Meet lori MACNEIL

Ever since I was a child, I always knew God was there, but I didn’t think He liked me. Maybe the reason for that is that I didn’t much like myself. Besides, God hadn’t seemed to answer my prayers to my father to stop drinking and to keep my parents from arguing all the time. So as far as I was concerned, God didn’t seem to care. For most of my life I felt such a deep and utter sense of loneliness, as though I were separated from other people. I didn’t think they could understand me or where I was coming from. So, to fill that hole in my heart I led a very sexual lifestyle. And I drank alcohol. Lots of alcohol to numb the pain. 

Growing up, there was always enough food on the table, but we never said grace to thank God for it. God back then was a Sunday thing. I had no idea who God was, other than the fact that He died on a cross, was raised from the dead, and He had a crappy death. I did not think He took a personal interest in me. I thought He was harsh and stern, like some cosmic cop ready to clobber me on the head every time I messed up. As a teen I even forgot God existed.

In grade nine I became a weekend alcoholic. I quit school in grade 11 because there was too much going on in my head to focus on my studies. That’s when I got my first job. It was in retail, and I was very good at it. Although I didn’t make much money, it was enough to buy my beloved booze. For three decades I drank and went through a lot of relations. I guess I was trying to distract myself from the isolation I had always felt. I even sold my body; that’s how low my self-esteem was. I figured that alcohol and sex could fill the void in my heart and soul that I now know only God could. And so, life became one long party to keep myself from the quiet times where I could actually hear the emptiness inside me. 

But when I turned forty, I met Doug and stopped fooling around and remained faithful to him the entire duration of our marriage. Even still, I continued to act in ways that weren’t very godly. Because I didn’t think I was good enough when sober to have the friends, I began to drink all the time. Drinking made me feel I could do anything. I was the best dancer; I was the prettiest; I had the best figure; people liked me; and I could do anything I set my mind to…or so I thought. In short, alcohol gave me the liquid courage I thought I needed to face the world I was so frightened of. Why I was frightened, I do not know.

Doug was a trucker, and I went on the road with him 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Why he loved me, I couldn’t tell you. He didn’t drink, take drugs or even smoke, so I often wondered what he was doing with a gal like me. Then at a truck stop one evening I was rummaging through a box of books, and a certain title caught my eye called “Under the Overpass.” It was about two young Christian men who left their cushy church because the members of that church were not practising what they preached. These two young men wanted to find God, the real God of love and compassion rather than the false god their former church was worshipping, a god who was very legalistic, which meant that one had to perform certain rituals and live by strict guidelines to obtain God’s favour—or else! They were never told that God loves people, warts and all, no matter how sinful they could be. After reading their take on God being a loving and gracious God, I went to church that Sunday with a new attitude. I was incredibly happy to learn that God actually likes me, not just loves me because biblically speaking God has to love me, just as it is written in the Bible: “For God is love” (1 John, chapter 4, verse 8).

But even still, although I now realized that God thought the world of me, that fact never helped me to stop drinking; that’s how powerful addiction is. Alcohol had become my slave master, cruelly mistreating me. The whole seven years that Doug and I were together I went through detox, rehabilitation, AA, the works—and nothing helped. Nothing changed. When we broke up after seven years (because of my drinking), my drinking got even worse!

That’s when I moved into White Oaks Court, where my drinking got so out of hand people gossiped about what a drunk I was. One time, in my apartment, I got so drunk I fell on my face and split my chin open. I was a mess, and the pool of blood on the floor looked like a crime scene. But I left that dried blood on the floor for a significant amount of time so I could give my head a shake of what alcohol was doing to me. But it didn’t help. In fact, I have three facial scars from fighting this foe called alcohol, which should be called Alcohell. No, I couldn’t stop drinking because alcohol had such a grip on me. After all, I had been doing it for about 30 years! But the worst was yet to come. 

My stomach started hurting. At first, I thought it was just the booze irritating my stomach lining, but I was so drunk I just dismissed it. Then one day my addictions caseworker did a wellness check on me, but I was so drunk that I couldn’t let her in. I couldn’t even stand up for that matter. So, I sat on the floor, talking to her through the slightly opened door. She alerted the police and the ambulance, who put me on a gurney despite my protests that I just needed help to go lie down. Long story short, I ended up in the hospital where I underwent emergency surgery because of a giant hole in my stomach, a hole that alcohol had caused, a hole that was bleeding out inside me. It seems that my beloved enemy alcohol had struck me a death blow, had given me a huge sucker punch in the gut. 

Later I found out that if that worker hadn’t come to check up on me, I would have died that day. As it was, I did die on the operating table—twice—but thanks to God the doctors were able to bring me back to life, just as Jesus raised people from the dead in the Bible. Now I know that Christ had personally used the medical team to raise me from the dead. After the surgery, I was in a coma for 12 days with a ventilator crammed down my throat. Next, I spent 30 days in a hospital room recovering, and then another 30 days with a dear friend named Ethyl. 

But get this: my alcoholism had me in such a vice-like grip that within two weeks of being in my own home again I was drinking. That’s how insane I was. That’s how lonely I was. That’s how empty I was. I knew I needed help, so I turned to the Scriptures seeking that help. Without realizing it, I had turned to God to help me stop drinking. I started to attend the Salvation Army Church and noticed that the people there accepted me for me. I didn’t have to pretend to be somebody I wasn’t. I didn’t have to put on a front for them. I could just be myself. I also used to sit on the balcony smoking cigarettes with Norm and he asked me if I had ever asked Jesus to be my Saviour, and so I went ahead and did so.

After that, I started feeling that God was on my side. I felt him speaking to my spirit softly on a regular basis. Then one day I just did not want to drink anymore. This was God’s doing, for no other power on earth could have relieved me of my alcoholism and restore me to clear-headedness. Contrary to popular opinion there is more than one way to get sober other than a self-help group. I give God the glory 100%. Because of Him I have been sober 2 years and 15 days now! And that truly is a miracle…considering how far gone I had been. It proved that God not only loved me, but that He liked me as well. What a difference God has made in my life. I am even in a relationship again with my sister, who had wanted nothing to do with me for years because of my drinking. Even better, I am a leader now at the White Oaks Community Church.

And as if all this weren’t enough, I have food now in my fridge instead of empty space because the money went on alcohol. I can buy clothes now that adorn the healthy body God has restored, a body that radiates God’s glow. I also have a new light in my eyes of God’s presence living inside me. A light that people notice. I have more real relationships with people instead of pretend ones. And God has taught me how to set up healthy boundaries within these new relationships. God has even restored my ability to remember things when alcohol skewed my entire thought processes. This wonderful Person called God is helping me to take care of myself and has also given me the gift of taking care of others too; that is, in building other people up, especially when they are being down on themselves. He has also given me the gift of being able to relate to others who are suffering, and patience for those who are on the same path that I was on.

This year will be the second time that the Salvation Army has asked me to manage the Christmas donation kettles outside No Frills, because God has seen to it that I can be trusted now. God has taught me how to think of others and be kind to everyone because who knows what struggles they are dealing with. For example, one day it was raining when I entered the lobby of my apartment building and a woman was leaving without an umbrella, so I gave her mine. That’s the kind of thing Jesus would do. I guess God is rubbing off on me; for He is making me more and more like Himself. He has even taught me that doing nice things for others is God’s way of using me to bless them and to thank him for what He has done for me. 

Yes, I was dead once, the walking dead, but now I have been raised to a new life in Christ. And all because God loves me. And oh yeah—because He likes me too!