Road To Redemption
Road To Redemption
Amanda Hunter's Road to Redemption
Amanda Hunter's journey from the depths of addiction to a life of purpose and peace illuminates the extraordinary power of redemption. Born into a military family without spiritual foundation, Amanda's early experimentation with substances at age 13 set the stage for decades of struggle. The absence of faith left her vulnerable to toxic relationships, depression, and ultimately a devastating spiral into prescription drug abuse that evolved into heroin and methamphetamine addiction.
The turning point came dramatically—a high-speed police chase through Destin ending in her arrest with 47 criminal charges. It was rock bottom. Face down in the dirt, handcuffed, Amanda believed she had nothing left to lose. But within the confines of Okaloosa County Jail, she encountered Jesus. Through studying Ephesians, she discovered her battles weren't merely chemical imbalances as doctors had claimed, but spiritual warfare that required spiritual solutions.
What makes Amanda's testimony particularly powerful is her raw honesty about recovery. After 16 months in jail, Stephanie McMinn from the Yellow House offered her an alternative to prison—a faith-based recovery program that required her to face her emotions without medication. "It wasn't graceful," Amanda admits. The healing journey meant confronting perfectionism, control issues, and learning to receive love after years of abuse had taught her to expect harm from relationships. Most challenging was forgiving herself.
Today, Amanda manages All Things New, a nonprofit gift shop where she mentors women walking similar paths. Her message transcends mere sobriety—it's about an "upside-down kingdom" where what the world labels failure becomes part of a beautiful testimony. For anyone feeling hopeless, her words resonate with quiet authority: "He delights in you, even in your mess. He's never taken His eye off of you." Amanda's life stands as living proof that relationship with Jesus changes everything, not by avoiding pain, but by finding purpose within it.
Take your first step today. Read God's Word. Find a Christ-centered community. Your road to redemption awaits.
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Welcome to Road to Redemption, a show sharing powerful life testimonies, giving hope to those on their own road to redemption.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Road to Redemption. I'm John Martin and I'm excited for our show today. We have a guest, amanda Hunter.
Speaker 3:Hello.
Speaker 2:How are you, Amanda?
Speaker 3:I'm good. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Good Thanks for coming in, Amanda. I'm excited to hear your story, hear your road to redemption. So just tell us a little bit about your background and where you grew up.
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. I grew up in a military family. My dad was Air Force, so I was actually born in England. I don't remember much of it. We moved to Idaho when I was two and then New Mexico, and then I moved to this area. My dad was stationed at Eglin when I was 12 years old, so we moved to Mossy Head and two amazing parents Love my parents. They've been married 46 years now, but I did not grow up with God as a part of my life. My dad was a nonbeliever. My mom might have believed, but we didn't go to church. Growing up I was very ignorant about the Lord and everything that that entailed. But I was raised right. I knew right from wrong. I just didn't have Jesus, and so the world looked a little different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have one older sister who's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And we had a good relationship. When I was about 13, my sister started driving, and so my parents would send me out with her to keep her out of trouble. That's not exactly what happened. I started experimenting with drugs, kind of seeing what that life looked like, so my lens got skewed a little bit there.
Speaker 3:When I was about 14, I began a relationship that lasted until I was 22. And it was not healthy. It was a toxic relationship. It was not healthy. So the years I should have been spent finding my identity in Christ, I was verbally abused and tore down. It really shook my confidence and I didn't have Jesus to fall back on. I didn't have the word as a mirror to see the truth about what he says about me. So the world was just throwing a lot of garbage at me, my value and my worth.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, how did you get to know Jesus?
Speaker 3:It took a while. I am 39 years old now. I met Jesus when I was 33. I ended up in jail After the relationship ended, when I was 22, I met my ex-husband, the father of my son, an amazing man. He was Air Force. We got married. I was drinking, as was the culture as being a military wife. We both got prescribed pain meds when my son was about a year old, so he ended up getting med boarded out of the Air Force and we moved to Texas, but our marriage only lasted another year. So after we were separated and divorced, I moved to Las Vegas where my dad was stationed and my son was four at the time.
Speaker 3:So, having never dealt with the abuse from my past, depression and anxiety were something I lived with daily through those years probably 20 years total of depression and anxiety just being a part of my life, like I really accepted it as normal. I remember when I was 19 or 20 going to a psychologist wanting therapy and wanting help, and they referred me to a psychiatrist and said I needed meds. And I remember that moment, feeling just broken, like there was just something wrong with me. Like there was just something wrong with me and that's just what it was. They said there was a chemical imbalance in my brain, and I remember being young and asking well, let's run some labs, like let's see what is it. And they're like, no, you just have to try this new medication. So I self-medicated. When I got on the pain meds, I learned later that opioids don't differentiate between physical and emotional pain, and so when I started taking the pain meds for my back, my depression didn't seem as bad. The problem with that is that it's a stronghold, and so after my divorce, living in Vegas, I fell further and further into the pain pill addiction, and the ones the doctors were prescribing were no longer enough and I started seeking more, and this went on until about 2017.
Speaker 3:I'm grateful that I was living with my parents, so they really shielded my son. I was a functioning addict. I made you know from the outside, looking in, I went to work, I made sure everything looked okay, but inside I was not okay. I ended up moving back to the area in 2017., and it was fall. My son was six and I ended up totaling out my car with my child in the backseat, and I ended up totaling out my car with my child in the backseat, and I see now that God was trying. He wanted my attention, like enough was enough, and my parents moved down and I moved back in with them and I got off the pain meds. I did.
Speaker 3:But after making it through the physical withdrawals the mental withdrawals were the hardest I had no hope, like I just didn't want to live, like the idea of living sober seemed so unbearable to me. And it's insanity. Looking back now I'm five years sober and I love my life. But that was reality for me. I still didn't have Jesus. He still wasn't a part of my life. I didn't know that the Holy Spirit could come dwell in me. I didn't know that the name of Jesus could set me free. I didn't know that I was in a spiritual battle. I was just surrounded by darkness.
Speaker 3:It was Mother's Day of 2019 that I was introduced to someone. At that point I had pushed away everyone, everyone in my life who cared about me and really only felt worthy to hang out with other broken people. But I was introduced to someone and in three weeks I accumulated 47 criminal charges. I had started using meth about a month before I met him. He introduced me to heroin, fentanyl and meth via the needle. And so that three weeks is kind of a blur.
Speaker 3:There was a high-speed chase on June 5th of 2019.
Speaker 3:He was driving and the cops pulled up behind us and I went to get out of the car.
Speaker 3:I was just going to go up to the house that he was parked at and he pulled me back in and he reversed and cut through three front yards and started a high-speed chase through Destin.
Speaker 3:And I remember thinking like we're on an island, like this doesn't even make any sense, like what's happening. But he hit a pole and I ended up with two pistols in my lap and he took off running and in the state of mind that I was in, I just wanted it over. And I remember thinking, if I just pick up the gun and get out of the vehicle, because at this point there's cops everywhere, but I didn't. I ended up opening the door and like pushing the guns off of me and I fell out of the car and, of course, there was cops everywhere. I was face down in the dirt. It was the first and only time I'd been arrested and uh, so I ended up in okaloosa county jail and that is where I met jesus amen, tell us about that I had sent my son to live with his dad about three weeks before, really believing that I'd never see him again.
Speaker 3:I didn't want to come out of that situation alive. And then I was in jail and I thought, okay, I was in full agreement with the lie, which I rebuke again, that the world was just better off without me. And to me this almost just affirmed it. Like, look see, you're no good to the world, you just need to go to prison, like this is where you belong. And just to get out of the jail cell and the pod I was in, I started going to church and discipleship and Ephesians. We read Ephesians and we battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and spirits. And that's where I learned for the first time that the name of Jesus could set me free, that I was actually under the influence of demonic spirit, of addiction. There was a spirit of depression, it was a spirit of anxiety that maybe, just maybe, there was that tiny seed of hope planted, that maybe I wasn't just broken, like maybe Jesus could heal me. And so I remember meeting with one of the religious leaders, miss Faye, in a visiting room in the front of the jail, and I gave my life to Jesus Really because I had nothing left to lose at that point. Nothing left to lose and I was in Okaloosa County jail for 16 months through COVID and I had arrested in June it was Thanksgiving that year so about six months later was the first time I had an experience with the Holy Spirit. We were reading Philippians and that's when I learned that Paul had murdered people but God still used him, and I was like okay, all right, and I started.
Speaker 3:I was still having anxiety attacks on a really regular basis. I was grateful that I was able to do video visits with my son during my time in there, but after every visit I would have an anxiety attack because I couldn't get to him, and so I started declaring Philippians 4, 6, and 7. I will not be anxious for anything, but in everything, through prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make my request be known to God and may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus. And so repeating that over and over and over helped the anxiety lessen and opened that door for me to have to follow the instructions that were in that scripture. Do not be anxious. Tell him what you need, tell him that you're hurting, tell him that you're scared.
Speaker 3:And so Thanksgiving I actually had peace, like I was still in jail. There was still a lot of people around me, there was still the drama and the chaos of jail, but in me something had changed. And that's when I first remember experiencing the peace that surpassed all understanding. And so at that point, really fully expecting still to go to prison, I just started reading the Word. I started reading the Psalms and the Proverbs and Ephesians. I just dug into the Word and it opened up this whole new world for me, full of concepts and ideas that I had never been exposed to, that were completely upside down from what I'd been taught in my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, amanda. Well, folks, we're visiting with Amanda Hunter and she's sharing her story, which is so powerful. So, amanda, how did you get sober and get set free? What was the next phase?
Speaker 3:God. It's interesting to me, I see now, like Psalm 4610 says, to be still and know that he is God, and that is something that I've gotten a lot better at. I was forced to. I was in jail for 16 months. God used that time to work on people's hearts.
Speaker 3:My mom was a praying mama, and she was introduced to Stephanie McMinn through Be Generous, and so my mom and dad actually went to the gathering in the garden Must have been in 2019, right around that Thanksgiving time and they heard testimonies of people who had given their life to Christ and God healed them. At that point, prison, or even A psych ward, seemed possible for my future, and my parents were very scared, and so they went, just looking for hope for themselves, and so they sent me Stephanie's address and I wrote her, and we wrote on and off for about six months, and God has a way of using things for his good. So when COVID hit, they were not as likely to send people to prison. They were trying to empty them out, and so when I went before the judge, stephanie McMahon offered to take me into two years at her faith-based recovery home called the Yellow House, and so she advocated for me, and so I was able to go to the Yellow House from jail.
Speaker 2:Oh, what a great place.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've had several of the girls from the yellow house on the show, so I know what a great place that is. So once you got to the yellow house, uh, I can tell just from getting to know you, you have had a radical transformation. You have so much joy and peace and the Holy Spirit. Tell us, how did that happen?
Speaker 3:I wish I could say it was graceful. I wish I could say I got there and a light switched and everything. That was not it. But God surrounded me with people who loved me when I didn't love myself. I had a little bit of faith, but not much. So one thing about the Yellow House and Be Generous is that we don't take any antidepressants, anti-anythings. Like we really stand firm, like Jesus will heal. And so it looked like sitting down and feeling all my feelings with no buffer no buffer, and that's incredibly painful. I still missed my son. I still didn't have him with me. I had to learn how to find my value and worth outside of the role as a wife, as a mother, as an employee, like I was really just sat down to be a beloved child of God.
Speaker 3:I had another court date about a year after I got to the yellow house, because I had caught charges in two counties, and so it was about a year after I got to the Yellow House. I went to my second court date and what that looked like was an open plea to the bench with a 12-year cap, meaning that the judge could choose to let me come back to the Yellow House or he could send me to prison for up to 12 years and I was ready to go when I was sitting in jail. But then I had this year that I was like just starting to see life and see people, and there was a lot of fear surrounding that. I made it to that court date and the judge let me stay. He added a 10 year suspended sentence to my 10 years probation. I would say that first year I spent overwhelmed by fear and still a lot of unbelief, and so that first year wasn't as fruitful. But by the second year I accepted like okay, like I knew at that point that God would part the Red Sea for me, that he was not a God that would give and take away, like my trust in him had been built. So I was like, okay, if anything, I know that I trust God. I don't know yet that I trust anybody else in my life, but I trust God. And so we worked with that and it looked like me really addressing my negative expectancy and my perfectionism and my control issues. It looked like me actually forgiving my ex-husband and asking God for eyes to see him as he saw him and learning to honor people simply because they're beloved children of God. It looked like giving up the right to be right God. It looked like giving up the right to be right. It looked like stepping into this sermon on the mount upside down kingdom of heaven. That does not make sense to the world. Where the last is first and the first is last, we're blessed, are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as children of God.
Speaker 3:It was a culture shock. Quite honestly. It wasn't anything I had lived in my life. Over time he softened my heart. I had to trust God and the people he had placed in my life and that they didn't want to harm me life and that they didn't want to harm me Because of the things that I had walked through in my past. It was really hard for me to receive love. I had had my love abused and manipulated against me. So even just the act of genuinely loving somebody and taking down walls to receive their love was frightening. It was scary. I finally had to forgive myself. That was the hardest. I could finally forgive the others. I could surrender and release and write letters. I was never mad at God because he wasn't part of my life at that point. So it was really just love forgiving myself because he wasn't part of my life at that point. So it was really just love, forgiving myself, which still to this day is a daily choice like some forgiveness.
Speaker 3:My son's 13 now and we have an amazing relationship. He still lives in Texas with his dad. I have custody of him, but I don't have peace about moving him here and I don't have peace about moving to Texas. So he comes to visit on his school breaks. There's those months in between that are often hard. I miss him, yeah, but I trust God, yeah, and he's shown up in both of our lives in beautiful and amazing ways and his plans for both of us are good, to prosper us and not to harm us. But I still miss him. But then the enemy wants to come in with the shame and guilt and I just rebuke that Because today my life is surrendered to the Lord. Today my only desire is to walk in his will for my life.
Speaker 2:And you're here for your son. I mean, if you look at God's plan in your life you probably should have been dead. There's so many instances where he was covering you and protecting you. So now that you have this freedom and joy, you know, the Lord hallelujah, that you are here for your son, you are alive and you will continue to be in your son's life. You know, and that's just something great to celebrate. You know and think about how how much that means to him, you know. So we'll um talk to us a little bit about what you're doing now and also talk to anyone that might be listening. That's feeling hopeless and maybe a little bit doubtful. If there there's a plan for them that they can come out of, whatever they're in sure, so my court ordered time at the yellow house ended two and a half years ago.
Speaker 3:All right, I was completing. That time I sat down with Mama Steph, the director of Be Generous, my spiritual mama, and I just let her know I didn't want a big shift, that I didn't want a big change, that this was working, and so she offered me employment. I'm the social enterprise manager of All Things New, which is a nonprofit gift shop in Dapiniac Springs, and so I've been doing that the last two and a half years. I had gotten my bachelor's degree in business management prior to my addiction, but I really had to dump all that out of the window because we're in this upside down kingdom. So really my job at the store is to steward the atmosphere, and so I have the ladies that are currently recovering their identity in Christ. They come and spend the day with me.
Speaker 3:So we start the day in devotion and we do creating with the creator, finding purpose in something that was discarded, like he does with us, and that can look like repurposing furniture or making jewelry. Really, I just get to deposit hope in various places of their lives. Through all this. God has given me a really unique skill set in that I walked through that journey, so I have a lot of grace. Freely we receive, so freely we give. And so, as they're going through the highs and lows of their recovery, I'm able to just love them right where they are. And so I am undone that I have anything good to give them because, looking back, I was in agreement with that lie that I had nothing good to give the world, when the truth is that God in me, if I just stay yielded as a willing vessel, he will use me to love others.
Speaker 3:And so that's what my life looks like now. I have kingdom family around me, people who support me and love me and choose to spend time with me. I don't have to compromise. I don't have to seek companionship outside of the will of God, because he surrounded me with this group of people who are just as hungry for him as I am.
Speaker 3:I've seen God use so many of my mistakes and what the world would define as a failure. I was going through this revelation with the Lord like really what is a failure, and I've come beginning to understand that a failure is a world's term. It's a man-made term, because anything I've perceived as a failure in my life I've seen God use for his glory. I've seen him use it to add to my testimony, or somebody else goes through something and I'm able to speak life to it and hope into it. So instead of fear of failure, I've started just having love for the journey, that there's going to be hiccups and I'm going to make mistakes and none of us are perfect but that if I just stay yielded to him, he will use all that and weave it all for his glory and for my good.
Speaker 2:What advice do you have for anyone that's listening, that feels hopeless or has just been in a continuous pattern of maybe substance abuse, depression, anxiety. This is pretty common throughout our world today and a lot of people are like, oh, that might have worked for her, but what advice do you have?
Speaker 3:A relationship with Jesus can change your life. It's not about the religion. It's not about checking the boxes. It's not about doing or saying the right thing. It's about having a relationship with Jesus, the constant dialogue I was reflecting as I drove here this morning. He delights in us, like that's. He delights in me and to anyone, wherever you're at in your mess, out of your mess, halfway in your mess he delights in you. He's never taken his eye off of you and so what an honor it is that I can turn my gaze back to him. Like I know he sees me. He's like I see you, I love you. But then I get to look back at him and say no, I see you, I love you. Let me tell you about my day Like it's really. He just is wooing us, relentlessly, wooing us back to him and regardless, even if you are an act of addiction, he still loves you. Like your outward behavior doesn't change who he created you to be. You're a beloved child of God. It doesn't matter the mess that you're currently in. He doesn't see that. When he looks at you, he sees his beloved child and he just wants to pull you back to his heart. He sees his beloved child and he just wants to pull you back to his heart.
Speaker 3:And I'll just say, in my journey he's so patient, it was like peeling back the layers of an onion and he's such a gentleman. He's not going to rip something away from me or cause me more pain. He simply waited until I was ready to take down this wall. Okay, god, I'm ready to process this pain with you. I'm ready to give you this hurt. I'm ready for this. And he just lovingly took it. And what I love about God is when we give him. There's this great exchange when I would give him a hurt or a disappointment or a hope deferred he would give me. I would ask him to show me how he sees it. Like God, how do you see this? How do you see my failed marriage, this thing that rocked me to my core and broke my world? How do you see it? And there wasn't condemnation. He showed me, me and my ex-husband, as his beloved children, doing the best we could. And then now he's shown me how, even though we made a mistake, he's lovingly woven it back together, like our child was a fruit of that. So it wasn't a failure and it wasn't a mistake. We have a beautiful child together, and God and his loving kindness has put people in my son's life to be there when I couldn't be.
Speaker 3:It's a different perspective when you have Jesus in your life. It's like trying to battle from ground level, like we're not made for hand-to-hand warfare, like when you're trying to deal with your problems, whether it be a bill that has to be paid or somebody who's hurt you. If you try to deal with it on the ground level, you get wore out and tired. Your feelings get really big. But if you pray about it and you ask God okay, god, show me your perspective, like take me up a little bit higher and show me how you see this, he starts downloading like supernatural wisdom, like you just have this, you now have a new strategy. And usually always he is love, perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.
Speaker 3:So, when you start seeing through that lens of love and you're in alignment with how God sees things, you move differently. You know that Bill is still due, but you're going to choose to trust that God loves you enough that he's going to be your Jehovah Jireh and he's going to provide for that. So today you stay focused on that. He delights in you and so you don't let that become an overwhelming, anxiety, stressful thing when somebody hurts you. Okay, I'm going to respond in love and I'm going to move differently than what the world says.
Speaker 2:Well, and, and I think that you've just had such a radical transformation, but one thing I'm seeing is that it takes time. God has has healed you over time and um, and what we would just encourage anyone listening, looking for hope is to take that first step. And there are three key things on Road to Redemption that we encourage our listeners to do. The first is to read the Word of God. The second is to go to a Christ-centered church and the last is to get into a small group that you can do life with and be transparent about what you're going through, and others can minister to you in that group. And we, just right now, want to just pray for anyone that's listening, seeking this hope, and just Lord. We just ask right now, lord Jesus, that you come and visit them, and just anyone that's listening, let them know that they can invite you into their heart. Right now, you can just say, if you're listening, lord Jesus, come into my heart. I accept you as my Lord and Savior, I give my life to you, I repent of my sins, I've surrendered to you, amen. And if you said that prayer, amen, amen, and if you said that prayer, you have been saved.
Speaker 2:Jesus has come into your heart and he will do great things. He will transform your life. You've taken that first step and now go out and get a Bible or get a Bible app, start reading his word. He will speak to you through his written word and you can do that right now if you have any smartphone. Or go get a Bible the old hardback Bible those are great too and go to just go to a church, find a Christ centered church, and start going and we promise it'll change your life. So, amanda, wow, this has been so great. Thank you so much for coming on. This is really going to help a lot of people.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Road to Redemption, sharing powerful life testimonies, giving hope to those on their own road to redemption. If you have any comments or questions, we would love to connect with you. You can reach out to us at destinyradiolive. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week on Road to Redemption.