When women come to Mountain of Faith Ministry seeking help, Heather McClung knows exactly how they feel.

She’s been there.

McClung, who came to Mountain of Faith in 2016 as a homeless person, is the ministry’s transitional shelter manager, and handles other duties at the mission.

“I answer the phones, I do anything that needs to be done; you name it, I do it. I do transportation, I assist the director with anything she needs done, I work in the thrift store; I clean.”

She also serves as secretary-treasurer for the Mountain of Faith Board of Directors.

Her story and the path that led her to Mountain of Faith is one many of the women who have stayed at and been helped by the shelter could tell. She was a single, unwed mother at 18, went through a series of abusive relationships, became addicted to drugs and spent time in prison.

“My dad was in the military,” she said. “I moved around a lot when I was a kid. I’ve been around the world. I grew up in a normal household; there wasn’t any abuse, I never heard my dad even raise his voice against my mother.”

But when she was 16, McClung said, “I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. My dad had retired to Mississippi, and I started smoking marijuana, drinking, having sex. The one thing my parents didn’t do was teach me about God. I didn’t know about the Lord until later on.”

When her daughter was born, she said, she was living with her mother and working, got married, entered an abusive relationship and had a second child.

It was her husband, she said, who introduced her to cocaine, starting a long-term addiction with the drug. When he went to prison, she said, “I stuck by him.” She also got off cocaine during her pregnancy.

It didn’t last.

When her husband got out of prison, McClung said, she resumed her addiction.

“Things got really bad, so I took my children to my mother, because I knew I wasn’t taking care of them the way I should be taking care of them. I wasn’t going to have someone call DHS (the Department of Human Services) to come take my children. I loved my children. The drug really did overtake me.”

When her husband went back to prison, she said, she left him. She also stopped using cocaine, exchanging it for another addiction, prescription painkillers.

“Pain pills weren’t as bad as shooting up cocaine, so I thought I was doing better.”

She married her second husband, who was also abusive, and then went to prison for stealing prescription drugs from the home of an acquaintance.

“I was sentenced to 15 years, but I got out in 21/2 years for good behavior and the 25 percent rule,” McClung said. “I did one year of house arrest. I was charged in 2006, went to prison in 2009 and was out in 2011. I’m still on parole because of the sentence.”

When she was released from prison, she said, “I was doing all right for a while. I was staying with my mother and my kids, and I started taking pain pills again and my mother put me out, and I got back with the same man (her second husband).”

The addiction to painkillers continued. McClung added methamphetamine to the mix, and the combination put her in the hospital. After numerous hospital stays, she said, she was diagnosed with IgG deficiency, a condition that prevents the body from making antibodies to fight disease and infection. Her body, she said, had just stopped making antibodies.

During this period, she left her second husband and entered a third abusive relationship. She also stopped seeing her parole officer and was on house arrest. One night, her boyfriend put her out of their home and refused to let her back in.

“It was about 45 degrees and he wouldn’t let me in, and I couldn’t leave property because of the house arrest, and I couldn’t call my parole officer because I was on drugs,” she said.

“I was laying out in the yard, and I was looking up at the stars, and I told God, I said, ‘I can’t do this any more. I’m done, I’m letting it go, you can have it. Obviously my way’s not working.’

“I didn’t want to live. I was miserable, I hated myself; I hated everybody else.”

She later checked herself into a hospital for suicidal thoughts.

“I was suicidal. I just wanted to die,” McClung said.

“I ended up at another place. It wasn’t a good fit for me, and they put me on a bus headed north toward my mother. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I went back into another hospital and told them I was suicidal, although at that time, I was not; I needed to buy me some time off the street to be able to find somewhere to go.”

That was when she heard about Mountain of Faith. “I called them and they accepted me.”

McClung came to Mountain of Faith in August 2016. “I moved over to the transitional home in September of that year,” she said.

“I didn’t really do much around here until December 2016, and I started working with Ms. Tina Hayward, the founder. She started teaching me a lot of things,” she said.

When women come to the shelter, she said, she talks with them.

“I share my story with anybody and everybody, because I finally realized that the reason why I didn’t have peace. I always wanted peace in my heart. All I wanted was peace in my heart; I felt like I was in turmoil all the time, and it was because I hadn’t made peace with God. Once I got here and made peace with God, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been here.”

Her experience being homeless, she said, helps her on the board of directors.

“Because I’ve been through the homeless system, it helps add a new perspective to ideas they have. You don’t know until you’ve been there, so I add a new perspective on what homeless people need, what we can do.”

People, she said, “Find me easy to talk to, because I have been through a lot of things. I’ve lost my kids, I’ve been through drugs; I’ve slept on the streets.

“When people first come in I automatically tell them I live at the transitional shelter, and it is possible to move forward from here. This is ground zero; you have nowhere to go but up.”

She has also taken classes in social work and psychology and human growth and child development. She takes women from the shelter to doctor’s appointments and stays with them to make sure they get the right care.

Many women, she said, “Don’t know how to go in there and explain what’s wrong with them and get the medications they need, so I go in with them and help them with that. Back when I was sick and nobody knew what was wrong with me, I didn’t know what questions to ask and how to go about it, but I do now. So I go with them to get their needs taken care of.”

McClung said she is saving money for the day when she will be able to move to a home of her own, “But I’m still going to be here. I love this place. This place has my heart.

“I didn’t have faith in myself or God or anything when I got here. They restored my faith in me and I found my faith in God. I’m on disability, but that doesn’t mean I’m supposed to sit in my room and not do anything. I feel my calling is to help others.

“You can’t get to heaven on works, but I’m doing this to make up for all the bad things I’ve done before. I lived a lot of my life wrong, and this is my second chance, and I’m doing it right this time.”