For a while, it looked like drug court had worked. Amber completed the program. Then she met a great guy and got married. She and her husband bought a house, and Amber even went to college, receiving a four-year degree in criminal justice. After eight years of sobriety, her life was looking up—until she started drinking.

Amber worked long nights in a juvenile detention center. "I would get home at 7 a.m., and I would drink. I would be annihilated by 9 a.m." The daytime drinking lasted about a year. Then she started getting high again. And she wasn't the only one.

"My marriage was falling apart, my husband was getting high off pills—it was just a disaster," says Amber. "Once I relapsed, I was like, 'I'll just do this once in a while, not a big deal.'" But just like when she was a teenager, "once in a while" was never enough.

Looking to feel powerful and in control, Amber also sold drugs. She prized the extra money. And she told herself it wasn't harming anyone.

"I'm a good person, I pay taxes … I don't rob people, and I don't steal," she would say to herself.

But life continued to spiral. Cheating on her husband. Running with unhealthy crowds. Doing whatever it took to get high. Eventually, the law caught up with Amber, and she was sentenced to Minnesota Correctional Facility–Shakopee. By the time she finally landed in prison, she had left her husband and was exhausted from chasing her addiction.

Amber feared facing prison after years of evading it. "But there was also a peace," she says, "which I know now came from God—a peace of, it's finally over. I can finally change my life and start over and build something that I can be proud of again."

As a child, Amber had known about God and even attended church and Bible studies. "I knew He existed," says Amber. But she says it was more of a surface level, "You pray when you're in trouble, 'God, get me out of this and I'll be a good kid,' kind of thing." She'd never had a close relationship with Jesus.

The Academy gave Amber a deeper sense of Jesus—and who she was in His eyes. It also gave her a sense of community she hadn't felt before.

"You could feel a presence of serenity," Amber remembers from one of her first days in class. "I started crying, and everyone was there to comfort me and give me words of encouragement and pray with me. … I felt accepted."

The Academy had her at "hello."

Academy staff and volunteers made Amber feel like she could be herself. Their openness and honesty amazed her. "They make a very dark place very bright," Amber says. Through the program, she learned to see that God has been present throughout her life.

"I learned I don't have to change overnight," she adds. "I'm a totally different person than I was, but I'm not who I want to be yet."

After her release, Amber got a job as a concrete finisher, working up to 70 hours a week. She reunited with her husband, who had also recently been incarcerated. They went to marriage counseling and have both been sober for several years now. They've been together going on 10 years, and they look forward to many more.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Amber helped out with her church’s food delivery program. "God's definitely moving during COVID," says Amber.

Amber enjoys her time with her teenage stepdaughter, whom she calls "amazing" and is proud to know. And Amber prays that someday she can reunite with her biological daughter. But she says she has to trust God's timing on that.

"If God can restore my marriage with all the damage that's been done," Amber notes, "hope is possible, recovery is possible, restoration and reconciliation are possible … there is hope for me, and there's hope for anybody that's in a dark place."