By Donny Ndoka –
While her brother was slowly dying of cancer, Paige Hanna prayed to God — and she partied, drinking until blackout and dabbling in porn.
“The emptiness that I felt in my soul, just the lack for validation from other people — or from men or from social media, whatever — when I was and doing these things, there’s no comparison to the freedom I felt when I surrendered my life to the Lord in repentance,” says Paige.
The mixup of her parents’ divorce combined with being introduced to sexuality by a neighbor girl when she was only a tyke messed with her brain. Even as Paige attended church, she was simultaneously involved in egregious sin. Only having a child and marrying straightened her out.
Paige Hanna was only five years old when she had first been seen naked in her closet with the neighborhood girl. That was just the start of her sexual immorality that later leaped into her elementary and middle school friendships. “I didn’t really know what I was doing,” she says.
Then, her brother, Andrew, was diagnosed with brain cancer. Dad tried his best to take care of Andrew, as did Paige. She was going to church at this time and crying out to Jesus for her brother to be healed.
As she got into high school, things only got worse for her. She engaged in frequent theft and partying. Sneaking out was a regular course for her, constantly engaging in drinking and doing drugs. Meanwhile all of this was happening, her brother kept his faith in the Lord and maintained a will to live.
In college her immorality peaked. She had gotten so hijacked by sexual promiscuity and her “love for booze,” she even had a phase where she was practicing witchcraft and consulting tarot cards. At one point she had volunteered for vacation Bible school, where she spoke about the Lord to inspire people to join him, which was a step in the right direction but not enough to break her free from the addictions that were reigning over her mental health. “People looked at me and they wouldn’t take the Lord seriously,” she admits.
Andrew’s health started declining so much to the point where he had to be taken to hospice, where he was being spoon-fed. She and her dad took turns removing the excess saliva from his mouth with a machine that suctioned. Every night she would call him and pray with him, which she described was very hard for her.
In a vision, she saw he was surrounded by thousands of soldiers, God’s soldiers, signifying his eternal glory with him.
“This might not make sense to someone who doesn’t believe,” Paige says. “But what I know to be true is that I saw a vision of the spirit world where they were literal soldiers in every corner of the home protecting the home and just praying, praying, praying, praying Psalm 91 and praying over him until he took his last breath.”
Her father and Paige spent some time recovering from her brother’s death. She got back together with an old boyfriend who now lived in Colorado. She got pregnant and married.
“Moving in with the boyfriend probably wasn’t the smartest thing around,” she acknowledges. “Five months later we’re married, and I had our daughter. She’s just the best thing ever. I had to become a wife very quick.
“My life completely has transformed. The loss of my brother and all these things happening… the Lord has just completely been so merciful to me,” Paige says. “I was broken, depressed and anxious. I just loved booze. But now there’s no desire in me to get blackout drunk. There’s no desire any of that because the Lord has just pruned me so much over.”
