When Fear Consumes Our Peace

Fear is often the hardest part of loving someone in addiction. The universal theme in all of the loved ones of addicted adults (AA’s) is a fear that their AA will die, and it is a very valid fear. The risk of death is huge when someone is using drugs. You can never truly know what is in something you buy on the streets or how strong it is. Your body’s tolerances change without warning and what used to be just enough can suddenly become way too much. And poof, we get the call we’ve been dreading all along.

I wish that I could tell you that if you pray hard enough, have enough faith, do x, y, and z, it won’t happen to you, but the truth is there is no rhyme or reason to who it happens to and when. There’s no justice in it. Two of the mamas I know that prayed the hardest and devoted themselves to helping and encouraging other loved ones and addicts lost a child to overdose. It’s enough to make even the most faithful of believers question God’s plan. How can God allow that to happen to such good people – people that are faithful servants and followers of Jesus. Shouldn’t they get a break? In our human minds, it doesn’t make sense and that makes it even more difficult to loosen the grip of that fear.

If our hearts are being squeezed by fear, how can we possibly have boundaries? How can we possibly have heated conversations when we refuse to enable them and hang up the phone with the fear that it could be the last conversation we ever have with them? What if? What if it happens today? What if it happens and they are cold or hungry? What if it happens and I’m not sure they know how much I love them? What if it happens and the last thing they said to me is that they hate me and it’s all my fault? What if it happens and I’m not sure they’re saved? What if their children have to grow up without them? What if I have to go on without them? Can I do that? Would I survive it? Could I ever be happy again? What if… What if… What if…

I do not claim to understand how someone goes on after losing their AA to addiction and overdose. I haven’t experienced it personally. Like many things I have experienced in life, I am willing to bet that the imagining of it doesn’t come close to the pain of actually having to walk through it. I would not presume to suggest to you what to do or how it would feel to go through something that I have not. If you have experienced this, let me just tell you how very sorry I am for your loss. My heart breaks at the thought of how many people and how much human potential we have lost in this epidemic of addiction. I will try to have a guest writer tell their story with the loss of their loved one, but today’s message is about overcoming the fear of the death of our loved one.

The first addiction I had to face with someone in my immediate circle was my husband’s sexual addiction. I was young and naïve when I married him and thought I was getting my happily ever after. He treated me like I was the most amazing woman on the planet… until he didn’t. The first couple of years of our marriage, he had multiple affairs. I wanted to leave. I wanted to start over. Everyone, including pastors and family members, was telling me I needed to do just that - everyone but God that is. I prayed and begged him to give me the release to go but it never came. (I am not suggesting that someone in that situation should stay. That’s just how God led me). 2 ½ years into our marriage, he gave his life to Christ and began treatment for his addiction. As wonderful as that was, the hurt and damage to my heart and soul had been done and it wasn’t just magically going to go away. My trust and security were broken. My biggest fear in this situation was that I would be blindsided by another affair. It made me paranoid, nosey, and anxious. Somewhere along the line I decided that I could not live that way anymore. At some point, God and I had a sit down and I told him all about my fears and then I handed them over to him. I asked him to show me what I needed to know, to hide from me what I didn’t, and to get me through whatever may come up with him. And with God’s supernatural grace, I was able to walk away and leave it with him. It had to be God’s supernatural grace because it was certainly not in my nature to give up control, to stop going through his phone and pockets, to stop demanding an account of where he spent every minute. Trust me when I tell you, I was probably the least likely person you know to be able to give that up, but with God’s help, I did.

So, what does that have to do with the fear of my loved one dying of an overdose? Don’t I know that having an affair and dying are two very different thing? Yes. Yes, I do. But I tell you this because this decision and experience served me well when twenty years later, I was faced with my daughter’s addiction to methamphetamine. By this time, I was in recovery for suicide, codependency, and mental health issues. I was working in a 12-step recovery ministry. I was known as the “queen of codependency” in that ministry and now I had to walk it out with a child for whom I would die to save her one ounce of pain. I had to draw boundaries. I had to go no-contact for periods of time to protect my own mental health. I had to protect the children I still had at home from exposure and any other damage that might be done if they were around her. I could not shut down and miss out on the lives of my other kids. It felt like a daunting and impossible task.

I lived with the fear of her dying all the time. It kept me up at night. It influenced the decisions I made. It made me feel guilty for being happy or enjoying anything. It consumed me. And then I had the same conversation I had with God that we had had 20 years before. I gave him my fears and asked him to show me what I needed to know, to hide from me what I didn’t, and to give me the strength to get through anything that would come up with her. I wish I could say it took away the struggle, but it didn’t. The struggle was still there. I remember calling her to check on her one night and they had just been robbed at gun point and it seemed that they were targeting her then-boyfriend, now-husband. I hung up the phone shaken but I talked to and prayed with my accountability team, and it lifted. I got a call one night that she had passed out from malnutrition in a convenience store and had been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. As luck would have it, I was cooking my family big, beautiful ribeyes when I got the call, and once again, the guilt set in. It took everything I had to take her back to the abandoned house with no utilities that they were squatting in that night. I wanted to bring her home - and I guess him with her because I knew she wouldn’t come without him. Damn the consequences! I didn’t care in that moment, but God empowered me to stay strong. He also nudged me to love on her in a way that had never crossed my mind. I believe that night was the beginning of the end of her addiction, and while I don’t take credit for her recovery, I don’t think it would have happened as quickly if I had taken her home that night.

So how do we live when that fear is hanging over our heads? I can only speak to what worked for me. In the beginning of my recovery, I realized that I had made an idol of my children. I loved them more than I loved God. When my children grew into adulthood and my vision of what life should be for them didn’t materialize, my faith crumbled. I had already been through that with other issues I had faced with my children, and I knew I could not go back to that. I had to protect my recovery and the progress I had made in those years. I had to take her off of the altar of my heart and keep God in His rightful place there. Basically, I had to put my daughter in His hands and make my decisions based on what was most in-line with His word and what would be most pleasing to Him and trust Him with the results. I’m not going to lie and say that it wasn’t scary. I was terrified that He would ask me to bury her.

Like Abraham climbing up that mountain with Isaac, I had to put obedience to God above my maternal instincts and love for my child. I could have brought her home with him and moved them in but that would not have honored God. I could not have them in my house, especially in front of my younger children, sleeping together outside of marriage. Nor could I have them abusing drugs in my home. I had made that mistake before with another child and I knew it wouldn’t end well. I was not in denial that they were having sex (as it would turn out she was pregnant at the time but we wouldn’t know that for a couple of months) but that was their decision. Using the drugs was their decision. They would have to work that out with God themselves. But allowing it into my house would be my decision and I would have to answer for it.

In the Bible, Jesus did amazing miracles and healings. He was incredibly generous, but he never enabled sin. Any time he helped anyone it was with the intention that they would go and sin no more. He never did anything to make anyone more comfortable in their sin and we can’t either if we are to be Christ-like. The line between loving like Jesus and enabling someone in their sin is a fine one and can be hard to find. It also seems to never stop moving from one situation to the other. That is precisely why we need an accountability team to talk to that will tell us the truth, even if it’s not what we want to hear. I did take them candles and groceries after that night and gathered a list of food pantries they could walk to from where they were staying. For me, it would have been heartless, to leave her there with nothing to eat in the condition she was in. I knew I could not provide groceries on a regular basis but filling an immediate need and giving her resources to meet them for herself in the future seemed like the right thing to do and they were touched by that.

A few months later, they would seek treatment and successfully complete it. They were pregnant, and while that life might have been ok for them, they didn’t want to bring a child into it. My daughter had spent most of her childhood in foster care (we adopted her) and she did not want her son to go through what she had. For them the pregnancy was enough to motivate them to get clean. For some it is not. Had they lived in my warm comfy home with plenty of food and all the comforts of home, I don’t think they would have been as motivated.

Those results aren’t necessarily typical. They could have just as easily continued down the road of addiction and overdosed and I would have had to trust God to see me through it. I can not imagine (nor do I want to) how difficult it would have been but I know he would have somehow used it for good. We never know what the trigger will be to get them sick and tired of being sick and tired. There are no guarantees that anything we do will get them clean. I wish it was as easy as do these three things and they will be free of their addiction. The fact of the matter, in my opinion, is that addiction is spiritual warfare, and we are not able to rescue anyone from it. We can encourage, we can love, we can point them to Christ but ultimately, it is God and only God that can save them from it. Trying to rescue them ourselves, while seemingly noble, is really just trying to take God’s place on the altar of their heart. If we could rescue them, they would need us and not Jesus. They can not be an idol to us, and we cannot be an idol to them. When we put God in his rightful place, the pieces will fall into place, not as we would have it but as he would. It may be difficult. Your worst fears may come to pass. But He will walk with you through it, come what may. When we are called according to His good purposes, He works all things to our good. All things include the good, the bad, the ugly, our greatest fears, our biggest disasters, and our most glorious victories. While He does not promise us that our loved ones won’t die, he does promise eternal life if they accept Him. God loves the drug addict just like he loves the pastors and the deacons. He knows our AA’s heart as well as ours. He is not going to abandon them any more than He is going to abandon us.

God loves you and has you in the palm of his hand!

If you have lost your AA to addiction, let me be clear in saying that it is not your fault – even if you enabled them, even if they were idols to you, even if you were a terrible parent/spouse/etc. At the end of the day, they are adults. They are responsible for their own decisions. Many times, when people talk about codependency, they well-meaningly say that we are loving our AAs to death. I get why that is an appealing message because it makes the point that enabling is dangerous and potentially deadly. That does not put the responsibility for their choices on our shoulders. It’s especially hard for codependents to understand that because codependency in and of itself is taking responsibility for things that are not our responsibility. If you are struggling in this area, please seek professional help and lay down that burden. It is not yours to carry.