The basketball court at the Sonoraville Recreation Complex temporarily became a makeshift stage and gathering area Thursday morning, May 6, as hundreds of members of the community turned out to hear author Ashley Smith tell her story.

Smith was the featured speaker at the annual Community Prayer Breakfast hosted by Gordon Hospital. She told of the life transformation she underwent after spending a night in March 2005 held hostage by Brian Nichols, a fugitive of the law.

Smith spoke about her early life, saying she accepted Jesus Christ as a seven-year-old and was raised by her grandparents until she was 12, at which point she moved in with her mother and stepfather.

Drugs and alcohol threw her promising basketball career into a tailspin in her senior year of high school.

“I instantly like the way that way of life made me feel back then,” she recalled. “My senior year was just a big blur to me.”

Smith found herself married and pregnant at 19, and her husband was stabbed to death just a short while later in 2001.

This tragic event turned Smith from recreational drug use to total dependence, and her aunt ended up taking Smith’s young daughter in.

Smith said she realized she had chosen a destructive way of life over her child, but it wasn’t until she picked up a copy of Christian author Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life” at a church service that her life began to change.

Smith admitted she used drugs on two separate occasions as she began reading the book, but she had begun to turn back to God.

Then, just a month-and-a-half after she began reading “The Purpose Driven Life,” Smith was randomly accosted by Nichols at her home after he fled an Atlanta courtroom, having killed a judge, a federal agent and a sheriff’s deputy after escaping custody while on trial for rape in the Fulton County courthouse.

Realizing she was at the mercy of an armed and dangerous individual, Smith recalled “screaming, realizing that God was sick and tired of my behavior.”

She said Nichols asked her for drugs and she gave him the remaining substance she had in her home; he asked her three times to partake in drug use alongside him, but she refused.

Smith said she made a decision to be clean of drugs that night.

“I had just laid down the good the bad and the ugly … Jesus Christ was in control and that’s where He needed to be,” she said.

She read portions of “The Purpose Driven Life” to Nichols and spoke to him about God, and he told her he was a born-again Christian. Smith said she came to understand that “sin is sin is sin” during the time she spent with Nichols.

“During that night, I was able to look at him through the eyes of Jesus Christ,” she said.

Smith told Nicholson he needed to turn himself in to authorities, and he let her walk free the next morning.

Smith’s memoirs, “Unlikely Angel: the untold story of the Atlanta hostage hero,” were published in 2005. She said it was difficult for her to write about topics such as her drug use, but that she included these passages in the hope that they might help someone else.

Smith married again in 2007 and now resides in Gainesville, Ga. where she attends church and is involved in the Celebrate Recovery ministry and in AWANA programs.

“What’s the most important part of my life today? Prayer, for sure prayer,” she told the group.

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About the prayer breakfast

The May 6 community prayer breakfast marked the ninth such event that Gordon Hospital has organized.

“We had a great turnout for it; we were thrilled by the attendance” said Kim Brazell, chair of the prayer breakfast committee.

Leaders and representatives from local churches of a variety of denominations prayed for the community during the breakfast. They included: St. Clements Catholic Church pastor Joseph Shaute, Trinity Baptist Church Pastor Eddie Brannon, Calhoun Seventh-day Adventist Church Pastor Albert Handel, College Street Church of God Youth Minister Richard Lee and Allen Chapel AME Church Missionary Janie Aker. Deanna Lee, 5, led the Pledge of Allegiance and Gordon Central High School vocal group Tonal Combustion performed several praise songs, including “Amazing Grace,” on which the audience joined in.

Gordon Hospital CEO and President Pete Weber opened the morning with a few words of welcome, and Gordon Hospital Chaplain/ Health Educator Dave Smith introduced keynote speaker Ashley Smith.

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