Continued from Thursday’s Enterprise Opinion page, this is the second and final part of Lucy Hall Gainer’s speech at the Reunion Dinner this Columbus Day weekend at St. Joseph’s Addiction Treatment & Recovery Centers in Saranac Lake.

We pick up her story after she graduated from St. Joseph’s, when she is living in Atlanta and working at a shelter. Frustrated by how people are required to leave the shelter after 90 days, she approaches a wealthy man she knows about offering something better, which ultimately led to her founding Mary Hall Freedom House, an Atlanta-based addiction treatment facility for women named in memory of her mother.

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“So I went over one Sunday, and I said, ‘Hey, Mr. D., God has laid it on my heart to help women. I want to help women just like He helped me. ‘Cause see, when God opened the door and let me out, he said, ‘Go back and get others.’ God didn’t set me free just for me — just like everybody sitting here who’s been set free, just like my man right here who can say it’s been 45 years. (The Fellowship awards pins for each five-year increments of successful recovery.) He’s still giving back what was freely given to him. The brother who came up who had 40 years and he’s still helping women. He’s still helping women 40 years later! Why? Because they freely give back what was given to them.

“That’s the secret to it. It ain’t about you no more. It’s about what God is going to do through you. And I said that to the women (in the morning women’s AA meeting), and after that meeting, one of the women came up to me and said, ‘Lucy. I was here last year when you came up and shared with the women, and came back this year because I heard you’d be speaking.’ That was the best gift. She made my trip worthwhile. Why? Because a year later, that sister’s still doing it (in recovery). She was going to leave, and I said, ‘Where are you going?’ She said, ‘Me and my daughter are going to lunch.’ I said, ‘No, you’re going to give back to these women.’ And I took her to that meeting because she needed to know that’s how we keep it, by giving it away.

“So it has been an honor to connect with the women of St. Joe’s. It has been an honor to connect with Robert and his beautiful bride, Patricia. It is truly an honor to stay connected to this fellowship, and to have this gift every year to come back to.

“I have been blessed immensely. So when I started Mary Hall (Freedom House), I didn’t try and reinvent the sauce. I came right back up here and got everything I needed to put down into Georgia. I knew in New York we knew how to do this. You got a fellowship in the South you gotta holler at. You really do, ’cause I lift up St. Joe’s everywhere I go!

“Last year when I came back, I was blessed to be able to come back with my roommate. I still connect with the woman I shared a room with in the women’s program. I still stay connected with the people I came through here with. It works. That’s what this fellowship gave me — lifelong friendships, lifelong relationships. It gave me a life! A life! God sent me up here in the beautiful Adirondacks. What a kiss from God it is to come together with a bunch of people who know what’s it like to turn your will and your life over to the care of God. What a gift it is to know that He’s got plans for us that you cannot even begin to think or imagine.

“It only begins here. You get to write the script. It is such an awesome privilege to be gifted a second chance. I tell the women at Mary Hall Freedom House, ‘Yes, we serve a God of a second chance, but sister, you don’t know which one you’re on, so you better make this one good.’ We don’t know which one we’re on, so we better make it good.

“But He’s got a plan for you. That’s why he spared your life. That’s why you’ve been given this privilege. That’s why we have this gift today. So I take it not lightly.

“When I was able to say I was going back to get my 25-year pin a couple of years ago, it was with honor, honor! And when I came up for the pin, they were one short, but like someone said in the back, ‘It’s alright. St. Joe’s loves us enough to rewrite the script for us when we walk in.’ You know, when you’re part of a family, it’s OK to let your family know, ‘I need help. I’m here. I need you all to love me. I need you all to include me. I need you all let me have a moment.’ And this is one of the greatest moments of my life. I cannot tell you what a privilege it is, what an honor it is for me to come up here and stand before you. So what works well for me today is that God has gifted me beyond measure.

“You know, when I walked into the rooms (at St. Joseph’s), I weighed 286 pounds. When I walked in, the floor shook. So once I stopped doing dope, I knew I could stop doing anything. I got down to the halfway house, and I decided I didn’t want to be a fat girl no more. So I started working on that. Not long after that, I was sitting in a Lent service in a church not far from me, and the pastor said, ‘For Lent, you know, you’ve got to give something up because Christ sacrificed for you.’ And he was going on and on, and I said, ‘OK, God, what do you want me to give up?’ He said, ‘those Newports.’ I said, ‘Well, God, there’s 40 days to Lent, and that’s 40 cigarettes; that’s two packs of cigarettes.’ You know, we addicts always want to negotiate. That don’t ever go away! We are great negotiators.

“So I’m negotiating with God about my cigarettes until about the 39th cigarette, and a pastor friend of mine said, ‘Sister Lucy, you know that God wants you to give up those cigarettes?’ Now I know she was not in that service on Lent. So I knew that God really wanted me to give up those cigarettes, because He said, ‘Where I want you to go, you can’t run out in the parking lot and smoke. People will be watching you. You will be an example to others.’

“So all of us, as we sit here, people will be watching. Your life is shining now. It’s been turned on, sisters. It’s been turned on, brothers. You’ve been up here on the hill up in the Adirondacks; now your light is shining so bright you need to give God glory and help others.

“And that’s what St. Joe’s gave to me. When I came up here, they turned the light on, and it has been burning light and bright and strong. And your light has now been turned on, so let it shine.

“You have no idea how far God is going to take you beyond anything you could ever think or imagine. That’s the greatest gift of recovery. It’s the gift that keeps on giving back. So make sure you give back what was given to you, yes? (Crowd shouts “Yes!”)

“Love you all. Thanks for letting me share.”