I talked with a 28 year old woman named Isabella at the jail last night, and she's still haunting me this morning. She's a pretty, delicate young woman with  black silken hair, and she only began using drugs when covid started, but what was so unusual was, the first drug she tried was fentanyl. 

She kind of blushed when she said it, knowing most people begin with far less dangerous drugs and work themselves up the ladder, fentanyl being the last. I didn't have much time with her, but enough to learn that her childhood was a living nightmare. I understood.

Towards the end she began opening up more and at one point she told me she had overdosed on fentanyl 26 times!! She explained how her boyfriend and her made an agreement that if one of them OD's the other will rush them to the hospital, but if they revive before they get there, they will go back and continue getting high. She told me she overdosed twice in one night! 

Such a flagrant disregard for her life reveals the depths of depression abuse causes, where one is willing to risk it all just to be free of memories of the past. What of death? Come what may.....

I'm left with such a mixture of turbulent emotions at times like these. Knowing that without ongoing, serious, experienced help, there is little hope for her. What a helpless longing I feel, a mourning deep within me, and yet, such a flood of love and affection that God pours through me as we talk, and remains with me still. I know His shadow hovers and covers, and my heart take refuge in one thing, and one thing only: all of my Hope is in Jesus. 

But Jesus proclaimed  

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives!"

Yes! Jesus saves! I've seen it ore and ore, had I not, I couldn't venture into this murky world of darkness and enslavement. 

The picture is not her, but a random photo from the Internet.