Walking With a Loved One Through AddictionSample

JOURNEY WITH A PURPOSE

What must forty long years in the wilderness have felt like? Deserts are draining, dangerous places. And yet, step by hard step, they followed his leading, and God prepared his people for life in the promised land. The wilderness is where much of God’s best work gets done.

In 1979, theologian Kosuke Koyama wrote a book, Three Mile An Hour God, in which he contrasts the instant efficiency of ‘modern’ technology with God’s way of teaching people – a style characterized by the forty years his people spent walking in the wilderness, where the learning was slow, difficult, and rooted in their daily experience.

As the Israelite's journey to the promised land advanced slowly, so too does the process of recovery from addiction – a reality it's hard to accept when you’re face to face with the suffering and sorrow it causes. Recovery journeys rarely advance with the fast and certain rhythm of falling dominoes! Instead, progress tends to be halting and precarious, like snakes and ladders. They are, however, journeys with a purpose – journeys that God uses to transform us, make us whole, and lead us home.

“There is no shortcut to the promised land,” writes Timothy McMahan-King. “If someone tells you there is one, you can know the land they are offering is a mirage. This is not to say that there isn’t a goal or a destination… But the journey is the place that transforms the wanderer so that the destination might truly be seen… Our impatience can destroy us. Our demand for results can poison us. The fastest is not always the best.”[i]

While the process may be painfully slow, recovery is possible. Addiction doesn’t have to be a life sentence. Indeed, change—as a point of neurological fact—is always possible. “God creates and cares for us in such a way that our addictions can never completely vanquish our freedom. Addiction may oppress our desire, erode our wills, confound our motivations, and contaminate our judgment, but its bondage is never absolute.”[ii]

As you walk with a loved one through addiction, one day at a time, may God fill you with steadfast confidence in his amazing grace and saving power. And may he comfort and strengthen you, as you wait patiently for his work to be completed.

[i] Timothy McMahan King, Addiction Nation: What the Opioid Crisis Reveals About Us (Harrisonburg: Herald Press, 2019), 175.

[ii]Gerald May, Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), 16. Kindle.