Lindell Recovery Network

This is Andy Thomas from the Masculine Journey Podcast where we discover what it means to be a wholehearted man. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. Consider joining the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America, also known as PRCUALife. PRCUALife is a fraternal benefit society that offers a variety of different life insurance portfolios for all stages of life. PRCUALife also offers fixed indexed annuity plans with a yield up to 3.75% APY. As a fraternal organization, the PRCUA provides member benefits such as education scholarships, sports tournaments, numerous Polish American cultural programs, and much more. To become a member and for more details, visit PRCUA.org or contact local PRCUA representatives at 336-776-7456.

Consider joining the PRCUALife this week. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If Not For God with Mike Zwick, and I tell you what, today we have an excellent guest. Hooray for Melissa. It's Melissa Hooray. Did I say that the right way, Melissa? You just had to get the Hooray joke in there, huh?

Well, you're good enough. It's actually Hooray, but we don't need to get that technical. Hooray. Hooray.

Close enough. Melissa had me on her show. She's with the Lindell Recovery Network, which is part of, for the two of you who don't know out there who Mike Lindell is, the MyPillow guy.

And now he actually works with people and is trying to help people in recovery. And so Melissa is a big, big part of that. I met Melissa in, I think it was Nashville, Tennessee at the NRB, the National Religious Broadcasters, and she's a good friend of our friend Chuck Riesch. But Melissa, you grew up, did you grow up in Minnesota as well?

Yes, I did. I grew up in northern Minnesota. I live down by the Twin Cities now, but grew up pretty far north out in the woods up there and had more or less a sheltered life. I didn't realize until I was about 10 that my family was pretty dysfunctional because it was just what I was used to. But my parents both drank pretty heavily. We did have some exposure to church. My dad was an elder in the Presbyterian Church. My uncle was a minister, pastor, so he pastored several churches around the upper Midwest. So there was always talk of God, you know, from as early as I can remember. We set our prayers before bed, and we went to church on Sunday pretty regularly. But when I got a little older and my dad's drinking got worse, it started to affect the family more, and we more or less dropped out of church, though I did continue.

I got confirmed, but I would say I never really met the Lord or felt the presence of God or, you know, I didn't even know that I believed for sure. It was just something I was told, and I struggled with that, a little bit of unbelief until I got older. But as my dad's drinking grew, my anxiety worsened. So when I was young, I had a lot of problems with anxiety and panic attacks, and I would really struggle with things normal kids were doing. I had a lot of phobias and fears and turned to food for that. Really, food was my first addiction. Sugar was, I'd come home from school and just raid the cupboards and watch after-school shows because my parents were gone a lot.

So I had an abandonment wound just from not having their presence or not feeling that I could really count on them to be there for me. So it started with food, and then when I was about 14, it turned to alcohol and boys. So that became my new medication kind of to deal with my wound was to get validation through the opposite sex and to start drinking. So I started drinking when I was 15. I had started dating this guy who was three years older than me, and we just went off drinking all the time in gravel pits. And from a very early age, I had a serious problem with alcohol where I would binge drink.

I had no off switch. I would get compulsively drunk and black out basically every time I drank. It was just a real, you know, out of control pattern that I had every weekend going to these keg parties. And it became a very terrible pattern where I had a lot of, I would say, near-death experiences, even though I didn't really see them as that back then. But times when I would wake up in my vomit and I would, you know, wake up in strange places not knowing where I was. I was driving drunk when I was 16, driving, you know, in the ditch and just doing all these just out of control things. And I had some grounding in God, but I just, you know, had fallen into rebellion where I just wanted to please the world.

So pleasing the world became my God. But I should mention back when I was nine, I had a lady in my neighborhood who witnessed to me. She was a babysitter. She took me on camping trips with her family when I was young, and she brought me to her Baptist church. And one Sunday at vacation Bible school, I got on my knees and accepted Jesus, although after that there wasn't any discipleship that came. There wasn't really anything that followed up with that. So my newfound Christianity really wasn't nurtured. And then I went into the path of just binge eating and then drinking alcohol and promiscuity, really. Just trying to find anybody who would accept me was kind of my pattern until I was well into my teens. And so what happened after that?

Well, the pattern continued really. It just, I guess the theme of my life was going from one boyfriend to the next, where I always had to be in a relationship. I had raging codependency. I could not be alone. I had panic and anxiety anytime I was alone. And I look back on my childhood and I see that when I was very young, I had to teach myself how to be alone.

And the way that I did that, like I said, was through food and television. Those were my babysitters because I was a latchkey kid. So I came home from school and I was alone.

And in the winter, when it got dark, I just would panic when it got dark so early. So I learned that, you know, I just didn't ever want to be alone. And I dated people throughout high school.

And then I was on this crash course. Really, I was obsessed with getting married because I think I believed I could create the family I never had. And I'm not saying my parents are horrible people. I mean, they love me and I wasn't abused. I wasn't, you know, I was provided for and I think they did the best they could with with what, you know, the way they had been raised and their influences that they had. And my mom really spent a lot of time taking care of my dad and trying to babysit him and her codependency with him, trying to prevent him from getting DUIs.

And, you know, it was just I look back and I have I have compassion for them. So anyway, to speed up the story, I wanted to get married. I got engaged to someone when I was 19.

That engagement ended when I met another guy and, you know, jumped over to this other relationship and we ended up. Our relationship was based on alcohol, really. It was one of those things that I forced outside of God's timing. I really wanted to mold him into a husband. And I had this idea, this fantasy in my head that if we got married, everything would be normal.

We could create this beautiful life together. So I ended up getting pregnant, you know, maybe a year into our relationship. And then we fast tracked a wedding, got married, moved 600 miles away to Kansas City, did all of these huge life changes without thinking, without consulting God.

God was nowhere in our marriage or our relationship. So we had our daughter. And then shortly after that, I panicked and wanted to move home. I was homesick. I was I had no stability, no anchor.

I you know, I just felt out of control. And I thought if I could get back home, I could maybe make things the way they used to be. But everything just got worse. So we ended up being married less than three years for the total. There was a separation in there, too. But we divorced. So I was 24 years old and divorced.

And I thought this was really not the way I found that my life would go. And that continued. So the drinking continued. By that time, I was a bartender. I was trying to finish college, but I kept dropping out because I would, you know, alcohol prevented me from following through on anything. So I was trying to finish my bachelor's degree, bartending, and also was a mobile deejay. So I was traveling all around the state doing dangerous things again, driving drunk to long distances.

Somehow God bearing me by the grace of Jesus, not killing myself or somebody else drunk driving, which I did habitually. And then when I was 26 there, that was a turning point because I got to I got arrested for drunk driving twice in one year. The first time in January of 1999. And then the second time was in August.

The second time was pretty serious. I rear ended a lady in a blackout. And again, thank the Lord, I didn't hurt her or kill her or myself.

And because of that, I had an 18 month period of sobriety where I stopped drinking. But really, my catalyst was fear. I was afraid I was going to go to jail. I had all these terrible thoughts in my head of being locked up and being sent.

You know, I didn't have any experience with real lock up. I had really never been in trouble seriously. And so I did everything I was told. I turned into the consummate people pleaser that I always had kind of been for much of my life.

Was just trying to not make people mad and hoping they would love me. So I went through outpatient treatment. It was kind of a rinky dink outpatient three day a week thing. But I completed that. I became an aftercare leader.

I did all the things. I went to AA and got a sponsor and I stayed sober for 18 months. But along the way, toward the end of the 18 months, I started to second guess that I was really, you know, an addict. I started thinking, I don't really think I have a problem.

I think I will never try to control it. So really, the enemy was working on my mind for several months before I actually picked up a drink again. But the truth of the matter was I had never really let go of it. I think in the back of my mind, I thought, yeah, I'm going to drink again someday once things settle down. And also during that time, I went back to church and I took my daughter who was five, my oldest daughter, and we joined a non-denominational church. I was baptized in water. I started getting really into the things of the Holy Spirit. And every time I would get sober, that's what I would do. I would pursue God again.

And he would, you know, I would draw near to him and I would hunger for the things of the kingdom. And so that went on for a good 18 months. But then I started to question and I started working at a TV station.

I finished my degree, which was in mass communications, and I got a job as a production assistant at a TV station. And I ended up working my way up to a reporter. And everybody, you know, people drank a lot in that industry. There was a lot of drinking and pot smoking and things that went on.

Not necessarily with the talent, but with the production staff. So I moved in with that crowd again. And they were good people. Not all of them were addicts.

Some of them were just kind of sowing their wild oats. And again, I started to feel cheated and bitter and angry and resentful that I didn't have that in my life anymore. And I really wanted it back. So I decided I was going to do controlled drinking. And that was my plan.

I'm going to do it, but only on special occasions. Well, that lasted. I started drinking again in March of 2001 after 18 months of sobriety. And I quit very quickly back into my old pattern, drunk driving, binge drinking, blacking out, waking up with people I didn't know.

All those things were happening again. Once I picked once I put alcohol in my system, I would lose control. It was like the devil stepped into my body. It was like another thing came into me and I would walk for me, talk for me, do things I never would do while sober. And once I was back into it, I knew that it was out of control again, but I didn't really want to stop for another good couple of years. And the next thing that happened was that my dad died of liver failure in December of 2002.

After he died, it marked a very dramatic descent in my alcoholism because I watched him die of liver failure at the age of 54. And I really started to feel the window closing on me. And I knew that this was going to be the path I was going to take, but mine was going to be more dramatic. I just had this knowing it was going to be an accident, an overdose or a drunk driving incident that was going to take my life.

And I started to just have that reality. And I really started wanting to stop and trying, yet I relapsed about six more times before I actually came to the end. And the last time I drank was August 21st, 2003. And I can just briefly recap that situation, but I had been sober for 49 days, really white knuckling it, trying to stay the course. And then all of a sudden it was like a switch flipped. I went down to the Minnesota State Fair.

I had been, I was living up in Duluth, which is north of here and a guy friend of mine and I decided to go to the fair and somewhere on the drive down, my mind turned in the direction. I'm going to drink again one more time. And once I reached the point of no return there, you know, nothing was going to stop me.

I just made the decision to do it. And he didn't know how bad I was. He really just thought I was going to have a good time, but he didn't know what he was signing up for was a night of babysitting me. But the night ended.

It was a 12 hour blackout. I was falling down the stairs at the grandstand, these cement steps, and couldn't walk, had to be escorted out by police who wanted to take me to detox. The guy I was with said, you know, I'll take care of her.

I will make sure she doesn't die. So I woke, I came to the next morning in this motel room. I had no idea how I got there. I couldn't remember anything. It was the most horrific, sickening madness I've ever experienced. It was like I had drank the madness back in one superficial evening, you know, after somehow white knuckling together, 49 days of sobriety.

But somehow that morning, so the guy was apologetic. I'm sorry, I never should have encouraged you to drink. We had to go find my car, which had been impounded and towed from the fair. And as I'm walking these empty fairgrounds, looking at garbage blowing around from the party the night before, I just cried out to God in my mind. And I just, and I didn't really know what I was doing at the time, but I just begged him to never let me drink again.

And I said, I want this with everything that I have. I never want to drink again. And I have come to realize that I repented in that moment. And I had never repented before. I had never really wanted to be done with it. There was part of me that still wanted it. So I fully surrendered.

I asked him to remove the obsession and he absolutely did that. And that was something that Mike Lindell and I had in common where he lifted it. I mean, it wasn't like it happened. It was a process leading up to that. But in that moment where I was absolutely done and so disgusted with myself and to the end of every attempt that I had made in my own power and I begged him, he met me with his grace.

And that'll be 19 years this August. I haven't had a drink, haven't even had an urge, a craving. There's no bitterness.

There's no resentment, you know, of wanting it or being jealous of people that can do it. So he really delivered me and then, you know, my life really turned around after that. Not that everything was perfect, but it was dramatically different after that. And after that, you drew closer to the Lord and you said you've been going to an Assemblies of God church now for the last 10 years. But what got you into, how did you get hooked up with Mike Lindell? Yeah, well, I'll just say really quickly that God really blessed me after that day because he, my husband and I, who we had met in the 90s, we met one time, and 18 days after I quit drinking, we crossed paths again. And it was one of those things where, hey, I know you, or how do we know each other?

We kind of caught up. And we were married one year later, and we'll be married 18 years this September. We have two daughters. So I have three daughters total, but God really blessed me, and he totally redeemed my divorce. My first divorce date was September 4th, 1997, and the date I was remarried was September 4th, 2004, seven years apart.

And I never realized that until recently. Yeah, so he really blessed me. When he knew I was done, he brought the man that he had selected for me instead of me trying to do it in my own timing. But yes, we started, my husband Mike, his name is Mike also, we really wanted to raise our kids with godly values. We wanted to pursue Jesus. We really had that, you know, that's the way you're supposed to find us, Paul, right? So we got into church.

It wasn't Assembly of God back then, that was 2004. We went to a Lutheran church, but the past 10 years we've been in Assembly of God. I think God has shown us things in each church we've been at, and we've gathered something from every church in every past or in congregation. But as our spiritual, you know, in our spiritual growth, we wanted to pursue the Holy Spirit more and be in a more Spirit-filled church, and that's what brought us there. But after I got sober, I went back to school to become an addiction counselor, and I worked in treatment centers for 12 years.

I did intensive outpatient groups for 12 years, basically about five groups a week for 12 years, and I was starting to get very burnt out even though I love the work and I want to help people with addiction. There were limitations being that it was secular and, you know, there was only so much I could do. I would pray one-on-one with people in my office, but I was praying for two years before I met Mike Lindell.

I was just praying, God, I know you want me to do this work, but I don't know if I can keep doing it in this capacity. And one day we were at the mall, we saw Mike Lindell cut out. Like you said, everybody in Minnesota knows Mike Lindell. It's not like he's, you know, we haven't seen his face, seen his commercials. But that day I saw his cross, and I thought, why does he wear his cross hanging out like that?

And it just kind of drew me like a beacon. So I started Googling his name, Mike Lindell, and I was finding all these articles about him being a crack addict. And so I'm walking through the mall saying to my Mike, did you know Mike Lindell was a crack addict?

I never knew that. That's amazing. So that got me really interested in him. And it took about eight more months to actually get into his company because there didn't seem to be any inroads to get in the door. Mostly he hires friends, family.

He famously said he hires people off bar stools, but I couldn't find a way in. So I ended up thinking, I'm going to get a part time job at the pillow store. It'll be cool to work for Mike Lindell. Maybe it'll lead to something. So they called me for an interview, and as the week leading up to the interview, I thought, this is ridiculous. You're already working a full time job that you're stressed about, and now you're going to get another job for the weekend.

This can be really bad. But I thought I needed to follow through with my commitment to do the interview. So I showed up there and the woman who was meeting with me looked at my resume and she said, oh, you're an addiction counselor.

Oh, wow. Well, Mike Lindell is creating this thing to help addicts. I don't really know anything about it, but I can pass your name along and maybe maybe they'll call you. And I really didn't think they would.

But two weeks later they did. And they called me to come in and meet with him. And he said, Melissa, I think this is a divine appointment. He didn't even he didn't even do an interview, really.

I want to hire you. And I was like, you know, don't you want to ask me anything? That's kind of how Mike does things, right? Yes, exactly. He just you know, he gets things from God. He gets things in prayer.

He said, your name has come up three times in the past week. So I thought I got to get this woman in here and talk to her. But we have an online platform, the Lindell Recovery Network. It's really a self-service hub of resources for people with addictions. There are video testimonials, church sermons. There's a searchable database for churches and treatment programs.

Christian, all Christian, all vetted, all low free or low cost. And we have the Operation Restored Warrior Freedom Course that people can go through all the content online. So Mike wanted to make a central location where people in the privacy of their own home, they can figure out what's best for them, whether it is a treatment center, a church or or the video content that we have. So that was we started that about two years ago. And then a year ago we started the Hope Report podcast. And that was something else that Mike had talked about when I first met him. He would walk around saying, someday I'm going to have a show and it's going to be called the Hope Report and it's just going to be good news. And back then, I didn't think I would be part of that because, like I said, I was a news reporter and an anchor.

I did that for seven years. And then that ended. The station closed.

It was consolidated in a revenue sharing thing that they did up in Duluth. And then I went into the addiction counseling field. I thought that ship had sailed. I thought it was over. And God brought it back around because it's always been part of something I've missed. But I thought, ah, you're too old, you're washed up.

But it came back around again. And then I became the co-host with Jason Perry. And I just am amazed at God and what he has done when I have gotten out of, well, I don't want to say get out of his way, but when I partner with him, like on parallel tracks, when I'm not trying to force my own will, how he just opens up the path, you know.

So it's been amazing. And my husband Mike and I go to, like I said, Assembly of God Church. We're very involved.

He serves on the safety team. I'm on the worship team. Our girls are very involved in the church.

So, yeah, we're just super grateful, always giving God the glory for everything he has done in our lives. Yeah, and so the, if people, you know, if somebody right now is listening and they have, they may be addicted to alcohol, they may be addicted to, no, is it just alcohol and drugs or can it be any addiction? Well, we do have, so in order to, we have this searchable database and Mike calls it Hope Match. So you can type in your age and select your addiction from the dropdown. And we have all drugs, alcohol plus gambling, sex and pornography. We may get some other things like I've gotten videos from people on smoking and food addiction.

We just don't have enough to make. We need at least five videos in each age category. So we've got a couple thousand videos on there now.

But if people want to, they can go to LindellRecoveryNetwork.org and you can. So drugs and alcohol plus behavioral addictions like gambling, sex and porn. And we have short, short clips on the main page and then you sign up for a free account and then you can view the full testimonials. So you basically see a kind of a tease, if you will, of people talking about what they didn't like about their addiction on the main landing page. And then when you get inside, it's the full testimonials. We also have inspirational stories of hope, which are not addictions, but they could be somebody who lost a child or somebody who, you know, things that Jesus has delivered them from.

Maybe it's grief or anxiety or any type of life struggle. We have all those inspirational videos that don't necessarily fit into an addiction category. And then sermons. So I vet all of these.

There isn't a video that has gone up there without my approval. We get some from outside and we get some from Chuck. Chuck Riesch is a huge helper for us, especially with the startup of the platform where he, with his ministry partners, has gotten us a lot of videos from people and the ministries that he works with. So that really helped build our content, especially at the beginning when we were getting the platform going. Yeah. And you guys have a great show and it's, and you can, uh, if you go to YouTube, you can go to the it's the hope report, right?

Yeah. And we have a website to hope report show.com. So if anyone has a testimony and they, you know, want to come on the show, really our only requirement is if you have a story where Jesus delivered you of something or even how you came to salvation, it doesn't even have to be about an addiction. Anything that, um, you know, any Jesus story are, we have a little motto. Um, your story is his story. So we really want to encourage, even if you think your testimony is no big deal, like my husband did his the other day.

He struggled with, he has bad anxiety or he did, and he was prescribed different benzodiazepines for that and got to, he was never using them daily, but he would abuse them at the time. So needed after public speak and he never told any, well, I was the only one who knew about this because he found it very shameful that I have to do this in order to perform. He didn't want his employer to know, you know, what he had to go through in order to be able to, Oh, you did this awesome presentation.

Well, yeah, I barely remember it cause I was on so much Klonopin, but he, he, I'm so proud of him because it was such a shameful thing for him that he didn't want anyone to know about. So we want to encourage anybody, you know, even if you think your story is not a big deal. Um, my cohost, Jason's wife told her story about perfectionism and she always thought, Oh, my testimony is not important because it's not like a near death experience. Or Mike Lindell was 10 parachute accidents and all the things he talks about, but she really struggled with, you know, depression and, and also like, well, if I'm a Christian, why am I, why am I depressed?

Why am I struggling with this? So we would encourage anyone. We don't, we don't even try to get famous people. I mean, occasionally it happens, but that's not what we seek out. We just want regular people. Yeah.

Sometimes the regular people shoot it to you straight. And, uh, Melissa, we're so, so glad to have you on here today on the truth network on, if not for God with Mike Zwick. And, uh, one more time, if people want to check it out, the website is what?

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Mike. I really appreciate it. And it was awesome meeting you at the NRB and I just pray your podcast explodes and grows. And it was great having you on the hope report too. Um, our two websites are lindellrecoverynetwork.org. If anyone is struggling with an addiction and then the hope report is you can find us on YouTube, hope report, and then our website is hopereportshow.com. Thanks a lot, Melissa. And, uh, we hope to talk to you again soon. Thanks so much. All right.

If not for God. Since 1873, PRC UA has been ensuring that which is most precious life as well as protecting its members and their families financially, helping craft robust retirement plans, join PRC UA life today and take advantage of its affordable life insurance plans, competitive annuity rates, and additional member benefits. Did you know that you can lower your income tax bill and boost your retirement income by opening a new PRC UA life, annuity, or transferring your existing account, earn up to 3.75 APY with one year guarantee and $500 minimum deposit. Get to know us better visit prcua.org or contact your local PRC representative at 336-776-7456 PRC UA life protecting life through all its stages. This is the truth network.