And Sometimes the Battle is Lost

“ He will rescue the poor when they cry to him; he will help the oppressed, who have no one to defend them. He feels pity for the weak and the needy and he will rescue them. He will save them from oppression and from violence, for their lives are precious to him.“ Psalm 72: 12-14

Today is one of those days of remembering someone who lost the battle—my husband and daughter’s father. He would have been 55 this year had he survived the fight. Dan struggled with addiction all his life. He had been abandoned and abused as a child, something he could never erase from his memory. He carried the shame of his family history compounded with the shame of the events of his life as a child and the decisions in his life as a man. 

And they were too much for him. 

The Big Book in AA has a saying: “there are those who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average.”

He was one of those. He was not rare though in a world of people in pain who feel unable to overcome, who feel as if they have no one to defend them and thus are too weak to rise up from the trauma. Peter A. Levine, who is associated with The Meadows, writes that “when it comes to trauma, no two people are exactly alike. What proves harmful over the long term to one person may be exhilarating to another.” He goes on to talk about the wide range of events in our early childhood that diminish our ability to cope and the judgment we often place on ourselves or that others place on us because of our inability to get past it.  (pgs 7-8) (Levine, 2008)

Levine describes trauma as being:  “about loss of connection—to ourselves, to our bodies, to our families, to others, and to the world around us….We may simply sense that we do not feel quite right, without ever becoming fully aware of what is taking place; that is, the gradual undermining of our self-esteem, self-confidence, feelings of well being, and connection to life.” (pg 9)

I have seen others struggle with their addictions—seen addictions take over their lives before they knew what was happening. I have lost friends in recovery because they couldn’t grasp what they needed to do to turn the tide. And I have struggled with my own issues and wondered if ever I would stop repeating a pattern based on the trauma of my childhood. I am thankful to say: “but for the grace of God…” as I’m sure some of you may be saying to yourself reading this. 

So my daughter and I face today with some sadness knowing that eight years ago someone we deeply cared for lost his battle with trauma and addiction. We also face it knowing that God did finally release him from his pain and suffering and that he found new peace in the loving arms of a Jesus that he believed in. His inability to fight off the demons of his past doesn’t take away the simple fact that he believed in a power greater than himself, whom he called God and Jesus. That faith is what kept him alive through his many years of fighting his addictions. He had faith he would be healed, but for him the healing was often followed by relapse and more shame. 

Dan’s life and death reminds us what Luke wrote in Chapter 11:24-26: “When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’  So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.” Even as believers we may still find that we have to keep fighting the fight. As Christians we need to be there for one another as we fight our behaviors and bad habits. That is how we will honor Dan today—loving others who struggle and knowing that sometimes the battle is harder for them than us, but that we all have a battle. A battle that as a community we can help each other through, with compassion and love.

Let us not judge what we perceive to be failure in another but rather embrace the potential for healing and stand with others to fight when they are too weak: FOR THEIR LIVES ARE PRECIOUS TO HIM!

 

Levine, P. A. (2008). Healing Trauma. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, Inc.