Deliverance Alley: How God Broke the Chains
The place I call Deliverance Alley is a vacant lot of grass and dirt in a neglected south Dallas neighborhood. Drive by and you won’t see much, just a sign that warns: “No trespassing, prostitution, drug dealing, loitering, weapons or criminal activity will be tolerated.” What feels like a god-forsaken patch of ground is where everything changed for me.
Why do I call this scarred urban ground Deliverance Alley? What if I told you it’s where God delivered me one afternoon almost two decades ago? That moment rewrote the rest of my life.
I was born into a military family in Kansas City, Missouri, the daughter of Wendell Gene Parker, a lieutenant colonel, and Mary Ann Parker who raised me and three younger brothers. Dad served in Korea and Vietnam, and when we lived on a base in Europe, he said, “We are a Black family,” he said. He wanted a safer world for us than the one we’d return to in the States.
On that base we played with kids of every color, toured museums and learned languages, and teachers taught us about the ugly reality of slavery and the contributions Black people made to American life. Everything shifted when we came back stateside in the early 1970s and I saw “White” and “Colored” signs in an airport. The sight of that segregation burned into me.
“Excuse me,” I said to a passerby, pointing at the whites-only bathroom. “What color do I have to be to go in there?” My dad pulled me away and hissed, “You have no idea what you’re doing,” he hissed. “You could get us all killed.”
We settled in Texas where Dad was promoted and my brothers were still harassed by police on a regular basis. I wanted to join the Army but Dad said it was no place for a woman, so I struck out on my own in New York and did well in telecom customer service. I also discovered the price of rebelling against a strict household.
I’d been raised to clean baseboards and follow orders, and my contrarian streak pushed me into a life that looked free but was empty. I married a man damaged by combat who abused me, and I left to save my life. Back in Dallas I fell for another man who sold drugs and I fell hard into the 1980s cocaine wave.
I started using and dealing, even though church was in my bones and I knew the moral rules I was breaking. Addiction crept in and swallowed my shame and sense of self; it stole everything simple and good. The worst was when a tiny girl came to my crack house door and asked, “Is my momma here?” she asked. “We’re hungry, and she took our food stamps.”
I screamed, “Go take care of your kids!” at the mother and then went right back to the pipe like I had nothing left to lose. Eventually I left the boyfriend but stayed in the trade, got pregnant, was arrested for possession and begged my parents to take my son. They were furious, but they were my family and they helped in the only way they knew how.
I prayed so many times for sobriety but clung to the very thing that kept me from God. Then I found myself homeless, fresh out of jail and headed to the place everyone in my circle knew: Deliverance Alley. I thought my last chance had passed.
Deliverance at the Lot
It was 2007. The lot had an old sofa, a bucket for a bathroom and friends who welcomed me home to a life of ruin. I sat on that couch, prepped my crack pipe and raised it to my lips, ready to drown the guilt.
Out of nowhere a voice spoke in my mind: “Say goodbye to all this, Rhonda.” I jumped up, stunned, and ran across the street, then looked back as if the lot had become foreign. A presence rooted my feet and people called, “Queen, you all right?”
I handed the drugs to someone, felt something release, and broke down weeping as warmth wrapped me. That presence led me to Dallas International Street Church and their one-year discipleship program where I surrendered, admitted powerlessness and began real recovery. I can’t explain all of it, but I know God moved in my life in a way that started my healing.
Seventeen years later I am sober, married and I run Making It Count, Inc., a ministry that offers housing and street support to folks lost like I once was. I reconciled with my child and my parents, made amends before my dad died and learned to thank him for the discipline that later helped me keep recovery routines.
We run the house with chores, spotless rooms and schedules because structure saved me when chaos ruled my life. Since 2010 Making It Count has served thousands with meals, hygiene kits, coats and free laundry while partnering with churches and service providers. I give all the credit to God and to the volunteers who refuse to let people fall through the cracks.
We bought that vacant lot and are planning a full-service resource center on Deliverance Alley to offer love, acceptance and real pathways to recovery. People ask if you can get sober without God; in my story it was God who spoke and delivered me and I can’t imagine it otherwise. There is always hope, and God always delivers on his promises.
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