Special note: If you have young kids in the car, we recommend putting those ear buds in for this episode as there are some topics that might not be appropriate for young ears.
Geneva shares her story of overcoming addiction and abuse. She became pregnant at 16 and dropped out of high school, leading to a life of drug abuse and domestic violence. After serving a 30-month prison sentence, Geneva found faith and redemption. She joined the recovery program at Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission’s Hope Place, a long-term recovery program for drug and alcohol addiction. Geneva graduated from the program and now works there as a guest service senior manager, helping others overcome their struggles. She emphasizes the importance of surrendering to God and breaking generational curses of addiction and domestic violence.
Special thanks to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission for sponsoring the Passion Meets Purpose Podcast.
Show Notes:
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Transcription:
Geneva:
When I hit junior high, I met my ex-husband and we were smoking a lot of pot back then and stuff, and I actually became pregnant at the age of 16, so I was a high school dropout. I had my daughter when I was 16. Praise God for that. He gifted me with her, but my life took a horrible turn after that.
Sarah Taylor:
Welcome to the Passion Meets Purpose podcast. My name is Sarah Taylor. This is where we discuss the things that you are naturally good at, your gifts, your talents, your abilities, and then how do you put those on display for the rest of the world. Let’s jump in with today’s guest. Her name is Geneva and I am honored to have her as our guest today on the Passion Meets Purpose Podcast. You’re going to hear a true story of overcoming and you are going to hear a story of redemption and Geneva, first of all, welcome to the podcast.
Geneva:
Well, thank you for having me. Praise God.
Sarah Taylor:
Before we get started with your personal story, which I just know is going to resonate with so many about overcoming challenges and hardship and just allowing God to make all things new, including you, let’s talk a little bit about your childhood because I firmly believe that who we are at our core essence really starts to emerge in those early years. So would you tell me something just about you, Geneva, that you think was there from one of your earliest memories?
Geneva:
Well, my earliest memories was when I moved into the new neighborhood I lived in and gosh, I want to say the early, late sixties actually, I was tagged the neighborhood nurse because when somebody would get hurt, I’d run out and fix them up and stuff all the time. So always had a heart to serve other people-
Sarah Taylor:
Taking care of others.
Geneva:
Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
Sarah Taylor:
How old were you, do you think, when you got that nickname?
Geneva:
So I was eight years old.
Sarah Taylor:
Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s right in that sweet spot. And we’re going to come full circle to how you’re doing that right now, but I think something that people are going to resonate with with your story is that life throws us some major curveballs. We’ve got these hopes, these dreams, these ambitions. Tell me about what some of yours were in school when you dreamed about what you might one day do. What were those hopes and dreams and ambitions?
Geneva:
I actually wanted to be a nurse and take care of kids in pediatric, but running around with the round crowd and getting involved with things that didn’t happen, but my dream was to be a nurse. Absolutely.
Sarah Taylor:
Where do you think that turn began?
Geneva:
When I hit junior high, I met my ex-husband and we were smoking a lot of pot back then and stuff, and I actually became pregnant at the age of 16, so I was a high school dropout. I had my daughter when I was 16. Praise God for that. He gifted me with her, but my life took a horrible turn after that. My husband was very, very abusive and I got involved with a lot of drugs after that too.
Sarah Taylor:
Tell me about, before we get too far into your story, I want you to really highlight some of those early moments, right? You say you met him in junior high and you started smoking pot. Do you remember the very first time you did that? You went from not doing any of that to the first time. Did you have anything inside your spirit that was thinking, “Maybe not for me?” Or tell me more.
Geneva:
Yeah, absolutely. So I was baptized at the age of 13. I was the only child in my family that went to church on Sunday, Sunday night, Wednesday morning, anything that had to do with church, I went. And so that was my crowd at that time. And then as high school went on, I guess you could say that looking for love in the wrong places at that age because of abuse. I suffered when I was younger from my uncles actually. So yeah, I remember the first time I smoked pot, I got scared, really scared, really scared, and then it just became a habit day after day.
Sarah Taylor:
It made you feel scared?
Geneva:
It made me feel scared and a little paranoid, but then after a while I got used to it and it didn’t bother me anymore.
Sarah Taylor:
Interesting.
Geneva:
It was the end thing back then back in the seventies and stuff, so I’m totally my age. But anyway, yeah, it’s all good. But yeah, so I mean, pot’s basically the gateway to other drugs, and so that’s what happened in my life. I was a meth addict for 27 years and praise God, I got 12 years sobriety in March, and so I’m very proud of myself for that. But before that happened, I had another child at the age of 19, another blessing, and so my husband ended up in prison, most of my marriage, most of my children’s young life. And so I was a single mom doing things I shouldn’t have been doing, just ride with my kids and stuff. My family home wasn’t the greatest.
I grew up in basically a non-functional, home dysfunctional because my mom and dad fought all the time and it was really sad. So I guess escaping any way I could, I did. And so I never, me and my husband got married, my ex-husband, we got married at a very young age, and then he went to prison when I was 21-years-old. I’ll never forget that because I was super, super scared at the time by myself with two very young children. And so that’s when I started drinking and partying and working. I worked a lot of time, a lot of hours. During that time.
Sarah Taylor:
Where did you work?
Geneva:
I didn’t want nothing … I loved my job I had, okay? I used to work at a place called Superior Records where we produced Motown records back in the day and it’s no longer around, so we did records like Stevie Wonder, the Temptations. We just produced them, put them on a press and send them out is what we did. And it was great, but I had gotten a lot of experience at Taco Bell as well as a guest. I love Taco Bell too, working there. It was so fun. It was a lot of fun for me. But as time went on, my husband got out of prison, and then I had another child by him in 1991.
Sarah Taylor:
Is that your third?
Geneva:
That was my third guess. So let me back up a little bit. In 1988, I was pregnant and my husband was beating on me, and he beat me and pushed me down, and I felt something rip on my insides and I lost my baby. I was very unaware that I was pregnant at the time and him being, I wasn’t involved with drugs at that time. I didn’t do drugs all that a lot at all, but he did. And so he said it wasn’t his baby and he was glad he murdered it and stuff. He was just … Yeah, he was mean. He was mean. And so I left him in 1992 with what I had on my back and my children. My baby had his bottle diapers and my daughter and my other son, we just had what we had on our backs and I left.
I spent the next two and a half years on the street in Mesa, Arizona, and I made it into a camping adventure because no mom wants their, I don’t want to cry. No mom wants their kids out on the street like that, right? So I’m sorry. I made it into a camping trip and made it eventful and kind of fun when it wasn’t fun, but I didn’t want them to see the severity of everything because they were young. But yeah, it was different. So I was on the streets for two and a half years, and then I said I had enough just wandering around doing things, and so I got a job at Taco Bell, mind you. And I got me and my boys’ first apartment December 21, 1995, and I kept that apartment for a long time, but mind you, after I left my husband. I was basically in the same relationship with the same person, but a different name looking for the wrong people all the time.
And my picker was bad, I guess you could say, right? Yeah. And so I got heavily involved in the meth scene, methamphetamine, and the first time I ever did meth was actually when I was twenty-seven before I had my last child, but I never did drugs while I was pregnant. And so after I had him, I started doing drugs head again, and it continued and it continued. I got arrested in 1999, that thing that didn’t scare me enough to not quit doing it right, so I continued to do meth after that, I was on probation, did jail time in 2012, 2012, I was arrested by the feds actually for crossing state line with drugs back then. I look at it now and it’s crazy. I can’t believe I did something crazy like that, but I was crossing state line with drugs just to get my drugs. I wasn’t making all that kind of money like everybody said I was going to make because I was being used basically.
And so I got a charge from Seattle. That’s how I ended up here basically. But they took me from Arizona, and I lived in Arizona at the time. I was sitting in the jail out there, and I knew they were going to send me down to Seattle because my charges were from here. And I was really super scared, Sarah. I was so scared because I knew I was going into something I’d never been into before, and I was really nervous. I got on my knees and I cried out to God. I said, ”
God, please calm me before I go into the storm I’m going to go into, because I knew I wasn’t getting out. And I’m not kidding you, sir. From the top of my head, all the way to the bottom of my feet, this warmth came over me, and prison was the best thing that happened to me. I used to sum it up like this. God loved me enough to save me for myself and put me there. He wanted me. He wanted my attention, and that’s how he got it. Praise God. And I was so content while I was in prison. Nothing could have touched me because I knew he was there with me the entire time.
Sarah Taylor:
So it’s not hindsight that you’re grateful, you were grateful in the moment you went.
Geneva:
Absolutely, I was because if you think about it, you put yourself in your own prison of drugs out there on the streets. I was more free. You’re sitting in that cell than I ever been for twenty-seven years sitting out there doing my drugs, and I was set free right there and then from that addiction, praise God for that. And he is the reason why.
Sarah Taylor:
Who was there in prison to support you in your faith?
Geneva:
So I did make some friends in prison at the CTAC. I did 16 months down here at the Federal Detention Center on 200th down there, and we were kind like the God pod. We had a God pod in there, and this is so crazy. It was Chaplain Ellis. He’s retired now and he held services there. He come there a couple of times a week and we talk and stuff and everything. It was great because I wasn’t the only one in there walking around saying, “God’s doing this, and God’s doing that,” because people look at you weird when you say stuff like that. I mean, they don’t believe, but I’m telling you what I’m walking truth that. Yeah. Anyway, so he was a big supporter of mine. I had some girls in there that were big supporter of mine. I’m actually keep in touch with one of them that’s out here now. I’ve known her for 12 years now. So it’s really great. But yeah, it was different.
But I was facing 10 years in prison because of my trafficking across state line with drugs, and I knew this, and I had two really super good lawyers in Seattle. And two days before I got sentenced, God came to me in my dream and he says, “I do everything for a reason.” And then he said, “30 months.” And I went, oh, yeah. So I would go tell my lawyer and I go get sentenced in court, and I said, “God, come to me and spoke to me. And he said, I do everything for a reason. And he said, 30 months. And they go, “Well, we don’t think so Geneva.” And I said, no. He said so he said So and so when I got in there and that judge, I’ll never forget and praise God for him, he said to me, but you’ve worked really hard to get to where you’re at right now. He says, “I’m giving you 30 months in prison.” And my lawyers look at me and they go, “Well, that’s crazy.” And I said, no, “That’s God. That is all God.”
Sarah Taylor:
So awful. The judge didn’t know that the Lord had spoke that to you. That was just you and your lawyers?
Geneva:
Yes, absolutely. He did not know. And God’s been there the whole time. Even when I was out there in my addiction, I think back on the things that was going on in my life and the things I did, he was there. He never walked away from me, but I walked away from him-
Sarah Taylor:
Do you believe, I want to go deeper on that because I believe this and I think you believe this. Jesus goes to places that a lot of people think he doesn’t go.
Geneva:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I really believe in my heart all the way he comes to those that are so broken because we need him so extremely bad. Right? And I never thought, I mean, I knew he loved me, but I didn’t know he loved me to that extent.
Sarah Taylor:
Oh, I do.
Geneva:
II can’t tell you the feeling that I have for that because it runs very deep in me. And I lived in the dark for so long, Sarah, you’ll never see me not smiling. You’ll never see me not happy. And it is because I have that joy and that light that he gave me back in my life.
Sarah Taylor:
What a gift that he told you before he told anyone else. 30 months.
Geneva:
Yes. And he said, for a reason. Right? So let me get to the reason. Okay?
Sarah Taylor:
Do it. Do it. The moment you told me you had a dream, I was like, “Whoo, here we go.”
Geneva:
And so he said, I do everything for a reason. And so I came to Hope Place directly out of prison. I didn’t know nobody in Washington.
Sarah Taylor:
Can you explain to our audience? Hope Place is part of Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. Explain what that is before you go on.
Geneva:
So Hope Place is a long-term recovery program for after you get done with treatment for drug and alcohol addiction, you could come here out of prison. You could come here from the hospital treatment programs. We call it God’s Hospital. We call it the healing hospital here and you’re going to get out of this program what you put into this program, and I was so ready to put into a program to straighten my life out. So Hope Place is one of the best facilities there is in Seattle UGM to get your healing on and your recovery on. And it’s a faith-based program. And your walk with God is just so incredible while you’re here. And I walked through the door, I had to ask them, “Am I in the right place?” Like a five-star or five-star’s, it’s not your typical shelter. It’s a beautiful building. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, am I in the wrong building?” And no, I wasn’t. And the love.
Sarah Taylor:
The .love, yeah. If you ever need to be celebrated or watch others who know how to celebrate each other, you go to one of those promotion ceremonies from each step to graduation.
Geneva:
Yeah.
Sarah Taylor:
It’s more church than church.
Geneva:
It is the graduation. We have those every 10 weeks. And it’s beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful to see each person on their journey here.
Sarah Taylor:
Yeah, you walk up there, everyone’s screaming your name, they’re on their feet. They’re saying, “That’s my sister.”
Geneva:
Yeah, it is absolutely wonderful. Yeah, the program here gave me a chance at my second life. God gave me the chance at my second life, and he’s a God of second chances. That is for sure. Because I mean, I’ve done things in my past and I’m not proud of it all, but I learned how to accept him and go on with my life and use that experience from then to where I’m at today. So it is really cool because as a guest service senior manager, I’ve been on the side of the desk that the guests are now, and I’m on the backside of it, and I can relate to them, and it’s okay if you’re going through stuff. It’s okay if you don’t feel good today, it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. But to know that we’re there for you.
Sarah Taylor:
We’re going to be right back to it with our guest. But first, I want to thank Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission for sponsoring this podcast. I had the pleasure of going and attending their women’s graduation ceremony. It was literally life-changing. I felt like I’d just gone to church. The way that these women supported each other, the hugs, the shouting out of the graduates from the audience going, “That’s my sister. You got this.” The vulnerability, the transparency, and the program that Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission puts on. Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission started over 90 years ago by serving soup to homeless and unemployed people during the Great Depression. Today, they’ve grown to operate twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They provide 300 and twenty-four hours throughout the greater Seattle area.
They’re motivated by faith and hope just like you. They want everyone to know that no matter their circumstances, they are loved and cared for by Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. And by God, their approach is highly relational. A lot of individuals come to their shelters, but they also have teams that go out in the search and rescue vans. It’s lasting change. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes patience. There’s no quick, easy fixes, but the change is possible. And if you want to find out how you can get involved, take action right now at ugm.org/take action. We’ll also link you up in the show notes. There’s plenty of ways to volunteer, so be inspired, volunteer, and give at ugm.org. When I interrupted just to have you say more about what Hope Place is, you were in the middle of telling me how God does everything for a reason for those 30 months. So I want you to complete that thought for me.
Geneva:
So after I got my sentence, I went to Victorville, California to serve the rest of my 10 months out there. And I tried really hard to get back home to Arizona where my family is, my children and my grandchildren are there. But unfortunately, he slammed all those … Not unfortunately, he slammed all those doors because that wasn’t the right place for me to go. No telling what would’ve happened if I would’ve went back there. So I came back here on the Greyhound bus, got dropped off down there at the Greyhound station down there on Soto. I’m not knowing where to go because I never really investigated in Seattle. I just drove through. And there I’m sitting there and I’m calling my probation officer, and I said, “Well, I don’t know what to do here. It’s 9:30 at night. What am I going to do?” Praise God.
My son has sent me money to get a motel room. So I went to the motel room, then I caught the light rail. I had to ask, “How do I do this? I never experienced anything like that. How do I get money to put on the light rail? Where do I get from A to B?” Here I’m looking down the street with these big old mesh bags with all my belongings in. I had about 20 Bibles with me, and that was about it. Isn’t it crazy? But yeah, praise God. And so I go to my probation officer who had came here to do a tour a week before I was released from prison. And she says, you know what, Geneva, I think this is what you need.
You need to go do this program here. But I wasn’t going to stay. I was going to do 90 days here and go home to be with my family. I really was going to get an interstate compact to go back home, but God’s got a reason for everything. I do everything for a reason. He said to me, those doors were slammed. And I shut it all the way. And when I said, I want to stay here and do this program, I want what these ladies have. I see what they have, and they’re happy. They’re smiling. I want that. And so I asked to stay here, and here I am nine years later. Praise God. Right?
Sarah Taylor:
Well, yeah. Nine years later, you graduated the program and then you took a position to serve and work there.
Geneva:
Yes. Yes. I actually did my internship when I was in program at Kent Hope, which isn’t Kent. I’m sure you’re familiar with that one. It’s an in-hat shelter, and we serve people straight off the street there. And it was really good. It’s a very humbling experience to see that, to serve people, meet them where they’re at. And yeah, that was a good experience for me. So I applied for a position here. I actually came back after I graduated and did the graduate internship program, which has been in here for about six years now. I guess seven years. It’s been seven years.
And so I graduated from there after year, and then I applied for this position as a guest service associate at the front desk. And I did that part for four and a half years and praise God. And that’s a very humbling experience because you can really relate to the guest in this building when you’ve been there, when you’ve been there. And we want to meet broken people where they’re at, because we’re all broken one way or another. Absolutely we are God’s reasoning. He does everything for a reason. I’ll never forget that. So loud and clear. I do everything for a reason. He has a purpose for me. And today I’m living that purpose. I truly believe that in my heart.
Sarah Taylor:
Let’s talk more about the program at Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. Tell me some of the key takeaways, the light bulb moments going through the program where someone said something or a success story and that made a new neural pathway in your brain, a new way of thinking or looking at something.
Geneva:
Yes. So they have a lot of classes here, and I think one of the best ones that I like is the Genesis process. This book will cut you open and put you back together because there’s things that we do that we don’t understand why we do, right? The insanity of it all. And this class will help you get through that to figure out, “Why did I do this? Why did I allow that to happen to me? Why couldn’t I say no?” You know what I mean? And so in the middle of the book, you got to write your life story at from when you can remember until where you’re at at that time. And it was like, “Oh my gosh. I was just living in a drug-induced days for all those years. I was allowing myself to be taken advantage of, and I had the power to say no.” One of those things is let your no be a no and your yes, be a yes. Don’t let your no be a yes and your yes be a no. It has to be even right there.
Let your no be a no and your yes, be a yes. Right? And so that I learned about myself. I was a people pleaser. I always wanted to make people happy in this process, making myself very unhappy. So I learned about that too. I mean, the boundaries class here is magnificent. It tells you, no, don’t let people take advantage of you. You have the right to say no. I mean, that’s a good class. And then they have Celebrate Recovery here. Praise God. Let’s celebrate your recovery. Let’s do the steps one to 12. Why did we do the things that we do and continue to do the things that we do? So the classes that they offer here are fantastic. And then you get your Bible study classes, praise God for that to dive deeper into the Bible so you can understand God’s word. And I’m really big on that right now because I want to do this Theology so I can understand exactly what it means. You can interpret anything in the Bible to your own liking, but I want to get a really big understanding what it means.
Sarah Taylor:
Oh, I love that you and I share a deep love of that. Let’s talk a little bit more about Celebrate Recovery for someone who’s not familiar. Step one, we admit that we’re powerless over our addictions and compulsive behaviors, that our lives have become unmanageable.
Geneva:
Yes, absolutely. And you go a step four when we make amends to the people that we hurt and ask for forgiveness. And so Celebrate Recovery is a class here. We are also affiliated with the church that picks the ladies up from here and takes them to a Celebrate Recovery class every week. And so Celebrate Recovery. If you don’t get it in that class, then you’re probably not going to get it. You know what I mean? You’re going to celebrate your recovery, nobody else’s, but your recovery. And yeah, it is wonderful thing. So it helps you make amends with yourself.
Sarah Taylor:
I just feel like celebrate recoveries for everyone. There’s not a person this does not apply to. If you’re listening to this podcast and if you’ve never read through these steps, go read through them and tell me, this doesn’t apply to every human on the face of the planet.
Geneva:
And you don’t have to be addicted to drugs or alcohol.
Sarah Taylor:
No. You just have to be a person trying to do this life. Right?
Geneva:
Yeah. And sometimes life is hard to live on life’s terms, right? But it is. It is. But praise God. I mean, it’s a really super good class. It helps you to figure out who you are, what you want to be, the immense part, the forgiveness part, writing their names down and saying, I forgive you for doing this to me, writing your own name down. I forgive myself for doing that to me.
Sarah Taylor:
Huge. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that for a second. Was that hard for you to do?
Geneva:
Absolutely, it was. Absolutely because my children were raised in an addict home. I took very good care of my kids, but I was still an addict. I was a functioning addict because I did work, but they still were around that all three of my children have been addicts as well. And it hurts me as a mom to know this. And so I had to forgive myself for that because they told me I had to. My kids did. Their favorite thing for me now is, “Okay, mom, we’re adults. We’ve got control over our own lives.” You didn’t. But as a parent, as a mom, as a father, any parent would take that personal and on themselves. So yeah, my kids are good kids. Praise God for that. But yeah, they’ve had their own struggles with the addiction as well, and it hurts me.
Sarah Taylor:
Is it continuing on to this day or have they found what you’ve found?
Geneva:
My daughter, praise God. She’s got seven months clean.
Sarah Taylor:
Wow.
Geneva:
Praise God. Yeah. My oldest son, he’s clean. He’s been clean for, I want to say 15 years. He did some time in prison as well. And he’s been clean for that long. And then my youngest son is on a maintenance from heroin, so he does methadone. So to keep off of the heroin,, and it hurts my heart. It really hurts my heart. But I also got to realize that I have to forgive myself and turn them over to Jesus because I can’t take that. I put them at his feet, but I used to take him back. Now I have to leave it at his feet.
Sarah Taylor:
That’s for all of this too.
Geneva:
Yeah. I plant that seed every time I can. I mean, you guys got to follow Jesus. And my oldest son, praise God, he’s been baptized. Praise God for that. He believes in prayer. Praise God for that. And I’m still planting a seed and watering with my other two children, with my daughter and my youngest son. And so my youngest son’s got this thing, “Well, what’s God going to do for me?” And I always say, “Well, have you asked him anything yet?” You got to ask dude. And you got to take the first steps. God’s going to do anything you want. As long as you take that initiative step, he’ll be right there by you. Sometime. It might not work out for you, but that doesn’t mean he’s not there. It’s crazy. God is good. Praise God.
Sarah Taylor:
Tell me how you getting clean, getting sober, serving the Lord in this capacity, helping others. Some call it leading with our limp. I think the best place for us to serve is where you set it yourself when we’ve been there. And the Lord brings people into our lives where you say, “What’s going on?” And then they basically tell you something you’ve already struggled through, and you’re just like, “Okay, this was a divine appointment for sure.” So how have your kids received the turnaround story of your life?
Geneva:
My kids love that. They say, mom, there’s such a bright light in you now. And they said … I mean, actually, how can we get that? And I said, you’ve got to surrender. You’ve got to surrender it all to God, because you’re not going to get where I’m at unless you surrender. And sometimes it’s hard to surrender. They say, “Well, we can’t see God. Well, do you see the air that you breathe? You feel the wind, but do you see the air? “Well, no, but it’s there, right? Yeah. Well, God’s there just like that. God’s there.
And my kids, my daughter especially told me, she says, “Mom, you just smile all the time. Now you got this light going on inside of you.” Because I do. Like I said, I lived in that dark for so many years, and I tried very, very hard not to frown, not to be sad, but we go through times, right? But yeah, so it’s important to me in the position that I’m in, that I let the ladies know it’s okay to feel the way you’re feeling. You don’t have to feel that way forever, praise God. But it’s okay. And we’re going to meet them where they’re at.
Sarah Taylor:
It’s interesting. As we’re talking, I keep feeling prompted to ask you, and I don’t know why, but maybe you’ll know why. I keep feeling prompted to ask you to take me back to when you were 16 years old and you found out you were pregnant.
Geneva:
I was so scared. I was so scared. I was 16 years old when I found out I was pregnant, and I didn’t even tell my ex-husband until, gosh, I was about six months pregnant. I didn’t tell my dad at all until I was further along. I was my dad’s angel, and it broke his heart when I told him I was pregnant, and that really affected me a lot. He didn’t talk to me the entire time I was pregnant, but until I bought my daughter home, Christmas Eve, she was born December 21st, 1976, and he seen her and he just fell in love. And then our relationship was built again and 16 being pregnant, it’s very, very scary because I was still a baby.
I’ll never forget my mom telling me, “That’s not a dog. You can’t toss her into the closet when you’re done playing with her.” And that was like, “Wow, okay.” And I mean, I took very good care of my daughter. She was walking by time. She was nine months old. So yeah, I lived with my mom and dad when I had her. Then when I had my son, at 19, I was homeless basically with my ex-husband. So we were staying with my dad, and then we moved in with his folks. Wasn’t all that grape. And it was there a place to stay.
Sarah Taylor:
But with your first baby, you had a supportive family
Geneva:
Yes. From my mom and my sister and my brother’s, absolutely. My dad came around after I bought her home. Praise God.
Sarah Taylor:
You saw that little face, that little face, she probably grabbed his finger.
Geneva:
He used to call her Jennifer Nene he flea flea on her knee.
Sarah Taylor:
I’m so thankful. I’m so thankful that you had that support at the beginning.
Geneva:
Yeah. Because a lot of people, it was scary.
Sarah Taylor:
And you say you’re a grandma now?
Geneva:
I am a grandma and a great grandma.
Sarah Taylor:
You are a great grandma.
Geneva:
Yes. I have grandchildren that range from the age of 24 years old to … How old is Violetta? To three years old, and then No, Violetta is my great-grandchild. She’s three. And then my youngest grandchild is almost two in February.
Sarah Taylor:
Okay. Wow.
Geneva:
And all those grandchildren, I have one grandson.
Sarah Taylor:
Wow. That’s a lot of girls. So here’s my question for you. As a woman of prayer, as a woman who is making changes in her life and praying over her kids and her grandkids now, her great-granddaughter, what generational blessing are you praying over them? And what generational kind of bonds are you breaking in prayer for your family?
Geneva:
So the curses, just the general racial curses are the DV, domestic violence as well as drug and alcohol addiction. Absolutely. And I play the blessings over them. I want my whole entire family to know how good Jesus is and what he’s done for me. Absolutely. And grandchildren. My grandchildren, they’re in that, what do you call them? The millennial, they were born in 1999, and-
Sarah Taylor:
Yeah, think That’s millennial. That’s millennials.
Geneva:
Yeah, that one. And so they all got these little ideals of other things and stuff. But yeah, they look at me like I’m crazy because my favorite thing to say is, praise God. Praise God. And sometimes it’s not at the right time when I say it, but that’s my favorite thing to say. I praise him for everything that happens in my life. I want my grandchildren and my own children to come to know him as I know him and have that relationship because it’s important to me and speak to them as well, because breaking that generational curse starts there.
Sarah Taylor:
And what’s the generational blessing that you are beginning?
Geneva:
Walk with God, praise God. Let’s just, yeah. Praise God. Just live life the way Jesus wants you to live it.
Sarah Taylor:
I firmly believe that your great-granddaughter and the generation after her, when they speak of you, when they remember you, they’re going to speak of God’s kindness and his goodness and his restoration as his redemption. You had to deal with some pretty strong challenges early on, and you have done the hard work of surrendering it all to the Lord and allowing him to take these ashes and grow something beautiful. And you’ve surrendered yourself to the process, and now you’re speaking about it, and you are serving in that same capacity with others. And I’m just honored to have spent this time with you today.
Geneva:
Thank you, Sarah. It’s been a blessing. Thank you so much. Yeah. I get emotional when I tell my story because there’s so much more to it, but that just tops. I mean, there’s so much that happened in the past, but we won’t go into that. But yeah, I wouldn’t be where I’m at if I had not surrendered to God and heard his voice actually talking to me. I mean, yeah. And the warmth. I mean, yeah, praise God. There’s a song that they play. It’s called Take Me Back. Take me back to that feeling I had when you were first in my life. I know you know what I’m talking about, right? That song means so much to me because yeah. Take me back to that feeling. And I feel like that almost every day I get that feeling of joy. I mean, I’m always full of joy. Praise God. I walk around and sing all the time. Joy, joy, happy. Happy, joy, joy. But yeah.
Sarah Taylor:
Well, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. And so it’s really a heart posture that you’re talking about. Yeah.
Geneva:
Yeah. I mean, yeah. I’m so happy. I am so happy with my life. I’m so grateful for my second chance at my life.
Sarah Taylor:
Geneva. Oh, what a gift You are. We are going to link to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission. In the show notes, we’re going to link to Hope Place so that you can hear more about Geneva’s story. I’m going to ask if we can link to Celebrate Recovery to find out more. And yeah, thank you so much. Honored. Honored, my honor to have you here.
Geneva:
Thank you so much, Sarah. It was a pleasure.
Sarah Taylor:
Thanks so much for being here today on the Passion Meets Purpose Podcast. We’re going to talk again in two weeks, but in the meantime, if you want to do us a huge favor, obviously you know this by now. If you leave a review, it really helps others to find this podcast. It also helps us to make it better, and then you can contact us anytime at Purposely Podcasts. Until next time, thank you.
