I have purposely let sometime pass from my last post before writing again. I wanted to drive home the fact that…this takes time… Not one parent or loved one of an addict will all of a sudden have the answers or tools (materials) needed to heal or even to begin the process. Many of us will come to realize we in fact suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Seeing our loved one as they have succumb to an overdose, finding them living in a car or in a parking garage, or we have spent months and years hiding our purses, wallets, trying to protect their younger siblings. One day we realize just how much trauma our hearts have been through and we will take the much needed and warranted time to start looking for help.
The rose colored glasses eventually fall off, and we will eventually reach for a pair of glasses that will help us deal with the realities before us and they will also help us gather the much needed materials we as loved one will need. For me that list began with the “new tin” to patch the holes. As I stated in my last post, the project vehicle (or my mother’s heart) once the rust had been completely cut away was left pretty desolate. The new tin needed wouldn’t be just a couple of small patches; it would need whole fenders, doors, hoods and roofs. That new tin was found literally in my faith. I gathered it on my knees before God, crying out in desperation for help. The wounds I had ran deep, and there was no self-help book or group that was going to get me through. I needed the Great Physician.
He provided the new tin. He would become the support and strength needed to get me to the next step. There was nothing I could do to fill the holes; all the patches I had tried in the past didn’t last. They we very temporal and had caused even greater overall damage.
If you are like me and have come to the place where your heart’s so full of damage from the years of living in this… just like our addicts, we need to come to the place of acknowledging that there is a Higher Power that we must turn to for strength and peace. I urge you to begin in the same place.
A Mothers Heart 