Almost to the end.......

There is a quote from Charles Spurgeon that spoke to me when I first heard it:

God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you cannot trace his hand
Trust his heart.

So I trusted God to show up and I asked him to hold me up. For four years we lived through the highs and lows of a family that loves an addict. I went to places I never dreamed I would go…both literally and figuratively. I never ever expected to see my child in an orange jumpsuit behind bars. I would never have imagined a day when I would say ‘thank God he is choosing alcohol now instead of pot…at least it’s legal”. Long periods of time would go by where he was almost the happy funny kid I gave birth to, followed by periods where he gave into Satan’s lies and slide into the cesspool of lies that the enemy filled his mind with and he would attempt yet again to drown out those voices of insecurity and inadequacy with drugs and alcohol. I prayed for him to get sober. I prayed that God would somehow make him hate alcohol. I didn’t see it happening. But it began to matter less to me. Not that I quit caring….not by a long shot. Not that I began accepting his life style choices. Never did I or would I do that. But I began experiencing the sweet serenity of knowing God was in charge. God loved my son more than I did…hard to imagine but I knew it was true. I still cried. I still mourned the loss of dreams I had for the kid. I still panicked from time to time. But over all I knew that he was one of God’s sheep and God doesn’t lose his sheep. [As an aside, he chose to get well on October 14, 2004 and as today has been sober nearly three years. Recovery works. He will never be cured from this dreadful disease that he has but he has chosen to live in recovery and I praise God for the deliverance. I am deeply grateful to all those who own a part of that recovery because of the battle you waged on your knees for his soul. You’ve loved him, accepted him as your own and that’s a debt a mother can never repay.]