Reverend Johnny Dragon

Some of you know that I work with alcoholics and drug addicts as a profession.  The addicts themselves can be very taxing, but their families are an entirely new level of insanity.  Addiction is truly a family disease and sometimes unfortunately the love for their addict blinds them to the fact that they are enabling them to self-destruct.

I currently have a particularly difficult client who has the awesome ability to manipulate his parents.  He has terrorized them so deeply and has controlled them for so long that they cannot even sleep at night.  I want to share with you a letter I had to write to them today.   The names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

Dear George,

I know that you worry about James and whether or not he is moving backwards.  He’s not.  If he was in a thirty day program he would be experiencing these same feelings the difference is he would be out there and he would probably get high over it.  When James demands that you come get him and demands that he is going to do what he wants, what I want you to be hearing is him saying that he wants to get high, because that is what he really means.  The kid that you handed me three months ago is not the man that he is turning into today.

I left this business three and a half years ago and swore I would never come back.  I had three former clients relapse and die in a 4 month period.  I had mothers thanking me for giving them back there children and then having to call me up and tell me what the funeral arraignments were going to be.  I had to explain to families why the children that they had taken home from the hospital and raised since birth had suddenly winked out of existence.  I was not able to find purpose around the death of those three individuals.  I had difficulty embracing Gods will.  I was angry at God. I swore that I was done and wanted no more of what God had to offer me.

I was not able to turn this over to God because I had decided that I was God.  A former colleague of mine asked me to come back to work in the field of recovery and I was terrified to do it.  I remember my wife telling me that I was wasting my time at the job I was at and that it would be a shame for me not to do what I was good at doing.  I remember looking at my own kids and thinking, if they were in that situation who would I want to help them?  Would I want someone like me? I remember hugging my kids that day and saying, okay God… here we go.

I am good at what I do and I say that not out of cockiness, but because God has decided to bless me with the ability to speak to people and sometimes they actually hear the message I have been given to convey.  I get up every morning and I finish my prayers the same way.  I say “God, your will not mine. Please don’t let me screw this up.”  It has worked so far.  I have low moments where I question whether or not I should be doing this and right about that time is when I get a phone call from a former client telling me how good their lives have become. They tell me that their marriages are still intact and that they are being good fathers and good employees.  They tell me that their parents trust them again and that they are proud of who they have become.  Just for the record… those are the wins.  That’s when I take a deep breath and say, “Okay God, lets do this thing until you say we are done.”

Please trust me. Please trust God.  Know that James is still learning and experiencing a new power that he has only just begun to know.  I know it hurts.  I get it.  Let me do what God has designed me to do and know that no matter what happens you will never have to ask yourself if you did enough.  I can guarantee nothing, but I can also tell you that there are no limitations to what God can do.  It is an honor and a privilege to work with your Son.  I am a better man by doing so.

J.D.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 3:17 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.