Crissy Christian- A Life Transformed: from Meth to Ministry

This podcast episode features Chrissy Christian, whose life journey took her from growing up on a dairy farm to working on a Ginger Rogers ranch in southern Oregon. She shares about her struggles with addiction to methamphetamine and her journey to finding redemption and faith in God. 

Despite a turbulent family dynamic and personal challenges, Chrissy's encounter with a dead body during a drug run became a turning point in her life, leading her to turn to God. After leaving her destructive relationship and returning to Oregon, she found solace in church and eventually embraced the call to missions in Kenya. Today, she serves as the missions director at her church, working on various projects such as sponsoring children's education, empowering women through sewing programs, and providing menstrual kits to girls in need.

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Transcript

[00:01] Jan: Welcome to just talking about Jesus. I'm Jan Johnson, a seasoned believer who loves relationships and, you know, just talking about Jesus.

[00:13] Crissy: It was an interesting time because we were doing, again, we were selling drugs, doing a lot of drug runs. But I just got to a point where I was so unhappy with myself. I couldn't believe how this was so fun in the beginning and how. What a dark path it had taken me down. And so one night we went on a. A midnight drug run, and the streets were empty in southern California. And there was a motorcycle that had crashed. There was no one around. And so we came upon this dead young man. So we were the first on the scene and I was just beside myself.

[00:53] Jan: Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode one with Chrissy Christian. Chrissy grew up on a dairy farm in southern Oregon. In high school, she was a student body president and homecoming queen. But then life took a turn when she started dating a guy and moved to San Diego. Join me as we lean into the story of God's grace and transforming power.

[01:16] Jan: Hi, Chrissy.

[01:17] Crissy: Hi.

[01:18] Jan: Tell me a little bit about what your life was like growing up.

[01:23] Crissy: Okay. I was actually raised on a dairy farm on a ginger Rogers ranch in southern Oregon.

[01:28] Jan: Really?

[01:28] Crissy: It was pretty cool. The cousins and lots of cows.

[01:32] Jan: Cousins and cows. A little alliteration there. Yeah. So did you, you helped with the milking and.

[01:39] Crissy: Yeah, our job was to feed the calves, which was. Now. It's terrible. I know they're ripped away from their mothers, but it was so much fun to, you know, there was always several dozen. And our job before school was to mix that milk up and go feed those baby calves. Well, so much fun.

[01:56] Jan: How many kids in your family?

[01:57] Crissy: Eight.

[01:58] Jan: Whoa.

[01:59] Crissy: Big family.

[02:00] Jan: All natural kids from your parents? Yeah.

[02:02] Crissy: Three different dads, but all natural. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't know who my dad was. Thought I knew who my dad was till I was nine. And then my mom sprung a surprise on myself and my older sister and told us that actually. Oh, this Ralph isn't your biological father. This other guy was. Didn't bother me one bit. I just wanted to go back outside and play. But it definitely took my sister down a dark path. She struggled with it for a long time.

[02:28] Jan: Huh, huh.

[02:29] Jan: Within our family, we have five dads. Wow. Okay. Yeah.

[02:34] Crissy: Not so unusual. Uh huh.

[02:36] Jan: Yeah. So interesting family dynamics that happened there. Yeah.

[02:41] Crissy: I remember once in high school, someone was mentioning one of my brothers and they said, well, isn't he your half brother? And I said, well, what's a half brother?

[02:48] Jan: Yeah, right.

[02:49] Crissy: I didn't even know what that meant. Now he's my whole brother.

[02:52] Jan: Well, good for your parents. For, you know, holding you together as a regular, regular, full family. So you were living on the dairy farm, then you went to college.

[03:01] Crissy: What did you do? No, I didn't go to college. Yeah, I started dating a guy in high school. I was a good kid in high school. I was student body president, homecoming queen, all that great stuff. And then the guy was dating. We moved to San Diego, and my life took a different turn. At that point. I was still responsible and working, but decided to check out drugs.

[03:22] Jan: Well, that was a switch. Yes. So how did you turn from good girl to bad girl? What led you down that path?

[03:32] Crissy: Yeah, I just was. I think I just wanted to impress the guy I was with. And I always felt like I was overweight, which is silly, because I wasn't. And so methamphetamine was a great way to not eat. And little did I know, the more I did it, the more I wanted it. I would stay up for three or four nights at a time without sleeping. Still worked and held down a job. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. Long nights, driving for drug runs. Even started selling it. Because if you can sell it, you get it for free.

[04:03] Jan: Yeah, pretty crazy.

[04:04] Crissy: Start smoking it. Smoking meth pretty bad.

[04:07] Jan: I guess, in some senses, that lifestyle had benefits. Yes.

[04:15] Crissy: So I thought.

[04:16] Jan: I mean, enough to keep you going into continuing that. Yeah.

[04:21] Crissy: Yeah, I just. I thought that that was, in a strange way, it was good for me. At that point in my life. I had so much energy. My house was really my apartment, tiny apartment was very clean. Cause when you're on meth, you don't sleep. So you clean a lot.

[04:35] Jan: Yeah.

[04:35] Crissy: It's pretty crazy to think back now.

[04:38] Jan: And how long did that relationship last?

[04:40] Crissy: Relationships, sadly, lasted about four or five years, off and on, until I just finally woke up one day and realized I just couldn't do it anymore.

[04:49] Jan: Why did you decide you couldn't do it anymore? What led you to that point?

[04:53] Crissy: It was an interesting time because we were doing, again, we were selling drugs, doing a lot of drug runs. But I just got to a point where I was so unhappy with myself, I couldn't believe how this was so fun in the beginning and what a dark path it had taken me down. I scrawnied down to 96 pounds. I lost a ton of weight, which was, you know, I didn't want to lose that much weight. And so one night, we went on a midnight drug run, and the street were empty in southern California, and there was a motorcycle that had crashed. And we came along, there was no one around. And so we came upon this dead young man. He was in his thirties. Later I found out he was on his way to work at the hospital. It was a construction zone, and he didn't see the big concrete piece that he ran his motorcycle into. So we were the first on the scene, and I was just beside myself. I was young. I'd never seen a dead body before and just was puking. But before we left on that drug run, I was sure I was gonna commit suicide. I was gonna find a way. I remember looking at my wrists, thinking, all I gotta do is slice. One little slice, and this misery would be over. And after that body was in front of us, I couldn't do it. It just woke me up. And that was the turning point for me.

[06:13] Jan: What did you turn to?

[06:15] Crissy: I turned to God. He was always with me. I just shoved him aside and. But I truly felt that as sad as it was that that young man had to die, it saved my life.

[06:28] Jan: Did you feel like a God call at the moment? How did that go from what you're living to that? No, I need God in my life. I mean, like, he's a real person and that happens. How did that happen?

[06:43] Crissy: It's a good question. You know, I was raised with God, but not. We didn't really go to church that much. My mom kind of struggled with alcoholism, and it was kind of a. It was a great childhood, but there were definitely a lot of bumpy parts to it. And so I always had God in my heart, but I didn't follow him. And at this point, I just felt like there was no doubt. I just remembered, just thanking God for what had happened once my brain was more clear now, I didn't just stop drugs immediately. It took some time, but that, for me, was just the moment that I just felt God's presence and that this was not who he wanted me to be.

[07:20] Jan: And how did that affect your relationship with your boyfriend?

[07:23] Crissy: Pretty much ended it, which was fine. We're still friends to this day. He's doing okay now, thank goodness. He had a long history of drugs, but I think he's pretty clean now. But, yeah, it definitely, you know, again, it took a little. I left him, and then he would come back. It was a little, you know, a bit of that young romance back and forth. But I knew every time he came back into my life, my life stopped or went straight downhill. And so eventually, I just knew I had to cut it out completely. And that's when my life really changed. I moved back to southern Oregon and just started growing up.

[07:56] Jan: So when you moved back to Oregon, how to work with coming back to your family or to talking to them about where you were at or.

[08:06] Crissy: Yeah, you know, I've always been pretty open with my family, and so it wasn't that hard to talk to my family. They knew that I was actually my mom. I remember she called me once on the phone when I was heavy into the drugs, and she said to me, chrissy, I had this dream, and she did not know I was doing drugs. Of course, I wasn't telling her I was down there doing drugs. And she said, I had a dream that you were calling me and you were crying, saying, I can't quit. I just can't quit. And I remember just thinking, oh, mom, you're just paranoid. You're just worried. But I remember hanging up that phone thinking, oh, my gosh, my mom really does know everything.

[08:45] Jan: They always tell you that. They do.

[08:47] Crissy: She's right.

[08:51] Jan: Do you just step back into church, find a church that you liked, or how did your relationship with God grow?

[08:57] Crissy: Well, it's interesting. Did you have a mentor or. No, I definitely still went through some hard times. I'd go to church here and there, but not real steady. I even dated an atheist after that for a while, and that took me for a little bit of a ride, but I still knew I believed in God. I just had more questions. And then much later, I decided to go back to college to become a teacher. I was going to finally get my life straight and do what I've always wanted to do, which was become a teacher. And when I was in college, I was working at a real busy restaurant. And that's where I met my husband. He came in, his wife had died, and he came in a year and a half later. Finally, some friends got him out. And one of the first things he asked me is if I believed in God. And even though I had walked, you know, away from God back and forth, I was clean at this point. You know, I hadn't been doing drugs for a long time, but my faith still wasn't where it needed to be. But when he asked me if I. If I believed in God, I said, well, absolutely. Of course I believe in God.

[09:52] Jan: Like, who doesn't?

[09:53] Crissy: Yeah, who does? Yeah, but I hadn't been going to church at all, but I was working in this busy restaurant, and these young kids kept coming in from youth group every Wednesday. Chrissy, when are you going to come to church? When are you going to come to church. And, ah, they just were driving me crazy. So then after my then boyfriend, eventually husband went off to sea, he was working on a ship. I was like, I'm gonna go to church. And these kids came in. I remember on that next Wednesday, and I said, bucky, guess what? I'm going to church on Sunday. And from there.

[10:23] Jan: Yeah, yeah. Because you had a God moment when you got there.

[10:27] Crissy: Oh, man, I don't even. I finally went to church that Sunday. It was so packed. I remember sitting in the back on the floor. I don't remember what the pastor said, but I remember I cried through the whole thing. And when I was trying to drive home, I just. I had to pull over. I was crying so hard. And I remember seeing Bucky after the service, that same young kid, the youth director. And I was just crying. I couldn't even speak. And I remember he said, chrissy, that's the holy spirit working in you.

[10:52] Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[10:55] Crissy: Everything changed from then.

[10:58] Jan: I'm always amazed at how God pulls people to him. Yeah, he pulled me because it is the holy spirit. How do you not? It isn't anything else, you know, and how God planted those people in your life to keep saying, hey, you need to be here. Yeah, yeah.

[11:18] Crissy: But he kept chasing me. I kept trying to run.

[11:21] Jan: Because he knew who you needed to be. Yeah, absolutely. And to bring you. To bring you to that place, it's just like, it, again, tells me how. How we in our lives need to keep pursuing.

[11:38] Crissy: Keep pursuing.

[11:38] Jan: Yeah.

[11:39] Crissy: You know, it's a absolutely. Anybody that we think we know, we.

[11:43] Jan: All need God, but.

[11:44] Crissy: But we see those people in our lives that, you know, just go back and forth, or maybe they just don't believe at all, but we know that somewhere in there they do believe, and we just want to keep. God just tells me, I've got a few people in my life right now just to stay alongside of them, keep.

[12:01] Jan: Loving on them and keep loving on them.

[12:02] Crissy: Yeah, 100%.

[12:03] Jan: Yeah. Wow. So from that point, and as you grew as a christian, you got drawn into wanting to do missions.

[12:22] Crissy: Yeah, that was, that. That was a backwards thing. So, you know, you sit in church and go, oh, missions, that sounds so great. I'd love to do that someday. Then I became a mom. We adopted a couple of kids, which is awesome. They're now teenagers, which is not awesome. They definitely keep me on my toes. But what happened was I became a stay at home mom, and I really struggled with that because I had worked since I was 14, and so it was that whole identity crisis. Thing that sometimes women go through. And so I tried my hand at network marketing, which didn't work out for me, but in that I was kind of headhunting on LinkedIn and ended up this guy from Kenya pops up and wants some help, which is pretty common. You know, there's a lot of scams out there, of course. But I went ahead and started chatting with this gentleman and built up a friendship, and he was in Kenya, and that led me right into missions. And now I'm super involved. We've got, gosh, I think almost 300 kids sponsored going to school now in Kenya.

[13:22] Jan: We've.

[13:22] Crissy: We've dug wells. We're helping orphans. The list is long. We've got women's programs going on. I've been over there. I'm headed over for my 8th time here in October. My son Elijah loves to go. He's been with me a couple times. He's so much fun to take to Kenya. But, yeah, now I'm the missions director at our church. And so I love that it's a volunteer position, and I love it, love it, love it, love it. Can't get enough of it.

[13:47] Jan: So, with Kenyon, of course, going back and forth, you developed relationships. Yes.

[13:52] Crissy: So many. So many friends in Kenya.

[13:54] Jan: Yeah.

[13:55] Crissy: They're like family.

[13:55] Jan: Yeah. What kind of things do you do with the women?

[13:58] Crissy: We have a women's program that's been incredibly successful, and I think what makes it most successful is that it's hands off for the Mizungus. That's the white people. That's what they call the white people, or Mizungus. It's really run by Kenyans. We handed them the curriculum. It was free. It was produced by a faith based company, and it's very specific to third world countries. And the ladies run it themselves. We pay them a small salary. They rent it, they save money. They lend to each other. And then there's a component of business, home and health, that they learn how to operate a small business. And most of that's like selling milk from their cow or rope that they've made. Just that it's not like big business. It's small business, but it's feeding the family. But that's been the. I feel like one of the most successful things that we've done there. And, of course, keeping kids in school, I feel like that's so important.

[14:48] Jan: Right.

[14:48] Crissy: My favorite thing to take over there are books. We just hand out books to the kids, and they just cherish them. And they love them.

[14:54] Jan: Yeah. Yeah.

[14:55] Crissy: The kids are amazing.

[14:57] Jan: Well, and part of your ministry that you help with is the sewing. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[15:04] Crissy: We have a group of ladies at church. Actually, I just got to feed them yesterday. About once a year. I love to feed them lunch because it's just my way to thank them for all that they do. And they sew these menstrual kits. Some people have heard of them. Days for girls is a company that puts them out, but I have ladies that sew them, and they're reusable, and they're life giving. The girls get so excited to get these kits because when you're in rural Kenya or in the slums of Nairobi, you don't get to go to school if you're on your cycle. And you probably don't have underwear, either. So with the kit comes underwear, and the girls love getting the underwear. They get very excited for that. But they're little washable kits, and they keeps them in school, which is awesome.

[15:47] Jan: Yeah. I mean, that is really amazing. Yeah. And then they sew some dresses and clothes for them. Yep.

[15:53] Crissy: They sew wonderful dresses. I'm real picky about what I take over there because I don't want to take away from the tailors and the seamstresses there in Kenya. So I have some single moms and some hardworking dads that work in that field that are Kenyans. So we pay them to make dresses and uniforms. But also the ladies here at our church, they love making these beautiful dresses. They pray over them when they make them, so we take them, and what we do is I hand them out to the teachers, and then they give them to the kids for good behavior, for attendance, good grades, as an encouragement and a motivation. Yeah, as a motivation. So it's coming from them, not us.

[16:29] Jan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a lot like the unbound program that we work with.

[16:33] Crissy: Nice. Yeah.

[16:35] Jan: A lot of it is the same type of model. You know, that's. Yeah. With them. That's awesome. We can put a link in the show notes, too, for great. Yeah. How people might support or find out more about that.

[16:47] Crissy: Oh, that'd be wonderful.

[16:48] Jan: Yeah.

[16:48] Crissy: And, you know, I've got kids waiting to be sponsored. I'd love to get some more child sponsors. Always.

[16:53] Jan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Christy. Thanks for being vulnerable.

[16:59] Crissy: Oh, so vulnerable, you know, and I have to say, jan, when you came up to me and talked to me at church and said you wanted to interview me first, I thought, well, why would you want to interview me? But then I just spewed out my life story. I said, oh, I've never told anyone. I used to be on drugs, and then afterwards you weren't even really gonna ask me about that. But I thought, why did I say that? Because it is so private. But I do think that people can. Maybe anyone can just hear that and know that God can save us. I really shouldn't be here today. I was so serious about committing suicide, and I was so done with my ruined life.

[17:34] Jan: I ruined it.

[17:36] Crissy: But God brought me back.

[17:38] Jan: God, the God of redemption.

[17:39] Crissy: Absolutely. Amen.

[17:49] Jan: Wow.

[17:50] Jan: Just wow. Isn't God good to take her from that messed up life of drugs to now heading up a massive missions program in Kenya where she is influencing so many and sharing God's love and mercy. I love how she encourages us to never give up on someone we know who needs Jesus. It may not look like it at the time, and maybe even over the years, but God is always working, whether we see it or not. I placed links in the show notes for Chrissy's Kenya project and also a link to information on how to make the menstrual pads. If you enjoyed this episode, hit the plus at the top right of your podcast to follow. Then it will automatically be available when each new episode airs. Can you think of someone who might enjoy this episode? Why don't you share it with them? It's easy to do. At the top right of the podcast episode, click the three dots and then share show. Thanks so much for listening. I look forward to sharing another transforming story with you next week.