Stephanie Levesque works at The Gideons International Headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. She makes donor thank-you calls. When her mother died, she made a surprising discovery.

While on one of my many phone calls, I felt compelled to ask the donor why he faithfully supported The Gideons. He asked me if I knew that God’s Word was powerful, did I know that it was life changing, did I know that God’s Word was alive? Yes, I answered him. I did know all of those things. His questions caused me to think about a testimony I had read recently.

It was about a woman who grew up very religious. She was taught that her good deeds and her good behaviour would get her to heaven if she was good enough. She married a man who was in seminary to become a pastor, when she was very young. Their family felt complete after they had a little boy and then a little girl.

After a few years in seminary, her husband decided he no longer wanted to be a pastor, but instead wanted to pursue a career in law enforcement. He moved his family from Tennessee to South Florida to start this new career. He was promoted fast. He moved up the ranks to work undercover in organized crime, and eventually, as a homicide detective.

His family was the all-American family. They went to church every Sunday. He served as a deacon and taught Sunday School with his wife. They were very involved in the activities of the church. Life looked so promising. As time went on though this man’s drive for success in his career served him well in law enforcement, but not at home. The long hours away from home began to take their toll on his family. The marriage fell apart, and soon they were divorced.

Gone were the plans to serve God as a pastor and pastor’s wife. Gone were the church friends and church family. Gone were the dreams of being the all-American family. Everything was different now. The woman was devastated by the divorce. She was now a single mom raising two small children on her own. Her extended family lived in Tennessee and she was now in South Florida alone and life was not turning out the way she had planned it.

She was wounded by her divorce, and she felt rejected by the only man she had ever loved. She believed that she had disappointed everyone in her life, including, and especially, God. The day that she walked away from her marriage, she also believed that she had walked away from God. How could she serve God now? Disillusioned with life and with God, the woman started to do things she never thought she would do. Desperate for relief, she looked for anything that would ease the pain and fill the void inside her.

The next five years would take her on a journey into darkness that would almost take her life on more than one occasion. She wanted the attention and love of a man. Her self-esteem was so low that she would even sacrifice her well-being for that love and acceptance. The men in her life would hit her and would be verbally abusive. In fact, one man beat her so badly, her own two children did not recognize her when she came home from the hospital. That man would later be charged and convicted with attempted murder.

During this time she and her two kids basically lived on the run. They lived in fear, and learned to be ready to move at a moment’s notice by packing all their belongings into her vehicle and making a quick get-away. Now her life was filled with constant abuse, constant running, and constant shame.

She moved her two kids around so often that they lost track of the number of schools they attended. They hated to see their mom hit and verbally abused. They would lie in their beds at night with the covers pulled up over their heads. Her little girl prayed that God would help her stay awake at bedtime. All the bad stuff seemed to happen at night and she reasoned that if she could stay awake when she was put to bed, then nothing bad would happen to her mom.

Their lives were total chaos now and the only way she could escape was through alcohol and prescription drugs. This only made her spiral deeper and deeper into depression. She even contemplated taking her own life. The shame weighed heavy on her now. If God was disappointed with her before, what did he think of her now? She no longer recognized the woman staring back at her in the mirror.

Now, in her early thirties, she was a shell of the person she once had been. Where there had once been so much promise, there was only pain. The years of hard living had finally caught up with her. She was rushed to a hospital in South Florida with chest pain and shortness of breath where she was hospitalized and diagnosed with Myocarditis (inflammation and damage to the heart muscle). She was placed in the ICU where a single curtain separated her from the next bed. The woman in that bed had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and she had friends who would come to visit her daily. Those friends would read the Bible out loud to her, they would pray for their friend, and sometimes they would sing to her.

Those precious friends never knew that the woman lying on the other side of the curtain, who was so disillusioned with life, was deeply affected by their time at the hospital. After these ladies would leave, she would reach into that nightstand beside her hospital bed and pull out the Gideon Bible, and she would read God’s Word. This time was different though. The Words came alive to her. She was tired of running, tired of hiding.

She finally surrendered her life to God. Holding that Gideon-placed Bible in her hands she told God that if He would heal her, she would never stop telling others what He had done for her. God did just that! She was released from the hospital and started a new life. She began attending a small church with her two kids. This small church literally loved her back to Jesus.

They took this little family under their wings and ministered to their needs. This woman fell in love with God and His Word. She became a mentor to many women over the years who had struggled just like she had. She was also a teaching leader for a Bible Study. God had given her a second chance, and she did not waste it.

This woman was my mother. She was tragically killed in an automobile accident at 67 years of age on December 6, 2011.

I was devastated by her death. I received a phone call at Gideons International to rush to the hospital as she had been in a serious car accident. After leaving the hospital on that dark day I went to my mom’s house. It was there I found a folder sitting on her desk where she had typed out her testimony. A few weeks before her death she had been asked to share it at a Woman’s Shelter in Nashville.

For the very first time, I found her story of the Gideon Bible in that folder. I wept as I read her words. I never knew. This is what I do know. God can use your biggest failure as your biggest platform. He can take the thing that you think disqualifies you and use it for your good and His glory! That thing that causes you so much shame, can be your biggest opportunity for God. He came for the sick, not the well. We are all sin sick and He is a God of second chances.

I want to thank you for what you do, and to tell you to never, ever quit! My mom’s life was changed for all eternity because, when she needed it the most, God’s Word was within arm’s reach. My mom’s life was not the only one affected by her decision. I was the little girl hiding underneath the covers at night, begging God to help me stay awake to protect my mom.

When my mom surrendered her life to Christ, it changed all our lives. Thank you for your faithfulness! My mom is in heaven today because she found Jesus in the pages of the book in the bedside table.

Stephanie Levesque gave this testimony at the 2017 International Convention in Kansas City