I’m not playing anymore.

No more Mrs. Nice Christian.

I wasn’t given a spirit of timidity. I was given a spirit of boldness and strength.

It’s time I started using it.

Shame has a cunning way of convincing us that our ‘ugly’ is better kept in the dark and secret place. What would people say if they knew that thing about you? How would people react to you? How embarrassing, you can’t possibly expose that. ….

What a load of bull. When the ugly is buried it gets to take root and grow more ugly. As the roots get deeper the ugly gets stronger and multiplies.

Keeping our struggles with Robyn’s disease a secret made me sick. Really sick. It made me angry and irritable. It caused me to have low self worth and feel overlooked. As a result I reacted in ways that did me no favours and was contrary to who I am.

Addiction is a disease and that is how I am going to refer to it from now on.

Robyn’s disease is back. She made a choice to unlock it and is once again powerless over it. When this happened last time I was silent. I didn’t blog, and when I did I was very vague.

Not this time.

She was doing super well, but left a tiny gap in the God-shaped hole. It quickly got filled with a guy. Who relapsed. Within 48 hours she was right behind him. She surfaced briefly and we tried to get her into detox. And then chaos came in and it got weird and confusing. By that time she had unlocked her disease and two days later she was gone again. That was three days ago.

Having a general idea of where she is I could go and break down every door to find her. I could use my connections with social services and the police to find her and bring her back. Funny thing, though is that it never really works.

But God. The last thing her sponsor said to me was ‘she’s in God’s hands now.’ She’s right. I can pray. I will pray. I’m not going to be shy or stay silent. I’m going to pray and I ask all of you praying folks out there to pray to.

Pray for her to be healed from this disease. Pray for her safety and protection. Pray for her safe return. Pray for her to collide into people who God put there to bring her back. Claim the promises over her that she will not know death; she will not be devoured by the beast; that the plans for her are good and for a hope and a future. Let’s flood Heaven with our prayers to the point where we drown out the saints!!(I hope that’s not blasphemy!)

Prayer changes things folks. It’s the most powerful skill Jesus taught us. It’s the sword that cuts through the thorns.

Join with us to pray. Our gloves are off. Let’s kick the crap out of the disease of addictions.

The charismatic Christian community are grieving the loss of Beni Johnson, wife of Bill Johnson who is the leader of Bethel Church in Redding California. I’ve never met Beni nor have I been to Bethel, but I’m no stranger to their teachings and have many friends who’ve been. Through his grief, Bill spoke on Sunday and a quote popped into my Instagram feed

‘There are aspects of His presence that you can only experience in the valley of the shadow of death.’

He’s right.

We didn’t lose Robyn, but we came close. Darn close. It wasn’t her time yet because Jesus woke me up to find her. For a brief time she was gone.

It wasn’t in that moment that I felt God’s presence. Nor was it in the minutes that followed or when the paramedics came to take over. It wasn’t even when she spoke to me for a brief moment.

It was after they had taken her to the hospital. I watched them drive off and I sat on the couch. It was four in the morning and the house was quiet once more. I was just about to call her dad and then it happened.

He showed up.

It wasn’t flashy or electric. It wasn’t loud or scary or surprising. The Great I Am sat beside me and held my hand. We sat there for a really long time. It was intimate and beautiful and felt like I had just melted into the arms of, well, Papa.

He was for me something He could not have been any other time. Not because He was incapable, but because the situation had never commanded it. It was a level of revelation I’d not experienced before. How much He was for me – how much He was for us. How he took care of every detail – even making sure he put supernatural headphones on our son, who slept through the whole thing.

The rest of it is indescribable and too personal. But Bill’s right, folks.

He was there. He had always been there. He never left. He never will.

That memory of the valley of the shadow haunts me. The only thing that brings me out of it is choosing to remember when God showed up to hold my hand.

For the first time in two years I was able to articulate an answer to the question ‘how are you?’

I’m about 60%.

I was then asked what my recent dreams/goals were.

Oh no. I’m not that far. I’m not at the point of dreaming. I’m only looking to the end of the day.

Maybe I’m more like 50%. I spent the rest of the night kicking myself for not looking to the future. It’s just not my reality right now.

Robyn and her AA friends talk about ‘normies.’ Normies are people who don’t live with addiction. She says she doesn’t think she’d ever be able to date a normie again, and wonders if she will ever get to the point when she can have deep connections with a normie. Outside of her family, that is.

It seems far-fetched, and maybe even outlandish, but I get it. As a normie who grew up with an alcoholic mother, there was much more to her addiction than actively drinking. It continues to impact us for years after she got sober.

I recently described it as a totally different world. A world where Nigel and I are 100% okay with her not having a job right now so she can rest and recalibrate and focus on her recovery. We never would have had that attitude had we not learned about addictions and trauma and the effect on the brain. And took the time to really listen to her and trust her. Trust that she doesn’t want to be like this – that she has hopes and dreams and wants to see them fulfilled. One day at a time.

A well meaning acquaintance mentioned a job may give her a sense of responsibility. I’d say keeping herself sober and alive is a pretty big responsibility.

I think back to my many years as a child protection social worker and the unrealistic expectations we had (and still have) on parents. Expectations to complete a 28 day treatment program and then come out and sort themselves out to get their kids back and go to all these meetings and make all these appointments and change friendship groups and block family members.

I’m exhausted for them and ashamed at how us professionals have totally diminished substance abuse. The system sets people up to fail. To a certain point, so does society.

Recovery is not linear and there is no quick fix. There is no one answer. It’s not getting a puppy, or a job, or an apartment. Those are all things that are built in to wider recovery but to hang on one answer or another will only lead to disappointment.

Our family is walking in a totally different world than what we’re used to or what we thought we would. We are being challenged and stretched. But we are learning to listen to each other, be kind to each other and understand each other in a way we haven’t before. In a sense there’s been a great deal of freedom released while we hold our hands up and become open to new and different ways of seeing things.

Most of all, I’m seeing God in things I would not have otherwise.

I think I’m actually even starting to breathe.