Christina grew up right here in Charlotte, but her early years were far from easy. Her mother struggled with addiction, choosing drugs over motherhood. Her father was, in her words, “a rolling stone”—absent, unpredictable, and eventually incarcerated. Both parents would later die because of their lifestyle. Christina was raised by her grandparents, who gave her love and structure, but even their care couldn’t mend what was broken deep inside her. “I was never good enough,” she remembers. “I could be whoever you wanted me to be; smart, athletic, charming…but I never felt like I belonged.”
Despite being on the honor roll and excelling in school, Christina’s pain lived just beneath the surface. Emotionally, she felt lost. She was surrounded by people who loved her, but internally empty. By the time she was 13, she found something that finally silenced the noise: drugs and alcohol. It felt like a solution. By 15, she was selling drugs. At 18, she was a felon.
Christina tried to walk away from that life. She got married, had a son, and started a career. On the outside, everything looked okay, but inside, the emptiness persisted. In her early 30s, a sledding accident left her with a shattered ankle. The prescription pain meds brought more than relief; they brought obsession. When the prescriptions ran out, she turned to the streets.
Her years of sobriety vanished. Her marriage ended. She had two more children with a partner who also struggled with addiction. Eventually, she lost everything, her job, her home, and her children, who were placed with her ex-husband’s mother. She lived homeless and hopeless for years. She was caught in an endless cycle of incarceration, addiction, and despair. “I thought drugs were the problem,” she says. “Not me. I didn’t realize I was shackled to something I couldn’t control.”
At 40, pregnant and incarcerated again, she felt completely cut off from God. Then something unexpected happened. Her cellmate, an older woman—was sobbing. And for the first time in years, Christina felt moved to comfort someone else. That conversation led to talk of adoption, and the woman gave Christina a phone number. Months later, high and in labor, she dialed what she thought was a friend’s number. It wasn’t. It was the number she had saved in jail, the woman who wanted to adopt. And she came. “It was the first truly selfless thing I had done in addiction,” Christina says. “That baby deserved more.”
A year later, Christina’s children’s father died from an overdose. That same day, so did she. But unlike him, she was brought back to life. She describes it as her “burning bush moment.” The obsession was gone. She didn’t crave the drugs anymore. She didn’t want to die.
After 90 days in a treatment facility, she picked up the phone and called Dove’s Nest. “I didn’t know if I had the willpower to do it,” she says. “But I knew I didn’t want to die.” When she walked into Dove’s Nest and saw the words “Behold, I make all things new” etched into the wall, she knew she had found something sacred.
At Dove’s Nest, part of Charlotte Rescue Mission, Christina experienced what she calls the greatest love story of her life. Not from another person, but from God. She learned that He had never abandoned her. That even when she ran, He waited. “I always thought God was distant and punishing,” she says. “But here, I learned that God is present and personal. He met me exactly where I was.” She rebuilt her life—one step, one prayer, one moment of grace at a time.
Today, Christina is back with her children. She owns her home. She leads, she mentors, she speaks to women just beginning their own recovery journeys. Every time she enters the gate at Dove’s Nest, she gets chills. She shared, “This place didn’t just treat addiction. It gave me a way to live. A reason to hope again. I hope I’m remembered as someone who carried hope to other women. That’s what Dove’s Nest did for me.”
