My name is Amanda Holtz and I was born October 26, 1974. I was the second child of five, and the first girl. Looking back on my childhood is really hard, it brings back a lot of pain as I had a VERY abusive father. My father was both physically and sexually abusive and both started at a very young age.
My dad was a very angry man and everything set him off, he took most of that anger out on us kids. He would often pull out some of our hair or twist our bottom lip until it bled for something as silly as spilling some water on the floor.When he was really mad, which was often, he would kick us to the ground or shove us into walls by our throats with the look of death in his eyes. This usually occurred when he felt like we had "talked back" or "disrespected" him. He beat us with his belt for little things almost daily. When two of us kids were fighting my dad would take us by our hair and bash our heads together over and over again.
The sexual abuse was not as violent but it was as equally damaging and devastating as the physical abuse. The first memory I have of the molestation was when I was about 6 years old, although I have been told by my father that it actually started when my sister and I were still in diapers. There was a lot of molestation of myself and my sister which mostly stopped by about the age of 12 or 13.
It was about that time that I began to rebel. We belonged to a religious sect that knew about a lot of the abuse, but encouraged my mom to stay and work it out through the church. My mom wasn't aware of the sexual abuse yet, but everyone knew about the horrible physical stuff, and yet no one protected us. By age 15, I was sneaking out and going to parties and drinking and having sex with my boyfriend. At age 16 my sister and I finally told my mom about the sexual abuse, she divorced him and he was prosecuted and sent to prison for 3 ½ years.
I was 17 the first time I smoked pot and a few months later I was introduced to crank. I instantly fell in love with this drug. I felt invincible, like I was finally in control of my life, like I could do anything. Crank is very seductive and it slowly sucked me in. At first my friends and I only used it on the weekends, then just a couple days out of the week to get us through the work days, then after a few months we quit our jobs and became full time crank addicts. By the time I was 18, I was a full blown druggie and no one could stop me, not my mom or my sister or my brothers. I would be this way for the next 7 years, alienating myself from everyone who loved and cared about me!
I left the small town of Middleton , which is where I grew up, and I moved to Boise and moved in with my aunt, who had also recently been introduced to meth. She was living with a man who had a son that I started dating and for the next three years the four of us lived in that house and we used crank daily. To support our habits we started selling it very early on.
I met the man that I would later marry, David Holtz, in the winter of 1996. We met during a drug deal at this filthy drug house and instantly hit it off. We stayed up all night talking and enjoying each others company, but I only saw him one other time during that next year. It wasn't until Dec. of 1997 that my life would change forever. I was kind of dating this man who happened to be buying his meth from David. I was so excited because I hadn't seen Dave for 6 months. When we saw each other, we just knew. I moved in with him the next day and a month later, Jan. 2, 1998, we got married.
At the time of our marriage David was selling very large quantities of very "good" crank. Everyone wanted some of what Dave was selling and so our house was constantly full of drug customers. It was at this time that I first realized that my husband did believe in God because he would sit for hours and read from one of the bibles that he had in his collection..I thought it was weird and it embarrassed me when one of our "customers" would come by and see it. I later found out that he had given his life to Christ in high school, but had gone back to drugs a short time later. Four months after we got married, I got pregnant with our first child together (Dave already had 2 boys with 2 other women). It was then that I started to realize that I wanted more for my life and for my baby, but David wasn't ready to quit the lifestyle that he had been living for well over 15 years. Our marriage struggled as I stayed home (in a drug house) pregnant and depressed while Dave ran the streets slinging dope and chasing women. I wanted out of the marriage, but God had other plans.
Five days after our son Kadon was born, David was arrested on some very serious charges which included several felony forgery and fraud charges. I was terrified, all alone with a newborn baby and no where to go. My sister helped bail Dave out and he actually got a job and a month later we moved into our VERY OWN apartment. Soon after we moved into that apartment they dropped the charges against Dave until they could gather more evidence against him. Two months later they did just that, and issued an arrest warrant for him for 105,000 dollars. We had been given a heads up and had left our apartment before they could arrest him, and thus began our 3 month run from the law, living in several different drug houses with a newborn baby.
One night I had had enough and I told David that I was done living the way we were living. I told him that I was going to my mom's house with our son and that he was not welcome. He asked me to take him to our friend's house for a couple of his things and then I could go. When we got to that house there was a police car outside, he asked me to drop him off by the river and go back for his things, which I did. When I walked into the house there were about 15 police inside and they wanted David. I told them for about 2 hours that I didn't know where he was and finally they let me leave. I picked up Dave by the river and at the next stop light we were surrounded by cop cars. They all jumped out of their cars with their guns drawn and were yelling for us to get out of the car. It was at this time that David told me "it is done, I surrender". It wasn't until later that I would fully understand what that meant. I mean, of course you have to surrender, there are cops all around us. But he was talking about a deeper more important more amazing and more miraculous surrender, and that is the surrender to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. My husband says that he "wasn't arrested", he "was rescued". God met David right there in the back of that police car and David's heart was changed instantly.
He even told the detective that arrested him that he was done and would never go back, to which the officer replied "I hope so". Once David was in jail, he re-dedicated his life to Christ and started attending a Christian recovery group meeting. God had completely taken all his cravings and he was fully delivered from his addiction. I, on the other hand, was on the outside with a newborn baby and trying to work as a waitress at a truck stop. It made me mad when he would talk about God and how great things were going to be when he got out of jail. I was thinking of course things are good for you, you have three meals a day, a roof over your head, and I'm putting money on your books for snacks while on the other hand, I'm working as a waitress at a truck stop and sleeping on my sisters couch with a newborn baby. I was also still using a little meth and smoking a lot of pot.
I wasn't buying the whole "jailhouse conversion" thing and I didn't really know what to believe about God. Like I said before, as a child I belonged to what amounted to a cult. I didn't know who Jesus was and I surely didn't know that He could change my life in so many amazing ways. It wasn't until I went to husband's sentencing that I truly saw who God is and I saw Him work. David was looking at 14 years in prison due to the severity of the charges and the fact that he had many prior arrests. Even after he agreed to a plea bargain, his defense attorney told us that he would more than likely spend at least 2 years in prison and that was being very hopeful. As David stood before the judge, he admitted his wrong doings, and he proceeded to tell the judge that he was willing to pay for his crimes. He went on to say that he deserves to go to prison and that if he was sent there he knew that it would be to bring the gospel of Jesus to the men out there and that he would go there and serve the Lord in this way, but that he felt that his first ministry was his wife and kids and that he would love to go home and take care of them. In that instant I felt the presence of God in that courtroom and I knew that everything would be okay. I saw the judges face soften and he sentenced David to 10 years with all of it, except 180 days, suspended. That meant that David would be out in just a couple of months!!! I knew then that there was a God watching over my husband.
After I went home that night David called and asked me to kneel on the floor in a quiet room and pray with him. I did, and I asked God to deliver me from the life that I had lived for all those years and make me new, and He did! Soon after David got out of jail we found Pure Word Ministries and we got tied in. God completely delivered me from my drug addiction just as he did for David, and being involved in Pure Word has given us the foundation to grow our faith deeper and stronger in our Lord and Savior. It has brought us together in love for all people who struggle with life altering sin, where we can come together and stand in the gap for our brothers and sisters who need Gods love and grace to be able to break the sin of addiction.
It has been almost 7 years since I knelt in that room and asked God to change my life and my heart and He has done just that!!!! My husband and I have now been married for 8 ½ years and we now have three children together and his two oldest sons live with us as well. God has blessed us with a beautiful home to raise our children in and we are very involved in our church. It is our hearts desire to reach as many hurting addicted people as possible and bring them the good news of Jesus and His saving grace! How amazing it is to me that after all the horrible disgusting things that I did, God washed it all away, and I am a new creation!
When two of us kids were fighting my dad would take us by our hair and bash our heads together over and over again.