I pray for a family I know well, and especially for their daughter … a daughter laid low by disease and living with an addiction to pain medication. It is a tremendous burden on the entire family and a crushing weight for her, at 24 no longer able to live the life she had begun to build for herself. She is a young lady who always lived life out loud … my prayer is that she regain her life and better health.
I spent almost 3 hours with her last night and it felt like a ministry. The tension at her house is so palpable, she lives for moments away from it, with a different adult to talk to. She is not easy to speak with, as the pain medications have her doing much too much of the talking, almost machine-gun style. But being with others gives her energy and is such a difference from the time spent in bed, either in pain or in a daze.
One thing really struck me, and it cuts both ways. She was describing how she feels when the pain comes into her mind, the headaches that strain her, the hot sweats of pushing toxins out of her system. And then she said: When I take the first of my pain meds, it feels like Jesus blowing in my face … it feels like His breath, and the pain starts to lessen.
On the one hand, that is so scary. I have read about and seen movies where the addiction to heroin and crack is so intense, it seems like a religious experience. The addicts give themselves up to the high, almost like a sacrifice. They are in another world, but probably not with Jesus. On the other hand, how does she see Jesus? In her mind, is her mentioning Him a way to express how positive the feeling is, a way to show she is still “with Him”?
Hard to say, but I pray today that she finds her way back to Him and back to herself. I pray that she will accept the need she has to be weaned from the pain medicines she is addicted to. Jesus can help, if she lets Him.
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