Happy Days

Hi Dad! That’s the way my daughter always greeted me, and she would say it with a certain, sweet cadence in her voice, it always made me smile.

More and more when I look at images of Lauren I am reminded of the joyful times, not the pain. That’s good!

We enjoyed lots of great times. When I look at this picture of Lauren it reminds of all that was so good in her. Her smile always brightened my day. I always admired her willingness to try new

things. We enjoyed skiing together, something Evan and Nereida had no interest in, roller coaster rides, another thing Evan and Nereida had no interest in, camping out in our living room for Friday night movie marathons, and so many other special moments that are too numerous to mention here.

Somehow for Lauren things started to unravel in life. You can get a sense of how it happened by reading this blog post, How My Daughter Ended Up on Heroin. I still ask many whys. In my heart I feel there were things Lauren faced that we still do not know about. She chose to keep them inside.

One of the people Lauren worked with was a local counselor. It was after we discovered that Lauren was battling an addiction and she had been released from the first residential drug treatment she was ever in. This young woman made a lot of progress with Lauren, I could see it, Lauren could see it. It is important to realize which approach to the treatment of addiction or mental health works best for your loved one. For Lauren it was one on one counseling. As best I can tell once Jennifer (the counselor) started touching the pieces of Laurens life that were really hurting, Lauren withdrew, the pain was more than she wanted to face. Soon she was coming up with every excuse not to see Jennifer. I wish I could tell every young person, PLEASE DO NOT DO THAT. I know it hurts but press into the pain, that’s were the healing is found. The Bible says it this way: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning”.

That is often the problem. We won’t move toward the pain, we move away. It seems easy, I take a pill, snort a line, inject a liquid into my body either orally or via a needle. I feel good, the pain goes away, but it’s not real, it never lasts. Last week I mentioned something Lauren said in a Face Book post: ““many people with addiction, including myself, have said at least once (for me at least, I said this hundreds of times) I don’t want to do this anymore’ and may very well be tired of and disgusted of doing the drug but physically and mentally cannot stop. repeating this cycle of saying ‘I’m going to stop using’ and the very next day or even hours later doing that drug.”

I can so relate to that statement, I said it over and over hundreds of times when I was battling a cocaine addiction.

One of the things that was very hard for me when I found out that Lauren was addicted to heroin was how completely violated I felt. It was an affront to everything I valued and believed in, everything God had done in my life. I felt dirty. One of my favorite verses of scripture is 1 John 4:4 “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”  I can literally remember days that I would say that verse hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my mind when I was first fighting my own addiction. It worked, and I knew it would work for what we were facing with Lauren!

This is another picture that reminds me of all the happy days. It was Laurens last Christmas with us. I once heard Lauren mention to someone that this was the first Christmas in many years that she enjoyed sober.

We had purchased this goofy little car for a nephew, the kind that you just keep turning the wheel back and forth to make the thing go, seemingly, with a mind of its own. Lauren got on the car and started zipping around the kitchen and dining room as fast as she could, we all laughed hysterically. The smile on Lauren’s face says it all. It shouts to me the joy of all the happy days, and there are many, we shared in life.

Addicts need many experiences like the one I mention above. They need to re-learn that life can be good, fulfilling, and fun without the drug. It’s hard but families need to really focus on creating and experiencing moments that are not centered on the elephant in the room, the addiction. They need to have times when you are not trying to solve the most current crisis, fighting, or trying to come up with the solution to their problem. Times when you are with them just because you love them. This will help our loved one in the re-learning process that life is good and for them, it can be good again.

This weeks featured image is another favorite by Brooke Shaden