Diann Siegle

Meet Diann! She leads CR and Empower small groups at That Church

My name is Diann and I am a believer who struggles with co-dependency and alcohol… When I go to a meeting where I have to say my name and my “drug of choice” I usually label myself as a person who is addicted to addicts. To some that may seem lame and even funny, but I am pretty sure my addiction started at birth. 

My mom dropped out of a Catholic high school her senior year to marry my father who was in the Navy. Four years later, after two children and one on the way – my birth father walked out the door and never looked back. I am told that I sat at the window waiting for him to come home for days. Finally, I was put on anti-depressants at the age of three! I became a pyromaniac (I liked to get up in the middle of the night and turn on the gas stove). I was depressed my whole life (I just was never treated properly for it), I was sick every holiday; I had every childhood disease, sometimes twice and some no other kids around me got.

My mom was a single parent for the next four years of my life, before she married my stepfather who would adopt us three girls. Life was great, I thought we had the perfect family, we went to church, we were involved in Girl Scouts, we went camping, we ate dinner around the dining room table….perfect! What I didn’t know was that my mother was an alcoholic. I should have figured it out when I had to start screening calls from bill collectors in junior high, paying late mortgage payments when I was old enough to drive, and finally taking over the “mother” role of my younger siblings (by now there were four of us) while I was in high school. I was the one to get everyone up and ready for school, I was called to the principle’s office when there was trouble, I was the one who made sure everyone did their chores and I was the one staying up late waiting on my mom to get home from her late night “meetings” with co-workers. I grew up in church – or should I say MANY churches. I was born Catholic, raised Episcopal, and during the summers we would visit my dad’s home church – a little country Baptist church. My best friend was Pentecost – so in high school, I even got to try that one on for size. By the time I graduated, I had either been baptized, confirmed, saved or was a member of at least four different denominations. Although, we went to church regularly, I would not consider our family Christians. I think a good picture of how dysfunctional my family was - is to tell you about my first boyfriend. He worked with my mom. She sort of brought us together – which is pretty normal mother type thing to do, except that he was 10 years older than me, married and I was only 16. 

When I graduated from high school, my family moved from Northern Virginia to East Tennessee. I stayed behind and went to work for the FBI, in order to stay close to my boyfriend. I worked for about a year and a half, before I decided to quit. My boyfriend broke up with me the night I quit my job (bad timing – he told me his news before I could tell him mine). I decided to join the Air Force and even talked two of my friends into joining up with me. I had a great summer between those two jobs. I had money left over from my government job and my best friend and I partied all summer long. We met up with some pipe liners working in our hometown. One night we were in their motel room trying to buy some drugs when this good looking, dark hair, blue-eyed guy walked in and they said “that is the guy you want to see”. Three months later that guy became my husband. Somewhere between me shipping out to boot camp and him heading to the next job in Texas, we ended up at my parents’ house in Tennessee. Neither one of us made it to our intended destination, we ended up getting married. Shortly thereafter we moved to San Jose California. Within two months of arriving in California, I was pregnant; my husband was cheating on me and became abusive. Also, he was an addict. I was okay with it when we first got together, but once I got pregnant I decided I didn’t want that life for my child. It was easy for me to give up the partying, but for him, it only got worse… using and selling, cheating and the abuse. We left California a year later to make a fresh start, sold everything we owned, packed up our baby and a small u-haul full of personal belongings. I was already pregnant again as we headed east for a new life.

Back in Tennessee, life didn’t get any better; he ended up using and drinking on a regular basis, the abuse got more violent (at one point he knocked my teeth out) and even added several stints in jail to our already unmanageable life. At one point, my two babies were in the hospital with pneumonia and my husband ended up in the state hospital after he tried to commit suicide in the hospital parking lot. Life would settle down long enough for me to get my hopes up, and for about a year we were doing really well. No drugs, no abuse, life was finally coming together for us; until I found out I was pregnant again. When I broke the news to him he not only left the kids and me, but he packed up & moved out of state. I already had two children under the age of three; I was raising a nephew who was even younger then my two so I made the heart wrenching decision to give this next child up for adoption.

While I was pregnant, my friends and family decided it would be a good time to tell me what kind of mother I grew up with. I had been in total denial and all too happy to stay that way for twenty some-odd years. But, even my dad felt a need to unburden on me the turmoil, the emotional abuse, the cheating, the financial ruin he had lived with all these years.

After the birth of this child, I went back to living with my parents. For Christmas, my husband and I decided to meet up in Arkansas to see his family - they hadn’t seen my oldest daughter and we thought this might be the only chance before we divorced. Somewhere during that holiday, we decided to try to work out the problems in our marriage one more time, this time in Arkansas. When I finally got up the nerve to tell my mom that I was moving to Arkansas, she let into me like I had never seen or heard before. During all that ranting and raving about what kind of husband I had, I was only reminded of the tales I had just recently been told about her – their lives were identical. My dad stood there and let me be mentally beaten down and cussed like a dog, yet the cycle of co-dependency continued - I stood there and kept the promise I had made to him, never to reveal the deep, dark secrets he had shared with me. My mom refused to speak to me for two years after that.

Within three months of moving to Arkansas, my two children and I were homeless and living in a battered women’s shelter. The cold, ugly beaten I received from my mother’s heart and mouth gave me the courage to seek the treatment and recovery I needed for my own sanity. I started attending 12-step programs – one for family & friends of alcoholics and one for adult children of alcoholics.

I worked the program and the steps and eventually got back on my feet – a stronger, wiser wife and mother. Although my husband continued to use, I learned to stand up for myself and make a life for the kids and myself without his help. About a year later, he received a workmen’s comp settlement. I tried to “play nice” until that money came thru. All I asked for was one fourth of the settlement so I could buy a house for the kids. He got his settlement, I got about $7,000 and he blew the rest within six-weeks (you guessed it – drinking and drugs).

I had all ways believed in God, and I knew he was there helping me out of scrapes here and there, but until this time – I never gave him the credit he deserved for the things that worked out in my life when I least expected them. While attempting to buy a house, I finally realized that God was truly working in my life and today I give him all the glory for the way things turned out. I couldn’t just up and buy a house. First of all, I had no clue what I was doing – to this day, I don’t understand points and interest, I had no credit, I had no real work experience, and in the state of Arkansas when you buy a house- your spouse has to be on the deed. I surely didn’t want that – he was an addict and I didn’t want to lose this small hope of any kind of future for my kids to his addiction. Needless to say, I kept hitting dead end roads on this house buying adventure.

One Sunday I decided to call a realtor and she showed me a house near Rose City. She told me the house was next door to her mother’s; it was four houses down from an elementary school and a block away from a church. It had three bedrooms, a fenced in back yard and the payments were lower than my rent at the time.

The one thing that clinched the deal for me was when my 5-year old son walked out on the back porch, looked over the roof tops and announced “Look Mom, there’s a church, we can start going to church now.” Needless to say, God worked out the financing and details for me. As we were getting ready to sign the final paperwork my realtor asked me if I was married. My answer for so many years had been “sort of, kind of”, but according to the law my husband had to either be on the deed or be willing to sign away his rights to the house. Again, God stepped in and my husband signed his rights away, no questions asked.

I became involved in that church my son saw over the rooftops and rededicated my life to God. I was baptized in 1988. Although, I turned my life over to Him, I had a very hard time turning all my troubles over to Him. I figured that my life was such a mess I couldn’t just dump it into His lap all at once. I would pray about the big stuff and I would continue to handle the small stuff. A very wise co-worker offered this advice to me – God doesn’t want just some of our troubles, he wants us to turn them all over to Him, so He can work in our life. THE BEST ADVICE I HAVE EVER RECEIVED, and advice I continue to share today. I’ve learned to lay everything big or small at his feet and leave it there! Philippians 4:6 tells us “Don’t worry about anything, instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done.”

A month after moving into our dream home, I lost my job, my car took it’s last breath, and my husband went to prison all in the same week. Whew! Someone forgot to warn me that becoming a Christian doesn’t mean that all your troubles go away! Satan just fights that much harder! But because of my new relationship with God and learning to let go and let God, I was able to handle even this with a smile on my face and gratitude in my heart.

Jumping forward in my life story - my husband had been out of prison and clean and sober for almost ten years, we were both involved in church and the community, we started a neighborhood watch program, had another baby, owned our own construction company. Life was good.

And then… Crack cocaine entered our lives. For nearly a year, it was a down hill slide back into that dark world of drugs and deception. I was smarter now; I wasn’t going to put up with his drug abuse. I told him right up front, “you want to ruin your life with drugs – go for it. I will not make your life easy. I refuse to lie to our teen-age children (they were old enough to realize something was going on), I will not take care of your business (I was the bookkeeper), and I will not write checks for your child support payments (he had a son previous to our marriage).” Plus I was president of the neighborhood watch program – I had connections – I was on a self-serving venture to do whatever I could to come between him and the drugs! Once again we were on the roller coaster ride of rehab and legal trouble. I went to our church friends and begged for their help – these folks were his mentors, some were recovering addicts, but sadly, my pleas fell on deaf ears. I felt like they turned their back on us. I walked away from church after that, but I never walked away from God.

A year into this replay of his old life - his father decided the best remedy for my husband was to put him on a bus for Arizona and get him away from all the legal mess he was in. It took less than a year before my husband was convicted of shooting at a police officer and sentenced to 40- years- to-life in prison. That night he overdosed on black tar heroin in the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix Arizona. I was a widow at the age of 38.

I grew up in an alcoholic home, my grandfather and uncle were alcoholics, all three of my siblings have had issues with drugs and/or alcohol, my son has spent time in & out of jail due to his addiction, my oldest daughter has fought her own demons with alcohol, and my 19 year old daughter is a recovering addict.

When I told my daughter that I was picking up my 2-year chip a couple months ago – she said, “Mom, you aren’t an alcoholic”. My drinking may not have cost me my family, or a pile of legal bills, or a job, but I knew the moment I found myself throwing up outside my car window with my grown daughter behind the wheel of my car, that my drinking was becoming an obstacle to me serving God. I may not have gone down some of the slippery paths as other alcoholics, but my life has always been controlled by it. The day I found out about some of the darker secrets of my youngest daughter’s addiction - the first thing out of my mouth was, “I need a drink”, and I knew it wouldn’t be too long before I would take that fatal step into full-blown addiction. I had to make a conscious decision to either continue drinking or serve the Lord - I couldn’t do both.

It is only thru God’s love and mercy and a whole lot of prayer - my youngest daughter and I both survived her addiction. Four years of heartache was cushioned with prayer and the comfort only God can provide. To this day, I continue to lean on His promise in Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”

I surrounded myself with a great support group of believers and friends who were dealing with the same hurt and heartache I was, I have been fortunate enough to find work along side other believers, talk openly about God at work and serve the Lord in my profession for the last 20 years, but I knew there was something missing in my life – a church I could call home and feel safe in again. When my (then 16 year old) daughter entered rehab in Memphis, I decided my Christian life needed to get back on track. As I said previously, I never walked away from God, I never quit being a witness, and I never quit studying the Bible - but I had walked away from the fellowship of believers in a church setting. Something had been missing in my life; there was emptiness and a longing for that Christian fellowship I knew I could only find in church. I craved the closeness of a church family. The Bible reminds us to “Not neglect our meeting together… but encourage one another…” in Hebrews 10:25

I walked into Mercy’s Cross (now known as ThatChurch.com) and found a place that accepted folks for who they were – whether it was part of their past or part of their present situation. The first NA meeting I took my daughter to, I looked across the room and saw about 6 people who had seen sitting near me just a few minutes ago at Mercy’s Cross. I knew right then this was the type of church I wanted to call home. I am now honored to call ThatChurch MY church, I am happy to be labeled “one of those people” and blessed to serve next to a wonderful group of friends.

Diann S. Siegele