I have been thinking about this blog a long time and I am very late getting this in. Since I began writing this blog, I have had to take this time for some interior perspective. Living sober is not easy I have failed many times. I wonder why I was asked to write this there are so many more qualified people than I. I see such success stories like Jeff Garrett and Rocky Meadows and i feel like a failure in my struggles, but then I realize we all have a different path to walk. I could not walk their path and they couldn't walk mine.
My dad was a raging alcoholic and my childhood in a lot of ways was a nightmare. He was not a good or a nice man. He beat my mother, brother and sister's. I did not get that normal childhood and as a result at the age of 11 I started trying to find anyway that I could to numb myself to the world I knew. That was mainly weed, then as I got older I fell into my dad’s trap and began a long relationship with alcohol. I have had DUI's and wrecked cars and disappointed my mother in so many ways that it breaks my heart. But as I developed a relationship with Jesus, He has helped me heal. No, I am not where I want to be yet, but I have hope in Christ that He will deliver me.
This brings me to where I am now, I am struggling, but still swinging. I give the hope I have as the biggest reason I am still in the battle and didn't totally surrender. Now I think about what we are seeing in our city on a daily basis. My nephew and his fiancé were struggling and in one night of weakness they slipped back, and went and got some heroin. They went to sleep and when he woke up she didn't. She was 24 and had lost her best friend and her father to heroin. She was a Christian. But I think those 2 loses eroded her hope. I am worried that my nephew will follow.
Our children are doing what I did, following in their addicted parents footsteps. That's the path we are showing them. I had my best friend just a day later have to call 911 because his daughter was laying on his bathroom floor dead of an overdose, but this time the wonderful EMT workers were able to save her life. Thank God, but he did have that moment of holding his dead daughter in his hands. I can’t imagine that and do not want to. My friend and the mother are no longer together because of addiction. The mother went to her daughter after she was sick and recovering from this traumatic event and asked her where she got the heroin because she wanted the "Good Stuff".
This is what we’re fighting. A disease that eats whole families either if you use or a family member of someone who does. God has plans for us to prosper and not to suffer. Children follow our example's good or bad. Living sober is not just for you, you may save your child.
God Bless