Living With Addiction

Never Give Up On Yourself

Day 4 of 40

My precious loved ones:  I am hoping you’re reading this because you have mentioned your awareness in rage and haste.  For starters, I love you with all my heart and soul and am so sorry you’re hurting!  ♥♥  Sometimes Perfect Love requires discipline and correction; this is how we learn.  There is no shame or blame here with what has happened, just the awareness of the accountability and reaching out for help!    

And even though you may not believe it, the pain I’m feeling is more than a broken heart, it’s a loss; the greatest loss of loved ones that any family could ever be blessed with.  That leadership gift that graces your lives with struggles is the testimony needed to share and relate with the world.  None of us are perfect; we all make mistakes and we just need to learn how to recover from them and get back up in order to grow.  Change is hard; I know this one all too well.

We all need the extension of the olive branch from time to time.  Grabbing ahold of it, though, presents many challenges filled with unknowns, but there is nothing to fear with Perfect Love.  The door of faith and favor and fulfillment is just waiting for you to grab ahold of and walk through.  My love will never stop; though it be afar right now!  God sees my tears and hears my prayers for the deliverance of anger, addiction and abuse.  This cycle needs to stop!

Living with addiction and its associated strongholds of anger, abuse and depression is a pattern that is being repeated over and over again in our families.  It has even claimed the life of some!  We are all beautiful specimens of our generations past so instead of running and hiding from the pain and patterns out of fear and shame, let’s embrace it and sever these addictive qualities. 

I kind of know what you’re feeling right now; abandoned and rejected, scared and confused.  I get that!  I am sorry you’re hurting.  I have felt that way myself more times than I care to admit.  This is what is tearing me apart the most because you are so loved and there is help waiting.

There is no shame or embarrassment here, just acknowledgement of the need for help and owning up to your own responsibility and asking for forgiveness.  Change is necessary for healthy relationships.  It’s a tough road, but a healthy mindset is powerful and full of peace.  That’s what counselors, support groups, family, and your responsibility in walking through those doors offer.  Going at it alone will only repeat, even intensify, the problem and another generation be cursed.

We have two choices:  Live with it or live without it.  I am no longer living with addiction or its byproduct.  I still struggle with my own strongholds of fear and denial, let alone anger and depression, but that is something the Lord will continue to work with me on this side of heaven.  I am not perfect.  No one is!  That’s the beauty of life blossoming.

I am not an enabler, nor am I co-dependent on the chaos and control spewing from the venom that entangles others into a massive web of destruction.  I decided to sever this dysfunctional lifestyle and embrace the protection offered from the umbrella of God’s grace and mercy to be protected from the storm causing all this pain long ago and follow up on my boundaries laid out.

Fear may have driven my entire life from the deposits of all the strongholds, but I will not engage in that battleground any longer.  I opened the chambers of my heart, but now with becoming healthier and stronger from living away from all the abuse, that world I left behind many years ago is where it resides; in the past!  It is scary, chaotic, and depleting and not a healthy environment.

Becoming healthy is an amazing freedom to live in!  I am seeing how God has transformed my own life because fear is loosening the reins of dictatorship controlling my decisions.  I am no longer surrounded by the fuel lines of anger and aggression and control that used to manipulate me.  I still struggle, but am prevailing.  I can see so clearly now how I do not belong in those strongholds God miraculously delivered me from.  

I may grieve now for a time and it will be hard, but by hanging onto the Lord, the Perfect Love who casts out all fear (1 John 4:18) and whom I know and trust wholeheartedly, this stretching will be brutal because I must be patient and await God’s timing to perform His miraculous healing.  I am walking by faith and not by sight; my faith walk.  It’s the being removed and patient part while grieving that will challenge my faith. 

When we’re awaiting the restoration and healing of our loved ones, we want the healing now!!!  I know I do!  The Lord assured me that your sickness would not end in death (John 11:4), but will glorify Him.  I will hang onto that Promise knowing I will see you again, touch you and celebrate while severing these strongholds afflicting our family.  I am sorry you’re hurting.  With my tears, this I pray with great expectation, in Jesus’ mighty name!

I love you… ♥♥