Rachael Cannon – From Addiction and Jail to Love, Healing, and Purpose

God can take the most broken story and turn it into a testimony of His love.

In this powerful conversation, Valerie Peterson sits down with Rachael Cannon to share her incredible road to redemption—a story of addiction, restoration, healing, and the life-changing love of Jesus Christ.

Rachael opens up about spending 25 years trapped in addiction and going in and out of county jail. After four rehabs, years of brokenness, legal trouble, homelessness, and hopelessness, she reached one of the darkest points of her life.

She was suicidal, addicted, facing another felony, and unsure if freedom was even possible.

But God met her there.

After hearing the testimony of a woman named Dawn, Rachael saw a kind of freedom she had never experienced before. Something in her heart awakened, and she knew she wanted what Dawn had.

That moment became the beginning of a brand-new life.

Rachael entered recovery, encountered the unconditional love of God, and began discovering her true identity in Christ. Through love, grace, and discipleship, God rebuilt her life from the inside out.

Today, Rachael is ten years sober and now goes back into the very places she once sat in as an inmate. She ministers in county jails across the Emerald Coast, teaching women about the love of God and reminding them that their mistakes do not define them.

She is also an author, musician, teacher, and founder of Greenhouse Lilies, using her testimony to help others find freedom, healing, and hope.

Rachael’s story is proof that:

Nothing is wasted.
Pain can become purpose.
And one encounter with Jesus can change everything.

She encourages listeners to:

Reach out for help.
Stay open to healing.
Get into God’s Word.
Find a church community.
Walk in accountability.
And believe that God still restores.

Your past does not disqualify you.
Your pain is not the end of your story.
And God can still bring beauty from every broken place.

What is one area of your life where God may be inviting you into deeper healing today?

📧 Email: Rachaelcannon5@gmail.com

For more information contact us at
rtrdestiny@gmail.com

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Rachel Cannon

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome. This is Road to Redemption, and I'm Valerie Peterson. I'm so glad you've tuned in because we have an amazing guest right in our studio. Her testimony, her road to redemption is powerful. And I first of all want to introduce her. Her name is Rachel Cannon. Hey Dad. It's kind of cool because we know each other. I was we were talking earlier about we've been friends for eight years, right? Eight years, yeah. And it's just been an honor to be connected with her in our community. Rachel, can you can we start and can you share what you're doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

I would love to. Today I go to jail every chance I get. I'm a former jailbird myself. I was in and out of county jail for 25 years. I had a 25-year addiction. And 10 years ago, actually 10 years and three months to the day, I met the love of my life. I met Jesus Christ and He changed my whole life. I had been to rehab four times. I went to rehab for the fifth time and it worked. And I met the love of my life. I met I met my lovely Lord Jesus and He changed my life. This relationship is everything to me. And so now I go to jail um three times a week and I hold the church service in three different county jails locally on the Emerald Coast. And I teach a class called the Love Class. And I go into female inmates and I remind them how wonderful they are and that just because they've done a few things wrong, they haven't blown it. And I just talked to them all about the love of God, which actually changed my whole life. And I also write books. I've written eight books in the past 10 years. Um, I also do music, and so I've got five music albums out right now on all music streaming platforms. I've got a sixth one coming, and I do AI-generated music. So I take the lyrics from my books and I generate the vocals and melodies for my songs, and people are really enjoying them. And I love doing it, it's so much fun, and I'm just so thankful. I'm so thankful for what the Lord's done in my life and how I how I get to serve the community now,

From Dropout To Doctorate

SPEAKER_01 2:20

really.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

All right. You gotta talk a little bit about your education because it's pretty amazing. Listen to this, folks. Listen to this.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Well, you know, in my addiction, I got kicked out of every college that I went to. I flunked out of the University of Alabama after going there for seven years without finishing my degree. And then once I met the love of my life, I got back into Bible college. And I ended up getting my bachelor's degree in theology. Then I went a little bit further and I got my master's degree in biblical counseling, and then I went a little bit further and I got my doctorate in theology. And so I'm actually Dr. Rachel Cannon. It is so amazing.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Oh my god. Oh yeah, really. Yeah. Talk,

Grace That Wastes Nothing

SPEAKER_00 3:10

share with our listeners about your testimony. I do want to say, yeah, Todd, and I'm like, oh my gosh. She is an Ephesians 3.20 girl. You think of it. It's what what does it basically say? Is he can do exceediantly abundantly more than we could ever ask or imagine. Think about where Rachel was and where you are today. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

I'm just, yeah, it's a real miracle. I, you know, I just ah, God is so amazing. I, and if I can say it like this, because this is the way that I talk sometimes, when I tell the girls or I tell my friends about the Lord, I'll just say, God is a freaking genius. He is so, he is such a genius on how he can take the messy wanderings of our lives and turn it into a beautiful tapestry of love where nothing is wasted, not even pain, not even the suffering, not even the bad decisions. Now I'm like, every one of my bad decisions got me here. And if I have to boast on anything, I'll say I did everything wrong. And somehow I'm co-ceded with Christ Jesus.

unknown 4:20

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

That is so good. It's only by the grace of God I am, and I call myself a greasy grace girl. I am so uh I believe in the grace of God. I just believe in the power of love, the raw energy of loving kindness that is flowing like a current through every human being and equal in our lives. It really is. And I'm I am astounded by the beauty of creation too. Now I stop for beauty everywhere. Like on my morning jogs, I just cannot run past a lake. I for some reason I have to stop and look at it and just marvel and our creator, marvel at the magnificence of our beloved and how he is showing all of this beauty around us to say, ps, I'm in you. I'm in you and you're in me.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

And that's all I need to know. Well, I love it. I love it. Will you be willing to talk about your darkest moment when you met Dawn and all of that? I think our listeners know to hear where you were. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Suicidal Night And Dawn’s Testimony

SPEAKER_01 5:25

So 10 years and three months ago, I was suicidal. I weighed 99 pounds, I was hopeless, I had been on drugs for 25 years. Like I said, I'd gone to rehab four times, and I had already been charged with, gosh, at this point, over seven felonies and a handful of misdemeanors over the past 25 years throughout my addiction. And I got busted again in Birmingham, Alabama. And so I had another felony pending, and I thought, man, I'm I'm really going downhill. I think this felony is gonna send me to prison. And I was scared. And um, I believed in God, you know, and so I was crying out to God for help, just help me, Lord. And uh a guy in Birmingham who used to kind of counsel me, I reached out to him and he said, How's it going? I said, Not good. I'm addicted again. This time I'm addicted to Kratom. I have a felony pending. I'm in um, oh, I was hurting so bad. I was homeless, I didn't have a vehicle, I didn't have a job, and I was just broken down. And I said, you know what? I'm suicidal. I just don't know how to get out of this. I can't figure out how to beat this addiction. Everybody was telling me stuff, everybody was giving me the right advice, but I just couldn't I could hear it. I could hear it here, but not right here. And he said, Rachel, he said, I wish you would come listen to this lady give her testimony at our church. And I said, Rock, I don't really know why in the world I'd go back to church again. I just never found what I was looking for there. And I said, you know what? I might try it. He said, This lady's story is a lot like yours. And I was like, all right. So I went, I got high, and I went to church and I listened to her testimony. I was sitting about on the third row, and this beautiful woman of God got up and she was glowing. I promise. She was she was radiating a freedom that I had never seen before. And when she began to tell her testimony, she said I was a 26-year crackhead in Daytona Beach, Florida. And she said, I've been to prison, I don't know, maybe three times. She said, I met the Lord in solitary confinement. She said, I was going into solitary confinement at Lowell Correctional. Down at Lowell. And she said, one of the guards said, Dawn, you need Jesus. So she's going into solitary confinement. And she said, Man, I don't even believe in Jesus anymore. And she said, when she got into her prison cell, she just on a whim said, God, if you're real, I want to know you. And when she said that, the presence of love himself came into her room and said, Dawn, I'm real and I'm here to set you free. And she said every ounce of anger melted from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. She said she felt it, the anger leave her body. I don't know if any of you have ever felt the anger, but I have. And to have that love, it says perfect love cast out all fear. And that's what happened. And so after she got out of prison, she started opening up homes for women like me. And I had no idea that I was sitting there listening to a living, walking, breathing love story. And I remember my heart just fluttered a little bit, even though I was high. My heart fluttered, and I thought, I want what she's got. I want that. And I met her after she talked. That night I could hardly sleep at all. The next morning I woke up and I got high. And I texted the guy who invited me to hear her. And I said, I gotta have what that lady's got, and I'll do whatever it takes. And he responded to me immediately on a text, and he said, Call me. And I called him and he said, Rachel, I'm sitting across my dining room table with Dom right now. And she said, You're the reason that she came to Birmingham, Alabama. And she said, If you want, pack your bags because she has a bed open and she would love for you to be a daughter in her home. And I said, Yeah. I said, Yeah. And boy, you know, I really I had no idea what the Lord had in store for me at that point. I just wanted to get off drugs. I just wanted the pain to stop. And I had no idea that this woman would love me unconditionally, and she would not let me go, even when I raged or was a brat sometimes. She loved me with no conditions and she taught me about the love of God. And I began to love myself. And I had this relationship with the Lord that is so inward and so personal that I mean, I'll just I love Dawn so much. I do, I love her so much.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Look at how that was the literally foundation for you to be where you're at today. Yeah. Nothing short of a God-given miracle, Rachel. Really amazing. I'm so thankful. I bet. Talk a little bit about from there.

Building A Life In Jail Ministry

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, where did you go? You had a passion to start your own.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

I wanted to start my own recovery home, but um, let me go back just a little bit because four months after I was at Dawn's, she ended up getting married and she moved to Texas and she left me in charge of her whole ministry. And, you know, I had a background with some college, and so I was able to do the financials and that kind of thing. And I was pretty good at being a house mom. I was kind of mean back then because I was a little religious, though, you know, like I was like, oh, we gotta do the rules, we gotta do these rules. Um and so, but what happened was she had a prison ministry at Lowell Correctional, and she said, Rachel, she said, I need somebody to go into the prisons. Why don't you apply for your PIN number? And I called her mama and I said, Mom, I can't do that. I have a felony pending in Birmingham. And she said, God don't care about that. You're supposed to be in the prisons. And so I applied, I got my PIN number, and four months after me meeting the Lord, I started going in and doing holding church services at Lowell Correctional two times a month. And man, I loved it. I loved being around people like myself, and I loved showing them that there's freedom in Christ Jesus. And so I was at Dawn's for about a year and a half doing all the prison ministry and stuff, and then I moved back to Birmingham, and then the Lord began to open up doors for me to start going into the same institutions that I had been incarcerated in in Birmingham, Alabama. And I just say, I just I don't know of anybody who wants to go to jail more than I do. I love going to jail. I when I first moved down here to Santa Rosa Beach about four years ago, I my top Google search was jails near me. I wanted to know how many jails there were, and I found out that there were 10 local county jails within about an hour driver's driving distance or an hour and a half away. And I just I allowed the Lord to connect me. He connected the dots for me and he opened up the doors for me, and now I'm getting to do what I love.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

It's amazing how God trained her up in active addiction. And what was your pain? Yeah, we've talked about has become her platform. I mean, it's just amazing to think about. You know, as you were talking, I think I was thinking about Psalm 66 where it says, I lay burdens on your back, yeah, I let men ride over your head, but I brought you through. He didn't leave her in it, right? Fire and water, but he's bringing you to a place of rich fulfillment. You're in the rich fulfillment stage, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

I feel like it, yeah. You feel very fulfilled. I feel like my life, I'm actually alive and I'm living it. I'm not distant from it, I'm present in my life, maybe for the first time ever. And being present, being able to enjoy the moment to me is everything. I feel like living in the moment and being present. Now I'm able to be present with people to have conversations. I listen to understand and not to judge or pick apart. I listen to love and not to guys. I don't even listen to correct anymore. I just listened to love. I'm like, I just want to be with you on your journey because I remember what it was like to have somebody on my journey. Dawn came into my life and said, I believe in you the way that you are right now. I see the real you on the inside, and I believe in you. And all it took was one person really to believe in me, the way that God believes in me, and that changed everything for my life. She didn't hold my past against me, she didn't treat me like I was a convicted criminal, she didn't treat me like a thief in her home. She treated me like I was her daughter, and I and that she would do anything she could to not let go of me. And I will I will never forget that. I feel like we should do that for each other more. We should believe in each other the way that God believes in us. And ah, that's I feel like that's what I had still in my ladies in the in the jails. I'm like, if you don't have anybody who believes in you on the outside of the jail, God just sent somebody inside the jail to believe in you, right where you are.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Can you we something we've been dialoguing about is Philippians 1, 6, he's the one that will continue to do good work in us until the day we meet him face to face. And and we were saying, like, he never stops working in us to become our goal is to look right more and more like him.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

So talk about that in your own life.

Therapy And Healing Family Patterns

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Here you've been in recovery, you've been clean sober for 10 years and three months. Ten years and three months.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Yeah. Talk about that. Well, going into year 10, you know, I really expected a huge celebration and a big like shaboom, like, oh, you reached 10, way to go. But I actually went into 10 in a little bit of a survival mode. I went, I went in and I was in fight, flight, or freeze because of a relationship with with my sister who I live with. And we had gotten to where we just couldn't even communicate together in my own home. And so I began to go into flight. Flight looked different for me 10 years ago, though. To me, flight years ago looked like addiction. This time, my flight looked like I dove into my work. I ended up writing two books in about four months because I dove into my work. Um, but what I needed was healing, you know? And so I ended up, I realized that I was in so much pain. I'll tell you the advice that you gave me that really helped change my life 10 year, well, not 10 years ago, but about four months ago. Because I remember we met back in February and we were talking. And I said, Val, I said I got into it with my sister, and we were cussing each other out. And I'm just being, I'm myself, I'm pretty authentic. We were cussing each other out, and I thought, well, I don't remember cussing like this in the past 10 years, but it happened, you know, and I was not proud of it, but I wanted to know, I wanted to understand it, you know. And so I remember what she said to me, and Mandy, my sister, I love her so much, and she said to me, uh, we were arguing, and she said, Um, you love your ladies more in jail than you love me. She said, You're not being nice to me, you're being really mean to me. And I told Val that and she said, You know what? She said it's okay. You just tell her you're right, and I'm sorry. I'm gonna get help for that. Because my ego wanted to come back and cuss her out and say, That's not true. Look at everything I'm doing for the Lord. No, you're the one being mean, you know what I mean? And you gave me some wonderful advice, and I went back and I said, You're right. I'm not being very nice right now. I'm in a lot of pain. And I remember I went to the doctor because I was having all these like flare-ups in my body. I I got diagnosed with high blood pressure, and they kept me in the doctor's office for like four hours, and they were like, Man, your blood pressure is so high. And then the doctor said, Are you under any stress right now? And I thought, Oh, I'm under stress. I'm stressed out. I had no idea that I would I was not listening to my own body. I wasn't paying attention. My body was giving me all these signals trying to say, help yourself. You need a little love and care, Rachel. You need some TLC. And I ended up reaching out to a therapist and I started going to therapy, and man, probably three weeks after I started therapy, I began to calm down. I became I became more grounded, I got back in my body because I was out there, you know, and um then my sister started going to therapy, and it changed our entire relationship. We were communicating like we never have before in my life, and then my mom came into town. I'll be honest, this is here's how it all started. You know, my sister and my mom and I had a dynamic, it was like a triangle relationship, and we would feed off of each other in negative ways. And one time when my mom came into town about eight months ago, we were doing the dynamic. I just say doing the doing the dynamic. We were doing the old dynamic. And I remember thinking to myself, I was having all these chemical reactions in my body with my nervous system, and I remember thinking to myself, this is why I started drinking. This right here. That's that's the pattern, the feeling that I felt. And I thought, oh my gosh, how do I get out of this? So I went into flight. Right? Yep, how do you get out of it? So I um, okay, um, so I so I started going to therapy to understand the dynamics of the why. Why, why this? I want awareness. I'm I'm curious. I want to understand the pattern. Now that I'm out of it and I can see it clearly, I want to understand it. So the next time my mom comes to town, um, and we really got to talk was about maybe three weeks ago that we really got to talk. She comes into town a lot more than that, but we really got to talk. And I was already healed from the dynamic, you know? And so now I'm going in and I'm asking her questions just with curiosity and understanding. No blame, no suspicion, and no regret, all right? In the in the relationship. I'm just curious, mom. Tell me what it was like for you growing up. Tell me why this happened in our family at this point, with no judgment or criticism. I just am bringing understanding to the surface. All right, and so we began to talk, and she began to share her life with me. And when she did that, it opened up a well of understanding, and suddenly I could see the pain that she was in, and I could see why she behaved the way that she did, but also I was able to empathize with her pain, and then she told me, she said everything that I ever did was to protect you. And then what she also said to me in that conversation was, if you ever need anything from me, I will give it to you. And I I thought, who does that? Wouldn't you love to have your parents tell you that? And I thought, wow, this is such a beautiful gift. And so we sat there together, we cried, and we held hands, and it healed our entire relationship. And I told her, I said, you know, when you said that to me, if you ever need anything, I'll give it to you. I said, That meant the world to me. It means that we're on the same side, we're not against each other, we're for each other, and that my mom was for me the whole time. The whole time. The whole time, and it was just my own perception and my own pain that distorted their relationship. I'm like, wow, this and so now. Now I understand healing is actually the way forward. Healing is also the way inward, but when we begin to heal emotionally, physically, and spiritually, it opens up a brand new dimension of intelligence. All right? Because now we begin to go in and we understand people, not based on their behavior. Now I understand behavior is a signal and a symptom. So I hardly address behavior. I'm like, I'm not going after your behavior. Obviously, I can't because I'm I'm ministering to inmates in jail and they are being labeled and accused and identified according to their behavior. And so now I'm I'm like, hmm, I see their behavior. I wonder what the understanding is behind it. I'm curious to know. That's good. And then I also realize maybe what they haven't seen is the beauty of their own soul. And that's what I want to show them because all of the behavior is just, I call it like an outer crust to the core. All right. So I'm there and I feel like I'm a mirror too. I get up there and I say, see yourself.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

See yourself free, see yourself healed, see yourself wide open and in a loving relationship with God. You said something I think our listeners need to be thinking on. You know, you said through this is the why behind the what. And I sense there's some listeners today that cannot figure out why they may relapse and go into old cycles of behavior.

Hope For Relapse And Getting Help

SPEAKER_00 23:35

Yeah. Can you speak to them and and and tell them anything to give them hope today that they may right now be an act of addiction?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah, so I would just say, oh, there's so much beauty in your soul. Your soul is the place where God dwells. Live from an inward knowing of who you truly are. And I would even say, forget about the behavior for right now. And one of the greatest things that you can do, reach out for help. As an addict, as an addiction like specialist, I would say one of the greatest things about addiction is that addicts know how to get help. And addicts are very resourceful. Honestly, they know how to get whatever they want. And once you understand that what you really need deep down is help, then you will look for it. When I wanted to go to rehab, I could find a local rehab. Nobody had to send me a phone number, nobody had to slide me a piece of paper and say, this is what you need. When I really wanted to get the help, I would say, okay, I gotta go somewhere. You know? Yeah. So do what you need. You're in deep down inside, you know what to do. Just do it. Reach out. You could reach out to Val, you could reach out to me.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

I would be willing to help you if I could, you know. If someone wanted to find out more about your ministry, yeah, or get in contact with you, can you share how they can do that? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

So you can look at my website. I have a ministry called greenhouselilies.com, or you can even put my name in, rachelcannon.com, and that will take you back to my website. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah.

Three Pillars And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_00 25:13

To close, we always want to share our three pillars, and I'd love for you to give some feedback here. We really encourage you to get in the word. There's there's power in the word of God. Oh, yeah. We also encourage you to find a church. I don't know about you, but there's something about gathering together. That I don't I always walk out of church feeling different and thinking differently. Find that praise and worship, the word that comes forth. Find a church that you feel led to. And then finally, accountability, community. Find a group, find a small group, find something to gather together because iron sharpens iron, right? Iron sharpens iron. Right, Rachel. So do those three things. And I want to close out. If I start, will you finish your prayer? Oh, sure. Father God, I just thank you for Rachel and I thank you for our listeners today. And we thank you, Lord, that people are being drawn just from her word. Father God, you say in Micah 7:8, don't gloat over me, my enemies, when I have fallen, for I shall arise. We pray for each person that needs to get back up on their feet, that you're helping them right now in Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Amen. And thank you so much, Lord, for the healing power of your love. Thank you for the restorative power of love, restoring us to oneness, oneness with you, oneness with ourselves, and oneness with each other. Father, for anyone listening who needs help, God, I pray that they would just that they would just pick up the phone or that they would just cry out to you because you always hear us and you always answer us in Jesus' name. Amen. I'm squeezing your H outers.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Thank you for listening today.