Crack had complete control over Lisa Veney.

“I was bound. It was a craving on the inside,” Lisa said. “When I got up in the morning, it dictated to me who you’re going to sleep with, what you’re going to steal. It dictated my entire day.”

She didn’t know when her misery would end, but she knew when it began.

“My dad would always come in late at night and drinking, after being with women, and he would just start beating my mother. I would cry myself to sleep,” she said. “He was actually murdered when I was about 8-years-old.”

In her teenage years, Lisa tried to block out the bad memories with alcohol, marijuana, and sex. By age 15, she was pregnant. When Lisa was five months along, she had an abortion. After that, she partied even harder. She hung out with friends who were into crack cocaine. It wasn’t long before she too, was addicted.

“It was like a downward spiral from then on,” Lisa confessed. “It wasn’t like when I took the first hit someone was standing and saying OK, this one hit is going to lead to a thousand or this one hit is going to cause you to be a prostitute, this one hit is going to cause you to be addicted. All I knew was that I just wanted more and more and more.”

Lisa married and divorced twice, and had five children. To get crack, Lisa would do just about anything, including prostitution.

“I would sell my body,” she said. “Sometimes it would be two and three different men at one time. And they would be dictating to me what to do: turn this way, turn that way, guns pointed to both sides of my head. I didn’t care. All I wanted was the drugs. They had what I wanted.”

While Lisa chased her next high, she neglected her children for hours at a time.

“They would just be screaming, just hollering, ‘Momma, we’re hungry, we’re hungry, we need something to eat. We want to go home. We want to go home.’ But it didn’t bother me,” Lisa said. “All I wanted was the drugs. As long as I had the resources, I wasn’t moving.”

Lisa’s aunt told her about Christ and Lisa became a Christian. For a while she was clean. But soon the need to get high was too strong.

“People really don’t understand how the addiction makes you feel on the inside,” Lisa said. “It fully has control over every area of your body.”

Lisa began dating a man named Len. He took care of Lisa and her children despite her addiction. She also met two women who invited her to a Sunday church service. She went not just once, but returned often. Then something started to change. First the first time in her life she had hope.

“It was just different. It was like I knew I wasn’t going to be like this always,” Lisa said.

Lisa says the longer she stayed in church, the more she wanted to be free from her addictions. She also wanted to be a better mother for her children.

“The only thing they know about their mom,” she said, “is that their mom was a drug addict and that their mom was always gone.”

While Lisa wanted desperately to change, her battle wasn’t over. At the time she was facing a drug charge and possible jail time. But she didn’t ask God for deliverance. She believed that to gain her freedom, she needed to go to jail, and out of reach of drugs. Lisa was sentenced to three years in prison.

“I told everybody; I said, ‘I’m going to be different this time. When I come out I’m not going to be the way that I was.’ Everybody laughed, like yeah right. But this time, it was different,” she said.

Lisa kept her promise. While in jail, she studied the Bible, prayed, and even prayed for other inmates. She was released after serving just four months. After that, she never used drugs again.

“I had gotten a taste of God and who God was and I didn’t go back,” she said. “I constantly kept seeking God and loving on God and building a relationship with my family. Not only did the Lord save me, but Lynn began to go to church with me. I went a few times and he wouldn’t go, but a couple of times afterwards he started going to church and he gave his heart to the Lord. And now we serve God together. Me and my whole family, we serve God together.”

Lisa talks about her life in her book, From Misery to Ministry. She now preaches worldwide, telling people God’s message of deliverance.

“I want to be that beacon of light, or that voice crying out to others that it’s not too late,” Lisa said. “As long as you still have breath in your body, it’s not too late to receive God.”