Loving with Closed Hands.

How does a mother stop loving her son or daughter?

Is it even possible?

Do we have to stop loving them just because they have become an addict?

My heart tells me no. We can’t and we won’t.

There are times that the line between love and hate is so thin you would think you’ve come to the place of no longer loving them. But we might as well resign ourselves to the fact that we will always love them.

Loving our addicts must take on a new dimension. We cannot get caught up in the Emotion of the Love. A dear friend of mine often says “Emotions do not have brains”. Changing how we love, that desire that comes out of our hearts to fix our wounded children, needs to change. We CANNOT fix them. No matter how deeply we love them. No matter how much love we pour out on them. It will be wasted.

We will become exhausted, overwrought and empty. We will be spinning our wheels and digging a hole for ourselves. Addiction prevents them from responding to the love we are trying to pour out. We can’t expect them to act and respond like our healthy children do. So we need to love them differently, we need to love them with closed hands.

Hands that hold onto our money and no longer give it to an addict that uses it to continue their habit

Hands that hold tight to hope all the while staying in the reality of the moment. Opening those hands too soon can actually rob our addict of the Hope that is before them.

Hands that stay active in our home, loving the children that are healthy, loving our spouses who are hurting through this. Fill those hands with loving the ones who have the ability to respond.

Hands that pray… praying for our addict, praying that they will come to the very end of themselves, that they hit the bottom and have nowhere else to look but up. That they will hear God calling them out of the darkness and they will cry out to Him for strength and help.

Hands that reach out to others in the same place you are. Keeping our hands full helping to comfort another parent is good medicine for our hearts that long to fix our addicts. We can’t fix them, but we just might be able to give hope to another hurting parent.

Loving with Closed hands is foreign to us. Our making our emotional love unavailable to them for a time will be the best gift we can give them and it can very well be what brings our addicts to the place where they will be forced into recovery.

Be willing to Love with Closed Hands.