Kimberly Oakley’s home in Bangor is filled with sunlight and the music of children’s laughter. It’s a life-affirming environment she’s still getting used to, a year after she moved from Virginia to Maine and stopped using drugs.

In July of last year, exhausted after a three-day binge of partying and getting high on crack cocaine, she called her father’s sister, Doral Thomas, in Bangor. “I asked if I could come for a visit. I was seven months pregnant. I was still using, but I just needed to take a break from my life. I had no intention of really changing,” Kimberly said. Her aunt extended a wary welcome.

But at the airport in Virginia Beach, something happened. “I never had any kind of religious belief; I didn’t even know if God was real,” she said. “But all of a sudden, I just dropped on my knees and I begged him to help me. … I quit that day – cold turkey – and I haven’t touched anything since.”

Kimberly, now 26, credits one of the Bangor area’s fastest-growing churches, the Calvary Chapel in Orrington, with supporting her recovery. She’s a graduate of the church’s six-month residential program for women seeking recovery from drug and alcohol dependence. “The glory for my recovery is all God’s,” she said.

Her son Josiah was born, healthy and strong, in October. More recently, Kimberly’s husband moved up from Virginia, bringing the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Raeven, back into her life. The family is cautiously rebuilding relationships that were shattered by Kimberly’s years of addiction.

Recovery is a daily struggle, she admitted, but with professional counseling and the ongoing support of her church, she’s determined to stay clean.

“I understand now that I am needed and loved,” Kimberly said, watching her lively young daughter play nearby. “I finally know what it means to love your family and be who you are, and I’m not going to give that up for anybody.”