“There was alcoholism. There were drugs, and actually there was even prostitution. In my family, we considered it normal. So, I was very scared most of my life.” 

Reality was too painful for Karen Coon to handle. She started drinking alcohol at 13 to numb her emotional pain. By 17, she enlisted in the military, because it seemed a safer place than the war zone she called home.

“I thought my family was my problem,” Karen recalls. “If I got away from them, then I’d be okay.”

But she wasn’t okay. Her abusive past kept her from fully trusting anyone. In her 30s, Karen went home to Oklahoma. Sticking to what she knew, Karen started running her own bar. 

“I did really well. I was one of these people. I was very aggressive. I carried a gun.” 

She continues, “I had the nice home, the car, had all the stuff. You would think when you get to that point you’d be happy. To everyone that looked at me, they thought I had it all together.” 

Two years later, she opened her second bar in a nearby town. Karen’s business continued to grow. She turned to methamphetamine to keep up with the hectic schedule. 

“I was warned by friends that knew people who had lost everything or ended up in jail,” Karen says. “When they’d tell me, my comment was, ‘That will never happen to me. I’m smarter than that.’ So I had a lot of pride in my ability to control things.

“When I first started to take it, it seemed to help. Then pretty soon it starts taking over. Once it starts taking over, job starts suffering, family starts suffering and your whole life starts spiraling down.” 

Karen became obsessed with getting and taking meth. One by one she lost her job, her family, her friends and her possessions. She was constantly tormented by voices and visions.

“I saw things,” she says. “Someone was in the woods always watching you. It was always there. It brought on great fear. If secular society had gotten a hold of me, before I went to jail, they probably would have committed me. I have seen a lot of people go through rehab, and they weren’t any better. So I was hopeless. I figured I was going to die a drug addict.”

Despite her desperation, Karen tried one more time to give up the drug. She planned to cook a batch of meth with a friend and use the money to get a new start.

“I looked outside and saw all the police officers pulling up the driveway. It was like13 cars, and at the time, I was laughing,” Karen says. “All this time, I had been so worried about going to jail. Then when it was finally there, I felt relief. Even jail was better than where I was.”

She began reading through the books in the make-shift jail library. The Bible was the last book on the shelf. 

"I just thought it was another book. As I started reading it, I knew God was in there. I just knew,” Karen says. “Pretty soon, I just picked up the Bible and said, ‘Did you people know this stuff is real?’ To me it was amazing!”

Karen was eager to talk to the jail’s minister about Jesus.

“Finally, I’d meet him at the window. He led me in the sinner’s prayer, laid hands on me, and cast devils out of me. I found out that all the drugs and all my life I had been settling for a counterfeit. What God did in my life at that time was so powerful that I’d never go back.”

Karen spent two years of a 10-year sentence behind bars – a place where she found the peace and safety she always longed for.

“I learned that it was a one day at a time process,” Karen explains. “[It took a long time] to not look far ahead and get in fear or look behind and feel the guilt. He would take me through those places where I felt I was so alone and so hurt. He would speak truth to me regarding them. I could forgive my family, release them and actually pray for them.

“I couldn’t just leave it at that. I knew I had a lot of friends out there that were strung out. I told them, ‘When I find the truth, I’ll be back.’ So God’s let me do that.”

Today, Karen runs a home for women just getting out of prison. She shares what she’s learned in her walk with Christ.

“He changed my life,” she says. “We all know that we can’t do it on our own. Only Jesus can set us free.”