Testimony
Testimonial
I am 69-1/2 years old and will be celebrating 25 years clean and sober in Alcoholics Anonymous on June 16. I had met a non-practicing Catholic man who was to become my third husband, on March 29, 1991, Richard “Mick” Smith, at a Parents Without Partners (PWP) dance in Covina, California on a Friday night. I was doing several things that night on the Sabbath that a commandment keeping Seventh-day Adventist should not be doing—drinking alcohol, going to a dance to meet men, and then going home after the dance with the man I met, and definitely not going to church.
Sexual abuse by my father began when I was 2 years old. During the 1950’s the unspoken rule in the church was “don’t air your dirty laundry for everyone to see, “what happens in the family stays in the family,” “don’t tell a soul what Daddy has been doing to you.”
When I was 9 years old my mother was hospitalized for breast cancer surgery. After school one afternoon my father picked me up to go and visit Mama. As we were walking to the car I asked “So, how is Mama doing, Daddy?” He told me she was at death’s door. All I knew in my little 9 year old mind was that Mama was dying and Daddy was raping me. Daddy died when I was 12 and Mama passed away when I was 17-1/2.
The young man I was dating at Ozark Adventist Academy and who later became my first husband, Lonny Smith, came to my mother’s funeral and I couldn’t have made it without him there to help me with my older brother and sister who both had Muscular Dystrophy. Lonny asked me to marry him the night before my mother’s funeral. We married the following summer in 1966 and he continued his ministerial studies at Union College in Lincoln, NE and then at the Seminary, Andrews University. We pastored churches for 10 years in Missouri. I had a nearly fatal head-on car accident on a snowy day in 1980. I had come to not trust God because a loving God surely would not have allowed such unspeakable things to happen to one of his loving little girls. So, I began to self-medicate with alcohol and later that year I had an affair. Lonny and I divorced after nearly 18 years of marriage. I later moved to California in the fall of 1984, leaving our three precious children who were then ages 10, 12, and 14 to live with their father.
I was rebaptized in Paw Paw, Michigan by Pastor Byron Hudson and my oldest son Jeff Smith (a Seventh-day Adventist pastor currently working at WAUS-FM) who was a Seminary student at the time, with all three of my children around me. In 1998 I had several heart attacks/congestive heart failure brought on by Thyroid Storm, a complication of undiagnosed Graves Disease hyperactive thyroid condition. Three years later I had ovarian cancer followed by a very aggressive course of chemotherapy. During both illnesses I prayed, “God, if this is all there is for me, that’s okay, but if there is something more you want me to do for You, if You restore my health and show me what it is, I will do it.” God spared my life 2 times as a result of that prayer.
Mick and I had a beautiful life together because we responded to the Judge of the Universe drawing our hearts to Him. We sponsored a lot of people in AA over the years and then in 2005 we were asked by the pastor of North Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church in Claremont, CA to lay the plans for starting the well-known and successful Celebrate Recovery program at our church, which is still going strong to this day. This is the crowning venture that my husband Mick was so happy to be a part of. He worked with the men’s group and I worked with the women’s group.
On 1/1/2012 I decided to begin praying for Mick in a new way—that the Holy Spirit would draw Mick to fall in love with Jesus. As a Catholic he had been taught to know about Jesus and to do confession and Mass every Sunday to avoid going to hell. A couple of years before, Mick had 6 stents placed in his heart and so was now living on very borrowed time. On 2/26/2012 Mick had a catastrophic stroke and survived as an invalid for 15-1/2 months. I cared for him in my home with the help of dedicated caregivers.
And I can say, it really was worth it all. I’m so glad that our Savior Jesus Christ decided so long ago that I was worth it all for Him to die the cruel death on the cross of Calvary for me. And during his long illness God did answer my prayer—Mick did fall in love with Jesus and accepted Jesus’ shed blood to cover his sins.
Now, here I am in Michigan—and I’ve prayed that prayer again—“God, I don’t know what You want me to do, but if You show me what it is and spare my life, I will do it.” I am looking forward to working for the Lord in this place and am eagerly awaiting His nudging. I am, after much prayer and thought, and with the Lord’s blessing, beginning to lay plans toward raising up a community of Seventh-day Adventist believers and others who want to be a part of an addiction, hurts, and hang-ups group such as Celebrate Recovery here in Berrien Springs and hopefully on the campus of Andrews University.
Harlene Smith