- Alcohol
- Drugs
As a child, I dreamed of living in a yellow house framed by dark green shutters. The house stood within the confines of a white picket fence that kept bad things out and good things in.
I grew up, married, and had three children. The white picket fence dream wormed its way into my plans on occasion. But most of it never materialized.
In the first grade, our son, Josh, was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and after much hand-wringing and tears, we agreed to put him on Ritalin. He continued taking the medication until the eighth grade when he took his first hit off a soda-can-turned-marijuana pipe. He also discovered alcohol at this time and my picket fence splintered.
From the ages of 16 to 30, he participated at six treatment facilities. He had periods of sobriety, then he would quit going to meetings (AA and NA), start drinking, using drugs and the inevitable crash would occur. He crashed hard in 2008 when someone gave him a Roxycodone tablet a few months before his son was born. That small pill caused a descent into hell.
The teenage years’ misbehaviors were like a ride on a see-saw compared to the dips and turns of the opiate addiction rollercoaster. In all his years of abuse, we never experienced anything like pain pills. He became someone I didn’t recognize.
My son did things he had never done before to feed the voracious opiate habit. I was a nervous wreck waiting for him to be arrested, killed in a drug deal, or die from an overdose. He survived an overdose at age sixteen. I wept as items in our home were sold at pawn shops. To think that a child of mine would do what he did baffled me. My spirit was as crushed and full of holes as his first soda can marijuana pipe. How would the nightmare end?
In August of 2009, his wife posted on Facebook: “Jeremiah 30 and 31. Restoration Promised.” Restoration wasn’t at the forefront of my thought processes, so I didn’t take the time to read the two chapters. We trudged along as the addiction consumed more and more of my only son and my family. On October 8, 2009, at 2:30 in the morning, I once again fought with the sandman. My body needed rest but disheartening scenarios of what might happen to Josh swirled in my head. Sleep wouldn’t come.
I got up to watch television but instead reached for my Bible. I remembered the Facebook post and flipped to Jeremiah 30. Tears streamed down my face as I read the prophet’s message to the children of Israel. He talked about them being held in bondage. I identified with that scenario. He talked about redemption and freedom and a time when all would be made right. I didn’t know about that and my breaking heart longed to know more.
I read and reread those two chapters. I marked through Israel, Ephraim, and Jacob and inserted my son’s name. I wrote in the margin what held him and our family in bondage: drugs, alcohol, lying, and friends.
In chapter 31, verses 15-17, I crossed out Rachel’s name and put mine. I changed Ramah, the region in which she lived, and put my city’s name. I made the verses personal, and I prayed them back to God, believing he would honor the promises to restore and redeem my family.
Josh entered treatment in November 2009 but was discharged four weeks later. He relapsed on pain pills following emergency gallbladder surgery. After two months he was allowed to return and, on February 18, 2010, his journey toward sobriety began in earnest.
From a parent’s perspective, addiction is brutal. The images of self-destruction hover in my memory. The night he overdosed replays in my mind; it is no longer a point of pain, but it will always be a point of reference.
How could he do the things he did? He’s an addict and that’s what addicts do.
I learned over the last four years that recovery is best accomplished one day at a time. I tried projecting five, ten, or fifteen years of clean time on him, and he quickly corrected me. “Mom, I can only be clean today. I can’t worry about five years from now.” I, too, live my life one day at a time. I know that today my son is clean and that is all I can ask or hope for.
For family members of addicts, hope is the life line to which we cling. When I speak, write, or share one-on-one with a distraught parent, I always include the promise of hope for a sober and clean tomorrow. As long as there is a breath in your loved one’s body, there is hope that today will be the day for healing and redemption.
My white picket fence dream is just that—a dream. I no longer peer through the sharpness of barbed wire, pricked at every turn. My life has quietly settled behind a split-rail fence, functional, but not as idealistic as the pickets nor as painful as barbed wire.
Blessings and hope for today.