When I was working in an office about 20 years ago, we would all take our lunch together in the tea room. We ate and chatted and sometimes one particular very self opiniated woman would preside over our talks.
She was very proud of her son who had graduated as a pharmacist and who had his own pharmacy. We saw no harm in that: we would have been proud of his achievements if he was our own son. But one day, she overstepped the mark and upset quite a few women at the table. Myself included.
One of the conversations centred around drug addicts and she declared them all to be a waste of space and definitely would be better off overdosing and dying and getting it over with.
At the time I was a mother of two drug addicted sons who I love dearly and pray for daily with the gut wrenching and desperate prayers that only a mother prays- I took exception to that.
With my stomach turning ill, I picked up my sandwich and took my cup of tea out of the tea room and ate and drank it in my car. She really was too much. I wanted my sons to be delivered and live.
From that day on, I avoided eating my lunch in the tearoom, especially if she was there, but one day I was asked by my boss to make him a coffee, and one of my former lunchtime companions was there.
She asked me directly why I never ate with the women anymore and I told her the truth. I told her that so and so was so hurtful in the things she says and so prideful of her son that she had no consideration that there may be mothers there with prodigal and wayward children who were also drug addicted.
To my surprise, she shared that she too was no longer taking her lunchbreak with so and so because she too had a drug addicted son and it was just too painful to consider that he was better off overdosing.
I said that I was praying for my sons and that I live in fear that they will overdose and I cannot sit and listen to her without feeling sick to the stomach.
She agreed and said that was why she too took her lunchbreak in her car away from her as well. We both agreed that one had to be feeling strong to listen to her raving.
One who doesn't have wayward or prodigal children like so and so had, can not imagine the constant fear when the phone rings that it will be news that her child has indeed overdosed. It gnaws at a mother's heart constantly.
As a Christian, all life is precious and all drug addicts have been enticed by carnal desires and instant gratification and this is something that is very hard to break from. Even with the LORD. Such is the hold from drugs that many have succumbed to their addiction praying for deliverence. And they are saved. They are, because Jesus died for our past, present and future sin. And addiction is sin.
There is hope in Christ and today one of my sons has broken from addiction and can testify that God heard my prayers. I continue to pray for the other who battles with it even while loving the LORD.
To tell me that either of these sons or even your son or daughter who battles drug or alcohol addictions is better off dead is evil. It limits God's ability to heal and deliver us and negates His Blood, and sees only successful humans as worthy of that. None of us are worthy but are sinners saved by Grace.
Nothing has changed my mind about her and people like her: if I turned back the clock, I would still sit alone.
For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. Romans 14:8