Personal Journey

Chrissy Garcia: A Life Transformed—From Drugs and Despair to the Desires of Her Heart

By Colleen Maile

To the fellowship at Calvary Chapel Boise, Chrissy Garcia is the articulate, mild-mannered wife of the church’s Latino pastor Julio Garcia. She ministers to women, leads Bible studies, provides daycare and tends to her own four children with grace and good humor. This seemingly average life belies a horrific childhood and troubled youth. It also serves as a testimony to God’s ability to make all things new.

Chrissy grew up immersed in a seldom-seen part of Treasure Valley life. Both parents dealt heroin. Her dad was in prison more than he was at home. Her mom had five kids with three different men. Her struggles with drug addiction made it impossible for her to care for her children. The eldest lived in Colorado. Chrissy was next in line. Responsibility for the three younger children weighed heavy on her little shoulders.

“There were times when I was in elementary school when my mom would leave us home alone for weeks. We had nothing, no food, no running water,” Chrissy recalled matter-of-factly explaining that she missed a lot of school. When she did attend, she felt humiliated by students and teachers alike. “We were the kids with head lice; we never had the homework; we were always in trouble. One time I stole the teacher’s pizza coupons that she gave out for rewards and I forged her signature so we could eat. I also stole from stores. We’d eat raw noodles; whatever we could get our hands on. We saw shootings, big fights, watched my mom get beat up by various boyfriends. There were broken ribs, stab wounds. We were always the ones taking care of her.

Sometimes Chrissy’s mom would forget the children were outdoors and they’d be locked out for the night. “There was a construction site with a big hole in the ground. We’d climb down in there to sleep.” When the kids did bed down inside they often had unwelcome company. “My parents were blinded by their addictions. They would be so focused on getting the drugs ready and getting needles ready, their friends would be on the same bed as us touching us. We were constantly sexually abused. We always had to fend for ourselves. We knew we had to stick together or bad things would happen. Bad things still happened but we knew it could be worse.”

State social services stepped in when Chrissy was ten. “I was so scared. I’d been taught not to talk to the police. I was afraid of them and of Anglos,” she said. For the first time the children were separated and Chrissy ached to return to her mother. “The home was OK, but the lady didn’t seem very fair to me. All I could think of was the look in my mom’s loving eyes every time she cuddled us and looked into our eyes. I knew she didn’t mean to let so much happen to us. I wanted to get out of there. So I started to steal to get money to run away and find my mom.” Chrissy was caught taking money. The police came and talked to her. Eventually she and all her siblings were placed with relatives.

“My mom was supposed to go to prison,” Chrissy explained. “In the jail cell she started praying ‘God I need help. I’m tired of this. I want my kids back. If you’re there help me.’ Something weird happened right after that. Instead of going to prison she was ordered to a treatment program. After about a year we all moved into the treatment house together. My mom got counseling and learned parenting skills.”

Six months later they were in a new home and Chrissy was hoping for a new life. But the nightmare wasn’t over. “My mom never went back to drugs but she still struggled with addiction and started drinking really bad. She met another man who we all thought wanted to form a family. We soon found he didn’t want us kids.” So, there was more fighting. Chrissy’s mother would leave her boyfriend, then, go back to him. It was a merry-go-round of different places and different schools. Chrissy approached her teen years trying hard to be absolutely clean—no drugs, no drinking, no boyfriends. Then at a new school some girls invited her to a party. “They said they wanted to get to know me better and asked me to spend the weekend. I thought they wanted to be my friends.” Instead she was drugged, beaten and assaulted by a series of boys. “From that point I was totally messed up and rebellious. I felt so ugly and dirty.”

At 12, Chrissy and her younger brother went to work in the harvest fields with their mother. In a few years the family had saved enough money to start over in Boise. At their new apartment complex, Chrissy met the man she would marry. “I didn’t like him at first. I didn’t trust anybody. He didn’t speak much English. Our parents never wanted us to learn Spanish because that was how they did their business. So, it was hard to communicate with him and I thought he was like every other guy.” Eventually Julio Garcia’s respectful demeanor melted Chrissy’s resistance. “He would always ask my mom if he could ask me out. Then, I’d say ‘no’ anyway. But he kept at it.”

Soon Chrissy thought they were in love. She had their first child when she was just 16. Four months later they married—and immediately encountered a culture clash. “Even though we were both Hispanic, I had been raised in the States. He was very traditional. In his world, men ruled the roost. We had no privacy. Mexicans are used to having three or four families live together. Our first home was a bed in a living room with a curtain around it. He was also very jealous and overly protective. He didn’t even like me going to my mom’s, “she explained.

Chrissy remained intent on gaining a better life for her family and over Julio’s objections got a job at BSU where as an employee she could take classes inexpensively.

“We bought a house. It was less than 1,300 square feet of space but it was ours. We still always had other people living with us—six cousins and brothers. It was really hard. We had no place to grow in our marriage.”

Chrissy had another daughter, continued to work and go to school and the tension with Julio mounted. They’d argue. She’d take the kids and leave, then return only to fight and leave again. “My time away grew longer and longer,” she said. After a particularly bad argument Chrissy went to her sister’s place and did what she thought would never be possible. “I started drinking and doing drugs. I always said I’d never do what my mom did but there I was. It helped numb the deep pain I had inside.”

Before they separated, Chrissy and Julio had been looking for a church. It was hard for Chrissy because she didn’t believe there could be a God who would allow all the pain she had endured. “However, my sister’s child was really sick and we had a nurse, Vicky Meyer, who went to Calvary Chapel. She invited us and we went. I remember sitting there listening to the music, Open the Eyes of My Heart Lord, and really being touched. Afterward I wanted to go talk to the pastor, but Julio said ‘No, you go if you want.’ We never did.”

Instead they continued to fight. Finally, Chrissy left her husband and children. Julio became so depressed he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Vicky Meyer and Calvary heard about it. Chrissy explained, “She sent Ernest Updike to visit Julio. They prayed. When Julio was released he started spending all his free time at church.”

In the meantime, Chrissy had a new boyfriend—a drug buddy. “He flattered me. Told me all the things my husband never said. Despite all the drama, Chrissy never got a divorce. During a visit home, she discovered that her mother was also attending Calvary. Chrissy went to church with her. Julio was there, too. Both Chrissy and her mom accepted Jesus as their saviors that day. Shortly thereafter, they were baptized together with Julio. Chrissy reflected on the experience, “The three of us held hands and walked down to the river. It was literally a scene from a dream I’d had.”

New beginnings came hard. While Julio tried to woo her back, his good intentions made her uncomfortable. Within days of her baptism Chrissy’s new boyfriend was in an accident. Chrissy returned to him leaving behind even her beloved BSU job. Soon the drug-addled couple hit rock bottom. “We had nothing. We were living in a car, doing drugs every day. Then one night he just freaked out on me. He got paranoid, decided I was a narc and started hitting me, threatening to kill me,” she recalled. The beating continued through the night. Chrissy was then held captive for two days. “He pulled a gun and I was sure I would not live another night. I asked God to forgive me for all the things I’d messed up.” When she prayed his rage ceased. Chrissy escaped to her mother’s and found Julio was already there. “God had put on his heart that something was wrong and he had to come help,” she said.

Much help was required. Chrissy was filthy, bloody, bruised from head to toe and so thin her bones protruded. Julio begged her to come home to the kids. “He said, ‘Give me the opportunity to show you the love I now know about. I’ve found true love in Jesus. Let me show you what it is.’ I thought he was mentally ill to want me back.”

She returned to the family but the reunion with her husband was not an easy one. “So much had happened. Our feelings for each other were gone,” she explained. We had to start over. I went to a ladies’ retreat and God told me I was where I needed to be, that He would always take care of me.” She then completed a Healed and Set Free class, set about allowing the Lord to rebuild her marriage and remains amazed at all God has done in her life. “What we have now is better than what I could have imagined. God is at the center of things. I realize that sometimes we have to go through hard times for God to be first in our lives. Jesus doesn’t want us to experience the pain. It’s not His will. But, we want our own way so we ignore Him. But now, He has restored so much to me. I just want to reach out to others with His love. God said He would give me the desires of my heart. And he has.”

« Back