testimony
Eddie Baiseri: Ex-Con Released Through the Air Waves
By Audra Smith
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– There were few safe places in Eddie Baiseri’s childhood. Home was no refuge, but a mine field of rage that could explode at anytime.
"Many times when my dad would come home in a drunken rage, my mom and I would have to flee the house in the middle of the night," Eddie tells The 700 Club.
Eddie often found refuge in the home of her Christian neighbors and later, at school.
"Whenever you have that type of situation at home, you frequently become an overachiever. I was a straight A student and a head cheerleader. So you just live out this life you want to have. You live it out in school. You have this sense of loneliness that you don’t fit in. Then, you start to try and get your self- worth fulfilled in so many ways."
When Eddie changed schools in ninth grade, she found new ways of coping with her pain.
"So all of the sudden, I found myself with no friends and really just kind of magnified to the wrong crowd from the very beginning. I went from being a straight A student to where I didn’t really care about grades at all. I didn’t participate in any extra-curricular activities. My extra-curricular activity was going to find someone who could buy wine or beer for us. I'd find marijuana or whatever. It got progressively worse and worse. It lead me to a point where I was given a scholarship to college, and I didn’t even go. I decided that I would stay home for a while. That is when I met my ex-husband. I married him, and he was just like my dad. Within two weeks, I had found out after marriage that things weren’t really any different there then they were at home."
Eddie and her husband began selling drugs on the side. On the surface, everything was fine.
"I was actually an accountant. On the outside, I was very successful, but things weren’t good at home. Both of us had turned to selling drugs, and we were doing that on the weekend. It was a huge business for us and there we were, making more money than we had ever made in our lives," she says.
Eddie was arrested several times, but never served long sentences. Each time she was released, she returned to her destructive lifestyle.
"I was so addicted to drugs. I had to have them everyday. It was my number one concern. Where will I get drugs? Where will I sell drugs? Where can I make money with drugs? My life was devastated," she remembers.
Then, there was a drug bust in her own front yard.
"I had the embarrassment of being hog tied on the front lawn, with neighbors staring, as they used a battering ram to get in my house. Yet, it wasn’t enough to make me stop," says Eddie.
In January of 1997, Eddie’s life on the run was about to end. She had few options left.
"I could not go home, I was afraid to go home because I had so many drug dealers looking for me. I had the police looking for me."
Eddie stopped at a friend’s home for refuge. In that brief moment of rest, she began to pour her heart out to God.
"I said, 'I have never doubted that there is a God. I have always known that You are there. But, what I don’t believe is that you could ever forgive me for all of the things I have done.' I began to recount in my head all of the people I had hurt, all the crimes I had committed, and all of the horrible things I had done. I thought, 'How could You ever forgive me?' I never gave that prayer a second thought, but left there and went straight to buy more drugs. That is when I got arrested."
" When you see those lights, you just know what’s going to happen. As I sat in the back of the car, I noticed that he had a Christian radio station playing and they were singing Amazing Grace. As that song was playing, I was listening to it. Amazing things happened after that. The disk jockey came on the air and said to me, 'If you have ever doubted God’s love for you, today is the day for you to realize that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.' At that moment, God just spoke to me so audibly and so clearly. He [God] said, "You asked me [in the shower] if I cared about you, and you told me you needed my help. If you give me your heart, I will..."
"The moment He told me in my spirit that He was going to help me if I would let him, I said, 'Yes! Yes!' Then 36 years worth of hurt, in the form of tears just started streaming down my face. Thirty-six years worth of neglect, abuse, and feelings of worthlessness started pouring down my face," Eddie says.
Eddie spent 18 months in prison. She says her time behind bars changed her life.
"It was really God’s grace that I got arrested. It was God’s mercy. God gave me the privilege of being able to go to prison. He loved me so much, that He was willing to set me apart and put me in a place where I would not only be able to hear from His Word, and from Bible teachers that came into the unit, He gave me time to grow in Him," she believes.
Eddie left prison, a new woman. She didn’t expect her next assignment so soon, but she wasn’t surprised how she heard about it.
"I was in my car, I had been released… listening to a Christian radio station. I have a thing with cars and radio stations. He came on the air and said, 'Who of you would like to volunteer with the station? You don’t have to have any experience whatsoever. We will train you, just give us a call.' I could not get out of my car fast enough. I told the program director… I said, 'I just got out of prison.' She said, 'I don’t care…you can see the love of the Lord all over your face!' "
It wasn’t long before Eddie was promoted to program director and still serves in that capacity today.
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