Heidi Rimestead admits she was naive about drug abuse. She'd never even had friends who used. She didn't even know the signs of drug abuse.

Her husband had been able to fool her for awhile, before the couple married. But two days after they exchanged their wedding vows, he hit her. "He changed into this monster," Rimestead said.

This was a second marriage for the young mother of two. Her first husband had been verbally abusive, never physically abusive.

The hardworking and attractive young woman worked hard at her job and hard at keeping the home. Her first husband would just "hit and lick" at work, said Jamie Collins, executive director of Mission Outreach.

But whatever Rimestead did, it was never enough for him. He berated her and made her "feel like the stupid one," Collins said.

Somehow he managed to make Rimestead believe their problems were her fault. She should do better, work harder, keep a cleaner home.

  Rimestead didn't understand what was happening. All she wanted was "to make her family work ... to keep her family together," Collins said. And she endured his verbal abuse trying to keep things together.

He made broken promise after broken promise to Rimestead - to stop treating her that way. At times he would improve, but something always set him off again.

"It only got worse," Rimestead said, shaking her head.

And sometimes she would come home from work to find things missing from the house. He would take money from the children's piggy banks. Their toys would be missing. Her parents once gave them a nice set of glider rockers. When they went missing, he told her he sold them for rent money.

But she never saw the money. A few days later, they were evicted.

She divorced him, but it was difficult. "It was hard. I felt like I was making the wrong choice. I felt bad because he was upset and I wanted to keep my family together."

"I loved him a lot ... but I just couldn't do it anymore. It was tearing me and kids apart."

With no place to go and her family in Kentucky, Rimestead had no choice but to go to Mission Outreach. She got back on her feet and left the mission.

She dated her second husband for some time before they married. She felt she knew him. He knew about her first marriage and the emotional pain she and her children suffered.

He made promises to Rimestead to take care of her and her children for the rest of their lives. Finally, Rimestead had hopes of finding a safe haven for her heart.

"I guess you could say he was too good to be true from the beginning," Rimestead said.'He promised,' I love you and I'll be good to your kids ... I can't believe what your ex-husband did to you.'"

Collins said he showered Rimestead "with words of affirmation and attention."

No one saw it coming, the violence, the drug abuse. He managed to hide it well until after the wedding.

When he hit her two days after she became his wife, it was the first time she had ever been hit by a man.

"It made me so angry," Rimestead said with a cringe. "I never wanted to allow myself to be like that."

"And it continued and my kids saw it."

Then, he started hitting the children.

She said she protected her children as much as possible, in hopes that he would get off the drugs. Again, she heard promise after promise to stop.

She admits she excused his behavior because she knew it was the drugs that made him act like he did.

One night he woke her up and told her to get up, that people were in the house. Doped up on meth and cocaine, his hallucinations continued through the night and he began to hit her. He left the room and she ran to her children's room. For some reason, he would never follow her into their room. He would just stand at the door and spew cruel words at Rimestead and the children.

She knew by morning he would be calm again. That's the way it always happened. But the morning found him still agitated. By afternoon it escalated and he threw something at her head.

Rimestead said, "I was so mad. I just lost it."

She started throwing plates over his head trying to get him to leave. He refused to go. The maintenance man at the apartments heard the arguing and told them to quiet down.

She looked at her son sitting on the couch.

"I thought, 'I'm either going to end up dead or I'm going to end up in jail and lose my kids,'" Rimestead recalled of that day.

The maintenance man told them he would leave them to work out their problems.

Rimestead said, "I told him, 'If you walk out that door, it's going to get worse.'"

She knew her anger at her husband was out of control. She had tried to leave the apartment earlier, but he wouldn’t let her get clothes or anything.

The maintenance man agreed to stay while she gathered some things. But her husband would not have it. She was only able to grab a few of her son's things. "And then I walked out the door, and we didn't go back," she said.

Rimestead walked with her children to Mission Outreach once again. Although relieved to be safe, she didn't want to stay at the mission. She wanted to go back home.

When she looked at their residence quarters at the mission, void of anything that resembled their home, she cried.

"We left everything behind," Rimestead said. "It wasn't easy to stay."

That was last November. In September, Rimestead and her son, Rake, moved into their own place. Her daughter, Courtney, 11, has gone to Kentucky to stay with Rimestead's parents while she gets her life together.

Collins said Rimestead "was a model resident" at the mission. Describing her as a "self-starter," she said Rimestead was determined to re-establish her life again.

Mission residents are required to save 75 percent of all income for starting life outside the mission.

Rimestead was so determined, Collins said most of the time she saved above the required amount.

"I don't want that lifestyle any more," Rimestead said with resolve. "I'll never go back."

To look at Rimestead, no one would guess that she was once homeless and in such desperation.

Collins said, "Homelessness and the victims of domestic violence are not this TV stereotype we want to make it ..."

Rimestead said, "We all have a choice as to how we want to live our lives. We have to make changes in order to have changes in our lives."

"Unfortunately, nothing changes in our lives until we change ... Nobody can make us a victim unless we let them."

Looking back on her past, Rimestead said she has learned from her mistakes.

"I was very co-dependent and naive. I allowed myself to be so abused, physically and mentally. My greatest regret is that I wasn't there for my kids ... I was steeped in depression."

"I'm thankful I got out of it ... The children are happier. There is no one yelling at them."

Through Mission Outreach, Rimestead is on the right track.

"I am a lot stronger than I thought I was," she said.