ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (ANS) -- Addicted to drugs and drifting in and out of abusive relationships, Debra Canipe's life story was one of unimaginable horror. However, when she asked Jesus Christ to take control of her life things began to change for the better.
 |
|
Debra Canipe
|
In a recent e-mail interview, Debra, now a resident at Joy Junction, told me her story. She was adopted when she was six weeks old. The only thing she knows about her biological parents is they were from Boston, her birthplace, and were French Canadian. When she was two, Debra moved with her adopted parents to Southern California.
Growing Up
Debra's dad was a salesman, and spent a lot of time working. When he wasn't working, Debra said, he and her mom would go out for the evening.
Debra said that was fine with her, until the unthinkable happened. She was molested by her babysitter when she was somewhere between five and six years old.
She said, "It was at that point that life as I knew it changed dramatically. From that point forward, there was nothing normal about my life anymore."
When Debra was about seven or eight, her mother left her father for a very close family friend. So close, Debra said, that she called him uncle. He lived in the house next door.
She said, "He lived in the house right next door to us. It crushed me, because I was such a daddy's girl. So they sold the house, my dad moved away and my mom and I moved into next door. This was after his wife had a breakdown, and took their three kids to Boston."
Debra said it took a little time to move from calling the family friend "uncle" to "dad." She didn't do it immediately. When Debra was nine years old, she had her first back surgery and it was then she started calling her mother's new husband "dad."
"I was in a body cast for three months," Debra said, "and I think the surgery made us closer. Right around the same time as my surgery, my mom took me off ritalin, and put me on mega-vitamins as well as changed my diet. She figured that sugar played a big part in me being hyper, and she heard the medicine caused side effects."
Life seemed pretty good right then, Debra said. "I used to see my dad every other weekend until he moved out of state. We had so much fun together. We would always go on road trips with his girlfriend and my grandparents. My dad had belonged to a playhouse in our town, so he was pretty talented. He was always singing songs from plays, and my grandparents would encourage me to perform whenever we would go away places. Those were happy days."
However, there was bad news ahead, Debra said. Three years after her back surgery she learned that her first operation had not been successful. However, this time she faced having a metal rod put in her back. It resulted in her being in a body cast for six months. Debbie said this time around it was harder, because she was in junior high, and on the verge of becoming a teenager.
The only bright spot, Debra said, was her step sister Debbie, who came from Boston for the summer. Debra and Debbie would go to the local stock car races on the weekends with her parents, and enjoy barbeques with neighbors.
“Hell on Wheels”
However, Debra's life was about to spiral out of control. She said, "When I was 13 I started smoking cigarettes, and by 15 I started smoking pot and drinking alcohol. I was ditching school to party, and barely passing classes in junior high. By high school, I was hell on wheels and it was harder and harder for my parents to control me. However, I did manage to graduate."
During Debra's first year of high school she continued to party and ditch classes. She said, "The last day of 10th grade my sweetheart and I broke into his neighbor's house and stole his piggy bank, so we could buy alcohol. For my parents, that was the final straw. I had already done mushrooms, acid, pcp, hash and every pill available at least once."
Debra and her parents started counseling, and they enrolled her in a drug program. While she straightened up she recalled doing things she shouldn't have, like staying out all night without calling her parents. As a result, her parents sent her to a rehab program for six weeks. Debra and her parents weren't getting along after she returned home from rehab.
"All of a sudden I was asserting myself unlike before," Debra said.. "I learned a lot in rehab, including how to stand up for my own feelings. My step dad was big on ‘you don't have a right to feel that way,' and ‘children should be seen and not heard. He was really old school."
Debra said it seemed like she was constantly arguing with her parents, especially her step dad. One day they had a disagreement about the child support her dad was paying not going towards the things she needed.
She said, "My step dad pulled money out of his wallet and said, ‘Here's the child support money. Get the hell out of my house, and see if you can make this money last for a month. So I packed a suitcase and bailed. Of course, I had nowhere to go. My cousin helped me out a few times by letting me sleep in a car in my uncle's backyard. Then when he would go to work in the morning, she would sneak me in and let me shower and feed me."
Debra stayed, as she put it, "here and there." However, she said, for the most part she was a teen on the streets. For a while, she said, she stayed with a girl from high school and her boyfriend for a while, until they wanted to kick her out because she didn't get a job.
Unable to come take care of herself, Debra said she called her parents to come and get her. Although they worked things out for a while, circumstances deteriorated again. Debra said she was in the eleventh grade and still in the drug program. Someone from her school had died in a motorcycle accident. This understandably affected Debra, and as a result she called her mother and said she wouldn't be coming home.
"She said if I wasn't home by dark, she would lock me out," Debra said.
Debra said she continued to go to meetings, and bummed couches from friends to sleep on. One day she was heading back to town and saw two men hitchhiking on the freeway on ramp.
She said, "I thought one of the guys was so good looking and I had nothing else going on, so I decided to go with them. They were hitchhiking back to Buena Park where one of the guys lived. We stayed in a hotel the first night, and the next morning I had a new boyfriend. He lived with his dad and had to sneak me into the house. I slept in the back room where his dad never went."
She added, "When his dad would leave for work, I would get up and take a shower. He used to steal money out of his dad's wallet so we could eat at Jack in the Box. Back then, five dollars went a long way."
Debra said she quickly grew tired of her new boyfriend's friends. While she was sober, none of them were. She said she finally couldn't stand it any more, so she told her boyfriend that her dad was sick and she needed to go home. The truth was, Debra said, her step father hadn't talked to her since she went to rehab.
The next day, Debra found a place to stay. A woman she had worked with and her boyfriend had an extra room in their apartment, so Debra moved in. She continued to go to school and stay sober.
Debra said, "In fact, because I was sober and they weren't I started dealing for them. I had a huge jar of Black Beauty's. It was speed in a black capsule, and my roommates knew I wouldn't snort them because I was sober. They said I could sell for them, so I could have some money in my pocket. I thought that was a great idea."
However, that arrangement didn't last very long and Debra was thrown out. She ended up calling her parents and went home.
Trouble seemed to follow Debra. She said that she was secretly involved with a man on the program – secretly because he had a girlfriend, and at 17 Debra found out she was pregnant. She ended up having an abortion, but decided she shouldn't see him any more.
However, another relationship was soon forthcoming. One of Debra's friends in the program told her about his girlfriend's son, and Debra said, "I landed my first serious relationship."
She said she and her parents finally reestablished their relationship, and her boyfriend moved in with them. That continued for about two years, and Debra got pregnant again. She had another abortion. Around the same time she met a musician at a party. They hit it off and started practicing music together. Debra left her boyfriend for him. They started singing professionally and moved in together.
Debra said a famous person, a family friend to his family, came to watch them perform. She put them in touch with an agent. That resulted in them doing a demo for a famous producer.
Abused
"Life seemed like it couldn't get any better with the exception of one thing," Debra said. "He was an abuser. Although we were engaged, he would hurt me on a regular basis. I finally broke up with him after two years."
Debra moved on to another relationship. She said, "I met a guy at this club who worked in show business and we started dating. Then the hard core partying started. We were doing massive quantities of cocaine all the time. I would go down to the show, and after he got off work we would party hard. I met a lot of famous people and partied with some of them."
Debra said although she is unable to remember exactly why, she was living with her uncle. She continued, "I thought he was unusually cool because he smoked pot. We got along real well. I was in a bad way with my drug use. I had such a problem with the cocaine physically, that in order to sleep at all, I would need to use enough to numb me and then I had to take Valium to pass out before the cocaine wore off."
As a result of the cocaine, Debra said her nose hurt badly and she had "blood clots coming out the size of a quarter. One day I couldn't get any and I never felt so bad in my. I realized I needed to stop before it was too late. I decided the Hollywood life wasn't for me so I left it, and the guy I was dating behind, and moved on."
It was then, Debra said, that she met her first husband. After five years of dating and living together they got married. He didn't do drugs because he was on probation for some hard core dealing. He was however, an alcoholic and an abuser, but she married him anyway.
Debra said, "While we were still dating I got pregnant twice and he didn't want anything to do with it, so I aborted both pregnancies. After years of just about every kind of abuse I couldn't take it anymore. I prayed every night for God to let me out of the marriage. I started having an affair and so did he, which was an answer to my prayers. At that time we were doing property management and enjoyed some great success. I had already been divorced from him emotionally for a long time. I finally told him I no longer loved him, and to find someone who would. He did just that."
Debra was single for the first time in almost eight years. She said she met another musician the day she signed divorce papers. She continued property management, and starting partying again with her musician boyfriend. He wasn't initially abusive, but became so after a couple of years.
Debra said she had always believed in God and even went to church on Easter and Christmas. It was at this point she started a Bible study with a friend and started dating her second husband, an abuser, alcoholic and a drug addict. While Debra was dating him and working 70 hour weeks as a property manager, she had an emotional breakdown and ended up in the hospital. In hindsight, she said, she thought it was a long time coming. After she recovered she moved in with her boyfriend and found out about his addiction.
They started using meth regularly. Debra said, "The abuse got really bad and one night I had to call my girlfriend to come get me because he choked me, beat me and busted my lip open. She took me straight to the police station. He was arrested, and charged with assault and battery. I stayed with him because he agreed to get help. I ended up having three more breakdowns in the course of three years, and he admitted one day in a drunken state that he was trying to make me crazy and was going to have me committed as many times as he could."
Debra said her inability to keep a job caused her boyfriend to abuse her even more. The week of 9/11 she packed all her belongings and left while he was at his anger management class. She got a job managing mobile homes estates, and joined a singles group at church. By now she had been meth-free for some time. She was baptized in 2002. She again met someone and got engaged for the third time. Debra said she realized that he was an alcoholic and moved on.
During that time, Debra said, she lost her aunt and uncle to cancer. She said they died 50 hours apart and it was a double funeral.
Debra said, "I don't know what possessed me to do so, but I got back with the person who choked me. I guess because I thought he was rehabilitated and he promised me the world. I believed him. We got married and by our first anniversary, I was staying in a domestic violence shelter."
After she got out of the shelter, Debra said she became a nanny for a couple at the church that she and her husband and were attending, and spent the entire summer with that family. She decided to give her husband another chance with counseling.
By their second anniversary, Debra said they were headed for divorce court again. "We had a really bad fight one night, and he went off like nothing I had seen before. This time I was lucky he didn't kill me ... It was not the first time I would go to the hospital from his abuse."
She said her abusive husband pulled all the phones out of the wall and took her cell phone so she couldn't call 911. After that he left, wanting to avoid arrest.
Debra said, "I didn't want to deal with all that. I just wanted to be done with him once and for all. He never came home, and I spent the whole next day packing."
They ended up settling out of court, Debra said, and her former husband gave her "a chunk of money."
Debra said she stayed with a friend until she found a room for rent. Things were, again, not looking good. Debra's stepdad had been diagnosed with cancer months before and was dying. Debra was using meth again, which ultimately resulted in her losing her job.
Debra said, "My sister called me to come visit my stepdad before it was too late, and I stopped using that day. I spent the night at my parent's house and my stepdad died the next morning. I got kicked out of the room I was renting the same day. Since I had nowhere to go, I slept in my car the day before my stepdad's funeral."
Debra said she called friends from church and asked if she could stay with them. As they were leaving for a business trip and needed someone to take care of their kids, she was in luck. Debra also ended up being the kids nanny for the summer.
She said, "Everything was going great, except that I was working so many hours between the kids and the job. I guess I overdid it, because I broke down again. My friends called the ambulance and off I went. This time it wasn't just a breakdown. I actually almost died because the doctor said I had an infection in my brain. I never asked what the cause of it was, but I knew that it was most likely due to the chemicals and toxins in the meth."
The hospital stay cost her both jobs, but her temporary disability came through so she had money for a night's stay in a hotel when she got out of hospital. After that she stayed with a friend while she looked for a more permanent solution.
Debra said, "I had no husband, no job, no car and no place to live. I did have my sobriety though."
Shelter in Hollywood
Debra said she found shelter at a mission in Hollywood (which also operates in a number of other cities), where she met her third husband James. Another relationship was on the horizon.
She said, "Within two months James and I became good friends and my divorce was final. James and I started dating after it was final, and things were finally feeling okay."
Debra and James worked long hours at the mission, and the work was demanding. She said, "Somehow meth came into the picture again, and James and I started using together."
She added, "We almost got kicked out because the meth use wasn't recreational. It was a huge part of surviving the long days. In January 2006 I was so sick from the meth use I came home and told James I was done. I had been throwing up for four straight hours in some little pizza parlor's bathroom. That was my bottom."
Debra and James said they were soon transferred to a mission branch in Arizona. Within a year, they were married. After the couple they were married, they were transferred back to Los Angeles where James became the administrator. Debra said she was employed as the outreach coordinator. Debra said they enjoyed great success at the mission.
However, corporate changes resulted in James and Debra leaving the mission. By the time they did so, they had eight years of service between them to the organization.
James and Debra had limited options when they left, so they were offered a place to stay at Boyle Heights Christian Center, pastored by Pete Bradford, a long time friend of myself and Joy Junction. That arrangement wasn't a long term option, so Pete recommended that they come and stay at Joy Junction.
Joy Junction
The couple came to Joy Junction in Oct. 2008 and opted to join the shelter's life recovery program soon after they arrived. Debra said, "The program is helping me to learn more life skills, and to prepare for the shelter that my husband and I will open in Denver, as soon as God calls us to do so."
She added, "My goal is to help other women who are survivors of violent crime. Because of my experience, I know God has called me to help others help themselves. Through God's grace, I have been shown that I can use my addictions for something positive."
Debra said her relationship with the Lord and her husband are the two most important things in her life. Debra said she has come to learn something very important.
She said, "With God anything is possible. I am living proof, because there were many times that I could have died but didn't. God has shown me to care about myself enough to never allow any of that abuse again from any drug or person. He showed me that once I stopped abusing myself with drugs, I could stop allowing people to abuse me. I am on the right track now, but it is not without consequences. The damage I did to myself and allowed others to do is irreversible at the moment."
Looking back over the most recent portion of her life, Debra said she is happy. "Since our sobriety," she said, "we rededicated our lives to Jesus and James got baptized on our wedding day. We replaced our addiction to drugs with Jesus, and I could not stay sober any other way. We have been happily married for almost two years, and continue to live for the Lord. For the first time in 40-plus years, I finally feel like I am done living on the cuckoo coaster with that insanity."
James Canipe
James said that Joy Junction and its life recovery program has also been a big help to him.
He said, "I grew up Baptist in North Carolina and didn't really know much then. I was baptized when I was about seven years old. I was made to go to church until I was 15 years old. I had a choice then and walked away from the Lord. I didn't attend again until I was much older. I started going to church again after I met Debra. I was baptized again on our wedding day as a way to start off new. We have been through a lot together, and I'm glad we made it."
Pat's Perspective
Joy Junction Resident Services Manager Pat Feeney said he is thrilled by the ongoing changes he sees in Debra and James.
He said, "Part of their desire is to move to Denver and start a ministry for battered women. James wants to be chemical dependency counselor to be able to help others that are going through what they have been through. It has been a blessing to have both of them at JJ and to watch the progress the Lord is doing in their lives."
Pat added, "Debra gave her testimony the other day. It shows that no matter how much we go through, or how far we try to get away from the Lord, we can always turn back and open the door a crack and He will come in and dine with us."
My Take
Debra's story is one of a number of ongoing wonderful transformations that we are privileged to see at Joy Junction. I want to thank everyone who makes possible the ongoing ministry of Joy Junction. Your kindness, and the Lord's goodness, never cease to amaze me.
