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As a Christian struggling to overcome addictions, Myra Hicks believed she was getting mixed messages. “In (Narcotics Anonymous) they tell you to deal with your past issues – bring them up and deal with them. But in church, they told me to put them behind me,” she said. “It was a conflict.”Now, nearly 14 years sober, Hicks, 53, believes she understands the need to do both. And the SMART Ministry she began four years ago attempts to show other struggling Christians how to do just that.
The ministry, she said, was born out of a revelation she had while pondering why it was that, no matter how much she tried to put behind her the past events of her life – molestation, rape, abuse, drug addiction and homosexuality – she always ended up carrying them into her next relationship.
“There has got to be a solution,” she recalls thinking while sitting in church one day. “I believe the word of God, and I believe it when he says to put the hand to the plough and move forward.”
Then she was struck by a realization: “God told me, ‘I do want you to forget the past, but it’s still in your present.’ I had never dealt with it. I stuffed it. … God showed me that the way to get it behind me was to deal with it.”
So Hicks began dealing with the past. She came to terms with the molestation that she believes triggered her downward spiral, and eventually was able to forgive her abuser. She apologized to her three now-grown children for leaving them with their father when she chose a life of drugs and lesbian relationships. She accepted their righteous anger, mourned what she had missed in abandoning them, and pledged to do better in the future. She examined her own role in three failed marriages and forgave her ex-husbands for the parts they played.She also learned to forgive herself.
“After I did all that,” she said, “I had to learn to let it go.”
Hicks cautions that none of this happened overnight. “It’s a process,” she says. “It took 10 to 11 years for the process to work for me.”
Today Hicks is a happily married grandmother who works as an insurance account manager in Concord. She serves as an inspirational speaker at retreats and runs the SMART ministry she formed four years ago through her church, S.O.U.L.S. Ministries in Vacaville.
“It started off being a support group for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics,” she says. “At the first meeting, most people who came had been clean and sober for 20 years or more, but their family members came – the ones who had never done drugs or drank. They started talking about the repercussions of the addicts’ behavior. From there, my ministry developed into learning how to get beyond your hurts, the pain of the past and working forward from right here.”
No matter what kind of hurt a person is trying to overcome, Hicks believes the key is to develop a relationship with God – not the “mean, cruel, hell-and-brimstone God – a loving, kind and generous God.”
As a child enduring molestation, she says, “I thought, ‘Where is God? How could I be his child and going through this stuff?’ Now I realize he was there, right with me. I survived it. The journey was difficult at first, but just getting to understand God really did love me, was important.”
The SMART Ministry group meets regularly on Thursday nights. For details, call 310-5674 or e-mail mjhicks@sbcglobal.com.
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