After long years of waiting, praying, and most likely a crisis your husband is now substance free. Did you see large changes in the beginning and now old familiar patterns are starting to creep back into your married life? Are you married to a dry drunk? Addiction is Only a Symptom Bill W., one of the…
Recovery
Can Forgiveness Make You Stronger?
“Addiction robs us of the things (and people) we care about the most.” Bill W, Founder Of Alcoholics Anonymous. “Family was foremost to Dad.” (Dewberry, p.18) Three Weeks to Forgiveness Three Weeks to Forgiveness: God’s Redemption in the Dark Places of Addiction delves lovingly into the confusing messages and home life children of alcoholics. This book…
Children of Addiction: God’s Redemption of the Dark Places
Addiction comes to rob us of those we hold most dear. God’s redemption lights up the dark places with a glow the world can’t provide. We live in a culture that encourages us not to take our own suffering seriously… Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child Children living with an addicted parent struggle…
How to Pray for your Addict Husband
Pray! Pray for my addict husband I screamed at God. He is my enemy! He is responsible for all this mess! Walking the dog in the early morning while my husband and my young boys slept, I talked or more often yelled at God. Exhausted, I struggled to hold it together during every day…
Children of Addicts: Who Is Parenting the Children?
I remember kneeling to pray between the doors to my two boys rooms. Who is parenting the children I thought. Children of addicts struggle with the long-term effects of family trauma. Lord, I cried out, “I don’t know what to do. I am an angry exhausted parent. I say things I don’t mean, get frustrated…
Resources for Children in Addictive Families
My first child laughed a lot. The angry tension between his Dad and I only made him laugh more. At times this calmed us down and we laughed too. According to the Mayo Clinic laughter can: Stimulate many organs. Laughter enhances your intake of oxygen-rich air, stimulates your heart, lungs, and muscles, and increases the…
I am Not My Addiction: God Says I Am
I am not my addiction. I am a child of God. Hello, My name is Tanya and I am a codependent. Hello, my name is Sally and I am an alcoholic. Phrases so iconic in our culture that anyone can finish the sentence for you. God never design me to be anything but his child. When…
Calling An Addiction Intervention Specialist
I just did it one day. I called the Addiction Intervention Specialist. lAfter reading Why Don’t They Just Quit: Hope for Families Struggling with Addiction, I just picked up the phone and called Joe Herzanek. I sat on that ordinary day with no big crisis looming and listened to Joe talk truth to me. Joe introduced me in his…
The Year Addiction Stole Christmas
It all feels like an upside-down fairy tale as I share with you about the year addiction stole Christmas. In a book for children,Beamer’s World, addiction is personified as a “joker” style villain. Not super scary, he is a creepy and sinister looking man that seems to appear everywhere. Addiction feels like this, lurking in…
Why Are Children So Obsessed With Gingerbread Cookies?
Our families obsession with gingerbread cookies started many years ago as the result of a book and class project. In those early years, Run, Run As Fast As You Can, You Can’t Catch Me I’m the Gingerbread Man tickled my sons into fits of laughter. The youngest designed a kind of hide and go seek…
