Daughter never gave up on her mom
Published: October 22, 2005
My name is Kayleen Brown and my mother, Laurna Wright, recently graduated from the Oklahoma Victory Transformation Center, in Sapupa.
About 10 years ago she started doing drugs and one thing led to another.
She started cheating on her husband.
She went through a divorce and she lost her home and the custody of her three sons she had shared with her husband.
She began living on the streets.
To get money, food or more importantly “a fix” my mom would dig through dumpsters and do other underhanded deeds.
With no place to live, she was not able to take care of me, so she always was sending me to stay with different family members.
A few years ago my mom moved out to Oklahoma to be closer to me.
She had not seen her sons for maybe six years now and I had not seen my brothers for years.
As a teenager I always wanted my mom to do things like go to the mall with me or take me out to a movie, but she could not do it.
She would get too nervous being around other people and the speed made it almost impossible for her to sit through an entire movie.
I hated her because I felt she had ruined my life and she had taken me from my brothers and the home I had grown up in.
We moved around a lot and she pawned some of my things to support her habit. She was always lying to me and she never wanted to spend time with me.
My mom once claimed she had stopped doing drugs when she moved to Oklahoma but I soon found her stash.
I went away to Florida last year for an internship at Walt Disney World and I spent Christmas with people I did not know.
I got one gift, a shoebox from my mom with some soap and hair ties in it.
It was almost offensive.
Late one night I got a call from my mom and she was crying.
She said she had been depressed for such a long time, she finally broke down.
My mother told me she was still on drugs but she wanted to get her life back together and stop living a lie.
She called her entire family and apologized for every little thing she had done wrong.
Most just acted like it did not matter any more.
She had made those claims before.
Nobody knew if it would be for real this time and some could have cared less.
For me, the entire situation was emotionless because I had become so numb, so calloused that I just did not want to get my hopes up because that meant she could hurt me again.
When I got back from Florida, some of my things, including my television were gone.
My mom said they had been stolen but I soon learned she had given my things to her friends as payment for her addiction.
She had no money left because she had written so many bad checks, that she had driven herself and her husband into thousands of dollars of debt.
They were on the verge of getting a divorce.
I was so angry with her.
I knew this time things had to be different, and I started calling rehabilitation centers all over Oklahoma.
My pastor the Rev. Kriss Haynes, gave me the phone numbers for people in the Southern Baptist Convention who dealt with these types of situations.
They recommended some centers for me to call.
I have to say I was becoming pretty discouraged as I was coming to the end of the list and everything was so expensive.
Most of the programs were only designed for specific types of addictions.
I never knew it would be this hard to find help.
I finally called the Oklahoma Victory Transformation Center and left a voice mail.
And then I quit.
I was done taking care of my mother.
I had given up.
Later that day I got a phone call from a lady named Rene from the center.
It all sounded too good to be true.
Rene explained it was a transformation center and it did not just treat the addiction but also the person’s body and soul.
It was a faith-based center, which was great because I had tried to get my mom into church since I was a freshman in high school.
I liked the idea it was structured so she would have a set mealtime, prayer time and even a bedtime.
No more sleeping for days at a time.
They would give her so much time to get the drugs out of her system and then they would work on helping her keep a steady job.
The best part about it was that it was free.
My mom would have to do chores to help out and would then only have to donate a small percentage of her wages back to the home.
But my mom would have to make the decision.
No one could make it for her.
I told her about the program and I told her she was going but it still took a little convincing for her to see it my way.
For the first few weeks, maybe a month, mom was not able to leave the home unless it was for church.
She had phone privileges and twice a week she could talk to her family.
She hated it and she wanted to leave at first because it was difficult.
Her husband and I encouraged her and got her to see the bigger picture.
“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” we told her.
Soon I began to notice a change.
For the first time in a long time, she was happy.
She was proud of herself and her self-esteem shot way up.
One day she called me and she was all giddy.
She said, “Kayleen I got saved.”
I never in my life would have thought I could her say those words.
A few months went by and my mom had advanced to being able to leave the home while under supervision.
I was able to sign her in and out and I was responsible for her.
I started bringing her to church and she would get so excited.
She would sing and shout “Amen.”
The center gave my mom the tools for leading a happy life, one she can take pride in.
They helped my mom find Jesus and she has been transformed from the inside out.
She has learned to lover herself and her relationships within her family are getting much stronger.
Her marriage is back on track and her husband is proud of her.
I am even comfortable in telling my mom that I love her.
There was a time not long ago when I could not even let myself think it.
God has removed the sin from her life and made her a new person and you can see His light in her life.
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