Recently, a sister in Christ invited a group of us to enjoy a time of fun and refreshing at her home near the beach. As I was going over logistics with my husband, he began looking up directions and mapping out where I would be. No, no, no, I said. That's not where I'll be. I know exactly where I'm going. The house was located minutes away from a place I stayed while I was in my early twenties. The day I was supposed to leave, I set my GPS, and pulled out of the drive, listening to a podcast I'd been eager to hear. About eighty minutes later, the navigator's voice interrupted and directed me to a shortcut, a series of back roads to get me just where I needed to go. A couple of rights and lefts later, I recognized names and landmarks I'd not thought about for thirty years. Memories --some pretty horrible --flooded my mind, and the weight of my emotions caused me to struggle to breathe. This is who I used to be. Let me first say, the things you see and read about when it comes to heavy drug use, they're all true. People who spend their days and nights getting high, who are fully dependent on illegal substances live like hell. Their houses are filthy and falling down around them --or they don't have a place to live at all, in which case they crash at someone else's filthy, falling down house because no one with a shred of sanity and a mortgage is able to sustain the madness drug dependence brings to one's life. Generally speaking, addicts' lives are a mess, their finances are a mess, their clothes are a mess, and their relationships are a mess. And it was my life with an addict, being an addict, and hanging out with addicts that had come back to me as I drove.
A single house, filthy and falling down, of course, was where I found myself one day. Nowhere to sleep or sit but dirty mattresses and a torn sofa. Evidence of drug use lie all around, and the floor was littered with food and wrappers. Little children, barefooted and clothed only in diapers toddled about. Children just a fraction of life older, faces smeared with dirt and whatever they'd fixed themselves for lunch, were keeping watch as "parents" used and argued. Their drug was not my drug of choice, so I was not partaking that day. I was just an observer, quiet and tense, trying not to look uptight, trying not to get called out and coerced into being one of them. But it was the first time I'd ever seen freebasing, and I remember knowing the police had been watching the house. Neighbors had been demanding for months that something be done about the drug use and all the chaos that came with it. What if they come and I'm here? What will I do if I get arrested? Who will come get me? But I didn't leave. In fact, not only did I not leave, did I not do drugs that day, I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything the next time I was there either. Or the next. Or the next. Or the next. I never did anything. Not drugs. Not leave. Not help those children. Not help those adults. Not cry and grieve for their pain and the futile ways they chose to deal with it. I did nothing. But that is not the most egregious realization that arrived with all of those memories: the most egregious thing is that I convinced myself they were all okay. Time after time, as I stayed entire afternoons at that filthy, falling down house, the initial shock of all that was taking place faded. No longer did I notice the smeared faces and littered floors. No longer did I care that people were so destitute of reason they lived this way. No longer did I think they needed to change course --at least for the sake of these sweet little babies. It was okay. They were okay. I was okay. And I was desperately wrong.
This is who I used to be. And I say that not to remain in that place or to punish myself in any way. I say that not to beat my chest and emphasize how far I have come. I say that to bring glory to the God who was with me even in those days, who looked on --How that must have hurt Him! --and kept me safe; not because I was His, but because I would one day be. I say that to bring glory to the One who forgives me for all of that; for my selfishness and my self-medication and my failure to obey Him in those days. I say that to bring glory to the Waymaker and Healer, my Redeemer and Transformer, who pulled me from that life and is every day making me a new creation. I say that to point to the only One who can use a filthy and falling down mess to bring glory to His name --the only name worthy of it --and give me a heart that now aches for people in trouble, a heart that is today praying for all of those I knew back when that was who I used to be.
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