“Satan sneaks in a little at a time,” says Marsha. She had never had a drink until she was 25 and experienced some trouble in her marriage. “I found that when I drank, it took the pain away. But by the time I was 30, I was an alcoholic.”
Marsha briefly separated from her husband, struggling with her addiction even after they reconciled. Then she lost her father — and a month later, her husband died suddenly. “My world fell apart,” she recalls. “I had gone from my dad’s house to my husband’s house, and I thought, ‘Where do I go from here?’”
Lost in grief, Marsha heard about Memphis Union Mission’s women’s program, Moriah House. “I’d been to several rehabs, but this wasn’t a 30-day commitment. It was a year. The first night I was there, I told the Lord I was going to open myself to whatever He needed me to do,” she remembers.
When Marsha started the New Life program, she felt as if the classes spoke to her directly. “I realized my drinking was a symptom of so many things I’d never dealt with. Jesus didn’t want me to have the shame. He didn’t condemn me. I grabbed a hold of Him and found the power of blessings I could use to help other people.”
Driven by a desire to serve, Marsha was thrilled when asked to fill the opening for a night counselor at Moriah House. She visits with every woman or family to make sure they have what they need before they bed down for the night. She is also available to handle any emergencies during the night and follow up on issues raised by daytime counselors.
“It’s amazing that God has placed me here!” Marsha says. “I’ve been where so many of these ladies are. I see the desperation and the brokenness. But I know, once they’ve been in Moriah House, they will never be the same.”
Marsha is grateful that you provided a place for her to realize her dream of helping others. “You show us how we can live like Christ, to give back what we’ve been so abundantly given!”
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