He Turned My Story, Into His Glory
By Ashley Poore & Pam Greer
How God brought one woman from a life of addiction to a life in Christ.
Pam Greer gave her testimony to a group at Meat Camp Baptist Church to highlight the struggles of addiction and the grace that is found in the Lord. This video includes excerpts from her testimony.
“He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captive and release from darkness for the prisoners… to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes.”
Isaiah 61:1-3
When you begin a conversation with Pam Greer, you start out with no idea of the trials, the struggles, and the situations that she has been through during her lifetime. But, by the time you finish talking with her, you have no doubt of the grace and the blessings that the Lord has bestowed upon her through the kinds of struggles that can destroy a person’s life.
Pam was an addict. She was only sixteen years old when she was introduced to methamphetamine and became dependent on the high that drugs like this gave her. However, the Lord had bigger plans for Pam. Through many years of incarceration, rehabilitation efforts, and toxic relationships, the Lord pulled Pam from a life of misery and darkness and into His saving grace and mercy.
Pam Corum Greer was born and raised in the High Country thirty nine years ago to Johnny and Georgia Corum. Georgia was left to carry the weight of being a single parent to Pam and her two brothers when their father decided to step out of the picture. Pam was only two years old. When she was nine, the Lord brought Gene Potter into their lives who became a good stepfather to Pam and a husband to Georgia. Pam’s mother worked hard, taking on three jobs to support her family, but she also worked hard to raise her kids in a Christian home. In a home where they knew who the Lord was. “My mother took us to church so we would learn the ways of the Lord,” Pam explains.
Pam’s childhood was filled with all of the activities and passions that often come with being a kid. Through her mother’s hard work, Pam and her brothers did not go without. They were given the same opportunities that most kids are blessed to be involved in. Sports and activities were a large part of Pam’s childhood from an early age.
Pam’s high school basketball team, where Pam was selected for the position of team captain.
“I really did it all as a kid growing up with all the normal activities like roller skating, which I thought I was pretty good at, and I played basketball like it was my day job as a youngster! I ran track in the Junior Olympics, and played in the band.”
Pam’s personal journey with the Lord began at an early age while she was attending a Summer Bible School.
“One summer at age eleven or twelve, I went to vacation Bible School at a church in Vilas, NC. One night I had a terrifying dream of the devil chasing me. I was so scared that I shared it at Bible School the next morning. They led me into a salvation prayer. I then knew there was such a thing as a devil, and he was very intimidating. I thought that because of the dream and the salvation prayer that I had been saved. ”
In her heart and mind, Pam wanted to live for the Lord. But her life took a very different path when she entered High School. “I was so excited about High School and all the opportunities there with sports that I loved. I could not comprehend anyone dropping out of High School when I would hear about it. Why would someone give that up? It was something I would never do.”
Pam’s high school years began like many others, with heavy involvement in sports and eventually becoming a leader for her team. “My freshman year I played basketball and ran school cross country. I was an average teenager. Sophomore year - I was selected team captain of our basketball team. I was happy and fulfilled.”
That same year was when her downward spiral began.
“I met a guy who was older and we started dating. He smoked. I would go to practice smelling like smoke and the coaches would make me run sprints because it smelled like I was the one smoking. They attempted to discipline me because they knew the guy was a bad influence, but I was completely unaware of their good intentions.”
This caused Pam to begin to rebel against them.
“They took my captain’s position away. I quit the team. I stole my mom’s car. I’d sneak out at night and wouldn’t come home for days at a time. I had repeated stints in ISS (In School Suspension) and OSS (Out of School Suspension.)
Things would only get worse from here. Pam’s boyfriend seemed to constantly have an abundance of energy, something Pam became curious about. This was when Pam was first introduced to methamphetamine.
“Methamphetamine and my boyfriend became my besties.”
Sharing her heart, Pam Greer shares her raw testimony with a group on individuals from Meat Camp Baptist Church.
Pam was wild with defiance. Her mom lived in intense and constant worry and fear over her daughter and her safety. She never knew when or if Pam would come home.
“Needless to say, this lifestyle did not fit in with the High School schedule, so I dropped out. Before drugs, I could not comprehend why anyone would drop out. Now at age sixteen I was one of them. My teen years were whittled away with much of the same litany of drugs, wild living, and the wild culture of people who were living the same life as me. Drugs, smoking, and a careless and carefree lifestyle of living with whomever.”
That “whomever” was occasionally Georgia, Pam’s worried mother.
“I came and went over the years at my mother’s house. I noticed my mom was so distraught over my life and it had an effect on me - but I pushed those thoughts away because I would see the pain that I was causing her. It broke my heart, but not enough to stop. It would bring my high down from the drugs if I thought about her worrying about me. Mom tried everything - she told me she didn’t want me to wake up at thirty years old and “not have a pot to pee in.”
The next decade of Pam’s life was spent entrenching herself further into drugs and selling as well. During her twenties, Pam would find herself in and out of jail. During one of these stints in jail, Pam met a woman named Nannette Franklin who was visiting the jail to minister to the inmates. Neither Pam nor Nannette had any idea of the significance of their relationship and how this connection would come into play years later.
“Jail became an unwanted second home. I was ordered to rehab, drug court, drug classes; yet none of them were successful. After I was released from all of the attempts at rehabilitation and jail - my faithful and loving mom picked me up and took me back to her home.”
On the surface, Pam was taking the steps that were expected of a felon and an addict. She went through the motions of staying in rehabilitation facilities and taking classes intended to help addicts, graduating through many of these programs that had been court ordered. But Pam was not ready to face her addiction just yet. While at home, Pam stayed clean for approximately two months. The longest she had stayed off of drugs in sixteen years.
After Pam was released from jail she returned to the same lifestyle as before. To support her addiction, Pam began selling methamphetamine. Over the course of the next six years, she had sold enough of the drug to get the attention of the FBI. This attention brought on an investigation that would soon leave Pam at the very end of her breaking point.
Her addiction had finally brought her to her lowest point. She was no longer fulfilled with the effect the drugs had on her, with her relationships, and with her wavering spirituality.
“I was miserable in every way. Nothing, the drugs or the way I was living my life, satisfied me. I had succumbed to weighing the drugs I bought to sell and reading my bible right beside each other. My life was a scary fence ride - God pulling my heart one way, and the devil jerking me the other way. I had become someone that I didn’t even know anymore.”
It was 2012 and Pam had felt as though she had finally hit rock bottom.
“December 10th was my Mom’s birthday. I knew I needed to choose how I was going to live my life from here on out. I prayed for God to deal with me, looking in the mirror and praying from my heart. But I still went to get more drugs after that cry to the Lord. That night I was arrested by Homeland Security. I did not know that my life would begin to change like this - not realizing this was part of His plan in ‘dealing with me’ as I had asked Him to.”
The turning point in Pam’s story began with more stints of incarceration over the next seven years, visiting various jails across North Carolina without bond and later being prosecuted for meth trafficking by a Federal Judge. She was given a sentence of over five years for her crimes.
“My life became a scary fence ride - God pulling my heart one way, and the devil jerking me the other way. I had become someone that I didn’t even know anymore.”
“I can remember waking up in a Mecklenburg County jail cell at thirty one years old, with no pot to pee in. My mother had been right. The fear of my future was at risk then, and was on the line now. The seriousness of my crime had Federal marshals surrounding us - federally convicted criminals being flown to undisclosed places of incarceration in the U.S.”
Looking at her surroundings, at the people whose hands were shackled and bolted to the floor of the plane alongside of her own, Pam finally realized the severity of her actions.
The Lord watched over Pam during her sentence, showing his blessings through a shorter sentence than the original sixty three months she was given. Going into her incarceration, Pam believed that she had signed her life away but the Lord had bigger plans for her.
“At the three year mark in my prison sentence, I had taken many classes including a very intense daily program called RDAP (Residential Drug Abuse Program), and was released from prison in the summer of 2015, sooner than my original sentencing date. I was put on a Greyhound bus from Illinois to North Carolina. I spent time in a halfway house, took post RDAP time, then moved home to Zionville, NC in December of 2015.
I got a job. I had several jobs. Sometimes people in my situation will tell you they can’t get a job because of their past. But my experience shows that’s just not true. You can get a job if you want a job.
Though one would think I would have straightened up this time, I ended up trying meth twice. When I did, I realized that I was mentally, emotionally, and physically a different person. Instead, I would go out to bars with friends. I would often hang out with my friends and their families and wish that I had made better choices in my life. I had accepted that I had sacrificed the chance of a family for drugs. I bought a new car, I bought a trailer in Tennessee.” But these material things still did not fulfill the need in Pam’s heart.
“Getting back into civilian life was still a huge challenge for me to navigate. I would have thought that my rock bottom would have led me to salvation right away from that previous prayer and mirror experience. I had said what I wanted to say, and believed I had meant it- but the devil does not like to lose his unaware converts of evil doings. The battle was fierce. I had things, but I still had an emptiness and needed a genuine change to come.
In March of 2018, I walked into a revival at Zionville Baptist Church and I surrendered to Christ Jesus, my Lord, that day and was SAVED! Praise God!
At that point I was changed by God’s grace, mercy, and love and I truly began to live a different life. I sold the trailer in Tennessee, and moved back home with my mom. I wanted to live for the Lord. I started loving myself instead of feeling ashamed, condemned, worthless, and disappointing to all who had loved me. I started to value myself as the Lord does.”
Answering the Lord’s call, Pam Greer & Nanette Franklin work together to share the hope and grace of the Lord to women who struggle with addiction.
As the Lord was working through Pam by sharing her testimony, He brought Nannette Franklin back into her life after their meeting in the jail twenty years prior. Nanette is the manager of the Safe Harbor High Country Recovery Center for Women that is located in Boone. Safe Harbor offers assistance for faith-based recovery resources throughout the community and offers an option for women to be placed in their Residential or Transitional Programs for recovery that is located in Hickory. Through Pam and Nannette’s reconnection, the Lord has given them an opportunity to share with others the struggles that women with addiction face but also the hope they have in the Lord and through faith-based organizations such as Safe Harbor.
Through Pam’s experience and her testimony, she provides heartbreaking insight to a life plagued with addiction. Combined with Nannette’s servant heart towards troubled women, the two of them have a connected passion for helping others who find themselves troubled with addiction.
Pam shares this all with a twinkle in her eyes, in awe that God would give her so much and bless her abundantly with all the things she believed to be beyond her.
“I have been given a great position with the county of Watauga, with state benefits as it is a local government job. I attend a church every week that I love and I’m involved with the youth program.”
An abundance of blessings: Larry & Pam Greer with their daughter, Mahala Faith Ann
In August of 2019, Pam reconnected with an old friend named Larry Greer. The two were married on her parents’ wedding anniversary and welcomed a baby girl in September of 2020 - Mahala Faith Ann. With a daughter of her own now, Pam has a new understanding of what her mother went through with Pam. She understands the depth of a mother’s love and just how strong a mother’s worry can be.
“I do get overwhelmed at times as a mother myself, thinking about what my mother endured through those years of pain that I had caused her.”
Pam and Larry have recently been appointed as custodians and housekeepers of their church. A blessing, Pam explains, for someone like herself who is a convicted felon.
Pam explains that her relationship with Christ, is her high now. The feeling that God gives her now is much greater than any high she received from any drug.
“All that I am today, not yesterday - defines my future - with Christ Jesus I can do all things possible. God placed it on my heart at the beginning of the year that He wanted me to share my story of how He has worked in my life. I truly have so much to thank Him for.”