Addiction

This Christmas season I have seen and talked with so many people struggling with loved ones who are addicts. Addicts of sex, drugs, alcohol, abusive relationships. So tonight my mind is on it.

Addiction is a horrible, horrible thing. I don't know of anyone who would disagree with that statement.  My whole life I have been in and out of relationships with people who were addicted. I have never been addicted to anything so I can't say what it is like to be addicted but may I say being the one on the other side of that relationship is completely exhausting, exhilarating, hopeful, hopeless, and more often then not heartbreaking.

If you have been there you know. You hold your breath when they tell you, "It's over. I'm done." You hold your breath and you try to decide if this time you should have hope. Hope can feel like an enemy because you have had it before for them and then it's been crushed and with it apart of your heart.

You love them completely without complete understanding. Because you can't understand. You try. You look and you think I don't get it. Why can't they just quit. They have to see that this addiction could kill them and at the very least it is destroying their credibility. Why can't they see? Maybe if I explain it to them this way.  Maybe if I love them more. Maybe if I'm harder on them. We take it on. It's not ours to take but we do it anyway because we love them and we see the devastation and we just want them to see it.

I have seen people break the bonds of addiction and never turn back. It is so very very joyous. It seems so fateful.

I have seen addiction end in death. It is so very very sad. It seemed so avoidable.

What makes the one and breaks the other?

With so many people hoping, loosing hope, finding it again. I pray. I pray for you as the loved ones. I pray for you as the addict. While hoping in people will always deflate, Hope in Christ, believing that He loves them more than we do gives me comfort. I pray it does for you as well.