As part of the Stories of Hope content, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is coincidental.
Part III
June
My daughter was a junkie.
It took me a long time to tell anyone. When we found out Amy was pregnant and still using, I got family involved. My cousin invited us to a church and we jumped into a small group, with hopes of creating a sense of community. We kept Amy’s drug habit from them for awhile, but it was nice to feel a sense of belonging. My sister was particularly good to us in those early days, but like the others, she didn’t understand the perseverance our situation demanded, so she left us high and dry.
Being the family of a user placed extraordinary amount of burden on us.
Our lives were completely upended and disrupted. My emotions were wrecked.
See, society tends to focus on the user. Cast blame. Judge. Disregard and discard.
Through our many visits with a counselor, we discovered that it was hard for people to understand that addiction and drug abuse is similar to an active disease. It is an unparalleled fixation in the brain that is not easily explained. In order to recover, the user must choose to change their habits, but in doing so, has to have help in the most unbelievable way. It’s not the same as saying “I need to get out of this relationship,” or “I need to make changes in my life.” It’s like dealing with a child all over again.
I’ve learned that addicts truly suffer and addiction doesn’t discriminate.
Some of the brokenness I saw in those early rehab days were enough to mark my life with gratitude. What chance does someone really have if they aren’t loved and supported, with someone to walk alongside them?
The problem is that families of addicts suffer too. It strained our marriage and I nearly lost my job from the mental toll. The strange isolation rooted into bitterness down in my heart. I went through a period of indifference towards my daughter. I lost my compassion for her. How could she not raise this beautiful child of hers, who had come from her own flesh and blood? Who barely made it alive amid the struggles of Amy’s intermittent using in utero? Who suffered from withdrawal weeks after she was born? She just dumped Olivia on us as if we were responsible.
Several battles ensued with custody issues and the threat of giving Olivia up for adoption. It was ugly, so ugly, for many months. But in the end she came to live with us, and from afar, we maintained our hope for Amy’s recovery.
We had a few people at church ask how we were doing, but most everyone left us alone. The isolation was staggering and I felt the shame hovering over me like a 6-person tent. I’d spent years making meals for baby showers, wedding showers, women’s bible studies and here we were. Struggling to find time to eat, let alone make food, we often found ourselves at the nearest fast food joint. Our yard became overgrown, flat tires and car troubles came from not being able to provide car maintenance, because who had time anymore with a daughter on the fringes of death every day and a brand new baby thrust in our lives?
It felt like an injustice that the church who cried for us to do more in our community would not serve those right under their nose. Bringing a meal to my house would not have elicited a drug fest. No one was actually getting high under my roof. Yet we were pushed aside.
It was a strange feeling. We weren’t cast out or unwelcomed, we were just forgotten.
It was hard to stay afloat, hard to swim that tide against the rising current of judgment, shame, loss. Oh, I felt such a loss for Amy, my sweet only child with so much potential. The loss for what could’ve been kept me up most nights.
My faith waivered many times. However, I realized something quick when it came to my expectations of the church: God always provided for me. Through Himself, so I would not rely on someone else, it was always His hand that was visible to me. When I needed to just vent, a lady I’d spoken with twice offered a counseling resource, out of the blue one day.
“We have heard great things about Ms. Barker. She’s at an agency a few miles from your house, so I thought I’d mention it to you, since times are probably hard on you right now.” She patted my hand, a pitiful look resonating across her face, and passed a card in my direction.
Once, at near breakdown level, I was sitting on a pew a few minutes before the sermon started and looking down at my lap. A hand reached out from behind and tapped me on the shoulder, “Liz, I know times are tough, can I pray for you?” He prayed for me right then and I could fill the weight on my spirit lifting.
Times were more than tough. Suffering was my middle name for years. But God has always, always provided. All I had to do was just look at His face at every turn. It’s hard to do, the fight for peace in the midst of suffering. My faith was often dangling by a thread, and I often pictured Him holding the other end, but He wasn’t actually holding that thread.
He was holding me. My entire life, right there in the palm of His hand. And this was our journey, but I wasn’t as alone as I felt. My feelings could never override truth.
One night shortly after Amy’s Big Lots parking lot arrest, I tucked 4-year-old Olivia into bed after reading her nighttime stories.
“Mimi?” She sunk down under a pile of blankets, surrounded by her favorite stuffed animals. “Does my mommy love me?”
My heart nearly broke in that moment. I think I felt a piece of it die right there. I placed a hand on her forehead. “Olivia, sometimes mommies can’t love like they were made to. You know how much Mimi loves you? You know how much you love Pinky?” She clung tight to her light pink bear and nodded. “Well, we were ALL made to love like that, but sometimes people like your mommy can’t feel that love anymore. They don’t know how because there’s too much bad in their lives.” I choked back the tears and swallowed hard. “God loves you more than anything in this world though, and so does Mimi. He won’t ever leave you without love, I promise you that.”
A few nights later, Tim and I sat down to watch the nighttime news and eat a handful of grapes. We’d barely spoken to each other all day from the busyness that now overtook our lives. Just when I was about to soften the atmosphere we desperately needed, the doorbell rang.
Amy appeared, standing in the misting rain, eyes anxiously downcast and skirting about. She was wearing an old pair of men’s sweatpants and a bulky oversized sweater even though it was warm out. “Mom.” Her voice cracked. She looked up at me.
In that moment, I looked in her eyes and it ripped a crack through my resolve as I stood in the doorway. I saw the brokenness, the despair. Weakness stared back at me, a longing for all things to be right. I saw the rebellion, the betrayal of all that was good and all that was love.
I put my hands to her face and held them there as she began to cry.
I saw myself. I saw the ugliness of my sin, the addictions I hold in front of God, the idols that saturate my heart, the walls I build to keep Him out. I saw myself.
Nothing has ever shaken me so much as in that moment I had with Amy on the doorstep that night in the rain. My heart was wrecked with truths from my Savior, flowing into me from the eyes of the broken. He is the one who has sustained us through it all. All the blame and anger her actions had produced in me, creating the bitterness I slept with at night, dissolved right then.
I no longer saw her as a lost cause, a leech on society’s doorstep. I saw her as worthy of love, a person made in God’s image, and hope for the first time in years.
Sometimes I can’t believe she’s still alive.
We are 3 months out of an intensive rehab inpatient stay after Amy cried to me for help that stormy night. We placed her in and then I walked straight over to my church for a meeting with our pastor. Wasn’t there a ministry we could start to reach the cast-offs in society? The ones who so many had given up on, the ones who’d given up on themselves?
Was I the only mom who desperately needed support for our situation?
That’s what I do now. I’m the director of our Recover and Restore Ministry at church. Amy lives with a church member who graciously housed her after rehab and has encouraged her sobriety. She is involved in Amy’s life and has supported my family in the most amazing ways.
More importantly, she helped Amy find the missing piece to the void she was constantly trying to fill. Amy stopped living for that constant relief and was for the first time in years, considering what living a full life could look like. She became a walking, breathing example of John 10:10 as Christ continued restoring her life.
No, our ministry doesn’t save people, and things don’t always go according to the ideal. I’m not naïve to think it could be this way forever. Amy may relapse again, she could lie and lose our trust, and we may have this battle for many days of our lives. But it may not be this way. She’s put her faith in something more powerful than herself. She could turn her life around and find the promised land that’s always been hers to claim.
I’ll cling to that hope, much like I cling to the Savior’s hand, who sustains me now and always will.
This is the last of a Part III series. Read Part I and Part II here.
Photo by Kristina Tripkovic, Danielle Dolson, and rawpixel
Author’s Note:
This is a completely fictional story that was inspired by a comment from a writer friend on the other side of the states. She mentioned how the church often was not there for her during a trial of drug abuse with her stepson. I began to tackle the task of developing a story on severe addiction which lives in our communities, and has family that sits with us on Sundays. What are the struggles like? How does the family suffer? These were questions I wanted to address, while offering the reality of hope. The events and characters are of my own imagination. If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, there is hope, there is help. If you know a family member of someone who is struggling in drug abuse, please reach out to them and be the hands and feet of Jesus. You never know how it could impact their lives.
Very . Well. Done