Welcome to My World




Aug. 28, 2006 Hi. My name is Marcy Hitchens (aka) Mercy. This is my testimony,


I am a fifty-four year old woman, saved and filled with the love of God. I know it has to be the love of God because there is no love in me without God. The experts called me an unattached child. This means I had no love for anyone except myself and most the time I was not too fond of myself. According to them (the experts) this was caused when my mother and father divorced. My father was the love of my life and when he sent us away I just knew it was because he did not love me anymore. I was six years old at the time. It hurt me so bad that I refused to allow myself to love anyone again. I hated my mother because she had taken me away from my father. She remarried to a wonderful man when I was eight. He tried to be a good father but by then I was not a wonderful daughter. I had turned off my emotions I was rebellious and hateful. My real father had remarried and when I was thirteen he wanted me to come visit them in California. By that time they had a child so all of a sudden I had a stepsister and a stepmother. The stepsister was not too bad but I was not going to put up with another woman in my fathers life telling me what to do. I was so jealous of her that I made life unbearable for her the whole summer.


They made me go to church three times a week. My mother and I never went to church in Iowa. It was a Church of Christ and they didn’t believe in dancing or musical instruments in church. They also did not believe in boys and girls swimming together. I thought they were pretty weird. Right before I was due to come back to Iowa I got saved I had absolutely no idea what saved was but they assured me I was.


I did pretty well about staying out of trouble until right before my fifteenth birthday. Nine men raped me at an ice skating rink in Greenville. My mother was an alcoholic by this time and got it in her head that I was lying for reasons beyond anyone’s imagination, even though the lye detector test confirmed that I was telling the truth, She sent me back to California to live with my father. By this time I also had a stepbrother.


When I got to California my stepmother thought it would be a good idea to sit me down and discuss drugs with me. I had never heard of drugs but if it was something my stepmother did not want me to do it had to be for me. It took me about a week after that to find some. The first thing I found was speed. It was great. It made me so smart. I could sit up all night and study. It took me a couple months to find the marijuana. That was even better because after being up on the speed I could smoke a joint and go right to sleep. Shortly after that I was introduced to L.S.D. Marijuana was my drug of choice and what I considered my closest companion for most of my life. I could get high and not worry or care about anything. I started skipping school. After I hadn’t showed up for school for ninety-two days the dean got in touch of my father. I was too much for them to handle so they sent me back to Iowa. As soon as I got back I quit school. There was no way I was going to go back so what could they do.


I was sixteen then and in my opinion all grown up. I could make it on my own and didn’t need anyone telling me what to do. I ran away twice and they caught me and brought me back both times. The third time they didn’t report me missing. Why bother, I would just run away again. I did not know this of course so I was hiding from the Police for the next two years. I was hitchhiking the country for those two years. When I was eighteen I ended up in Denver.


I thought it would be fun to join the army. The only problem was that two days earlier I had gotten high on STP and carved a naughty word in my arm with a knife. I knew better then to go to the recruiting office with that word in scabs on my arm. They would think I was crazy. I thought I was crazy so there was no doubt in my mind they would think so. I had to fix it first so I took a knife and carved it out. By now I had a ¼ inch slash in my arm that looked pretty nasty. I went to my local recruiting office. I passed all the tests with super high scores except the physical. I had a really bad infection in my arm but once it was cleared up they saw no reason I couldn’t go to OCS.


Two weeks later I married my recruiter instead of going in the army. I would have been better off in the army even in a war zone. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I had married a chronic alcoholic. My mother thought he was great because he would sit up drinking with her all night. Within two months after we were married I found out I had cancer of the cervix. They were able to get it all so I shouldn’t have any trouble having kids. Six months later we were in Japan. We lived twenty miles from the base where my husband worked. He would come home drunk about two in the morning and head back to work about seven in the morning. It was a very lonely two years for me. I had finally made up my mind to leave him when I found out I was pregnant. I stayed. I went in the hospital six weeks before my due date with phlebitis. They were afraid it would turn toxic so they kept me. Thirty-three years ago in an overseas military hospital they did not believe in inducing labor unless the baby was dieing. When I was ten months along the baby’s heartbeat started to slow so they finally induced. She almost died. Two days after she was born I saw my husband for the first time since they put me in the hospital. They would not let me travel until she was six weeks old or I would have left him right then. As soon as she was old enough we left him.


We moved into an apartment near my father in California. I did pretty well until I ran into some friends from school days. It was drug time again. Within two months I was also drinking. Up until that time I had not been a drinker and did not even like the taste of the stuff. I wrote a bunch of bad checks, about ten thousand dollars worth on my husbands account. I left my daughter with a babysitter one night and did not come back. She was about ten months old then. My husband took an emergency leave and came to the states to find my daughter. After he found her he came looking for me. I was not in too good of shape when he found me. I was only about one step ahead of the police he told me. If I would give up custody of our child he would not turn me in and would give me enough money to get out of town. I agreed.


I changed my name and went to Salt Lake City Utah. My mother and stepfather had split up and she was living with some guy there. I stayed high on acid for about three months. When I finally ran out I decided to go back to Denver. Shortly after I got there my mother left the man she was with and showed up in Denver too. She got a job in the bar I hung out in. That is when I met Michelle’s dad. He was a Mexican and told my mother when he saw me “I am going to marry that girl”. My mother said over her dead body, she was quite prejudiced. That was good enough for me. As soon as I heard what she said I moved in with him. If mom didn’t like him he couldn’t be all bad. I was wrong again. A few months after we got married I found out I was pregnant with Michelle. He told me to abort or get out. I got out. I moved back to Iowa with my step dad.


As soon as my mother found out I was living back here and pregnant she came back to my step dad. She had been gone for five years. I need to add here that I did not do drugs while I was pregnant either time. It was ok to hurt myself but not a baby. From the time Michelle was born my mother did every thing she could to get that child away from me. After she called the police on me and got me kicked out of my house I had a nervous breakdown. It was not hard then for her to convince me that the baby would be better off with them. I left town. Hitchicking again. I came back three years later to have my daughter tell me, “You made my momma cry just go away” they had her calling them momma and daddy. I left. It was probably best because I was not mother material. If she had stayed with me she probably would not be alive today. I didn’t care about anyone or anything except drugs. I didn’t even care about myself. I wanted to die but I knew I could not take my own life, that was wrong.


When I was twenty-six I started riding freight trains. I was a loner. I lived out side and ate out of dumpsters. I didn’t trust anyone so I would not stay in missions or eat in them either. I had my dogs and that was all I needed. I collected metals, aluminum, brass and copper to sell at the junkyard for spending money.


On one of my trips into Salt Lake City I met Pastor Harry. He was Pastor of a little church that dealt in street ministry. I had just been beat up and was looking bad. He bought me a meal and took me to church. The people there were so loving and caring that I knew they were special. I couldn’t accept what they were telling me though. God could not possibly be dumb enough to love me. Nobody loved me why would he. I was jealous of what they had though. My heart was so hard that I was not going to let anything penetrate it. I started drinking thunderbird wine with the other tramps along with the drugs Every time I wandered into Salt Lake I would drop by that little church. I would even go out street ministering with them. I was still high most of the time and it gave me a chance to meet new dealers. After they would go back to the church I would go back and buy drugs from the same people they were ministering to. Something kept drawing me there. It was all right to visit but I would not stay or get involved with anyone. I did not trust even them. I thought everyone wanted to hurt me so I did not stay around anyone. By this time I had been living outside by myself, not counting my dogs, for six years. I was thirty years old and usually acted more like an animal then a human. After I fell off a moving train coming into Salt Lake one night I decided it would be a good idea to get in touch with Pastor Harry. It was about one in the morning. I had torn all the ligaments and tendons in both knees and could hardly walk. I limped over to their house and by the time I got there it was about four in the morning. I did not want to wake them so I rolled my sleeping bag out in their back yard and went to sleep. One of their neighbors had seen me and called the police. They came shining the flashlight in my face about an hour later. I assured them that I knew the People that lived there but I had gotten in late and did not want to wake them. They didn’t believe me. I can’t blame them. I would not have believed me either. I was covered in coal dust and blood and smelled like a campfire. They thought I was just some tramp that wandered in off the track and decided to roll out. They woke up the Pastor and his wife to see if they knew me. I thought they would be mad at me for having them awakened that time of day. They not only told the police that they knew me but they started hugging me and crying. I was still on the ground because by then my knees had swollen and stiffened and I could not stand up. This was something totally new to me. I had not had a hug since I was married and nobody had ever cried over me. By the time they were through they had coal dust and blood all over them too. They carried me in the house and put me to bed in their spare room. I had not even been in a house in six years. When I woke up the next morning those clean white sheets on that bed were black. I thought for sure the Pastors wife would take one look at those sheets and kick me out. I lived with them for four years. They taught me to be a human again. I was mostly off drugs during those four years except for an occasional slip.


I moved into a house that belonged to the Pastors daughter and son-in –law. Shortly after I moved in to the house my oldest daughter found out where I was and called me. It was a real shock. She told me when I answered the phone, “ this is Rachael” I said Rachael who I don’t know any body by that name. She said “your daughter”. I about fell over. I had not seen or heard anything about her since she was ten months old. She had a son and I was a grandmother. She and Dillon came to see me and we went back to Iowa so I could meet my other daughter, Michelle. Michelle was pregnant with my second grandchild at the time. I had not seen her since she was three or four. I can’t remember for sure which. I went back to Salt Lake and Rachael went back to Denver.


I started ministering to, and feeding the tramps. I did this entirely on my own and without prayer cover or Gods blessing. Another dumb moment. When I was thirty-eight I found out I had lupus and would probably not live out the year. I rebelled. I started getting high again. This time I went in for the hard stuff. I started smoking crack. After a while I was not getting high enough on that so I started shooting coke and heroin mixed. This was called a speedball. When I could not find that I would shoot crank. I wrote several thousand dollars worth of bad checks to support my habit. When I figured I could not get away with that anymore I started prostitution. I was actually proud of myself that I could make that much money in that business at forty years old. Two years later I got arrested for the first time in my life. They let me out on my word that I would appear in court. It is called O.R. I was immediately out on the street again trying to get high. I did not show up for court. A week after I was supposed to be in court I got arrested again. I was charged with prostitution, drug possession, and failure to appear for my last charges. They were not going to let me out on OR again. My bail was set and I called my step dad. It cost him twelve hundred dollars to get me out through a bail bondsman. I still did not learn my lesson. I was right back out on the streets. Two or three days later I got arrested again for prostitution. The Jail was full so they could not incarcerate me. They found out that I was already out on bond so they went a head and let me go with a reminder to show up in court or else. I went to court. The judge did not know about the last arrest so he gave me six hundred hours of community service and one-year probation. I decided it was time to leave town. If he were that hard on me the first time I knew I would go to jail the next time.


I went to Florida. I had had enough of drugs, the hard stuff anyway. I had been off drugs for three weeks when I ran into a dealer in Florida. I stayed high for two days. I could not get the same high I was used to. I don’t know if it was God working on me or if the drugs just weren’t as good as I got in Utah. I left town. You can probably tell by now that I was a habitual runaway.


I went to Texas. From the time I was thirty-nine until I was forty-two I was back living outside again. I was living in some woods in San Angelo Texas. I was off the hard drugs but still smoking pot. One day out of the woods come three men in suits carrying a video camera. They came right to my camp so the first thing I thought was that I was going to jail. It turned out that they were ministers with the Baptist churches in the area. They had heard I was there and wanted to ask me some questions on camera. Their youth group was doing a project on homeless people and they wanted to use me for an example. I was not very polite to them. They bribed me with some food so I let them interview me. I had not eaten for a few days so it was not that hard to talk me into it. I would not talk to them until they brought me the food though. They asked all the normal questions of the curious. Where are you from? Why are you here? How do you live? Then they asked me, if you could have anything you wanted what would it be? I was trying to be honest with these people so I had to think about that one for a while. I was really getting tired of my life by then so I told them that I would like a house that I could afford on my social security where I could keep my dog. A few days later they came back with three boxes of food. They had found me a house but it would not be available for a week. That is why they brought the food. It would get me through until the house was ready. Then they tell me that the rent is one hundred twenty-five dollars a month utilities paid but I have to do five hours of yard work a week. No problem it sounds good to me. I was getting my check in three days so I could come up with that easily. That is when they totally blew my mind. The church had gotten up a collection and paid the first three months in advance. I figured it was probably a dump but I didn’t care at that point. For the first three months all I had to do was the yard work. Naturally I thought heaven had just come down on my doorstep, or tent flap as the case was. They came down almost every day for that week to make sure I was all right and did not need anything. When the day came for me to move the youth pastor came down with six kids and a van and moved all my stuff my dog and myself. I thought the landlords would take one look at me and say no way they didn’t want me there. Praise the Lord they didn’t. They welcomed me with open arms, my dog too. It turned out that he is a Pastor too and they are missionaries to Honduras every summer. The house was beautiful. I had not lived in a place this nice since leaving home and it was even air-conditioned. I had not quit smoking pot or drinking yet and had no intention to do so. I even told them that after I had been there a few weeks. They accepted me anyway. They “niced” me half to death. I started feeling guilty every time I got high. I lived in their little house for a year when I decided to go home. My mother had died so I had no reason to stay away anymore. I called my step dad and asked if I could come home with my dog. He said he would be happy to have me even if he had to put up with my dog. The next morning I told Tom and Martha (my landlords) that Buddy and I would be hitchhiking back to Iowa the next day. They would not allow that. They reserved me a flight out the next day with my dog. They paid for it. They were such good people and you could see Jesus shining out of them.


I had pretty much turned back to the lord then but I was still smoking pot and drinking. I used the excuse that when I am high I don’t lose my temper or get all riled up about anything. This was true I don’t. I don’t have any emotions at all when I am high. When I am not high I rant and rave at anything or anyone including God when things don’t go my way. I have had a very violent life, which included my violence toward others and their violence towards me. I have almost killed two men by stabbing them and have been at the point of death from attacks on myself at least four times.


twelve years ago I quit pot. This time I have no doubt, for good. I have no desire for it for the first time in thirty years. Anytime I have quit before I have still craved it. This time there is no craving. The Lord has taken all that away. I have not had a drink in 12 years and do not want any of that either.


Now God is working on my temper tantrums and that is exactly what they are. Except for the crying, there is no difference between the way I act and the way my grandchildren act when they don’t get their way. It is almost like having to grow up again all over because I didn’t do it right the first time.


The fact that I am still alive proves to me that there is a God. I have been in too many situations that I should not have survived and only a miracle could have gotten me out of. I have had my windpipe broken from being strangled, my back broken in two places from being intentionally run over by a pick up truck. I have had a gun pointed at my head in the middle of nowhere by a stranger who could have pulled the trigger and no one would have been the wiser. I almost died when my liver quit functioning last year and because of tests they had done, I got panckcreitus If it had not been for pastor Fred from first church coming to pray for me daily, I know I would not have survived. These are only a few situations that convinced me there was a God. If I was to mention them all it would take up a whole notebook.


Thankfully God was always there waiting to welcome me back. I would have to be a total fool not to believe. I thought I had given my whole life over to God and was happier than I ever was getting high and running all over the country.


My trials were not over as yet though. I wanted to be a member of Pastor Fred’s church but they didn’t want me because I smoked cigarettes. I tried to quit but could not. I got mad at God again. I quit going to church. Pastor Fred did not give up on me though. He came to visit often.


I had both knees replaced two years ago. They put me on some rather strong pain pills. The surgeon who did the job really botched it. My back and hips gave out on me about a year ago. I have had back surgery, but I still have to have more. I also have to have my hip replaced. Four weeks ago I decided I had enough of the pain pills. I was addicted. I didn’t realize it until I tried to go cold turkey. My doctor brought me off slowly. I am still in a wheel chair but that is bearable.


About a month ago, my daughter and her fiancée took me to church with them. As soon as I walked in, I knew that I was finally home. The Holy Spirit was so strong, that I started crying. I am now a member of RiversEdge Church where no perfect people are allowed. I have also joined one of their small groups, Celebrating Recovery.


God is back in my life for good this time. We have bible and prayer meetings at home with the family. I have finally taken my place as spiritual leader in my home. I have been a Christian for forty years, even though I was not walking with the Lord all of that time. He never let me go.








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