Lindsay had big hopes and dreams . . . just like any other teenager. But a high school cheerleading injury brought pain into her life—with prescription painkillers to manage it. And that proved to be an almost impossible trap to escape.

It started slowly enough, Lindsay explains: “I’d hurt myself, so I was dabbling a little bit in medications.” It seemed to handle the pain she felt, but then she was hit with everything else that comes with a high-pressure high school life.

“I just wanted to be with the ‘in’ crowd,” she confesses. And weekend parties led to one thing after another . . .

“I had my daughter,” Lindsay says. “And that straightened me up for a little while. Then I was pregnant with my son and was still doing good.”

But at the same time, the relationship Lindsay was in went from bad to toxic . . . and eventually . . . “horrible,” she says.

Lindsay had not grown up hearing a man talk so negatively to a woman, like he spoke to her, and she had never witnessed the type of abuse she was experiencing.

That abuse—and the alcoholism that fueled it—almost cost Lindsay her life.

Everything came literally crashing down. “We got in a car wreck. He was drunk, and just mad. We [were going] 120 down the road, and wound up flipping nine times, running off a 20-foot embankment,” she says.

“I couldn’t close my eyes. I watched myself rolling and rolling, just screaming, ‘No!’ All I could think was, ‘I’ve got to get home to [my kids]!’” Lindsay shares.

“My back was shattered,” she says, remembering the moment she was a centimeter from being permanently paralyzed—an inch from dying.

“That night, I had emergency surgery and had metal plates fused to my neck and lower back. I kept asking, ‘Am I going to walk again?’ My dad would tell me ‘yes,’ but the doctors were telling him, ‘no.’”

That was when her addiction really kicked in . . . “I was suddenly ripped away from being a mom to someone who couldn’t begin to take care of her two little kids,” she says.

“I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t roll myself over. Everything I knew was taken away.”

Lindsay fought for her life. “I was in the ICU for a month,” Lindsay says. But when she finally returned home in a wheelchair, the abuse continued.

When her boyfriend finally left, “I lost my apartment: that was the beginning of me living on the streets. My family was just waiting for the call saying I was dead.”

And while her father and friends cared for the children, Lindsay’s big brother stepped in with the lifeline that would finally save her: “I’ll be there for you,” Lindsay remembers him saying, “I don’t want to see you out there suffering anymore.”

“He called one of his friends, and they called Nashville Rescue Mission.”

Lindsay says she’ll never forget when she got the news. The Mission had a spot open for her in the Life Recovery Program.

And then when her brother arrived to bring her to our door, “He was so excited!” Lindsay says, thankful for all he did to help her get to Nashville Rescue Mission.

She will never forget the first breakfast she had—or the help friends like you made possible so she could turn her life around and reestablish healthy relationships with her family and children.

“I’ve started understanding what it looks like to be loved and love back properly, giving God all your trust and connecting back with Him.”

And through every twist and turn, Lindsay can see the hand of God. “It’s amazing: God loves you, and He will not let you down!”

Lives like hers are being transformed through this Christ-centered ministry. Thank you for being a part of that true life change today—and for all the days ahead!