Clean/Unclean

By the above title you are probably worried that I’m about to jump into some dissertation of Levitical Law. Not to worry I will spare both of us from such an undertaking…

For many months God has been prodding me to write on a very difficult subject, and last night He revealed to me that He has brought me to a place where I can start this, a place of absolute trust in Him. At first I thought it was just that I have distanced myself from the pain enough not to shed gallons of tears over yet another difficult time. Yet last night the whisper of His voice telling me, it’s not distance you’re experiencing, its complete trust in me in this matter. A place I never thought I’d get to.

It only makes sense to back track a bit to bring you up to speed to how I got to this place of absolute trust, so get your cup of coffee, tea or cold drink of choice and sit with me for a bit.

November 2009 seems like a life time ago, but it was then we discovered that my 22 year old son was addicted to heroin. He’s not been a model child, so this isn’t some “High School Honor Roll, Star Athlete goes to drugs” story. This has been a long painful decline that crashes into a drug addiction that you think only happens in Hollywood.

It was a rainy Saturday, my son had been gone for a few days, and for some reason my husband and I had decided to re-arrange his room. We started to take the bed apart so we could move it and there between the mattresses was a hypodermic needle.

My head started whirling in twenty different directions as I started putting all the puzzle pieces together, his excessive need for money on a daily basis, things had started disappearing, my silverware draw was becoming deplete of spoons, and there were those spoons I had found in the garage with burn marks on them… a hundred thoughts and fragments of conversations and observances came crashing around me and I fell in a heap on the floor sobbing uncontrollably for what seemed like hours.

These last nine months have been a roller coaster of Rehabs, Detox, fighting with Insurance Companies, finding programs that would take him, promises, failures to keep promises, more things missing, another trip to detox and yet another. I could fill numerous pages worth of text with all that has taken place, and one day I will write that book. But for now I will bring you back up to today, to last night after 5 months of being “clean” hence the title of this writing, to the phone call I received at 5:03pm at which time I heard the following

“Mom, I need you to bring me to the hospital.”

This was not the first time I had heard those words, but it was the first time I had heard them without having to beg him for days to get help. Baby steps… maybe

On the ride to the hospital he said “why did I go back? I was doing so good, why?” somewhere inside me my heart broke for him as he struggled with this, but I also heard a voice telling me; he’s in my hands, he’s always been in my hands.

Me and God have struggled over who gets to fix my son. It’s been a tug of war in true biblical Joshua fashion. I must tell you these past five months of “clean” it has been a delight to put down the “rope” and not feel like I had to tug it back from God. He (God) has proven Himself faithful to me countless times on my son’s behalf and as I dropped my son off at the hospital last night at 6:30pm I felt no need to pick the “rope” up. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God, the Great Physician had him in His care.

Trials will come, over and over again; the same trial may befall you. Yet each time it comes God is there, waiting for us to put down the “rope”, to trust Him completely. I praise Him this morning as I have NO desire to fix my son; my desire is to let God fix Him, in His time, in His way.

Unclean… and only God can make Him clean.