Your Life Will Be a Drink Offering: Sharne’s Story

Sharne's life moved through two childhood churches, years of abuse and addiction, prison sentences, and a slow, hard-won surrender to God Along the way, she learned the difference between legalism and relationship, between fixing herself and being healed. Today she calls her life a drink offering, poured out for someone else's sake.

This is how she got there. 

Two Churches, One Question  

Sharne grew up between two churches and two messages. Her father was Catholic and her mother was Baptist. Her mother was a daughter of a preacher, and for the Catholic Church to recognize her parents' marriage, her mother agreed to raise the children Catholic. Sharne lived in both worlds every week. She spent her weekdays in Catholic school, where the lessons were strict and structured and she learned a great deal. Then Sundays belonged to her mother's Baptist church, full of music, testimony, and shouts of praise. Young Sharne liked pieces of both dominations but caught between two very different rhythms of faith; she never felt like she fully belonged to either one. 

Her grandfather used to tell her that women should never have a foul mouth. He told her women should dress a certain way, act a certain way, and look a certain way. For years, Sharne believed those rules were the whole of God's law. This caused her to think that makeup was sin and that a woman who did all those things must be heading in the wrong direction. It took her decades to understand the difference between legalism and a real relationship with Jesus and living aligned with what he says. 

At home, her father was an addict, and he was very abusive. Sunday after Sunday, Sharne sat in a pew and heard how much God loved her. Monday through Saturday, she lived through pain no child should experience and carry. She drew her own conclusion from what she experienced. If no one else loved her, maybe God did not either. No one had ever told her a relationship with God could be personal, that He could be her best friend. She would not discover that truth until her thirties, and by then, addiction and negativity had already taken root. 

She carried that false belief for years, straight into addiction of her own. 

The Cycle  

The first time Sharne tried cocaine was as a young woman, convinced her father's addiction made him weak. After trying it herself she learned fast it was very addictive for even the “strongest person.” Crack cocaine took over her life, and by 27, she was incarcerated for the first time. After she got out and got clean. She had her first child and believed that would be the turning point. For a while, it was. Then life happened, and the parts of her story she had never dealt withstood back up and pulled her under again. She relapsed after six or seven years clean, and the weight of disappointing her daughter kept her out there even longer. She married a man who was also an addict and abusive. They divorced, and she relapsed again, and that relapse brought her second child into a world already unsteady beneath her feet. 

That second child was the one that finally brought her all the way in. Sharne got clean and stayed clean for ten years. She walked into the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous and became a sponsor, guiding other women the way she wished someone had guided her. She loved that season of her life. She got baptized, joined a church, and became a faithful, active member. She looked whole from the outside. But through it all, Sharne was still fixing herself the only way she knew how, one piece at a time, by her own strength. She had never surrendered the whole of her life to God, only the parts she was ready to let go of. 

Then a face from her past addiction showed up, an old wound she had never fully surrendered, and it cost her a 15-year sentence. 

Not the Cute Parts

Inside prison, Sharne finally understood what surrender actually meant. 

"I was a fixer," she said. "I fixed it all myself. God wanted all of me. Not the cute parts I wanted the world to see." 

The cost of that sentence was steep. Both of her children wanted nothing to do with the mother they had watched fall apart again. On top of that she lost her marriage and had nowhere to turn but up. 

"I heard God say, I didn't throw you away," Sharne remembers. 

For fifteen years, God met her in the places she had avoided her whole life. He brought back memories she had buried and asked her to talk about them instead of running from them. She cringed at the things He brought to her remembrance, but she understood His reasoning. If she could not lay something down to Him, she could not heal from it. It was not easy, and it was not fast, but it was real. Sharne built a relationship with Christ that became deeper than friendship. He became her foundation. 

While incarcerated, Sharne became a CIU graduate and graduated at the top of her class. She served as a chaplain's clerk, signing other incarcerated men and women up for classes, and through that role, she discovered JUMPSTART SC. She loved that JUMPSTART SC did not just deliver a message and leave. JUMPSTART SC stayed for the after, walking alongside people rebuilding their lives once incarceration ended. After going through on the inside, she became a table leader. Every week, a group of her peers sat with her, wrestling with the same battles she had just wrestled with, and they wanted to know what to do next. Sharne got to share her story over and over, and she believes, and prays; it helped someone find their own footing. 

One volunteer, a man named Steve, left impact her while she was in prison. His words to her were always the same: "I'm a simple man." Sharne carries that simplicity with her still, along with lessons on breaking sin patterns she had never even recognized as sin. Patterns the world around her had made feel normal. 

Coming Home

After 12 years away, release day arrived, and it was not what Sharne expected. After release, a trip to Walmart left her overwhelmed by how many choices existed on the shelves. Her phone felt like a foreign object in her hand, a piece of technology she had no idea how to operate. 

"My phone almost took me out," she said. "At one point, I really thought I was going to have an emotional breakdown." Everything had gone digital while she was gone, and none of it existed the way she remembered it. "I couldn't even go to a doctor's office and get test results without knowing how to set something up on my phone," she said. Twelve years is a long time for the world to change without you. Sharne believes it's important for others to slow down and teach the formerly incarcerated the basics first, before automatically expecting anyone to catch up to a digital world that kept moving without them. 

Then she arrived at Restoration Village She pulled up and saw a neighborhood of homes, and every one of them belonged to JUMPSTART SC. She saw the Indigo Hope Center and thought she must be in the wrong place. "We welcome you here, and we've got stuff for you," Anthony told her. Anthony assured her she was not in the wrong place at all. This was her new home now. He carried a calming spirit that steadied her while he walked her through her intake.

She had pictured one big old house with a couple of floors, everyone crowded into shared rooms. She was surprised when they took her to her very own room, already decorated and waiting for her before she ever walked through the door. She took a picture the moment she saw it and asked someone to help her send it to her daughter. She wanted her daughter to see it too. For the first time in a long time, Sharne exhaled. 

"It far exceeded what I expected," she said. 

God Never Once Left Her Side  

Today, God is teaching Sharne about acceptance, accepting who she is becoming. 

Her favorite verse is Romans 8:28. All things work together for good. She wrestled with that verse for years, certain her story of abuse and addiction could never be redeemed into something good. She asked God directly why He allowed her father to beat her, why He let her walk through so much loss. God told her plainly that He built her for a purpose, that she had been shaped through every season, and He never once left her side. He never allowed anyone to take her life, because she belonged to Him. Then He told her the rest.

Her life would become a drink offering for someone else's life. Every hard season had a purpose, and every purpose required a season, both the highs and the lows. 

Sharne also carries a quieter kind of grace in her story. Her first daughter, the one who had it hard growing up beside her mother's addiction, now holds a master's degree, a strong marriage, and Sharne's first and only grandchild. Her daughter never touched drugs or alcohol, and Sharne calls it nothing short of God's doing. 

When Sharne shares her story, she still feels the sting of remembering. She keeps telling her story anyway, because somewhere, someone needs to know there is another side of the pain they are living in right now. 

To anyone nervous about applying to JUMPSTART SC, Sharne has one answer. 

"Hands down, make the best decision of your life and come to JUMPSTART SC. You will never regret that decision."  

Watch the Full Interview Video

Write Someone Else's Homecoming

Restoration Village gave Sharne more than a room. It gave her a place to restart after incarceration and heal. Your gift makes rooms like Sharne's possible. It turns chaplain's clerks and table leaders into someone's turning point. Your gift tells another Sharne she is loved by God long before she believes it herself. 

Will you be the reason another Sharne gets her own room? Give today at jumpstartsc.org/give 

If you are considering giving to finish the village:  Your support funds more than a home or a program. It funds the structure that turns hope into a real pathway from incarceration to restoration. Give today at jumpstartsc.org/give 

If you are considering volunteering: You do not need a law degree or three decades in finance. You need what Steve had, a heart ready to show up again and again. Both inside volunteers and transitional program volunteers are not just saving people. They are being changed, one conversation at a time.