May 2022 Newsletter

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Freedom From Bondage

Out the bedroom window, Tia fled in the middle of the night. She was afraid that he would catch her leaving. In a hurry, she just grabbed a duffle bag with a few clothes. During their long relationship, she was not allowed her own vehicle, job, money, friends. He was verbally and physically abusive. The days of restrictions, insults, black eyes, even an ambulance to the hospital were over. Tia said, “One day the light turned on. I understood my background. It was abusive and neglectful. It played a part in the way I was living, the influence it was having on people around me, and how hurtful my actions were. I didn’t want that for my life anymore.”

An abusive childhood normalized codependent relationships. Tia’s parents were drug users and they divorced. Each one remarried an addict. As a teenager, she bounced between the two addictive and abusive households. Then at 16, she moved in with her boyfriend. The culture of addiction and abusive relationships was taught by parental behavior. Yet, drugs were her personal escape from the destructive lifestyle. It was a self-defeating cycle. Even after getting clean from drugs seven years ago, the codependent relationship remained. They no longer had a mutual interest, but it took time to let go of the emotional tie.

Family had an important role in Tia’s transition. She was able to stay with a cousin for a few days. Because of laws about over occupying living spaces, her time there was limited. Department of Human Services referred her to Samaritan Inn. As she approached the front fence and locked gate, she was uncertain but not scared. It made her feel safe. There, Tia met a program supervisor, she said, “was very kind.” A week later, she started the first job she had in years, through the referral of her aunt to the restaurant owner.

Freedom from bondage is Tia’s new life. She has the independence to work her new, 35-hour a week job. She has the liberty to have friendly chats with people at work and her temporary home without the fear of reprisal. She has equal social and economic rights, even in a dormitory and shelter with other homeless women. She has more choice to move about the community, now using public transportation. Tia said, “This is a safe environment. There are no threats to my recovery, nobody is under the influence or talking about it.”

Tia has been rescued from a selfish, violent world. Her feet have been placed on solid ground. “He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the mud; And He set my feet on a rock, making my footsteps firm” Psalm 40:2.