Teena Myers

I opened an email from a dear friend and read sad news. The economic troubles preceding the historic election of America’s first black president had cost Milena her job. I immediately sent her an email expressing my concern. Her reply carried an air of confidence that all was well.

Several emails later, the dam broke, and the truth of her distress flowed. Her husband had lost his job several months before she did. Hurricane Katrina had already depleted their savings. She didn’t know how her family would survive.

I reminded Milena of her desire to minister to people struggling with addiction. “Perhaps God has shut a door so he could open another that would fulfill your desire,” I suggested. Her pain quenched my words of hope. There is little one can do except weep with the hurting. I prayed for my friend and gave her space and time to heal.

Three months later, I received an email from Milena with a link to a website she thought would interest me. Her message included a beautiful prayer. Clearly, God had healed her hurting heart. I gladly accepted her invitation to meet for coffee. She paid the bill—a sign she was no longer penniless. “I felt like I’d called God for help, and he put me on hold, but he came through at the eleventh hour,” said Milena.

“Did you feel a little like John the Baptist when he was in prison?” I asked.

“I felt more like the rat that was keeping John the Baptist company,” laughed Milena. “I never lost faith, but it was a struggle to keep up a façade for my daughter. She had already lost so much—first in Hurricane Katrina, and then her father died a few months after the hurricane. I’ve been down several times in my life, but there is always a ray of hope.”

Years earlier, a light had dawned in Milena’s heart after her mother died. Her mother had struggled with alcoholism and ended up in hospice by age fifty‑nine. Milena visited her as often as possible. On one trip, her plane encountered turbulence that forced it to make an unscheduled landing. She called to tell her mother that she loved her and was on her way. Her mother had already died. “When I buried my mother, I realized that life is transitory and something bigger and grander is waiting,” said Milena.

Milena returned to Los Angeles and a marriage already in jeopardy. Her husband’s drug abuse had become intolerable. She had watched alcohol destroy her mother’s life and decided she couldn’t go through similar circumstances again. She begged her husband to get help. When he refused, she divorced him.

In need of a way to provide for her children, Milena started a business that became the precursor to Isis Films and worked as an executive selling global distribution rights for independent movies. She also produced several independent films.

“I believed in a higher power, but I didn’t call that power God. That came after I married Trey. Life couldn’t have been better. We both had executive jobs, nice cars, and we purchased a beautiful home,” said Milena.

Trey was at work when Milena picked up her daughters, Lara and Nova. Lara called shotgun. Milena never let her ride in the front seat for safety reasons. They were only two miles from home, so she relented. They were almost home when a tow truck for eighteen‑wheelers broadsided her car.

Milena’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank God Lara called shotgun. If she had been sitting in the back seat and her sister had been sitting in the front, the crash would have killed Nova or anyone bigger than a child. The accident shattered the left side of my body. Somehow I found the strength to hold Lara in my arms and pray God would take me and let her live. We both lived, and it was in that moment that I knew God existed. My daughter survived the impossible.”

The wreck had severed Milena’s anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), one of the most important of the four ligaments connecting the bones of the knee joint and providing stability by controlling backward and forward motion. She needed surgery to return to her normal activities, which included endurance walking.

Unable to work, her savings dwindled. Then Trey lost his job, and the bank repossessed their home. Trey went to Baton Rouge to seek help from his mother and to look for employment. Milena remained in California to complete the treatment for her ACL before she joined him.

“If I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t work. I needed to work so I could care for my children. I began praying and attended church. It didn’t matter to me which church. I just wanted God to put my life back in balance, heal my daughter, and let me walk again.”

Milena’s body produced scar tissue that mimicked an ACL, leaving the doctor bewildered. He summoned his colleagues to examine her knee. They ordered X‑rays and an MRI. Amazed by the unusual ACL, they repeatedly prodded and wiggled her knee to test its stability. After yet another MRI and another round of X‑rays, they concluded she did not need surgery. Her knee was in better shape than it had been before the accident.

A few months later, Milena went hiking in the Grand Canyon with her favorite cousin. “Without the aid of a brace, Tanya and I walked nineteen continuous hours, only stopping to eat, air our feet, or rest briefly. The experience proved to me God had answered my prayer. When we reached the precipice, my feet were bleeding and blistered, but that didn’t matter. I could walk.”

Milena’s voice broke with emotion, and tears filled her eyes as she continued her story. “I fell to my knees and prayed, ‘From this point forward I give my life to you. I don’t need my free will. I need your will.’ That happened the third weekend of September 2002, and I’ve never looked back.”

I had joined Milena for coffee to learn how God had turned her life around since our last email. She gave me so much more and then told me how God came through at the eleventh hour. Her husband had got a job organizing events, and WLAE‑TV hired Milena to produce the Prep Grid Iron Report. Then God fulfilled her desire to help addicts. The Louisiana Department of Health asked Milena to produce Recovery Fest for the state’s observance of the twentieth anniversary of National Recovery Month.

Milena produced an all‑day event that included a benefit concert featuring music from Jefferson Starship, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Richie Havens, Cyril Neville, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Jo Jo Billingsley, and many more. The funds raised benefited rehabilitation facilities in Louisiana, including Odyssey House, a behavioral healthcare facility with an emphasis on addiction treatment; O’Brien House, a halfway house serving recovering alcoholics and drug addicts; Cenikor Foundation, specialists in helping people with chronic substance dependence; the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse; and the Chemical Dependency Council.

Three months earlier, I had tried to comfort Milena by suggesting that God had shut a door so he could fulfill her desire. Clearly, God had directed my words. I wasn’t a prophet predicting Milena’s future, but a friend offering a ray of hope that better things were on the horizon.

If you’d like, I can also prepare a version with light annotations explaining the editorial decisions—useful for future revisions or teaching others your process.