My name is Stephanie Koontz, and I am a grateful child of God. At the age of fourteen, I believed the lie that told me I was never going to be good enough. I became bulimic, only to soon mask and hide my emotions with hard alcohol. Food, and the release that came with purging, was my drug of choice. Alcohol helped numb the pain of loneliness.

 

Before I turned 21, I was a college drop out, I was physically dependent on alcohol, and I found myself in ICU after flatlining from a seizure due to a fatally low level of potassium due to malnourishment. My near death experience didn’t phase me. I continued full speed in my addiction like a tornado, destroying anything and everyone in my path. Bulimia for me was not just three meals a day, it was an obsession. Some days I binged and purged thirty times, only stopping when I ran out of food. The men I found comfort in only wanted one thing, but my lack of emotions made it easy to dismiss the pain these men caused.

 

In 2007, I became pregnant, and I was able to stop drinking, but bulimia controlled my every move. Not one day of my pregnancy could I stop my addiction. Karlee was born healthy, but in 2009, she developed ulcerative colitis. In 2011, due to medical complications, I held my little girl in my arms as she took her last breath on earth. Everything good inside me died right along with her. Spiraling downhill, and several DUIIs later, seizures from alcohol withdrawals became a weekly occurrence. I drank a fifth a day just to get out of bed. I drank several hard drinks to function thru my shift as a waitress, and I ended each day in party mode, chugging and shotgunning beers until 2 am. Seizures usually happened between 2am and 7am, so I found myself buying and drinking bottles of rubbing alcohol to avoid the hassle of another seizure.

 

I quit chewing my food in hopes that my esophagus would just erupt, and I could finally end the hell that I created for myself. But the hell just continued until I found myself admitted to a mental institution with a diagnosis of Wernicke Korsikoff, aka, wet brain. Basically my brain was floating in alcohol because my body could no longer process it, and I was stuck in a permanent state of psychosis. God intervened even before I knew Him. He had a different plan, and a few weeks later, I walked out of that permanent diagnosis without any trace of brain damage. Unfortunately, it still didn’t phase me. I threw up my first meal, and went right back to old habits.

 

I found myself pregnant again, and still unable to stop throwing up. Satan whispered louder, “you’re gonna kill this baby, too.” The day after Aiden was born, I relapsed on alcohol and within six months I had lost everything, including my son to the state. I had no choice but to accept the invite to Teen Challenge. I knew I could stay sober from alcohol, but there was no way I could stop my fifteen year addiction to throwing up.

 

Two days into the program, I gave up. I fell to my knees in front of a cross, begging a God that I didn’t know, to save a wretch like me. In that moment, He knew my heart and delivered me from both addictions. “God cast my rebellious acts as far as the east is from the west,” Psalms 103:12. Today, seven years free, I know who that God is. He is my healer, my redeemer, my strength in times of trouble, and He is also my Father who loves me unconditionally. He has above and beyond replaced what satan wanted to destroy. I am a wife, a mother of three boys, a servant, a leader, an author, and I am His beloved child. I am forgiven. I am made new. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world. “Faith doesn’t make things easy, it makes them possible,” Luke 1:37