Me today in our emerald pasture.

Me looking bad as ever with my little sister who is a big reason why i changed.

I would visit my mom at the farm once a week and get my dose of nature and animal medicine.

Me today with my dog Talula in our favorite prayer spot.

Hello dear readers! My name is Reesa Montana Grace Harrell. My middle name is fitting because I was born and bred a mountain girl. First, thank you for reading this, and welcome to my first ever blog! To kick things off, I would like to share my testimony with you. For their privacy, some of the people's names in this account have been changed.

I was raised by a strong fighter of a woman who to this day is my very best friend. Just us two for much of my young life, my mom and I encountered some struggles. Regardless, we were always blessed. One of our greatest blessings was my step-father who helped raise me from the age of ten on, and who has continued to be our rock. No matter what our family was doing, we were always cradled in Jesus' precious hands. Growing up, beloved family friends exposed me to many different types of spiritual practices including, Buddhism, Judaism, Reclaiming Tradition, Native American Church, Santeria, and Christianity. Though my mom had a deep relationship with Jesus since childhood, we never went to church and had little to do with religion. To this day, I still don't consider myself religious. Growing up, I always said The Lord's Prayer before going to bed or any time I felt scared. Though I knew about Jesus, I didn't have a relationship with him.

When I was around eleven, I started smoking pot and drinking, and at thirteen I took up smoking cigarettes. In middle school I had a yearlong stint with bulimia, followed by a decade of off-and-on starvation, and a terrible body image. In the ninth grade, I took a gravity bong hit of some laced weed and had a complete psychotic break that continued for the next two years. I became a lesbian at fifteen and decided that I hated the male gender. Not long after, my best friend Tony died in a tragic car accident. That's when I really had a mental breakdown. I dropped out of school towards the end of my sophomore year and began partying with my friends in the neighboring city a LOT. What started out as a few days in town every week, turned into me running away to live there and couch surf full time. Mostly, my friends and I would hang out getting blasted in the park with our beloved homeless friends, or partying in squats. Thankfully my treasured childhood friend Shiloh lived close by and I spent many nights in the safety of his family home with him. After many months of heart break and worry for my poor mother, she finally gave me an ultimatum; move back home and finish my junior year of high school, or move to Wisconsin with my dad. Needless to say, I went home kicking and screaming. I finished my junior year at the local ho-dunk high school in our rural town, refusing to go back for my senior year. Instead, I went to a community college, pending a GED, and continued my party lifestyle.

Not long after my first year at college, I decided it wasn't for me either. I got my GED, followed by a degree in cosmetology, and was thrust into the dog-eat-dog world of "the beauty industry". I killed it as a hairstylist, but it started killing me right back. Unfortunately, alcoholism and drug addiction are hard to avoid in the beauty industry if you’re prone to them. I met my first "bad girl" at a popular gay bar, shortly after beginning my first job at a high-end salon. I wasn't yet nineteen, but I had been a regular at many of the local bars in town, thanks to various friend's ID's. Kelly was abusive to say the least. Many nights I was kept awake until four o' clock in the morning with her screaming in my face. Between our street fights, screaming matches, and her frequent death or suicide threats, Kelly and I had the police called on us often.

Kelly and her friends liked to snort lines of coke before and during our bar escapades. Though at first I was fiercely against it, I eventually took part in the drug myself. There were many coked out bar adventures that followed over the years. Though she demeaned and exhausted me to no end, I loved Kelly's good side dearly. It was this fiery female with the smile of an angel who introduced me to a little blue smurf called ecstasy. Once i experienced what i thought meeting God must feel like, i was hooked. Ecstasy, and its newer sister drug, "molly" became our special drugs of choice.

For my nineteenth birthday, Kelly, and my "former" heroin-addicted roommate, Kate, decided to throw me a surprise party. I had always been unsure of rooming with a girl who I knew had had a past with one of the "bad drugs" but I had needed a roommate, and she had needed a room. Plus, Kate was a wonderful girl, and a fun friend. On the night of my party, rolling on molly, I noticed something peculiar. My bathroom door was locked, with the light on, but when I knocked, no one seemed to be in it. My friend Billy, who had left the party, came back needing to pee. Together, Billy and I busted my bathroom door open, only to find Kate in the fetal position, unconscious and completely blue, with bags and a needle surrounding her. As my friends crowded around the bathroom to see what all of the commotion was about, Kelly and I just looked at each other as if to say, shit she’s dead! Without hesitation, Billy flung Kate's fumbling boyfriend out of the way and begin to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on her. Kate's small, limp torso ascended and descended violently as Billy breathed life back into her. By God’s grace Billy was able to save that girl's life. To this day I have never seen something so remarkable.

After trying to help her to no avail in the months following the incident, I eventually had to kick Kate out. With the combination of my girlfriend's mental and sometimes physical abuse, and the trauma that followed Kate's incident, I lost 20 pounds. This weight loss delighted my then anorexic spirit to no end. To replace Kate, I let my friend Lena move into my apartment. Within two weeks of her living with me she attempted suicide. Kelly and I had stayed up late with her drinking beers and eventually went to bed around midnight. We awoke to frantic texts and calls from our friends asking if Lena was ok. She had apparently left the apartment after Kelly and i went to bed and was threatening to take her own life via Facebook. As i was reading the post in shock, our friend, Becka, called me and informed me that Lena had been rushed to the hospital after a car accident and stab wounds. We found out later, by Lena herself, that she had purposefully swerved her car off of the highway going 120 miles per hour and rolled her car five times. When she came to with barely a scratch, she took a knife that had been in her center console and stabbed herself in the arm six times. The fact that she had survived the car accident without a scratch tells me that she has a much greater purpose on this earth. She moved back into my apartment two weeks later, after her stay in the psych ward, and we lived together for a number of months after that. I eventually cut it off with Kelly for good after filing a restraining order against her.

After my twenty first birthday, a string of young deaths followed. Heroin finally got the best of a friend of mine named Celia, who had been battling an addiction since her teens. My dear friend, Shiloh, a close friend since middle school, who had taken up heroin around the age of nineteen called me crying after Celia died, promising me he was never going to touch the stuff again. Within that same year, in the middle of a Halloween party I was throwing, my friend, Gracie, called and told me that Shiloh had OD’d on heroin in his childhood bedroom. The next day I went to my mom’s house and she put me bareback on her horse Zoey for the first time; an event that changed me forever. Not long after Shiloh died, my hero of a friend, Billy, who I had watched save Kate’s life, lost his in a car accident. He had been wandering around with some drunk friends when the driver of their car tried to avoid being pulled over by attempting to outrun the cops. The driver survived, but Billy and his other friend died. By this time, I had met another girl named Jayden. Ours was a love story much like mine and Kelly’s. We liked to party. A lot. We didn’t go anywhere without a 12 pack of beer, at least an eighth of weed, and if we were lucky, a bag of coke or molly. One day, while at Jayden’s apartment, my friend called to tell me that Kelly had died in a car accident. Kelly had taken up heroin after we broke up. She and her dealer had been snorting the drug and decided to drive to the neighboring city to get more. Her doped up dealer of a driver hit a guard rail on the highway and they both died instantly. My girlfriend didn’t understand why I was so wrecked. I spent the next week in drunken hysteria. I drank vodka in my diet coke at eight o’clock in the morning at Kelly’s wake and partied with all of our friends in between uncontrollable sobs and watching angry girls have fist fights.

Following Kelly’s death, Jayden and I had many fights, one of which preceded my attempting to drive home after one too many drinks. This extreme lapse in judgement resulted in my being arrested and receiving a DWAI.

Throughout Jayden’s and my entire relationship, my mom had been battling Lyme Disease. Because I was uneducated on the illness at the time, and completely preoccupied with my own life, I didn’t realize that Lyme was eating away at my dear mom. She made it a point to see me for one hour a week at a coffee shop. It pains me to this day that I often would rush our visits, counting down the time until I would be able to get to Jayden’s house before rush hour. My mom would beg me to spend more time with her but I flaked on her often. Because I was so caught up in my own shallow life, I didn’t realize until long after the fact that my mom had almost died a couple of times. My mom thought that she would go in a flash of brilliant white light and find herself in heaven with Jesus, so she had been ready to go home. It was then that God told her that this wouldn’t be the case, and that she would have a long drawn out death, if she continued to eat sugar. As she lay dying, God told my mom that he had work for her to do on earth. He told my mom to quit eating sugar and she would be 100% cured. After this, mom quit sugar, gluten and dairy, and God gave her a full recovery. Within two weeks, my mom was riding her road bike up the very mountains that her horse, Zoey, had previously carried her up in her weakened state. My mom immediately got involved in training rescued horses, with the help of her mentor, Tabitha Morgan. She is now healthier and more full of life than she was before she even contracted Lyme Disease! This was the first BIG miracle I watched God perform.

Meanwhile, my girlfriend’s mental abuse eventually became too much to handle, and I broke it off with her. When we got back together shortly thereafter, I found out she had been unfaithful. During a full-on coked out blow-out with Jayden, I tried leaving her for good. As struggled to leave her apartment, Jayden had me pinned down, a habit both her and Kelly had shared. When I had finally wrestled myself free from her grip, Jayden screamed “if you leave me, I’ll die”, and before I could make it out of the door, ran into the kitchen, grabbed a steak knife and stabbed herself in the stomach. As she collapsed to the ground and pulled the knife back out, I ran to her and immediately tried to bring her back to consciousness. I flung the steak knife into the bathroom and called 911. As soon as Jayden heard me reporting to the dispatcher what had happened, she grabbed the phone and threw it. She changed shirts, wiped the blood and plasma off of herself, and proceeded to beg me not to tell the police the truth. I was in complete shock. She called the dispatcher back and told them that she was playing a Halloween trick on her girlfriend and that everything was all right, (this was in October). When the police arrived, she gave them a story that they believed and that I stupidly confirmed. I texted her friend that we had been hanging out with prior to Jayden’s and my arrival to the apartment that she had just stabbed herself and that they needed to pick her up ASAP. I was in so much shock that all I wanted to do was get OUT of there. When Jayden’s friend told me that she was rounding Jayden’s block, I left. The next morning, after getting obliterated with my friends to numb the trauma, I received a call from the police and a text from Jayden’s friend; the police needed me to give them a new statement, Jayden had been rushed to the hospital with a punctured liver. Though she told the doctor that she had “ran into a broken piece of glass from her bong”, she had told her friends that I had stabbed her. My mom took me to the police station immediately and I told them the true story, receiving a certificate of domestic abuse (she had stabbed herself, but I was technically the victim). Though the hospital could tell right away that the wound was self-inflicted, it took me months to fully convince Jayden’s family what they didn’t want to believe was true.

Jayden and I got back together after a year and a half of having no contact. At this time, I was completely sick and tired of being sick and tired. Partying didn’t elicit the same excitement that it had in the past and I found myself unfulfilled, and living a life that didn’t match my spirit. After becoming a hairstylist, I had began to wear clothing that gave me a promiscuous look. Though I was trendy, I dressed in a way that did not attract the right audience. I wore a full face of makeup, along with eyelash extensions, fake nails, hair extensions, (that were making my hair fall out in clumps), lip injections, and a fake tan to boot! I weighed about a hundred and ten pounds, which on a five-foot eight frame was unhealthy, and survived on about one meal and one pack of cigarettes a day! Oh, and lots of alcohol. I had also gotten into the habit of smoking weed from dawn till dusk, something I had picked up from Jayden.

 After her experience with Lyme Disease, my mom had been purging her life of things that are not of God, and seeking him like never before. She had a wonderful life in the country with her husband, a healthy diet, and a sober lifestyle, a deep connection with her horses, and most importantly, a close relationship with Jesus. I wasn’t sure about all of that, but somehow, I knew that I wanted it too. After much research on the Bible prophesies, current affairs, and the history of our country, I was convinced that there had to be something very true about the Bible. Little did I know that I was close to embarking on the most meaningful relationship I will ever know.

One day, sitting with my mom at the little round table where she keeps her big Bible, I asked her, in passing, how I could have something like what she had. She said, “Reesa, ya gotta just ask Him into your heart!” I thought about it for a second. “Er, ok, let’s do it then” I said. I felt awkward to say the least, but there was a little spark that had been ignited in my heart, a spark that I had carried with me since birth. My mom took my hands and we prayed together: “Jesus, I believe that you died on the cross for my sins, and I ask you into my heart” Then we said The Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us for our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Leave us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is Thy kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever. In Jesus’ name, amen!”

What followed after that day was nothing short of miraculous. Though it took struggle, continuous obedience, and a lot of falling down and getting back up, the Lord redeemed me in every way possible. After attempting a pseudo relationship with Jayden, I finally let go of her for good. Thankfully, she accepted Jesus into her heart before that while driving to Maine with my mom and me one winter’s day. Through my mom’s constant prayers, and my eventual acceptance of Jesus as my Lord and savior, all of my addictions were vanquished. In this order, while abstaining from any type of romantic relationship, over the course of about two and a half years I have quit: doing drugs, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, smoking weed, using social media, watching TV, and my career as a hairstylist. I’m also happy to say at this point that my previous eating disorder has been conquered, and that I have gained back the weight that I lost. I moved home to my family’s farm with my three animals and started working at a hemp farm run by three young visionaries. I began playing music again and got back together with my ninth-grade band. I started going back to school for psychology, and am a 4.0 student. I rescued my first horse, Annie, a sweet-as-can-be halflinger who was saved from a meat truck. I have become serious about working with our horses and am now well versed in natural horsemanship. I get to wake up every morning and greet our beloved animal kingdom, breathing in the fresh air and the beauty that surrounds me.

My life continues to be exceedingly blessed by God. I see miracles happen so often that it has become the norm. My relationship with Jesus has grown so much that I can actually feel the Holy spirit send waves of euphoria through my entire being whenever God turns his face towards me. I have been gifted with deep, meaningful friendships, especially the ones that I have with my mom and sister. What’s the most shocking is the fact that I now know that I want a husband and children of my own, a dream I never thought I’d have. My values and physical appearance have changed so radically that I don’t recognize the person that I was before I met Jesus, and neither do the people around me. I was truly born again.

I feel a strong calling to help young girls. Girls who were broken like me. I want to expose girls to horses and to Jesus in the same healing way that my mom exposed them to me. I want to help girls who have been abused, who have experienced trauma, who struggle with addictions and eating disorders. I want to help girls who live in the inner-city and who rarely see the countryside, girls who are in foster care who don’t have a forever family, or girls who are stuck in a juvenile detention facility. If I can expose one young girl to the healing power of Jesus and the love of a horse, I will be happy.  

            Thank you for reading, may God bless you in all that you do.

-Reesa Montana