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.

From Mourning to Morning

There is a time for everything and a season for everything under heaven…
A time to weep and a time to laugh
A time to mourn and a time to dance. (Ecclesiastes 3)

Life’s journeys can bring us both weeping and mourning as well as Laughing and dancing. And sometimes the same circumstance can bring one to a place of dancing and the other to a place of mourning. The action comes out of the where the heart is in the journey.

This road I have been down with my son has brought me both. I was reminded of my time of deep mourning just this past Monday. I went to my first parent support group and found there those who were hurting deeply, they were in their time of mourning. My heart broke particularly for this one woman whose healthy son could not understand her need to mourn. We parents must mourn. The loss we feel during this difficult season calls us to do so.

They are our sons, our daughters, the very children we carried in our swollen bellies, we birthed, we rocked, we bandaged their boo-boo’s. These are the children we have prayed over, dreamed for, and loved. All those dreams of who and what they would become, the aspirations we have had for the lives they would one day live. Gone. Or at the very least put off to a distant time. A time we can't quite see or sure exists.
Addiction has stolen our dreams for our children, its stolen their dreams for their own lives.

My son is gifted and talented in so many areas. When clean I have watched him excel in two different trades, I have heard his bosses sing his praises.

Addiction has robbed him of that.

So I have mourned that loss.

Addiction has stolen his dignity and relationships with his peers.

So I have mourned that loss.

Addiction has stolen days, weeks, and now years of his life.

So I have mourned that loss.

As a mother who has watched her son become an addict, I have mourned the loss of who he was, the little blonde haired blue eyed boy whose smile brought joy to my heart. The small child whose heart cried over seeing a homeless man in the park, his compassion for others is swallowed up in his need to get drugs. So much potential for life and goodness seemingly gone…

And so it’s our season to mourn.

But the pendulum will swing in the other direction, and as they get clean and stay clean we will laugh once again and we will dance, and we can be there to hold up those who mourn.

Will He?

The long and bumpy road that has been my son’s addiction could today start to straighten out. Each time he’s gotten to this place, he’s looked for a different door with the name EASY on it. Rehab after Rehab he’s gone the Sober Living route, not that sober living can’t work, it’s just not meant to work for one coming right out of a Rehab. It’s meant for those coming out of a long term program, long meaning MANY months of sober living. His experiences in Sober Houses have always ended badly, the last one only lasting 5 days.

Just two weeks ago he walked out of High Point after being there nearly three weeks, and just days away from an interview with a Halfway House. It didn’t take him long to realize he had made a grave mistake.

We stood firm in our boundaries, and would not cave.

For three days he made call after call to get back into a program and after securing a bed the System failed him and he lost the bed. The Hospitals are cracking down on keeping them overnight while they wait for a bed and he made call after call to me that they were going to discharge him and he had nowhere to go. He was scared.

All the times he had gone to the hospital in the past, waiting two or three days in the ER for a bed to be found, being fed, kept warm, TV at his finger tips… not this time. Just before being discharged a bed was finally found. This time at a Rehab he was not familiar with. But at that moment in time he was just glad to have a place. There was no transport available to take him, so after carefully weighing “Is this Helping or is this Enabling” I went to the Hospital, picked him up and drove the unfamiliar route to SSTAR.

Just two days ago he called with the litany of excuses;

“I hate this place, this isn’t like High Point. There’s a nurse here that’s disrespecting me”

“Well all you have to do is your part and that’s to be engaged in your recovery”

I had the overwhelming feeling that he would run from here too. But I stayed persistent in staying the course. If he had, he would also had run out of options. And I think he finally knew it.

Today the running could end. Today he is to do an interview with Hamilton Recovery House, a long term Halfway House far enough away from the homestead to hopefully make a change.

Waiting to hear…

Will he?

Do Not Run Ahead

One of my biggest faults is running ahead of God. There are more times than I care to tick off that I have made a mad dash to get out ahead of Him.

Just recently in one of those ah-ha moments I came to realize just why I do that. Understanding how our family of origin operates can unlock many secrets to our behavior and this was one of them.

Knowing you have the problem of running ahead of God and not running ahead of God are two different things. But I can assure you He is working on that in me. Just minutes after my last post of Freedom in Saying No – Part 4 my cell phone rang. It was my son telling me he had been kicked out of a Rehab and I needed to come get him right now.

A still small voice was telling me…

This is a test…

Would I pass or would I fail, would I cave already?

Is this helping or am I about to enable again?

I took a deep breath and decided this would be enabling and I needed to let him go, to let him struggle this one out. I couldn’t say for sure what God was doing, but I knew He was and there would be no running ahead of him this time.

I said No as firmly as I could.

God in His infinite wisdom provided a Christian woman who sort of knew my son to offer him a ride and on that ride he heard about his need to repent, to turn from sin and that more than anything he needed Jesus. Now he’s heard that from me over and over, but this would be from a new voice, a voice that God had ordained for just this moment.

Just a few days later my son would try to get back into a Rehab… For the first time all the helps that had been out there, the doors would be closed. No over nights at the hospital until a bed was ready. In absolute fear of being homeless he called me begging me to come pick him up.

Once again I heard the still small voice in my head …

This is a test…

No more enabling for me, no more running ahead of what God has in mind. I reminded myself that God is good, He is always good.

Because I said No... and he had run out of all other options he went through his phone list and found the number of one of the Elders from our church and asked for help. Right now he is the car of with him, again hearing a new voice, a God ordained voice. A voice I am sure God planned to use long before today.

Today not only did I refuse to enable, I refuse to run ahead of God.

Philippians 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Freedom in Saying No (Part 4)

The road to freedom of any kind is paved with a lot of battles, bumps, potholes, and roadblocks.

The journey I have been on has been no different. My friend’s insistence to read the book, and then the book itself only set me on the road. It has taken determination, falling, failure and utter resolve to keep moving down this road of Freedom.

Just like Allison’s ah-ha moment that I described in my last post, I’ve had a few that have pushed me further down the road. The first was last August, when I came home after being out of town for 4 days at a conference and my husband’s schedule had been pretty busy as well, leaving our son home a lot (which should be fine considering he’s 23) to find that all hell had broken loose in our home.

My son had overdosed and was found unresponsive, he was rushed to the hospital, given a medication that counter acts the drug he had taken and within 5 hours walked out of there refusing any other help… add to that finding out that he had lied about his girlfriend expecting a baby just to gain our sympathy and financial support. The heart sickness I felt was overwhelming, and the light finally dawning on Marble-head (mine) that he had NO desire to change or get well was enlightening. The only person seeming to fight for him to be well was me…I wanted him to change, I wanted him to be well…

This would be my first “AH-HA moment” that began the process of saying NO.

“NO you cannot live here; you have refused to go to a rehab after nearly dying.”

“NO you cannot stay here; you lied to us for the last three months so we would support the two of you.”

DONE.

The chaos that ensued after that brought a call to the police to have him removed. Remember I said when you start this process, it will get ugly. You must be prepared for that.

The next few months brought a peace to our home, a peace that I had not known for nearly 6 years. I had no clue how to live in it. My new found freedom was unfamiliar territory. During that time I would cave here and there in helping him (if I am to be truthful it was more enabling, he just wasn’t in our home)

It would be Thanksgiving before he ever walked back through our doors. ~ And nothing says battles, bumps, potholes and roadblocks like the emotions of the holidays and the frigid weather they bring. This would be where the rubber would meet the road in putting all that Allison’s book had to say to work. I’m not telling you to cut your child out emotionally, but I am telling you, you will have to NOT act because of those emotions.

I did…

again I would have to say… "My name is Susan and I’m an enabler."

In my post Peace in the Silence, I shared the utter despair of our family as my son walked out with $2500 worth of electronics; a good portion of these were Christmas gifts, this last episode would push me to new place, recognizing the depth of his addiction and illness, seeing my part in all of this, my undying hope that one day he will emerge a healed, whole young man due in part to my gallant efforts to give him another opportunity to succeed.

RUBISH

I cannot fix him, no matter how much love I pour on him,or how many times I help him…

The word STOP screamed in my heart.

I had to break free of this once and for all.

Finally saying NO, drawing a line in the concrete (no longer in the sand) will be the only way I can be of any true help. And if I truly want to see him healed and whole, it WILL never be about what I do. It will be about what God will do. Yielding everything to God (Y), giving my son up to Him, and NOT taking him back to fix, trusting that God has the plan all in place, I just need to get out of the way and let it happen. This one letter of the Acronym will be the most important one to implement, once you do...

The FREEDOM will come…

The road has smoothed out,

the battles, bumps, potholes and roadblocks are no longer visible. They’re not visible because they are not mine to endure. They are his…

If I can give you anything to hold onto, anything to take away from all of this… it’s this;
The Road to Freedom begins by saying NO! And each time you say NO, mean it, stick with it, If you cave, start all over again and eventually you won’t go back. The road will smooth out and the Freedom will be incredible.
My friend; there is Freedom in Saying No.

Freedom in Saying No (Part 3)

Being able to see myself as an enabler was a huge step, and a painful one. Answering those 20 questions from Allison Bottke’s book “Setting Boundaries with your Adult Children” had to be one of the most difficult things I have ever done. It took every ounce of strength I had to be honest with myself and see just what kind of mess I was dealing with and what part I had played in it.

As I continued on in the book I thankfully found that Allison gave us the way out! It’s only the first step to admit you’re an enabler, that was hard in and of itself, but to…

STOP

… as much as I wanted too, I had no idea how to.

Her Simple Acronym SANITY gave me 6 action steps to take to STOP the enabling.

• S = STOP, your negative behavior; enabling, blaming, and STOP the flow of money
• A = Assemble a Support group
• N = Nip excuses in the bud
• I = Implement Rules and boundaries
• T = Trust your instincts
• Y = Yield everything to God.

The S in Sanity would be the hardest to tackle. When you set a norm and start going against it to set a new one, it more than rocks the boat. And I will tell you when I began this process it got ugly. Saying NO when your asked for money for things you always caved in for in the past, you best be ready to implement the N and the I and laden it with the Y, and be sure you have A ready to call when you have.

What I’m saying here is this an all or nothing process. You can’t just Assemble a Support group and not take the plunge to Nip excuses in the bud (his as wells as yours). Or Implement Boundaries and not STOP enabling.

I wish I could say that after reading this I instantly began saying NO and sticking with it. I’d be lying to you and to myself if I even tried to breathe that as truth. What I can tell you is I already had A in place. I have an amazing husband who has loved me in-spite of being an enabler who has stuck by me in it all and through it all,and a group of girlfriends that had my back, that held me accountable, that cried with me, laughed with me and had no problem asking me the hard questions (or handing me a book to read that I needed more than them at the time).

And I had Y in place. I had a strong walk with my God, and I had been lifting my son up to him for quite some time. (Problem was I kept taking him back to fix myself.)

I slowing started saying NO, each time it got a little easier, less scary. It would be three months into this process when I had to firmly and with all the tough love I possessed to tell my son He could no longer live with us. That was August 2010, which is when I wrote “Letting Go of the Prodigal”. Over the next six months I got good at saying NO (S), staying accountable to my friends (A), not listening to his excuses when he’d call and start telling me why he couldn’t do something. (N) putting firm Boundaries in place, (I), I knew in my heart I was moving in the right direction (T) and my walk with God seemed better than ever (Y).

So why did it take two more times of letting him in and watching him fail miserably to finally (oh I hope it’s finally) to draw a line in the concrete? I went back and re-read some of Allison’s book, and in Chapter 8 she tells the story of her son’s court case, and how it got back to her that her son felt she sat there and cried just to be the center of attention. It was like a lightning bolt hit her, how little he cared about her and her feelings. That all that she had done out of a mothers heart truly meant nothing to him.

She state’s:

“Clearly my son was unaware of the depth of my pain and therefore the depth of my love for him. All the years I had come to his rescue out of love for him-out of a desire to keep him safe, to help during his trials and tribulations- all for naught. He didn’t get it. He never got it. Not only didn’t he get it, he didn’t appreciate it, Not only didn’t he appreciate it, but I suddenly realized with crystal clarity that instead of helping him, my actions had hindered him.”

Tomorrow I will end this series of post with my own Ah-ha moment and how I have gained my Freedom in Saying NO.

Freedom in Saying No (Part 2)

I can still clearly remember the night that Allison Bottke’s book was handed to me by a dear friend. The sting of her words sunk into my heart

“I bought this book for me, but I think you need it more than I do right
now”.

If she hadn’t been a trusted and dear friend I may have taken that as an insult, but I knew her heart and her struggle with her own wayward son, so I took the book home and tentatively opened it and I was met with a list of 20 questions that stopped me dead in my tracks.

I have copied the two pages from her book that encompass these questions and I will bravely post my answers:

1. Have you repeatedly loaned your adult child money, which seldom, if ever, has been repaid? (‘You had me at hello’ but I had to finish the list of questions)
2. Have you paid for education and/or job training in more than one field? (Yes)
3. Have you finished a job or project that he/she failed to complete himself because it was easier than arguing with him? (Yes)
4. Have you paid bills he was supposed to have paid himself? (yes)
5. Have you accepted part of the blame for his addictions or behavior? (yes)
6. Have you avoided talking about negative issues because you feared his response? (No, I had no problem confronting, I had a problem drawing the line in the sand, later that line would become concrete)
7. Have you bailed him out of jail or paid for his legal fees? (UGH yes and more than once)
8. Have you given him “one more chance” and then another, and another? (yes, yes and yes)
9. Have you wondered how he gets money to buy cigarettes, video games, new clothes, and such but can’t afford to pay his own bills? (No, I knew the answer to this one)
10. Have you ever returned home, at lunchtime (or called) and found him still in bed sleeping? (Yes)
11. Have you ever ‘called in sick’ for your child, lying about his symptoms to his boss? (No)
12. Have you threatened to throw him out but didn’t? (Yes, see the answer to #8)
13. Have you begun to feel you’ve reached the end of your rope? (Yes and was holding on for dear life)
14. Have you begun to hate your child and yourself for the state in which you live? (yes and it was causing me to slip into a depression)

15. Have you begun to worry that the financial burden is more then you can bear? (yes, and it was hurting our whole family)
16. Have you begun to feel that your marriage is in jeopardy because of this situation? (yes, I often asked my husband how he kept staying… he took the brunt of my son’s attacks)
17. Have you noticed growing resentment in other family members because of your adult child? (yes, it had caused numerous family problems with extended family and as gracious as my daughters are, they too were at the end of their rope in dealing with him)
18. Have you noticed others are uncomfortable around you when this issue arises? (Yes and No)
19. Have you noticed an increase in profanity, violence, and /or other unacceptable behavior from your adult child? (yes, and it was bringing out the same in me)
20. Have you noticed that things are missing from your home, including money, valuables, and other personal property. (YES, and the total of this is astounding)

“If you answered yes to most or all of these questions you have not only been an enabler, but you have probably become a major contributor to the problem."

"It’s time to stop”

The night I read that list for the first time, I can remember feeling a wave of nausea come over me. The final words on that page "Its time to stop" Hit me like a ton of bricks. I was deeply taken aback at how much of an enabler I was. It was as if Allison had written her book just for me, it so spoke to my life and what I had allowed myself to be apart of. It wasn’t until I got real with myself and could see what I was doing to him and to me that I could begin the road to freedom. I cried out to God to help me turn those 17 yes's into No’s.

In Part 3 we’ll go over the Steps to SANITY ~ the 'How To' in gaining Freedom.