Beside Still Waters: Discovering Peace in the Midst of Your Child's Addiction

We were blessed recently to be able to republish the book Beside Still Waters: Discovering Peace in the Midst of Your Child's Addiction through Christian Faith Publishing. This story began with a very enthusiastic woman, Ann, who attended the LTTL group at Keswick and called Christian Faith Publishing, very emphatically telling them that they needed to pick up our book. We received a call from the literary agent and the rest is history. Our church, Bayside Chapel, and the Carole Mastroddi Foundation covered the cost of republishing, which was a huge blessing! CFP did a wonderful job with every area of the book, from the editing to the cover design, and we are excited to see where Father will take the book as a result of this step of faith. The book can be purchased at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple books.

“We pray for blessings, we pray for peace

Comfort for family, protection while we sleep

We pray for healing, for prosperity

We pray for your mighty hand to ease our suffering

And all the while, You hear each spoken need

Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things

‘Cause what if your blessings come through raindrops

What if Your healing comes through tears

As we go through the fear that comes from having a child in addiction, it is so easy to allow that fear to consume us. We live it, we breathe it, we virtually bleed it until it seems that there is nothing left of the person we were intended to be. Any brightly colored joy we may have felt in the past seems to be painted over by a dull aching gray.

Love Them To Life is not about “fixing” our kids’ addiction problems, but rather it is about learning to trust Father. We want to help our children do the right things. We want to keep them from overdosing or going to jail. We want to find out the way to make them more responsible or to help them see how they are destroying their lives. We get happiness from “fixing” our children  because it shows that we are needed, that we have value, and that we stand in the gap between them and the consequences of their actions. All the while we are helping dig their graves and nailing the lids on their coffins. While those are tough words, they are true. When we don’t allow our kids to experience the consequences of their actions, they have no motivation to change. Fixing is enabling and enabling can lead to death.

I listened with sadness as my friend told me about her nephew’s addiction. He told her recently that he would rather lose both his legs than give up heroin. While he may state it more boldly than most people, the heroin epidemic has enslaved so many of our sons and daughters who no longer care about anything other than using heroin.

“Well, here it goes; my testimony is only because of Christ and Him dying for me and the lost and sick in the world. It is only because of God’s grace and my yielding and obeying Him that I have been able to stand and testify.

“You mean I am supposed to be thankful for my child being in addiction?  I am to thank God that they are destroying their lives and our hearts in the process?  All the darkness and ugliness that has taken them over – even for that?”

It is so much easier to thank God in spite of the circumstances, to rise above, so to speak, and thank Him for keeping us through the pain and heartache.  It is a whole different thing to thank Him for the situation and the ripping, shredding, violently consuming agony we are experiencing.

This is not easy to read but it will help those of us who are parents of children in addiction to understand more clearly the terrible choices that threatens the very life of our child.

I NEED To Get High.

I’m your child, or spouse, or friend.
But I’ve changed.
I don’t care about you.
Not in the way you want me to.
I care about getting high.
I WANT to get high.
I will do ANYTHING to get high.
I LOVE getting high.
I NEED to get high..
and I will step over you to do it.

Happy are those who are strong in the Lord, who set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When they walk through the Valley of Weeping (Baca), it will become a place of refreshing springs, where pools of blessing collect after the rains! (Psalm 84: 5-6 NLT)

I often feel as if the Valley of Weeping is where I live, not somewhere I am just passing through.  The pain of destructive marriages and of children in addiction has been a part of my life for a long time. The pain of watching my husband suffer for the past 5 years with a debilitating and deadly disease drills into me every day.