This month’s Inspiring Mom is Ashley Roche.

Just a heads up, there are some delicate topics included in this story. During the interview, I wanted to make sure Ashley didn’t feel pressured to share anything she wasn’t comfortable with. For Ashley though, she just wants to get the full story out to give God the glory and possibly help others. She told me that if she could even help one person by sharing what God has done for her it would be worth it. I had tears listening to her story and writing it.

When Ashley came to my house for the interview I opened the door to a beautiful, healthy, smiling mom and her adorable 6-year-old son with his fluffy, yellow dog stuffed animal in tow. I welcomed them in and my youngest son immediately ran to the door to say hello. The two boys took off downstairs to play together. The love of Christ radiates from Ashley and her son, unless you know her story you would never guess in a million years what they have overcome.

 

Ashley was raised by a single mom whom she had a bit of a strained relationship with. She didn’t grow up in the church. She knew about God but had no relationship with him.

When she was in high school she gradually got involved in the wrong crowd and in 2003 she started getting fake IDs and drinking. She dabbled in various drugs but Ashley firmly explained “I’ve done everything from marijuana to ecstasy, but it always came back to meth. I had to have meth. I was addicted to it.” When she recounts her struggles with Methamphetamine you can see it in her eyes how the drug had a hold on her. Meth was the thing that would not stop until it took everything.

She would do whatever it took to get it. The grip meth had on Ashley was so strong that jail didn’t stop it. Rehab didn’t stop it. Her family could not stop it. A move of God would be the only thing able to break the chains of addiction.

In 2006 she got involved with a drug dealer. They weren’t in a relationship, but they were close enough that she did end up pregnant and had her first son. Still, she used. She allowed drug dealers to work out of her home so that she had access. Her home was raided many times and eventually, CPS took her son and Ashley’s mother got guardianship. With all of her attention on getting high the visits to see her son were few and far between.

Ashley was so far gone she didn’t have hope that she would ever get her life together.

At one point in 2015, Ashley was desperate for money. A friend she did drugs with told her about Back Page. It was a website that has since been taken down, but it was for prostitution. Ashley was desperate so she started to advertise and meet with men at casinos and hotels. Twice she was busted when a fake client turned out to be a cop. That never detoured her. She continued to work the system and ended up in some terrible, TERRIBLE situations. At times she was living on the streets and starving, but eventually, the more tricks she turned the money started adding up.

This only increased her drug habit. She became an IV user and she overdosed multiple times. Ashley wasn’t really feeling sad or desperate she was to the point where she just didn’t feel anything at all. She felt lifeless, so why worry about being alive?
It doesn’t end there though.

It could have, but praise God He had his hand on Ashley and she knows it without a shadow of a doubt. But before the breakthrough she had to face another trial. In 2016 Ashley became pregnant after the contraceptive failed with a client. She contacted her client to tell him that she was pregnant. The man who was the father was married and wanted to make sure this “problem” was taken care of so that “it” didn’t destroy his life.

So he scheduled an abortion, but Ashley’s ride never showed up. Then he rescheduled and this time she made it all the way to planned parenthood and was sitting in the exam chair getting a sonogram of her 16-week-old fetus which she refused to look at. However, when they took her blood pressure it was dangerously high because of the drugs she had been on. The risk of cardiac arrest was too much of a liability so the doctor refused to do the abortion. So the man rescheduled the abortion. Later that week Ashley went to the bathroom and did more drugs as usual, except this is the part of the story where everything changed. While strung out on meth in a bathroom God met her there. You read that right. GOD MET HER THERE.

Even with drugs in her system, she had an overwhelming supernatural experience. She felt the love of God and felt a maternal connection to her unborn child that she never had before. While remembering the story Ashley said “Something spiritual happened that night and I sat there in the bathroom and cried all night long and repeatedly said ‘I am so sorry’. Crying and crying and crying and after that, something told me I didn’t want to do that anymore. I cancelled my next abortion appointment and I quit drugs. This was after using for over 10 years.” She said “The only way I can explain it is that I felt the same as Mary in The Chosen in the scene where she says ‘I was one way and then I wasn’t, and the only thing that happened inbetween was Him’ and that’s how it was for me. That’s all I can say. There was nothing that could have changed me. I was so long gone! I didn’t know He was there the whole time.”

She canceled the abortion and her baby was born 6 months later.

It wasn’t a perfect path lined with roses. The baby did have meth in his system, and CPS was wanting to do the right thing by keeping him from his mother. Ashley was changed though and she did anything and everything she had to do to prove she was clean and could keep her son.

She eventually had full custody and moved out of state. In September 2018, her baby was dedicated to the Lord.

Then in November 2018, Ashley was baptized.

She was completely changed just like 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

Then in 2019 she was able to get custody of her older son back!

He moved in and they began to mend the broken relationship.

In 2022 he was also baptized!

In six years Ashley went from a life of drugs and prostitution to now having a place of her own with her two sons!

She’s had 4 job promotions where she works as a quality lab technician and she has a new car that she paid off on her own!

All of those blessings and achievements are incredible, but of course, the best part is her relationship with God. Ashley told me “As weird as it sounds I don’t regret any of the stuff that I went through because I don’t know that I would have reached out to God. I don’t know if I would have felt like I needed Him if I were managing on my own.” She said she will never forget the day He saved her. She wants everyone to know “If you are struggling it’s not too late. God will never fail you and no one is ever too lost to be saved by His amazing grace.”