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After years of drug addiction, a daughter finds forgiveness from her parents, her children, and her Savior.
On June 26, 2017, Elizabeth Harr flatlined in the back of an ambulance from a fentanyl overdose.
On June 27, 2024, she celebrated seven years of sobriety from drug addiction.
The days in between are a testament to her determination, the enduring love of her family, and the power of a God who works miracles in even the most hopeless places.
Spiraling downward
A look back at Elizabeth’s early childhood in a small town near Ann Arbor, Mich., wouldn’t seem to foreshadow her battle with drug addiction. “I had a really, really good childhood,” she remembers. Her parents, Terry and Robbin Lundquist, were loving and supportive, faithfully taking Elizabeth and her two younger siblings to church every Sunday. Elizabeth was baptized as a baby and later confirmed in the Lutheran faith.
But a deeper look at Elizabeth’s hometown would reveal troubles beneath the surface. According to Terry, there was a lot of “dysfunction” in their rural town, with an alarming number of young people attempting and committing suicide. Illegal drugs were infiltrating the community from nearby Ann Arbor.
At age 13, Elizabeth started smoking marijuana. At age 19, she started dabbling in hard drugs.
So began Elizabeth’s 22-year downward spiral into hard drug addiction. “I was a needle junkie for 11 years and a ‘meth cook’ to pay for my heroin,” she says. Each substance drove her further away from her family and into increasingly hopeless situations. She had four boys with three different fathers, all of whom were incarcerated multiple times and had “little to nothing” to do with their sons. “I picked the worst of the worst to have children with,” Elizabeth admits. At one point, her family was violently attacked by heroin dealers. Eventually homeless, she and her boys were forced to live in a shelter and rely on state aid to survive.
As Terry and Robbin poured themselves into trying to pull Elizabeth back from addiction, it strained their relationship with each other and with their other two children. “We were constantly dealing with her issues,” recalls Robbin. “We put our other kids on the back burner.”
But even their bottomless well of parental love couldn’t break the chains of Elizabeth’s addiction. “I was rageful and hateful,” Elizabeth says. Once while in jail, she threatened her parents, “‘Either come get me, or I’m going to blow all of the windows out of your house when I get out.’ And being the way I was, they didn’t doubt that I would.”
Heartbroken, the Lundquists decided to move away from Michigan—and from Elizabeth—when Terry retired in 2014. They didn’t feel safe, not knowing what Elizabeth would do while in the stranglehold of addiction. “To be perfectly honest,” says Robbin, “we were afraid of her.” They didn’t tell their daughter they were leaving and moved to Chattanooga, Tenn.
Hitting rock bottom
Then came June 26, 2017, the day Elizabeth hit rock bottom. While in a friend’s car in a public parking lot, Elizabeth shot up with what she thought was heroin. It was actually fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that can be deadly in illegal doses. Her friend dragged Elizabeth out of the car, laid her on the ground, and called 911. The EMTs desperately worked to save Elizabeth’s life. She says, “They hit me with the maximum amount of Narcan, and I still didn’t come back.” She flatlined. But through persistent medical intervention by the EMTs in the ambulance, God brought Elizabeth back. He was giving her a second chance.
Six days later, Elizabeth’s children were taken out of her custody. “I couldn’t keep my composure,” she recalls. “I cried for three days straight.” Her love for her boys was the motivator that finally pushed her to get clean so she could get them back. “I thought that what I endured in the back of the ambulance coming out of my overdose was hard,” she says, “but that was a walk in the park compared to losing my children.”
Reconnecting to family and faith
So Elizabeth started on the grueling path of recovery. She regularly met with psychiatrists and counselors and her sponsor. She avoided triggers, like white coffee filters and metal spoons and charcoal fluid—things that to most of us are simply common household items. At first, she couldn’t get through a single day without craving drugs. “You know how they say, ‘One day at a time’? It was one hour at a time that I fought to keep the needle out of my arm.”
Gradually, minute by minute, hour by hour, it got easier. Then came the day protective services determined Elizabeth was fit to be reunited with her boys. To her amazement, they have all forgiven her. She began the painstaking work of piecing her broken life back together.
Later that year, in an “almost fairy tale-like” turn of events, Elizabeth reconnected with her high school sweetheart, whom she married in 2018. Her husband then encouraged her to reconcile with her parents. As Elizabeth began visiting Terry and Robbin in Chattanooga, the relationship between mom, dad, and daughter slowly began to heal. In 2023, Elizabeth and her family moved to Tennessee to be closer to her parents.
Terry and Robbin began inviting Elizabeth and her family to Living Hope, Chattanooga, where the Lundquists are members. Terry and Robbin had first met Eric Melso, pastor at Living Hope, at a convention where Living Hope had a booth.
After concerning things began happening at the church the Lundquists were attending at the time, Terry remembered Melso, who had been regularly touching base with him since they first met. “Pastor Melso called Terry about once a month,” remembers Robbin. “And it finally came at the right time, and that’s when we started to go.” The Lundquists found the church home and church family they had always craved.
Now living in Tennessee, Elizabeth and her family began regularly attending Living Hope. For the first time in her life, the message of God’s Word began to resonate with her. “What Pastor Melso had to say intrigued me,” she remembers. “There were certain sermons where it felt like he was talking directly to me.” She took the Foundations class and became a member, as did her husband and two of her sons, both of whom were baptized at Living Hope. Elizabeth says, “I now appreciate God’s grace like nothing I could express in words.”
Finding forgiveness
At Living Hope, Elizabeth is known as “the prodigal child.” It was Terry who introduced her to the parable of the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15, a story Elizabeth and her parents can easily identify with. “That could be our family’s story,” says Robbin. Terry agrees. “That’s the beauty of the living Bible and the living Christ, and how it is today as it was then,” he says. “The Word is the same all along.”
Like the father in the parable, Terry and Robbin have welcomed back their prodigal daughter with arms flung wide, with full and free forgiveness. “There are no words to describe the joy, forgiveness, and redemption in our faith and having our daughter returned to us,” says Terry. “I see it as a miracle,” says Robbin. “Jesus brought our daughter back to us.”
Elizabeth is now a different person: “I am the complete opposite of what I used to be,” she says. “My whole life has completely changed.”
“Only in Christ could that happen,” adds Terry. “The Holy Spirit intervened and helped Elizabeth with the strength to . . . start putting something before herself, like her children.”
Elizabeth knows that stories like hers—with the depth of her addiction—don’t usually have happy outcomes. She mourns what her addiction has cost her. Enforced time away from her sons. An estranged relationship with her sister and brother. The heartbreaking number of friends she has lost to overdose and suicide.
But what she has gained! A restored relationship with her parents and her children. Two grandchildren, with more on the way. A church family that knows her past and accepts her anyway. No longer having to hitchhike or sleep under bridges. A fierce determination to never again let addiction control her.
And most important: a strong, personal relationship with her Lord and Savior, Jesus, who has worked miracle after miracle in her life. “I did a lot of bad stuff while I was using,” Elizabeth says. “My children have forgiven me, but it took me years to forgive myself. . . . I have reached for God on both of my knees, and he has said, ‘I’m here, child.’ ”
Learn more about the home mission Living Hope, Chattanooga, Tenn., in this month’s WELS Connection.
Author: Ann Jahns
Volume 111, Number 08
Issue: August 2024
