Latandra’s Story: “I Had to Get Down on My Knees and Seek Him”

For a long time, Latandra felt misunderstood.

She had been through painful things as a child, but she didn’t really begin opening up about them until she was older.

“I felt like my family didn’t understand me.”

So she looked somewhere else for belonging.

“I kind of turned to the streets.”

At first, the streets seemed to offer what she was looking for.

People who would have her back.

People who would keep her safe.

People who would make her feel wanted.

But looking back, Latandra sees it differently now.

“The streets gave me a false love.”

That false sense of belonging eventually led her into drugs, loss, jail, and a life she no longer wanted.

But it also led to a moment she now believes God used to get her attention.

When False Love Starts Taking More Than It Gives

Latandra’s drug use began around the people she was spending time with.

“The people I was around were trying drugs.”

She started with marijuana and drinking. Cocaine followed. Then methamphetamine.

What may have once felt like fitting in slowly became something much harder to escape.

The people around her had offered a version of love and loyalty, but that life couldn’t give her the security she had been looking for.

And then something happened that would stay with her.

One of Latandra’s friends had been struggling with addiction and had talked about coming to see her.

For a while, he never came.

Then one day, he did.

And he overdosed in front of her.

A Loss She Felt Responsible For

Latandra and others tried to help him.

She called for emergency help. They performed CPR.

But he died.

“I felt responsible because if I hadn’t told him that he could come over there, I felt like he would have still been alive.”

The shock of the moment made everything difficult to process.

His belongings were still there, including his card and wallet. Latandra says she didn’t learn that he had died until later.

Then came another moment she says she will never forget.

Early one morning, there was a knock at the door.

When she looked outside, she saw police cars lined up down the street.

She was arrested for illegal use of a credit card.

At the time, it may have looked like everything was falling apart.

Today, Latandra sees that moment differently.

“If it hadn’t been for that moment, I wouldn’t be sitting right here today.”

She says the knock at the door felt like something more.

“I feel like that knock was God knocking.”

Alone With Her Thoughts

During another time in jail, Latandra got into a fight and was placed in lockup.

There wasn’t much she could take with her.

Only a Bible.

Her first reaction was simple.

“I am not going to read this.”

But lockup left her with very little to do.

She spent long hours alone with her thoughts, something she says she hated.

Eventually, she opened the Bible.

And she began reading about Jonah.

The story immediately felt familiar.

Jonah had run.

Jonah found himself trapped.

And Latandra felt trapped too.

“I think I was Jonah for a little while and I think I was in the belly of the whale.”

Sitting in lockup, she began talking to God differently.

She asked Him to make a way for her to get out.

And she made a decision about what she would do if He did.

“I asked God that if he would make a way for me to get out of there that I would change my life when I walked out of there.”

About a week later, Charis House came to get her.

Seeing That Change Was Possible

When Latandra arrived at Charis House, one of the first things that gave her hope was hearing from the program director.

The director shared that she had also struggled with addiction.

That mattered to Latandra.

“When she told me that she used to be an addict, too, for me to see where she was sitting, it made me believe that, you know, I had a chance.”

Sometimes hope becomes easier to believe when you can see it in someone else.

Latandra wasn’t being told that change was possible by someone who had never experienced addiction.

She was looking at someone who had been there and was now living differently.

For Latandra, that helped make recovery feel real.

A Love That Felt Different

One of the things that stands out most in Latandra’s story is the way she talks about love.

Earlier in life, she had turned to the streets because she wanted people who would have her back.

She thought she had found love there.

But at Charis House and through the church community around her, she experienced something different.

“The church just have showed me that love that to me represents God.”

And there was another part of that love that mattered deeply.

“Cuz they know that I’m an addict, but they don’t treat me like I was an addict.”

Latandra wasn’t reduced to the worst parts of her story.

She was known.

She was welcomed.

And she was given room to become someone different.

Looking Back From the Other Side

Latandra says she has been clean since June 8 of the previous year.

And when she looks back now, even the painful parts of the story have taken on a different meaning.

She still wouldn’t want to go through them again.

But she can see how God used them.

“I didn’t like the way it felt then. But looking back now, all of that was worth it.”

The arrests.

The lockup.

The Bible she didn’t want to read.

The story of Jonah.

The knock at the door.

None of it felt good while she was living through it.

But it became part of the road that led her somewhere new.

“Things Can Be Better”

Latandra knows what it feels like to search for love in the wrong places.

She knows what it feels like to be surrounded by people and still not be safe.

She knows addiction.

She knows loss.

She knows guilt.

She knows jail.

But now she knows something else too.

“Things can be better.”

Her story isn’t about simply saying a prayer and waiting for everything to change.

She makes that clear.

“You just have to trust God and you have to grab a hold to God.”

“You can’t just pray and ask for it. You have to actually seek Him.”

For Latandra, that became personal.

“And that’s what it took. I had to get down on my knees and seek him.”

That is where her life began moving in a different direction.

Not because her past disappeared.

Not because every consequence went away.

But because she stopped running from God and started seeking Him.

And the love she had spent years looking for in the streets was finally replaced by something real.

Things can be better. If you’re ready to leave addiction behind and begin seeking a different life with Christ at the center, learn more about Charis House and apply today.