Growing Up
Anita is the youngest of 10 kids, She has six brothers and three sisters and all of them are from the same parents (the first question they always get asked) and no they aren’t Amish (that’s the second question they always get asked). Anita’s parent’s just wanted a big family, so they had one.
Her mom was forty years old when she had Anita and they had not planned on stopping at Anita, but the doctor found something while she was pregnant that caused her to need a hysterectomy preventing her from having any more children.
Anita’s parents ended up divorcing when she was four years old causing her not to remember much about them as a married unit.
“There's a lot about my childhood that I don't remember. My memories start around third grade. Before that, it's a few scattered memories here and there. In therapy I came to realize that, that's a trauma response. So that time in my life, from birth until about 9-10 years old, there was a lot of upheaval, a lot of change, and I blocked it out.”
Anita had lived on a farm out in Millersburg and moved before her 7th birthday to a subdivision by Fairfield High School. That's where she grew up. She spent the weekends at her dad’s house, which is the farm in Millersburg, and by the time she was 16 or 17 and had her license, a job, and her own car, she stopped going over to see her dad regularly.
“It was a distant relationship. He had a viewpoint on the world that did not support his daughters doing anything other than being wives and mothers and so when I would talk about wanting to go to school and do all this other stuff, he was never supportive of it.”
Marriage
When she was 18, Anita met Colin. She had gone away to school for my freshman year and came home over christmas break. He was a new manager at her job, and at the time, he was engaged to another woman, Anita was away at school, so they were just friends.
They’re relationship quickly progressed. He ended up leaving his fiance and he and Anita started dating. Six months later, they were engaged, and then married five months after that.
Anita’s family didn't necessarily support their marriage.
“ They never said anything against it, but they were not 100% behind it.”
Everything was good for a while. They had their ups and downs, just like all marriages. Then 2 months into their marriage, Colin got arrested.
“That was a pretty low point. I remember, I was at work and he called me. He told me, “‘hey, I'm getting arrested and I need you to call my dad.”’ I'm thinking to myself, well crap. What am I gonna do? I’m twenty years old and have no idea how any of this works.”
Anita called Colin’s dad and they got it sorted out, got him bailed out and home. They went through the whole process of courts, house arrest, etc.
Anita went into a pretty deep depression. Anita didn't know how to deal with it. She had grown up in a family that didn't really do drugs or drink alcohol.
“We didn't struggle with addiction too much, it was there [drugs and alcohol], and I know my brothers dabbled in it when they were teenagers, but never anything to the point of it being detrimental”
Witnessing Colin struggle was Anita’s first experience with addiction. She believed him when he said that he had it under control, and that it wasn't an issue. Part of her just wanting to believe him, not actually doing so.
“That went on for several years. I had moments of doubting his sobriety, of doubting pretty much everything he was telling me. It was a dark couple of years, but then things seemed to get better, he held down a job, we moved to our house out in Middlebury, things were going okay.”
August 10th
At this point, Anita’s dad started to get sick. He refused to go see a doctor, leaving it up to his kids to take care of him. Without having to worry about doctor’s appointments, the experience of taking care of their dad wasn’t horrible.
However, his sickness eventually reached a point where they couldn't care for him anymore. It became very obvious he was dying, and there was nothing that was going to change that. Anita’s brothers eventually convinced him to let them take him to the hospital.
“I think they told him that, “‘Dad if you died in your house there would be an investigation because there is no medical history of you being sick. Do you really want your kids to go through that?”’ I think that’s what it finally took, because something else my family does really well is sweep things under the rug, pretend like things aren't a problem.”
August 10th, 2018, on a Friday, he went into the hospital. His family gathered in the hospital waiting room, hanging out for that weekend, waiting as the doctors ran all sorts of tests, trying to figure out what was actually wrong with their dad.
They determined that he had prostate cancer, which if caught early is very treatable, but because of his refusal to go get checked out, by the time they found it, it had spread everywhere and there was no hope in saving their dad.
August 12th
That Sunday, August 12th, Colin tells Anita that they need to have a talk when they got home.
“I am sitting in the hospital room with my siblings, nieces and nephews, finding out that my dad, who granted was not a great relationship, but is still my dad is dying, and I’m like well crap, what do you need to talk to me about”
They went home, Colin sat her down and told her how he hadn’t in fact overcome the addiction.
“I'm thinking to myself, well okay, like whatever, it's addiction, we can get through that. That’s fine.”
Colin then went on to tell Anita about affairs that he had been having.
“I remember sitting there on the couch kinda curled up. I had a pillow in my lap and I remember thinking to myself that there's no coming back from this. It was almost an out-of-body experience. I could look down and see myself on the couch, curled up, hugging the pillow to my chest and trying to pretend that it wasn't happening.”
After revealing the affairs, Colin asked Anita for a divorce. Anita sat there for a little bit, not knowing what she was going to do. She had always said if somebody cheated on her or if somebody hit her, she wouldn't stay. Those would be the only two reasons that she would ever get a divorce.
She told him to give her a week. One week, so she could make up her mind and he left.
“I don’t even remember crying that night. I don't think I did”
As it would happen, Anita started a new part time job the next day. As she was getting ready she was thinking about the logistics of the whole situation.
“As I’m getting ready for work, I think to myself, well this really sucks. This is a part-time job, so if I get a divorce I can't support myself and I already knew that I would have to have a conversation with my boss like, “‘so hey, my dad's dying so there might be days that I'm not able to come in.”’ I didn't want to also have the conversation of, “‘ hey I’m getting a divorce so I can’t afford to work here anymore”’
As she is trying to figure it all out, Anita hears God’s voice telling her to forgive Colin.
“I remember looking to my left, because that's the side that I heard it on, and obviously there was nobody there. I ask, “‘why would I do that? Why should I?”’ And He told me, “‘because I already have”’
In that moment, Anita decided to at least try to work it out.
“I didn't know if we would make it. I didn't know if it was even going to be worth finding a counselor, going to therapy, and fighting for marriage. I didn't know if it would be worth it, but because God said that I needed to forgive him, I figured I should at least try.”
September 23rd
After finding a counselor, Anita didn’t know what to expect. On top of everything going on in her marriage, she and her siblings were now on 24/7 “dad watch”, taking shifts sitting with him in the hospital, and eventually nursing home, for the last month of his life. Anita didn’t tell anyone in her family what Colin had confessed to her, not knowing what to do with it all. The only place Anita felt any sense of normalcy was at work.
“That was the hardest time of my life and I could go into work and I knew that they [female coworkers] would make me laugh, that I could joke around and kind of forget about my troubles for those three and a half hours that I was there every day.”
Colin and Anita got into counseling and after going to their first appointment, they ended up needing to cancel the second due to her dad passing away on September 23rd, 2018.
“I remember going in for the next one, which was only a week later, and the counselor was very concerned about how well I was handling my dad dying.I remember thinking to myself, well that’s not why we’re here, we’re here for the marriage. I just had to to compartmentalize a lot of things in my life at that time, and that's really how I got through it, by putting things in boxes and saying okay it's time to deal with this box or it's time to deal with that box”
Caught
Colin and Anita spent about 3- 3.5 years in counseling. About a year into it, Anita continued to find out more and more about Colin until she caught him having another affair, sending inappropriate text messages to one of his female coworkers.
At that point, Anita quit. She took her ring off and threw it at him, leaving for 2 months.
“It was really poor timing because, at that time I had just switched to a job working for Colin's dad. I started working for my father-in-law when I was no longer living with my husband and it was a very awkward 2 months.”
Anita’s depression got really bad. It was at the point where she was now a danger to herself and others around her. She began to have suicidal thoughts, mostly thinking about driving her car into the median on the bypass on her way to work, and being done with it all.
After talking to her personal counselor they built a suicide prevention plan and Anita forced herself to drive in the right lane and go the speed limit. Anita still carries her plan with her as a reminder of where she was and to not let herself get back to that point.
October 31st, 2019
On halloween, October 31st, 2019, Anita returned home. In that 2 month period that she was gone, she had continued going to marriage counseling and individual counseling. It had reached a point where they either called it quits on their marriage or she returned home.
While she was gone, Colin had gotten baptized. Anita and Colin started Crossroads Community Church, and things were good. Then Covid hit, and the world shut down. Together, they made it through 2020 with counseling and then in 2021, when everything started to open back up, they started volunteering at Crossroads.
Colin got on to the Worship Team and Anita started helping with meals at Crossroads Recovery. They stopped going to counseling and started funneling all of their energy into CR.
Anita started actually attending CR about 1.5-2 months after she had started volunteering.
A Call to Ministry
The fall of 2021, Anita felt a push to do something in ministry. She talked to Ashley LeCount, the Crossroads preschool director, and asked her if she had heard of the IF gathering and if the church would be interested in hosting one. She was really excited about it, and about Anita bringing it up, because she wanted her to lead it.
“That was not the thought process that I had. I thought well, I'm feeling this push so if I ask someone, they'll do it for me,and I won't have to. That's not at all how God works.”
Anita led the first one Crossroads had hosted in 2022 and it went really well so they hosted another one in 2023. By that point, Anita knew that she couldn't ignore the ministry calling anymore.
“I had put it off for 12 years at that point. The first call to ministry I felt was when I was 18. I was a senior in high school and that was the first time I heard God's voice. He told me I needed to go to school to become a pastor, but I didn't want anything to do with it. I'd grown up in a ministry home. My mom worked for the church and it was rough. The church always seemed to come first, and I didn't want that for my life so at 18, I ignored it. Then 12 years later, 30 years old, I couldn't ignored anymore”
Anita talked to Pastor Michelle, the Mishawaka campus pastor, and she helped Anita get her local license in June, 2023. In the fall, Anita started college at Nazarene Bible College. Anita is eligible for her district license, waiting until district assembly next year, and then planning to be ordained four years after that.
“It's kind of amazing how God takes all of this mess and this up and down and still uses it for his glory. I don’t think that without everything that I went through, growing up with a single mom and a whole bunch of siblings, then I'm getting married really young, dealing with addiction, depression and infidelity, that's the stuff that shaped who I am now and it gives me a perspective to where I know that I can speak to people in a certain place in life because that's where I was, it's not where we have to stay”
-Anita Huff
Suicide & Crisis Lifeline:
If you are considering suicide, or if you or someone you know is in emotional crisis, please call or text 988. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress.
