From Basement to Sanctuary

Finding Healing and Transformation Through Surrender

Sometimes it takes a step. When we find ourselves at our lowest, struggling with addiction and broken lives, sometimes it takes one step, and one moment, to begin a journey to recovery. But how do we take that step when we are trapped in a pit of despair and surrounded by a lie, seemingly unable to change, unable to live, and unable to cry out for help? From Basement to Sanctuary is a radical story of conversion and transformation that speaks to how God’s strength truly can be made perfect though our weaknesses. Author Holly Christine Hayes spent her teen and young-adult life mired in alcoholism and drug addiction, and she was in the grips of a downward spiral that led to a life of trauma, shame, and eventual homelessness. After an encounter with God in a public bathroom in 2001, her life was forever changed. God miraculously healed her and delivered her from her addiction—but it took years for her to find out who the God was that saved her. Through the telling of her story, Holly takes us on a journey through the surrender of the recovery meetings that gather in church basements, to the wholeness and healing she found in the sanctuary of the church. All the while, she shares lessons she learned in the basement about who God really is and the miraculous ways he wants to heal our hurts, habits, sins, and setbacks.