Finding Hope: A Plan for Loved Ones of AddictsSample

Day 4: Just Admit It, It’s Easier

What will happen? That’s the big worry, the great unknown: you don’t know what will happen when you finally admit that your family is in trouble.

And when we don’t know something, we can be afraid of it. So if you have a fear of admission, you’re in great company!

But the crazy thing is—and I’ve seen this over and over—once you admit your problem, that very same problem gets easier to live with. It’s much more work to keep your family’s secret a secret, while the benefits of admitting your family’s struggles far outweigh the hassles of tamping it down.

For one thing, when you admit your problem, you’ll suddenly find people crawling out of the woodwork to say, “Me too!”. It’s crazy to find out how many of your coworkers, neighbors, friends, and fellow churchgoers have gone through the exact same thing.

Trust me: you’re not alone in this.

Admission also provides a great opportunity to learn from those who’ve been through it. Why bang your head against a wall when someone can come along and show you where the sledgehammer is?

You’ll find the willing arms of a community of people, a network of shoulders to cry on, hands to hold, and knees to hit in prayer.

And who couldn’t use more of that?

Parents’ Perspective: Wendell Lang

Before we can come to grips with dealing with our children’s addictive propensities, we need to take a personal spiritual inventory. Once we have looked inward we can better deal with the social and cultural taboos of assisting our addictive children. Indeed, coming clean with the dirty little family secrets is a huge step toward healing.

I admit that I have struggled with having an addictive child while believing I “practiced what I preached.”

When we own our shortcomings as parents and trust God with our kids, then we are able to lay the choices of our children squarely on their backs. Then and only then can we admit that we have some family issues.

Of course we would all do some things differently as parents, but addiction is an illness, and hiding that illness serves no purpose. It would be paramount to feeling ashamed that our offspring has cancer.

There is a tendency to refuse to admit our struggle with hurts, hang-ups, and habits. We are prone to say, “I’ve got this thing,” Sometimes God sends other people into our lives to help us see those blind spots. This is called an intervention! These are hard, painful experiences, but we must be willing to hurt someone’s feelings in order to help them.

Even God has dealt with some of His children through interventions, like Isaiah, who said “Woe is me… I am a man of unclean lips,” or Paul: “Oh wretched man am I, who shall deliver me form the body of death,” or Peter: “Depart from me Lord for I am a sinful man.” These are men who came to face to face with their faults and admitted them after God shone upon them.

Remember: the first step to healing is to admit that you have a problem.