Stacey Ann Garvey described her life before finding Jesus Christ as a mess. By the time she surrendered to Him in prison, she had done nine abortions, unsuccessfully tried to take her life, and was heavily dependent on drugs to get her through the day.
Her journey on the road to self-destruction started early after the seed of rejection was planted. Little did she know that this was a generational curse that had struck her mother and several generations of women before her. Because she felt rejected, she read a lot of romance books and quickly bought into the ideals of the love she saw portrayed. She went searching for this kind of love.
“I got a boyfriend early and I got pregnant right out of high school,” said Garvey.
She wanted to do everything to please her boyfriend, so she could win his love. When he said he wasn’t ready for a baby, she aborted the child.
“When I opened the door for my first abortion, I opened the door for the enemy to come and abort purpose, and so one abortion led to about eight or nine more,” she informed
It wasn’t until her sixth abortion that Garvey started to experience the impact of her earlier choices. She started to feel like she was a murderer and just didn’t want to live anymore. What followed were several attempts to end her life. She initially took anti-depressants and sleeping pills to numb the overwhelming shame she felt, but when those stopped working for her, she upgraded to hard drugs.
Engaging in criminal activities enabled her to get extra money to secure her fix and to maintain friends she thought loved her.
“Our society today doesn’t understand that a lot of persons are imprisoned mentally and emotionally, but we were never taught to speak about our problems,” Garvey said during a recent Choose Life International Webinar. The organization focuses on suicide prevention, which is currently one of the leading causes of death globally.
“One of the biggest problems, and it is even in Christianity, is rejection. We don’t know how to love ourselves. We’ve never been introduced to ourselves and so that is one of the doors that the enemy uses. Listen, he just turns that key and he comes in. That is why a lot of people turn to fornication and homosexuality, and promiscuity,” she explained.
She encourages people to not give the enemy that opportunity to turn the key. People, she shared, should learn to be happy and show themselves love. Sometimes it takes reaffirming this love in front of the mirror.
“Sometimes if people don’t text and call, and say something, people get into their feelings,” she observed.
“The enemy”, she noted, “knows those who are marked. He targets them especially, so they can self-destruct. While he cannot destroy you, he will allow you to destroy yourself”, but in Stacey’s case, all her attempts failed. She still recalls the night she consumed excessive amounts of alcohol and drugs while at a party, with the intention to crash her car on her way from St. Elizabeth. To her dismay, she woke up in the car the following morning, fully rested. She concluded that an angel must have guided her home.
“Not even suicide could accept my invitation and not even the enemy could have written a contract concerning my soul belonging to him. Why? God had called and chosen me.”
While Garvey’s abusive behaviour did not kill her, it eventually resulted in her going to prison. She was sent to the Fort Augusta prison to serve time. It was while there, she realized that the baby she thought she had aborted was still alive. An ultrasound confirmed the doctor’s initial observation.
The mother-to-be went back to her dorm confused, but then she remembered she had heard a lady praying the day before in another dorm, so she wrote her a note. When they met, the lady asked, “Woman of God, what would have been your answer to God if you had killed yourself and killed that prophet inside your belly?”
Garvey was further confused after being called “Woman of God”. She went to the sanctuary the following day and listened as the pastor spoke a “Rhema Word”. Her life was transformed immediately. She said she felt the love of God and it was so much better than the drugs, her promiscuous life, the money, and all her material things before. Even the baby in her womb who had been quiet up to this point, started moving. He is 12 years old today.
The feeling was so surreal; she remembered asking God to keep her in prison if it meant she could continue in His presence. She stayed for three years and during that time, ministered, cleaned the sanctuary, and got deeper in the Word. She has since started the Resurrected Garvey Ministries and a Prison Break Conference Series which offers hope to others.