themselves, and, I mean, goodness, that's a wise thing, not an unwise thing, but what happened is is

46:07

I got very lonely, and the support there, you know, was just little because there again,

46:15

I didn't really want to call up my family and say, hey, I'm having another problem. I'd already kind of shamed the household.

46:22

They were fortunate to still love me through this. You know, this was my first real in trouble type with the law, so they were okay to, you know, talk to me and everything, but, you know, that's not who they are.

46:36

That's not how they brought me up. That's not how they taught me, and I was so rebellious against all that.

46:42

It was kind of like, they're like, who are you? You know, who is this person? And so during the course of that time that I was from four to six months when

46:52

I finally ended up going back to jail, I met someone who actually came up during Hurricane Katrina for the first time to Montgomery, and he was a meth manufacturer, and when

47:03

Katrina hit, you know, everybody kind of spread out across the nation, and him and some of his people kind of settled in Montgomery, and when things started being rebuilt, he apparently went back home to New Orleans, but during this time, there was a large drug bust, and very few of...

47:24

There was actually a large, large drug bust that about 20 meth manufacturers at the time were, you know, busted in on, and only about four of them got away.

47:36

Two of those four ended up getting caught, and there was two that didn't get caught out of this scenario, and I just so happened, because I was looking for drugs and I couldn't find anything, somebody said, well, you know,

47:49

I know so -and -so, and they've got, and so I ended up walking into a house one day to go and get some drugs, not the prescription painkillers, because I was so relieved that I wasn't back on those.

48:04

I never did get back on prescription painkillers, I will say, because to me, those were the biggest beasts of them all.

48:11

Those were the ones that really had chains on me, so if you know someone who had a heroin addiction or a painkiller addiction, to me, out of all the ones

48:19

I've been addicted to, that is still, you know, and I never went back to that, but I was still having pain in my butt and my brain and my body still weren't producing it correctly, so I went out and got some of these other things, and I didn't have the pain in my soul,

48:32

I wanted to cover it up, and so these street drugs work well for that, and so like I said, I ended up getting introduced to a meth manufacturer that was actually out of, they scanned originally from New Orleans and Biloxi and then made their way to Montgomery, and I just,

48:47

I got connected with the wrong people. Walked in a house, and they actually, you know, made me, you know, show that I wasn't wearing a wire, and I thought that was very strange, because even though I've been different places, and I've had people, you know, question, you know, who are you with, where did you come from, who did you call from, where did you, because in the criminal world, the deeper you get into it, the more fearful they are of the police, because there's more to lose.

49:17

You know, and so I walked into this house, and I thought, wow, I'm coming into somewhere, and when, once I had convinced them that I was not indeed the police, they told me that I'd have to wait just a little while, because the meth was not done drying, and I thought, oh my gosh, they're manufacturing here, you know, these are the people who make it, and you know,

49:39

I don't know, like I said, you know, at that time, my thought, life was so bad, it's always about yourself and what you can gain, and I was thinking, hey, you know,

49:52

I could pick up this, and I wouldn't have to worry about getting out here and searching for drugs, searching for this, searching for that, putting myself around those people, having to ride with them, you know, because,

50:03

I mean, I didn't really like those people, but I needed what they had to satisfy what was going on in me, and so,

50:12

I mean, in the midst of this horrible ugliness, I was thinking, you know, hey, they've got a talent, they've got a trick of the trade that not a whole lot of people have, you know, and I ended up becoming friends with so -and -so and becoming friends with so -and -so, you know.

50:28

That's all she wrote. I ended up learning how to manufacture methamphetamines.

50:34

And just going back briefly to your Christian family, I know that you were kind of being secretive to a degree about the depth of your addiction and your lifestyle, but how much did they actually know?

50:51

Well, you know, I mean, the judge are to speak for themselves. You know, I couldn't deny the fact that I had cocaine on me.

50:57

I could not deny the fact that I had ecstasy on me. And they already knew that my addiction to pain pills basically ended my marriage, you know, the sin that I allowed to continue in my life.

51:14

And they knew these things, you know, that they... I'll never forget one of the things that my mom...

51:20

And actually, if you ever watch my testimony, I was speaking when I bring those PowerPoints in, you know those little pieces of paper that have, like, busted and mugshots, and, you know, you have all these pictures of people that have their, you know, their mugshot, basically, and you can pay a dollar a week, and you can get this thing, and you can see everybody in your city who's been busted for something.

51:39

And I'll never forget, because I was a front -page person, and my brother ran across that, and he, you know, actually was like, oh, you know, he had to make sure that my mom didn't know.

51:50

My mom was an assistant principal at a high school, and, you know, like I said, we just didn't come from this type of thing.

51:55

I mean, I had really... You know, you can hide, but so much. And then the evidence in your life, the question, were you a

52:05

Christian? Was fruit being manifested in your life? Well, actually, sin was being manifested, so there was a lot of sin there, and it wasn't something that I could avoid their knowledge on, but it wasn't something that I would openly still admit to and discuss with them.

52:21

I avoided it. The conversation I would just admit, generally, hey, I'm a sinner. I'm sinning, yeah, you know, but never get into depth.

52:29

I don't want you to feel uncomfortable badmouthing your family in any way, but do you think that they were too afraid to know the deeper truth of what was happening and didn't really push to investigate?

52:44

Do you think that they were too soft on you? I mean... No, I was totally avoiding them.

52:51

I was very good at avoiding them. I kind of removed myself from them.

52:56

It wasn't that they necessarily removed theirself from me, because obviously my brother was the one who opened up his house for me to come live there.

53:07

And in the midst of the things that were going on with me and my husband, I remember going to my parents for a couple of weeks.

53:13

So it wasn't that they weren't supportive or they wouldn't be willing to talk about it. It was just one of those things that I didn't want to talk about, so I didn't bring up and I didn't go around them to do that.

53:25

I truly believe that if I would have opened my mouth and said, hey, I need some real help, like counseling or whatever,

53:32

I cannot do it by myself, that I could do this. I could do this.

53:38

I can do this, and I'm sorry. I was a very good talker, you know, a silver tongue. I can make you believe what you want to hear, type thing, which ended up playing a big part in my life in the future when there was a time period when no one spoke to me for a few years, because I did do so much talking and so much reassuring that I know...

54:01

Because I was very straight. I knew what I was doing was wrong when I was doing it.

54:08

And I knew my parents... You know, it was one of those things. I really believe that if I would have opened my mouth and humbled myself then,

54:18

God, I could have gotten help and avoided a lot of pain in my life, but I didn't. Now, as far as the meth lab that you started operating, where did you do this?

54:29

This was in my... Okay, in my sister's... Like I said, I got those charges in 2008. I did well on the probation.

54:35

Up until six months, I got a dirty ring, which is a failed talk screen, and he pulled my probation and said, you know what?

54:42

We're going to go ahead and give you these two years, but what we're going to do is we're going to send you to a life tech transitional center to go through this state program, which is about eight months in substitution for your

54:55

DOC. And so I went to this program that offered every bit of recovery method that the world could offer.

55:06

I mean positive self -talk, you know, play the tape forward in your mind, and, you know, things that are healthy for you, things that aren't healthy for you, just myriads of ideas that they believe would be enough to help me be a productive member of society and stay sober, and you went through different phases of this program, and so the intensity level was different.

55:31

They would swap out counselors at different sections during the course of your recovery, so I was really getting a very well -rounded world view of recovery and what you need in order to stay sober and be healthy and be whole and offer society something better than what

55:49

I was. And then different churches would come in, like, of all denominations, Monday through Friday, they would bring them in, and you weren't mandated that you went to them, but like I said, you had to go to, like, an alternative program if you weren't going to them where they would give you some more stuff, some spiritual...

56:05

Here's some spiritual vitamin. You suck on this, you know? You blow on this, and it'd just kind of be start over in life, and I was actually very excited when

56:25

I left there, and because I had invited people into my brother's home before I had the dirty talk screen, my brother would no longer allow me to go there, so I really couldn't go back to that place.

56:39

I had lost the home that I owned with my husband the first time I was incarcerated because when you're incarcerated for a 2 or 3 -month time period, you know, you can't pay your bills, so I wasn't paying my bills.

56:50

I lost that home. I'd already been to my parents. My sister was kind of that person that stepped up and said, you know,

56:56

I'm going to bring her to my house this time. We're going to try to offer her a loving, caring, warm environment, and this is going to help be the thing that's going to help just seal the deal as far as her sobriety, and she's going to do well here, and so we were all excited when

57:12

I finally got out of the transitional center, and I was just stoked. I was just ready. First week

57:17

I got out, I ended up going and getting a car. The second week I got out,

57:23

I enrolled back in Auburn University in Montgomery to finish my college education.

57:28

I'd already gotten my basics. And then get peer support, so the fourth week

57:38

I got peer support, and the peer support that I got was somebody I met in jail, but she was also serious about wanting to get sober and stay that way and, you know, live life not addicted to this substance, and so we were going to do this together, and we went to a few classes together, and one thing led to another.

57:57

We went to an AA class, and no one showed up but us, and we were kind of looking like we had nothing to do, nothing productive to do, and we knew some people around the corner, and we looked so good.

58:12

We had been sober for a little while. We were both trying. We wanted to go by and encourage and say, hey, you know, we're doing good, and we didn't end up using like that second, but we ended up going back, and there started my drug use again, and they say that sin picks up right where it leaves off.

58:36

Addiction has to do with pleasure, and the heights of pleasure that you get at certain points of drug use, you're not going to go in and do something less than that pleasure because you don't have any greater pleasure, and so I kind of picked up right where it left off, but neither one of us had a lot of money.

58:56

I had just gotten out of jail. I didn't have a job yet or anything like that. I still had what I could do because now

59:03

I was a fellow, and I still had a little bit of disability, so some manual labor jobs were kind of off limits, and so, you know, she brought up the fact that she knew how to manufacture something, and there went the meth manufacturing, and she didn't do well, so we all heard, and I said, well, hold on.

59:27

Let me show you. And let's pick up right where you left off there when we return from the break. We'll be right back after these messages, so don't go away.

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01:04:07

This is Chris Arns. And if you've just tuned us in for the last hour, we have been interviewing Jenny Reese Clark, a living testimony of what true faith in Jesus Christ can bring.

01:04:16

As a multiple felon of various drug charges, including unlawful manufacturing of methamphetamines,

01:04:22

Jenny is no stranger to breaking the rules or suffering their consequences. And we have been learning of her journey to the foot of the cross and the transformation of the

01:04:33

Holy Spirit that changed her life radically for the better. And before we return to that interview,

01:04:40

I just want to announce some good news. I just got a phone call today from an astronaut. It's the first time an astronaut has ever called me.

01:04:47

I got a call today from Colonel Jeffrey Williams, who is a Christian and an astronaut.

01:04:54

In fact, he is preparing for a launch in March where he is going to be spending six months in space at a space station.

01:05:03

And he has agreed to be my guest on Iron Sharpens Iron the Monday before Thanksgiving, which is the 23rd of November from 4 to 6 p .m.

01:05:13

Eastern Time. And he is going to be discussing not only his testimony of salvation and his becoming an astronaut, but he will also be discussing his book,

01:05:26

The Work of His Hands. And it is so good to know that there are people who truly believe that God is the creator of all the universe that are in places of employment like astronauts and so forth.

01:05:42

And this interview actually means something very special to me because my father,

01:05:47

Harry, my late father, who passed away in 1998, he was on the team for Grumman Aerospace that helped design the lunar module back in the late 60s, and he worked there until the mid -70s.

01:06:05

And so I'm dedicating that program to the memory of my dad, Harry Arnzen. But I hope that you mark on your calendar

01:06:12

Monday, November 23rd for Colonel Jeffrey Williams, the astronaut and author of The Work of His Hands.

01:06:20

And now we return to our discussion with Jenny Reese Clark. We have reached the point of manufacturing methamphetamines.

01:06:30

And going back to my original question about that, where did you actually do that physically? I'm sorry, what was the question?

01:06:37

Where physically did you have the meth lab? Well, I actually had...

01:06:42

I brought everything that I was taught from the manufacturer that I learned it from.

01:06:48

It was kind of one of those things where you kind of actually have like an apprenticeship where you sit under and you learn what you want to learn.

01:06:59

Well, the manufacturer that actually taught me everything I know ended up in an explosion in Stone County, Mississippi in a propellant from the explosion that he was in and ended up having to have skin graftings and a coma for almost a month.

01:07:14

And it was terrible. So I didn't finish this process.

01:07:20

But, you know, I was very arrogant and very prideful. There's a red flag for you right there. Don't do that anymore.

01:07:27

You know? And so that should have told me that for some reason fear exists in my life but I've never really listened to it.

01:07:37

You know, fear is there for a good reason. A lot of times it's a healthy indicator that something is not right.

01:07:43

And I just, you know, I kind of... That should just tell you how bad this unbridled sin that was in my life was.

01:07:51

Because even though this big huge danger warning sign happened to you, this guy's been manufacturing for 10, 15 years and it happened to him after he's been doing it for that long, what makes you think that it's not gonna happen to you?

01:08:04

But when I had my car accident, you could have never told me at 17 that something that tragic could happen to someone like me.

01:08:11

And here I am in the same circumstance. Oh, something like that could never happen to me.

01:08:17

Now, at the time, my sister, of course, she's a teacher at school and so she was gone during the day and I would only show my face and do things for a very short period of time because I would use that...

01:08:28

Once I started using drugs again underneath her household or as far as while I was living there,

01:08:33

I wasn't bringing drugs into her home, but I was under the influence while I was there. I would limit that time that I saw her telling me that I had to go to a meeting.

01:08:42

That I had to go to wherever and what it would do is get me out of the house so that I wouldn't be on me because there again,

01:08:47

I told you, I kind of ran from accountability in my life. I didn't want people to know. I was ashamed of what

01:08:52

I was doing. I had pride in my life, but I had pride in my life that I was killing me.

01:08:58

And so I had been under the influence. I had been awake for almost a solid week at this time because methamphetamine can keep you up for those long periods of time like that.

01:09:09

And so I already wasn't using good judgment. And I don't know what

01:09:14

I was thinking. I've been asked this many times before. What possessed you to bring that meth into your sister's home to bring those chemicals into your sister's home when she had a kid?

01:09:27

What were you thinking? And the only thing I could think, honestly, is that she was so good that no one would ever think to look there.

01:09:37

And that's just how evil that whole environment is. It's just evil. So you could actually operate a meth lab in your sister's house without her knowledge of it?

01:09:45

Well, the reason why I brought up the former meth cook that taught me what

01:09:51

I knew as far as how to manufacture methamphetamine is because everything he taught me was portable.

01:09:57

Everything that he taught me was in order to do mobile labs to where you could pick up if the police or the authorities were coming into where you are.

01:10:06

In a split second, you could take your stuff and go. So everything that I had was disposable. And, you know, it was actually kind of a little more in -depth than the typical because, you know, he actually kind of taught, oh, you don't have more than three precursing chemicals.

01:10:22

That equals out to a manufacturing charge. You can't have any more than this and this milligram, so you need as far as pseudopedrine, and you have to have proper

01:10:30

ID to get that. So this is the way to do that. This is interactable with this. This is interactable with that.

01:10:37

And, you know, everything... Like I said, everything was portable. So what I brought in, the type of manufacturing that he brought to me is a setup formula to manufacture meth to instead of taking so many hours to do it, you know, if you're manufacturing ice or whatever, which is another form of methamphetamine, it's grown, and it can take anywhere from, you know, 20 -something to 30 -something days to grow.

01:11:06

Okay, well, then that's too long for an addict. That's too long for these distributors. So they began to make these other ways to kind of produce it quicker, and what happened is they just started, you know, sticking a bunch of chemicals together that would heat up the cook and make it hotter so that the time would be less that you would have from manufacturing.

01:11:25

Because a lot of times you are doing this in places that's illegal, highly explosive. You're doing it in places that, you know, you're trying to be discreet and can't stick around for six hours.

01:11:35

Six hours in a vehicle hanging out somewhere is gonna look, you know, kind of suspicious.

01:11:41

So everything I had was portable. I did the manufacturing not inside of her home but in her backyard, and the dangerous part, which is the actual, where the chemicals are heating up and you have to kind of release these gases so that it doesn't explode at a certain amount of time, all that stuff

01:12:00

I did outside. I didn't do that inside of her home. But at the last minute, there's a third process to doing it is what they call smoking off, and it's where, you know, you bring in two chemicals, and from the reaction of those two chemicals comes the actual mess.

01:12:19

And it's not a dangerous process. It's just a process. One of the things that happens is

01:12:28

I had a gallon Ziploc bag of a gallon's worth of liquid drugs, and I was filtering it through a funnel and a filter because I was trying to remove the lithium particles that were still floating around inside of it, kind of like, you know, purifying it.

01:12:46

And so I was doing this process, and I had one bag to another bag, and I dried out the sink because water is an activating ingredient into these particular chemicals.

01:12:58

Water and lithium are highly explosive. And then what happened is I dried out the sink and made sure there was no water in it, and I began to filter these little pieces out with a coffee filter.

01:13:11

And a little piece of lithium the size of the width of my nail sloshed outside the funnel and landed in the sink.

01:13:17

Beside me, while I'm sitting there holding a gallon of fuel that had been saturated in ammonium nitrate, lithium ammonia, basically a big bomb in my hand, and a piece of lithium sloshes outside the funnel and lands in the sink.

01:13:32

From that, you know, it just exploded from the sink and scorched the ceiling.

01:13:39

And I'm sitting there, and my heart's on the floor, and then it comes back into my chest, but the flame itself put itself out, and I thought, oh, my goodness,

01:13:48

I almost died. And I was kind of like, whoo! That was intense. But little did

01:13:54

I realize at the time that the fumes on top of the fuel that I was holding had ignited from the ceiling.

01:14:00

And chemical fires are every color under the sun, so all of a sudden these snake -like fumes were on fire in every color coming straight down to the gallon of liquid fuel that I was holding.

01:14:14

And, of course, I didn't hold on to it. I swung it across the room. It went underneath my sister's birdcage.

01:14:21

Needless to say, the bird perished instantly. And by the time I had made it to the door, which was only about,

01:14:28

I would say, 25, 30 feet from where I was standing in the kitchen, my shoes had already melted to the floor that I had to remove them because they kept sticking as I was heading out because the temperature in the room was so hot being a chemical fire.

01:14:44

Wow. Yes. Very intense. So, was that enough of a wake -up call for you?

01:14:52

Well, you know, you would think that, you know, okay, you have just lost your husband, your children, your family life is down the tube.

01:15:01

You've got one last relationship, a couple last relationships here, and I have just stabbed the one person in the back, betrayed her, who reached out to me when all others wouldn't, and I just burned her, burned her home.

01:15:19

She had actually sold the house the day before, and they were coming to family home to buy that home.

01:15:25

The story is very deep. You could spend your days on it. It's novel -worthy itself, but I'm not going to write it in a book.

01:15:33

But she had sold that house the day before, and they were coming over to my home.

01:15:42

They had a mother -in -law plan that I was going to be in at 6 o 'clock, and I blew their house up around 1130 that day.

01:15:49

What kind of a house was it? The house that I was in was a garden home.

01:15:56

It was a three -bedroom, two -bath garden home in Montgomery, and the home that she was going to get was, of course, you know, another good thousand square feet.

01:16:05

It was going to have a lot more of a carport and garage type thing, just to step up from where they were in the beginning of their family.

01:16:17

I just tore all those hopes and dreams apart because of my selfishness and my addiction and my sin in my life, because I would not address it the way

01:16:25

I had to address it with the Lord. Like I said, after I did all of that, I couldn't stick around.

01:16:32

I was so ashamed. I was so guilty. I just took off running, like...

01:16:43

Did you leave without any note or any awareness? No, there wasn't time for it.

01:16:49

After I got out of the house, I jumped in my car, and I realized I didn't have my key.

01:16:56

I turned around, and this should tell you how under the influence I was, because I went back into the burning building, when it just did what it did, just perished before my eyes, disintegrated in a second.

01:17:12

Something like that, but that's the kind of sense I had at the moment. It was kind of like that backdraft effect, where the oxygen kind of pulls your hair forward.

01:17:20

It was like it was happening in slow motion. As soon as I realized what was happening, oxygen feeding the fuel, basically oxygen being the fuel to the fire,

01:17:31

I realized it was getting me a call from the hospital.

01:17:43

I was in a coma, and I was admitted to Jackson Hospital in Montgomery as a Jane Doe. In a coma, yeah. Where was your sister's children when this happened?

01:17:53

My sister had an 18 -month -old at the time, her name was Sophie, and Sophie was in daycare. Her husband, of course, was at work, and she was at work teaching.

01:18:12

Well, I was in intensive care. I got admitted to the hospital as a Jane Doe. It just so happened to be that Montgomery is not too large, you know, a quantity of about 200 ,000 people.

01:18:20

But one of the nurses actually recognized me and called as being one of her friend's sisters.

01:18:27

And so she called my brother and said, hey, I think, I'm not sure, but I think your sister was just admitted to the hospital as a

01:18:33

Jane Doe. You guys need to come check it out. Well, everybody hated me by this time. I just destroyed everything.

01:18:40

They realized that it was not an accident. The house burning was indeed because of a clandestine laboratory that had been illegally brought into their home, into their sister's home, their daughter's home.

01:18:52

I wasn't going to go to it at the time. And so my brother called my parents and said,

01:18:57

I just got a call from a nurse and said, they said Jane Doe's at the hospital. You might want to go check it out. And so I was taken, you know,

01:19:05

I was admitted to the hospital. And I remember as soon as I began to come to, I had been in a coma.

01:19:10

My brain actually woke up before my body did. And what happened is, I could hear my mom telling me,

01:19:18

Jenny, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand. And I go to squeeze her hand and nothing was happening.

01:19:24

And then she would say, oh, she's not listening. She can't hear me. And I thought to myself, no,

01:19:30

I'm pretty sure I squeezed her hand. And then the same thing would happen again. And then she said, Jenny, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand.

01:19:37

And I'd squeezed her hand a little bit harder and she's still nothing. And that began to really set a fear inside of me because all of a sudden here

01:19:44

I am trapped again. My mind can do and my body cannot do. What my body cannot do, my body's not listening to what

01:19:51

I'm trying to tell it. And, you know, a very big panic mode began to, you know, my heart began to race.

01:19:58

And eventually, finally my body caught up with what I was telling it to do. And I was squeezing it, because all

01:20:03

I could think was, please don't pull the plug, I'm alive in here. Please don't pull the plug. Don't, you know, don't let me die.

01:20:10

That's all I could think about. This fear was just so great in my mind. Well, a few days later,

01:20:15

I recovered. They gave me antibiotics and all these different kinds of things. Because some of the fire, there's some chemical burns going on outside of my body and a few other things that were happening.

01:20:24

And I ended up, the police department did find out that I was there. And they did take me into custody at that time.

01:20:32

And they charged me with a class A unlawful manufacturing of methamphetamines charge, along with an arson three charge, which is methamine arson class.

01:20:44

Wow. I was taking a gulp of tea there. Sorry about that. Yeah. So you are now incarcerated.

01:20:52

And what is the sentence that you were given? Well, I was given a 15 year sentence.

01:20:57

But here's how it went down, is I sat in jail, had a high bond.

01:21:03

Of course, I could not afford to get out. No one's talking to me at this time. You know, they're just kind of, my parents did come to the hospital to make sure that it was me and identify me.

01:21:11

And they were talking to me. But again, I think it was kind of like out of pity. They loved me.

01:21:17

They loved me a lot. But it got to the point where they just felt like, maybe I just couldn't change. And this was just gonna be the dog that they had to love in all of me, like I was.

01:21:27

And so, anyhow, I was sitting there in jail.

01:21:35

They, I sat there long enough to get a preliminary bond reduction hearing. And when they reduced my bond, which they did, they put a stipulation on it that I had to go to a halfway house if I were to bond out.

01:21:45

And I had just a little bit of money saved up to where I could actually go and bond out and go to this halfway house where they would be able to watch me and give me random drug tests.

01:21:57

And, you know, I was under supervision, couldn't leave the premises type thing, come out of the house arrest type thing.

01:22:03

And, you know, you would have thought that all of that that had transpired in my life would be enough to make it where I would never, ever use again.

01:22:12

And I said I would never manufacture again, just like I said, I would never do opiates again. And I never did manufacture again, but I did use the same drug that nearly killed me again, because it didn't show up in a drug screen.

01:22:26

And I was so into hiding. I mean, I just wanted to hide. You know,

01:22:31

I wanted to hide from responsibility. I wanted to hide from my problems. I wanted to hide from everything. And this drug abuse allowed me to hide and not have to really stand up and take full responsibility for everything and all of it, all of it.

01:22:46

So when I ended up being at the halfway house two months, I ended up having a dirty urine, another dirty urine, because I ended up using another type of drug once I started ingesting the

01:22:57

GHB again. And, you know, I got arrested that last time and I said, okay,

01:23:02

Ward, I am tired. I am tired of this. I'm tired of this lifestyle.

01:23:07

Obviously, I do not have the answers for my life. That in my greatest thinking, it wound me right here in jail.

01:23:14

I'm staying, because my bond was actually lowered when I went back in than when it was when

01:23:19

I bonded out, because I'd already sat through this whole time period of the penal system, it's just how it works. And I had the money to get out, but I said, mm -mm,

01:23:27

I'm going to stay, because obviously, if I go back out there again, I'm going to die. Again, I almost died twice in 48 hours.

01:23:35

You know, I had different times in my life where I nearly died in the midst of my drug use and then almost died at 17.

01:23:40

You know, if I go out there again, you know, I mean, no, I'm gonna stay right here and I'm going to find out the error of my way and how to fix this.

01:23:50

All right, so when did the Lord in His sovereignty bring the hammer down on your heart and make you really, truly repentant of all this?

01:24:01

Well, when I chose, when I chose to start to take responsibility for my actions and all that it was and to really, truly begin to just confess and say this is my heart, my heart is dirty, it's unclean,

01:24:15

I need help, I stayed there and it began to start with that choice that I made, that I wasn't going to try to fix it myself,

01:24:22

I was gonna choose to allow the Lord to have His way with me in my heart and I began to read the

01:24:28

Bible and I began to pray and I took an eight week sudden abuse which was kind of like a

01:24:34

Christian -based type thing, as much as Christian -based as it can be in a public institution, that they offered there and I kind of started going through the, and that was just basically another juiced up recovery but it did hinge a little more on prayer and it did help me to focus.

01:24:51

And this time, I lost a little more than the first time, I went to rehab and I began to repent and I began to pray and I began to read scripture and I thought

01:25:02

I had a true grasp of what it was that I had done and I ended up getting sentenced, a 15 year sentence because that is the minimum sentence that a class

01:25:10

A felony can have in the state of Alabama is the sentence was 15 years to 99 or less and so there was a lot of praying there but it was,

01:25:19

Lord, please don't give me a life sentence, let me have an opportunity, let me have a chance to make this right.

01:25:27

You know, the Lord was, again, gracious to me and I got the minimum which was 15 years and I remember going into the back gate of Julia Tate Law Prison and thinking that I'd been, by that time, it was like another 10 months but I had been sober for about 10 months, almost a year and I was thinking,

01:25:44

I've got a good handle on this, I've got a good grasp, I understand what's going on, I understand what I've done, I understand the destruction and I remember

01:25:52

I got put in a dorm called The Jungle because it's just so far back and there's so many women being housed in one dorm room and they do this thing called mail call and it was like my first or second week in prison and I ended up seeing a brown envelope come out of mail call and I knew that brown envelope was for me because our family business is that exact same color brown envelope, the

01:26:15

Mexico don't have brown envelopes and I was so excited because someone had thought about me, I wasn't dead and I hadn't destroyed everything, at least somebody had thought about me, it was probably my parents but I would take it, anything that anybody would send me,

01:26:29

I'd appreciate. So I ran up there and I opened this letter and my dad proceeds to tell me what transpired, what truly transpired in the room that day when the doctor came in and said she's gonna live from the overdose and was in this coma and I was unconscious and I was unresponsive.

01:26:45

And he goes on to explain to me that one of our family friends had died and my mom had gotten the phone call, sitting in there as soon as the doctor walks in and says your daughter's gonna live, she gets another phone call and says

01:27:01

Sue will be re -ped. And there's this other guy in the room who just so happened to be with my mom when they got the initial call that the

01:27:08

Jane Doe might be their daughter and he decided to come along with support and that man who came along with support had a son who thought drug problem.

01:27:18

And so my dad is sitting there telling me what it is like, what is going on in his mind at the time and what it is to look at this man and see him look at me in such sorrow because his son could be in the exact same position as me.

01:27:31

And he tells me, you know, I didn't understand, I kept asking God, why Lord, why would you choose this? Stuart Bieber was a

01:27:37

Christian, a godly man who walked and talked with you. He wanted to live and you took his life and he left my daughter, he was destroying things, tearing people's lives apart, why would you do that?

01:27:48

And it was this conflicting thing in his soul and I'm sitting here and I'm listening to my dad pour out his guts to me and I thought

01:27:57

I had a clue but I truly did not have a clue until I read this letter. And at the end of the letter, he said,

01:28:03

Jenny, he said, Bill Bergeron, the man who was in the room with you,

01:28:09

I just wanted to let you know we just attended the funeral of his son. He didn't make it, he killed himself.

01:28:15

Jenny, yeah, he says, Jenny, do you hear? Jenny, do you see? Jenny, you can do that. And I will never forget,

01:28:21

I took that letter and I went back to my bunk, climbed to the top and I read that letter over and over and over and over again because I just wanted to burn my mind with the pain that was happening in that room that day but I would never forget it, that I would never make the same choices that would cause those people to suffer like they were suffering.

01:28:39

All of that was based off of my choices in life. All right, we're gonna be going to our final break.

01:28:45

It's gonna be a brief one and I thank everybody who's been waiting patiently for me to get to your emails and I promise

01:28:53

I will get to them when we return from the break but if anybody else also would like to shoot over an email with a question, you've got a half hour left.

01:29:02

So please send it now at chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:29:11

Please include at least your first name, city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA and please only remain anonymous if it's a personal and private question that basically requires that you remain anonymous and so we will honor that if that is the case.

01:29:31

So we look forward to hearing from you and your questions right after these messages.

01:29:37

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01:32:38

Chris Arnzen and this is our last half hour with our guest today, Jenny, and she has been giving her testimony of coming from drug addiction and even being a manufacturer of methamphetamines to the cross of Christ, to repentance and to a total transformation of life.

01:33:01

And if you have any questions, please email them now because we've got less than a half hour left.

01:33:07

Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

01:33:14

We've already got a number of emails, but before we get to that, I just have to bring us to a final point before we start taking questions.

01:33:23

This is where some of the Christian women who are single are even going to be battling the temptation to hate your guts,

01:33:31

Jenny, because they're going to say, how on earth did this chick get to marry a military, an army chaplain?

01:33:43

And they're finding it hard to even get a date. And -

01:33:49

Amen, Jesus is good. I am totally aware that Jesus is good. Well, tell us how you met your husband and how this relationship developed, and even,

01:34:03

I'm assuming he became eventually aware of your background. Absolutely, he did.

01:34:10

Well, needless to say, I got this water in prison. I truly hit my knees and my soul.

01:34:16

Something firmly penetrated. Something got through to me at that moment. And I realized that every bit of my being needed

01:34:24

Jesus Christ for everything that I needed to do in life from here on that point forward.

01:34:31

Walking, talking, the way I carried myself, what I was going to do from that moment forward, everything hinged on if God said it was okay.

01:34:38

It was kind of like, God, is that okay? Jesus, Jesus, is this what you want from my life? I began to surrender my will for his.

01:34:44

And once I did that, he started to radically transform the way I talked, the way

01:34:50

I thought, the way I carried myself, the way I walked changed, my gait changed.

01:34:56

Everything about me began to change. And the Lord used those three years that I was incarcerated to really do quite a number on me.

01:35:05

I feel like I went through an intensive amount of training, kind of like at people's seminary. I kind of went through this intense education, and I learned these principles that the

01:35:15

Bible taught, and I learned them through such odd manners, but the intensity of it, and the

01:35:22

Lord wanted to, that's how he wanted to mold my life. And so I got out. I ended up making a program, and I ended up getting out after three years.

01:35:30

And the Lord had placed it upon my heart in a brief moment of sobriety earlier in my life, a dream to write a certain book for a certain group of people to kind of help them so that they could truly get over that hump and that hurdle in their life, whatever was hindering them from moving forward, like in my life, when my pride was hindering me from moving forward.

01:35:51

And so once I got out, I ended up praying about where the Lord wanted me to go, because my biggest thing was,

01:35:56

I had been learning so much so fast, biblically speaking and application -wise, is that I did not want to go anywhere else that I would not grow at the same pace

01:36:05

I was. And so the Lord said, okay, home is where I want you, because your grandparents are there, your parents are there, you have two sets of parents looking after you.

01:36:14

My grandma sat under John MacArthur for 33 years and became one of my biggest mentors. So I would do

01:36:20

Bible studies with her and we would pray every single night at nine o 'clock together. My entire first year, every night at nine o 'clock, you'd find me with my grandmother praying.

01:36:28

And so the Lord began to just really, really do a number on me. I love that scripture in Proverbs where it says, where there is no counsel, the people will fall.

01:36:37

And so I took heed to that. And I was like, I need counsel, I need two sets of parents, I need church accountability, I need this,

01:36:43

I need that. And so I was desperate for that. The Lord placed it on my heart after about a year of really dedicating almost every bit of my free time to developing relationships of trust back with my family members.

01:36:55

He placed it on my heart to write a book. And this book, of course, is my Christian fiction novel, which is filled with influence and it's basically geared towards, it's about a

01:37:04

Marine who gets wounded in combat, comes back stateside and has to fight a whole nother battle with PTS and drug addiction on the streets of New York.

01:37:12

And I wanted to do it for three groups of people. I wanted to do it for the addict who suffers, who cannot find their way out of the hole that they're in, to kind of gently guide them in a step -by -step walk through of how they can come out of where they are, to help them get up from where they gave up.

01:37:28

And then I wanted it to be written for the family members who didn't understand what addiction was, didn't understand what the sin was, for them to safely get inside of the mind of an addict and know how they're thinking.

01:37:40

Because you know, as well as I do, if you know what somebody's thinking, you have the advantage to speak to it and then the thought life, you direct them gently.

01:37:47

And this would be a safe way for them to enter, you know, get inside of the mind of an addict and not really have to interact with one and put themselves in a dangerous situation.

01:37:54

And then of course, for our veterans, for our soldiers, because Bill Bergeron's son, remember the guy who was in the hospital?

01:38:01

His son was actually an army guy and he was an infantry, went over to Afghanistan, got wounded in combat, came back, couldn't handle the things that he saw.

01:38:12

He developed PTS. And because he did not have the proper coping skills and the spiritual strength, he turned to drugs in order to cover up his pain and ease his burden.

01:38:22

And when he did that, he became addicted. They ended up sending him to Georgia to get off of these narcotics.

01:38:28

They diagnosed him with PTS, enrolled him in a clinic in upstate New York, and he overdosed and died before he got there. And so it just, that part of my testimony, along with the fact that I felt like I'd fought a war for years, and my love for my country, believe it or not, but Bill Bergeron planted this story in my heart.

01:38:47

And so I began to write this story. I finished this story. And it was so funny because I had taken my personal money and investing as far as getting it edited and getting it marketable and getting it to the point.

01:38:58

You have this traditional publishing route that you have to go. And I remember January of this past year, you asked how I met my husband.

01:39:04

January of this past year, I ran out of money for this project, Field of Influence. And I said, okay,

01:39:11

Lord, you know, either I, because I was doing full, by the time I was doing full -time ministry, I was speaking wherever I was asked.

01:39:18

I was doing social media. I was praying with people, you know, counseling, kind of giving direction, spending all my time on this subject matter and kind of sharing the gospel with people.

01:39:29

And in January, I said, okay, Lord, you know, I either need the funds to help me move forward in this, or either

01:39:36

I'm going to have to get a full -time job and I don't know what to do. And so I fasted for seven days and asked the Lord what direction

01:39:41

He wanted me to take. And at the end of that seven days, I concluded that this is my calling.

01:39:46

This is what He's asked me to do with my life, to go ahead and go full force and go till the money runs out.

01:39:52

And fortunately, the money just never completely ran out. Got very close many times, but it never completely ran out.

01:39:59

And at the end of that seven days, I said, okay, well, if I had Field of Influence in my hand and I wanted to help minister to people that are struggling with these issues, how would

01:40:09

I get it into the hands of the people who need it? And I said, chaplains. It just dawned on me, chaplains. And that was kind of like what came out of that seven -day fast was chaplains.

01:40:17

And so I went on LinkedIn and I didn't know what I was doing, but I sent out a whole bunch of invitations to chaplains, all the military colonels, lieutenant colonels, captains and majors, it didn't matter, all different branches, and just started trying to get connected.

01:40:31

And, you know, within 24 hours, I had over 150, 200 connections in the military. My husband being one of them.

01:40:38

And he sent me a message and he said, you know, I see that you're connected to some chaplains. Oh, do you have a bio and how do you offer aid to chaplains?

01:40:46

And I basically told him, yeah, here's my bio, but basically I'm just trying to put together a list of people

01:40:52

I want to give my book to. I think it'll be a valuable tool for you and a resource for you to help you help others, help these soldiers and their families who are struggling with substance abuse and PTSD.

01:41:02

And that's how it got started. So eventually, obviously, you met and...

01:41:10

Yes, I did end up meeting him once in Nashville for a brief 24 -hour time period.

01:41:16

And then I ended up going to Fort Leavenworth to speak as the Army's very first faith -based approach to substance, excuse me, faith -based approach to substance abuse speaker that they've ever gotten credit for at Fort Leavenworth.

01:41:31

It was kind of experimental. Wow. It wasn't, yes, it's a big deal. And what happened is he read my bio and he said, oh my goodness, you are everything that I've been trying to get these soldiers to understand about how and in what way they truly need to surrender in order to have their life transformed, to get this resilient spirit that will help them bounce back and all these types of things.

01:41:54

Because he was actually a chaplain at the JRC and the USPD, which was a military person in Fort Leavenworth at the time.

01:42:02

So we always joked that we both came from prison. Different side, different side, that's it.

01:42:08

But he told me that, and when he told me that, I thought to myself, well, you know what? I need to have my book by the time

01:42:14

I go there because then I can begin to get it into the hands of the people who really, really need it. And so I ended up flying out and speaking.

01:42:24

I spoke twice there on the post, did some meet and greets, spoke at the VA hospital, the Eisenhower Hospital there in Leavenworth and did the chaplain's and flew back.

01:42:35

And it was like a three -day blow of events that happened so fast. But that was a big challenge in my soul because I thought, well, this is gonna be the kicker.

01:42:44

If I can minister with this guy and we can do ministry together and we can share together and we can do this and we can be together.

01:42:51

Because it was just a big deal, you know? And I told him that when he began to start to say these things like, I love you,

01:42:57

I thought, well, I told him, I said, look, Jesus Christ has my heart. If you want me to love you, you need to convince him, then he'll convince me.

01:43:06

And then I ended up falling in love with him and I was like, okay, I guess I'm supposed to love you.

01:43:14

All right, we do have some listeners that have been waiting patiently. Tom in West Islip, New York says, given your guest is born again,

01:43:23

I do understand she now looks back on her actions and sees them as sin. Understanding such,

01:43:30

I would be interested in knowing what she thought when she was in that world. How did she justify her actions knowing how negatively it would impact others?

01:43:41

I don't ask this question to condemn, but rather to understand. And that's a good question and a legitimate one.

01:43:50

That whole justification of action process doesn't even occur when someone's in the midst of their drug use.

01:43:57

They lie to themselves, they lie to others. I've always said you cannot take personal what someone in the midst of their drug use, especially the drug, the sin of addiction, you can't take personal what they're doing.

01:44:11

It's not about you. They're not trying to justify their own actions. They're trying to feed their sin life. And so I didn't walk around going how, maybe if I had walked around and said, what impact is this choice gonna have on tomorrow?

01:44:29

And what is this decision that I'm making right now gonna do for me down the road or for them down the road?

01:44:35

If I had thought like that, maybe I would have stopped doing what I was doing.

01:44:41

It wasn't about everybody else. I wasn't trying to justify anything in my mind. I felt like I've got pain,

01:44:50

I just want it to go away. It was an unbearable sore in my life. It just was an annoying, aggravating thing.

01:44:58

And that is what my central focus was. It wasn't on how so -and -so feels or how whatever feels.

01:45:04

I honestly, and that's why you always hear those drug addicts always say, well, I'm not hurting anybody, just leave me alone.

01:45:10

Because they don't get it. They don't get it, they don't realize it yet. We have

01:45:15

Tony with an I in Rock Hill, South Carolina, says,

01:45:21

I have been ministering to a younger brother I believe is caught up in a meth operation. What are the risks in terms of overdose or permanent harm?

01:45:31

Oh, that's a good question too. Methamphetamines unfortunately have more harm on the human body than any other drug that is out there.

01:45:41

They're more potent, they fry your brain. The recovery process for methamphetamine is a whole lot longer.

01:45:48

They average about 18 to 24 months as far as how long it takes for the brain's chemistry to balance back out after a chronic meth user becomes sober.

01:46:01

And I can attest, and even my parents can attest that my letters in the course of the time that I was incarcerated, that I would write home, went from six and seven pages because I couldn't get out what

01:46:11

I was trying to say in six and seven pages, to one to two very pointed, very straightforward, very direct letters that were worth reading and you had to have something important to say.

01:46:21

So it does take quite a bit of time. And if you are concerned about someone in your household or that you know using a meth operation, probably it is very dangerous.

01:46:34

I can attest, it's highly explosive. Delaying the long -term effects, as a matter of fact, when they were rebuilding my sister's house, it took them three times for the fire department to clear the house, the studs and everything of the chemicals that were there.

01:46:50

The bricks, they ended up tearing down everything besides the bricks. And if they didn't pass the inspection that last time, they were gonna have to tear down the bricks because of the residue cause of cancer from manufacturing in a home.

01:47:02

Well, what is the actual fatality risks in overdosing like they would be with heroin and some other drugs?

01:47:11

Well, that's it. It's all relative to who's ingesting them and the quantity level that they're ingesting them.

01:47:17

It just depends. Certain people have heart defects prior to drug use and they're not aware of it. They use a drug the first time, not even in a large dose.

01:47:24

That could be it for them. That'd be their heart attack and then they die. Some people have diabetes and certain particular drugs will increase their sugar and put them in a coma and these types of things.

01:47:35

Just, I would say drugs are bad. Stay away from them, period. We have a

01:47:42

Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know if your sister ever forgave you for destroying her home and even putting her family at risk.

01:47:53

Oh, absolutely. This is another part of the testimony that we don't have time for, but my sister totally forgave me.

01:47:59

No one spoke to me for the few years that I was incarcerated except for my parents. But one of the things that I share in my testimony that sometimes you can find in my mind is that my sister, the

01:48:09

Lord was working in my sister's heart the entire time. He was fighting for me. Those scriptures that say, the Lord fights for you.

01:48:15

While I thought that I was going to experience the rest of my life with unforgiveness, the

01:48:20

Lord was working on her heart. And matter of fact, when she did end up forgiving me, her and her husband pulled me to the side, did this side, and they wrote these letters.

01:48:29

And inside of these letters, she proceeds to tell me, Jenny, I not only want to forgive you, but I want to thank you because had we not experienced this traumatic event in our life, we would have never clung to the

01:48:42

Lord as strongly as we did. And now our relationship is impenetrable, my husband and mine, because we clung to each other and we clung to God for strength throughout the entire thing.

01:48:52

So it was a huge, it was mind -blowing how the Lord worked in her heart and she was able to forgive me after a few years of silence.

01:49:01

And now she actually ends up, she shares her testimony with me during the summertime. She's still a teacher.

01:49:07

And so every summer we get together and share about three or four different places our testimony at halfway houses, at churches, pretty much wherever we're asked, just because it's really neat to really see the two perspectives of forgiveness, one person having to offer forgiveness to someone who has truly wronged them, and then the other person in seeking to be forgiven.

01:49:31

So it's really, really neat to see, good question. We do have Pastor Mike in Kingston, North Carolina, has two questions.

01:49:41

The first is, so -called experts in today's secular society refer to drug addiction as a disease for which there is really no cure.

01:49:51

Coming out of the drug culture, what is your response to that? Oh, I'm so glad somebody asked it.

01:49:58

See, addiction is sin, plain and simple. To me, addiction is unbridled sin.

01:50:06

There are things in your body's chemistry that can happen as a result of drug use, but if you look at it, there are things that can happen in your life as a result of other types of sin as well.

01:50:18

You know, things that your body actually gets accustomed to. I'm not one to walk around telling people that they've got a disease.

01:50:26

I'm one to walk around and tell people that they've got sin in their life and it needs to be rectified, and the only way to rectify it is through the blood of Jesus Christ.

01:50:34

So, that's a good question. I'm glad it was asked. That is debatable. A lot of people do not agree with me, but coming out of it,

01:50:42

I just believe it was unbridled sin. Amen, well, I'm very happily relieved to hear you give that answer.

01:50:51

Yes, unbridled sin, what it is, get it out. And Pastor Mike also asks, if you could give one message for anyone listening today who was caught up in addictions, what would that message be?

01:51:06

Oh, turn from your ways. Jesus is good. You know, his promises that are written in the word of God, cling to them because those promises,

01:51:19

God is real. He is absolutely real, and he has the absolute power to transform your life and change it, and that doesn't mean life is gonna be peaches and cream from that moment forward, from that time of confession forward.

01:51:31

It just means that he's gonna walk with you as you go through life, and that your will is gonna be surrendered for him, and you will glorify the kingdom, and it's worth it.

01:51:41

It's worth the risk. I mean, if I'm talking to addicts, and I'm gonna say, here's one piece of advice, what is there to lose?

01:51:49

Try Jesus Christ. I am so confident that my Lord can fix anything. I mean, if you would have told me five years ago that my life would be transformed as radically as it is today,

01:52:01

I would have told you that that was a lie, that it could not have happened, that it would never be possible, but I am sitting here as a living testimony, professing

01:52:10

Jesus Christ as the absolute only thing that changed my life, and it has so radically changed it. I mean, my cup is full.

01:52:16

My cup is full today because I chose to surrender. Amen. And we have an anonymous listener in New Jersey that wants to know, can

01:52:26

I have the contact information for the rehab that you entered into?

01:52:33

I did not go to the rehab that I went to. It was called Life Tech Transitional Center.

01:52:39

That is the eight -month rehab that I went to. It is no longer there.

01:52:46

It was a state -sanctioned facility called Life Tech Transitional Center. It is no longer there. And then the other rehab

01:52:52

I went through was Department of Corrections Rehab, which is a six -month, and then another one that was

01:52:57

White House Counseling, which was also while I was incarcerated, which was an eight -week program.

01:53:04

Education for addiction is important. I will say that. Those of you who are suffering, who are looking to kind of come up and come out, educating yourself on what drugs are, how they affect the body, how they affect the mind is very important.

01:53:19

Learning the different coping skills and the triggers and the things that may hinder you. But I can guarantee you that if you turn around and use the church as your accountability partner, after learning your basics on that, it will completely hold you to a whole nother standard of living than a program like a 12 -step can offer you.

01:53:39

I've always said that if you're striving, if you're walking a true Christian life and a true

01:53:45

Christian walk, you're striving for perfection. So you'll never be out of your program. You'll never be finished trying to recover from what you've done because you're always striving for excellence.

01:53:56

So as far as looking for rehab, I would definitely say find a faith -based approach with the substance abuse program.

01:54:04

But when you get out of those rehabs, I recommend you finding a church as your accountability partner versus a step program.

01:54:13

Amen, amen. A lot of mischief is wrought in those recovery programs.

01:54:19

Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, I was even thinking, I'm praying about writing a book on the recovery religion because I believe that a lot of what is taking place in the 12 -step groups and the recovery groups is really, it's really a cult in many ways because they offer a false belief about God and have many of the other trappings of a cult.

01:54:48

Now, I understand that a lot of people have been rescued from very dangerous and deadly lifestyle.

01:54:54

So I don't wanna undermine the good that has been done in the name of these groups.

01:55:00

And even those, some of them have adopted a Christian mission statement behind that.

01:55:07

But I just think that the church is really neglected as being the primary place for somebody to find sanctuary and transformation.

01:55:18

I can't agree with you more. And one of the biggest things that I have a problem in, and I'm not one for knocking programs because it's not that I don't think

01:55:23

AA or NA or any of these programs can get you sober. I just don't think they're gonna keep you sober. And my thing behind this is a lot of them are agnostic in what they're saying.

01:55:33

Matter of fact, step three says surrender your will to the care of God as you understand Him. Well, guess what?

01:55:39

If you do not have the proper definition of God, you are now going to be surrendering over to whatever God you choose next in your life.

01:55:46

And you just got done choosing drugs. So the next thing could be women. And then after that could be your work and your job and money.

01:55:53

And now you're surrendering over to the will of money and however it can be made. No, you're no longer using those drugs.

01:55:59

But like I said, I don't consider it disease. I call it sin. You're just surrendering one sin for another sin. So if you don't have the definition of who

01:56:07

God is there and you surrender your will over to the care of God as you understand Him, you're gonna be messed up in the end, my friend.

01:56:13

Truly messed up. Amen. And I also want to give the website for the rehab facility, recovery facility that I went to that is

01:56:28

Christian -based in North Carolina, Boone, North Carolina. It is one of the oldest, if not the oldest active

01:56:37

Christian drug and alcohol recovery programs in the

01:56:42

United States. It's Hebron Colony Ministries. Their website is hebroncolony .org,

01:56:49

H -E -B -R -O -N colony .org. They also have a facility for women in Santee, South Carolina.

01:56:58

And you could get that information at the same website, hebroncolony .org, H -E -B -R -O -N .org.

01:57:07

The thing that I find amusing, I mean,

01:57:14

I don't know if I should use the word amusing, but I just can't help but define them amusing is that the steps, among the steps of AA, you have one step being basically that you are acknowledging that you are lacking sanity, and then the next step is telling you to submit to a higher power of your own understanding.

01:57:44

Well, if you don't have sanity, if you're insane, how are you supposed to choose what higher power to go to?

01:57:54

Bravo, bravo. Like I said, I have other issues with the 12 -step program.

01:58:01

And like I said, it's not that I don't think that one of those programs can get you sober, because you need to be sober.

01:58:07

And it's a lot easier to share the gospel with somebody who's actually hearing what you have to say through a body that doesn't have substance in it.

01:58:17

But once you reach your 12 steps, and once you climax at your highest point, then

01:58:22

AA can take you, come talk to me, because I've got a better way. And Jesus Christ said that. And I mean, like I said,

01:58:28

I'm always striving, always growing, always reaching, and the Lord continues to show up and show out in my life.

01:58:34

Amen, and I know your website is jennyreseclark .com. That's J -E -N -N -Y,

01:58:42

R -E -E -S -E, Clark, C -L -A -R -K .com. And that's where our listeners can get a hold of your book.

01:58:51

And how much is that book? And what's the title of the book again? The title of the book is

01:58:57

Field of Influence. It's $14 .99. You can find it on my website, or you can find it on Amazon online.

01:59:04

Great, and you can also go to cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. It's cvbbs .com,

01:59:12

a sponsor of Iron Sharpens Arm. Thank you so much for being on our program, Jenny. I look forward to having you back. I hope that you all have a wonderful, safe, and blessed weekend and Lord's Day.

01:59:20

I hope you all always remember, for the rest of your lives, that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.