Ashley's Story - Finding Stability

I arrived at Hope House on the 17^th of July 2019, after I was allowed to stay following meeting Jim, Heather, Pete, and Jackie Jackson at an interview.  Pete loved it that I brought my mum to the interview, and she wanted to come into the meeting but had to wait in the kitchen.  Not long after the interview I had a mental breakdown and they agreed for me to come and stay.  (I had met Jim a couple of years before and had been attending groups before applying for residency). 

This actually saved my life.  I didn’t know at the time I was broken, hyper, depressed and manic, and having problems knowing what was right or wrong, who to listen to and who to trust, but I needed a safe place, which Hope House is. I needed good people in my life to protect me and help me.  I had been listening to the enemy and did not know who to trust as I was influenced by human beings who had plans laid out by the enemy and as the Apostle Paul wrote, I do the things that I don’t want to do and I don’t do the things I want to do.

I had a business that I grew that I thought was my calling and expanded in 2017. I should have listened to the people who told me no but I thought I knew better, so I borrowed money to expand.  By then I had been off drugs 10 years and for 5 years had stopped gambling and alcohol.

As the stress mounted, I carried on thinking I could fix it by working harder and harder and getting into more debt.  I got worse and worse. I could no longer afford to pay for health cover and life insurance and food for my family.  I put work and business before my family. Various people took advantage of me, and in November 2018 after years of sin, I started to gamble to win enough money to get me out of the pit of despair and I needed to take drugs to take the pain away.

In March of 2019 I was in no state to be at my family home so I left to try to get better. It was the hardest thing to date, which hurt me very much and I can only imagine what it was like for them.  I crashed on my mum’s floor after sofa surfing at friends houses, but my behaviour worsened. I was pushing away the people that were trying to help me and in July, my sister mum and dad could not take no more and I moved into Hope House.

In my first days I started to fill the house with things I thought I needed: one bag, two bags, three bags and four and then boxes of stuff.  I think I had infected the house with my hoarding behaviour to the point every room had stuff in it, and I do mean every room; counselling room, front room, hallway, kitchen, shed, gym room and garden.

I would turn on all the taps, start to cook and leave the oven on and lights on.  I could not settle; up and down, in and out, I was chaos and mayhem, a whirlwind of ups and downs.  It was like I was on a rollercoaster and everyone had got to take the ride with me if they liked it or not.

I remember Jim saying to me once after I was threatening to leave “Ashley the world does not revolve around you”, but the enemy was telling me this lie that I thought the world did revolve around me.

After keeping to my commitments and structure; doing daily prayer, voluntary work at Lifespring Church and Faith, Bed 4 the Night and Abbey Baptist, I started to learn and to listen and to read the word of God. He put people in my way to let me mature as a child of God and become a better human being.  God does not give up on His children and Hope house did not give up on me.  It is truly a Godsend, a place for people to become stronger, to deal with the things that the real world will throw at us and not go back to sin but to do what God wants us to do.  To be like the shepherd who goes after the one sheep in a hundred, leaving the ninety-nine and comes back with the one who is lost, to rejoice with our brothers and sisters, and I was that one sheep.