AMAZING STORY
Jeffrey and Rachel Hardcastle: 'This is What Jesus Does'
By Audra Smith
The 700 Club
CBN.com - “By the time I started high school, I had done every kind of drug you could possibly imagine. I guess I introduced her into that side of life, and that lifestyle,” Jeffrey Hardcastle said.
“For about two years, we kind of got on a binge doing different drugs, doing a lot of things we had not business getting into, Rachel said. “And then I ended up getting pregnant after those two years. It wasn’t like he decided to get down on one knee and asked me to marry him. It was, ‘hey…I’m pregnant. We’re going to have to get married. It was hard because I was like, that is not what I wanted for my life. And I had a tendency to blame him, and resent him.”
“I was very depressed,” Rachel said. “I didn’t know how to deal with my depression very well…especially after our son was born.”
“After our son was born, we had our little girl,” Jeffrey said.
“I stayed home with the kids. I would call a friend of mine and make up stories for a reason I needed a pain pill,” Rachel said. “I was just kind of behind closed doors, one of those moms who deals with her depression by taking prescription drugs.”
“At the time, I didn’t know that she was on the pain pills the way that she was,” Jeffrey said.
“I was just screaming, yelling, mad, irritated all the time,” Rachel said.
“It was not any type of marriage that you would want or anything that you would want your kids to see,” Jeffrey said.
“Because of depression and because I was constantly looking elsewhere to try and find my happiness…I came into a relationship,” Rachel said. “I began to have an affair with one of our friends. It was a physical, emotional affair that I brought me, what I thought I was looking for.”
“In the back of my mind, I knew that something else was going on,” Jeffrey said. “At that time, I began to have an emotional affair with another woman at a job. She would do her thing, I would do my thing, and we would come back home and basically just slept underneath the same roof.”
“She had threatened to leave and get a divorce several times,” Jeffrey said. “But when you see the papers, and you realize that it is real and that this was something that was about to happen, it was really hard.”
“I just didn’t care,” Rachel said. “I just didn’t care if I lived or died, I didn’t care what happened anymore. I started snorting oxycotin, started doing coke again.”
“I signed over custody to him,” Rachel said. “I remember I left the lawyers office and came home and got high. I lost my job, I lost the kids, I couldn’t afford my apartment anymore. I had nothing, I was left with absolutely nothing.”
In 2008, Rachel’s parents checked her into Mercy Ministries, a Christian Rehab Program.
“I remember days being extremely hard because I couldn’t talk to the kids,” Rachel said. “There would be times that I would be in so much physical pain…because I missed them so much but I had to relieve every bit of what I had done to bring me to this point to get better.”
“Just to have that opportunity for those months to lay everything down before him and say, this is what I bring to you. It is just a big pile of complete, and utter destruction and I need you to help me, I need you to save me from all of this…because I can’t save myself.
”It was every single thing that I needed,” Rachel said. “Because ultimately there was a heart issues, and it was Jesus. He was the only thing that could fix what was going on in my life. It was ultimately God wanting a relationship with me and me having that relationship with him, in order to be the person that he called me to be.”
Six months later, Rachel graduated from the program completely sober.
“I got to see the kids very rarely at the very beginning, because Jeffrey was of course very stand-offish,” Rachel said. “I wanted to rush in and rush back home and everybody to see this great change that I made. But, ultimately, it had to be a God thing. He had to change their hearts to see me as a different person.”
“I had started going back to church with my parents,” Jeffrey said. “The more we went and the more I started praying, I asked for forgiveness for the things that I had done and during that time God opened my eyes and showed me that Christ died for me. How am I still going to be bitter towards her?”
“I started seeing the way the kids where with her, how she was with the kids, and started picturing our family back together,” Jeffrey said .
Me and my sister and my mom were having dinner at the Cheesecake Factory for mothers day,” Rachel said. “Even though I didn’t have custody of my kids, I was going to celebrate the mother that I was going to be.”
“I remember looking around the corner and I saw Jeffrey and I saw the kids, Rachel said. “They walked over and Jeffrey got down on bended knee. He was like, I know that there has been so much that we have said and done to each other. There have been so many things that we have done to hurt each other and I want you to know that I forgive you
...and we were wondering if you would marry us again?.....
“Just standing there watching my kids and seeing how excited they were,” Rachel said. “I thought, ‘This is Jesus…This is what Jesus does…’”
“My marriage now compared to what it was before, is like night and day,” Rachel said.
“It wasn’t overnight,” Jeffrey said. “It took a long time, but to know that He can restore anything, we try our best to put him first. It is completely different.”
“ I think that if you feel hopeless in your marriage, get on your knees and seek the only one who can save any situation like this one,” Rachel said. “Because he wants more than anything to see marriages restored. He is Jesus, He is in the power of restoration. That is what He does! There is always hope, because there is Jesus…and he is the answer.”
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