SWINDON, England — Van Porter was desperate. She had no home and no job. She was drunk most days and in her search for affection and a bed for the night she was sleeping around. She was suffering from depression and she even thought about committing suicide.

Her life hadn’t been easy. Right from the age of five she had found it hard to mix with people. Her father was a manic depressive and her family had massive and painful rows. At the age of 15 she had a nervous breakdown and at 16 she was thrown out of the house.

Suicide

“I started drinking heavily,” she says, “and I was wandering from home to home. I had bad times of depression, feeling a mixture of being really anxious and just not caring at all. There were times when I thought, ‘Why not just commit suicide?’”

Her concern to find somewhere to stay left no room in her mind for thinking about God. Then, in 1989, things came to a head.

“I was really desperate, drunk most days and unemployed. One day I went to the graveyard where my gran was buried and I said, ‘If there’s anything there, you’ve got to show me.’ At that point a bird like a dove flew down in front of me.”

Some time after that someone gave Van a Bible. She met a friend who was a Christian and she actually got a job. “I knew my prayer was being answered,” she says – but nevertheless she carried on drinking.

Bible

“The first thing I read from the Bible said, ‘So do not start worrying, Where will my food come from?... Your father in heaven knows that you need all these things ... and he will provide...’ That spoke to me because I had always had to worry about things like the next meal.”

Finally, one day she felt compelled to make a commitment and give her life to God. “I went into a field, got down on my knees and prayed. And although the problems were still there and I was still drinking, I knew I had made the most important decision of my life.”

The road to rehabilitation was a long one. A couple of years later her drinking was even worse. “I was still praying and had a job and more stability but I was getting violent and becoming physically ill. It really was taking over. It had such a hold I couldn’t do anything about it.

‘Up to you, God’

“I tried to stop it in my own strength until one day I went to my room and just said, ‘I can’t take it any more. It’s up to you, God.’ I felt a relief and a pulling sensation… I knew then that it was over.” Since then, she says, she has not looked back.

“I haven’t had a drink in ten years. The desire and the illness it was bringing have gone. But when you’re an alcoholic there are always reasons why and I know that God is still working on these things which are so deep and [are tied up] with damage from the past.

“I am now a ‘healed alcoholic’ and although it’s always with me I don’t focus on it, I focus on God. I don’t hope for things on earth because people can’t always meet your expectations. My hope is in God and what he’s done. I can work. I have got friends. I have got a busy church life and I’ve always got a roof over my head. I don’t feel rejected, aggressive or ill, I don’t steal like I used to, I don’t sleep around and I don’t drink any more. I’ve got a future now. Then, I couldn’t survive without a bottle of whisky; now my hope is in God.”