Restorative Recovery Letter to a Loved One

Letter to a Loved One

Theology in the Trenches

by Kathleen Kjolhaug

Restorative recovery is a process constantly seeking stability…making sense of the process of transformation. Recovery offers a future and a hope. May the voices speaking each week give rise to prayer. Prayer has the power to change things when we invite God into the process. His Word is active, breathing, and living.

This week’s article will give voice from a family member. Next week we will be hearing from an addictions counselor, and the final two weeks from the loved one in the midst of restorative recovery. May these give rise to hope.

Dear Loved One,

This is difficult to write. I vacillate between being angry by wanting to give voice to the pain that has pierced hearts over the years to being compassionate and trying to understand the root of your pain.

To be honest, anger hits the top of the list. Betrayal surfaces along with feelings of being used and manipulated. Love is a two-way street…it gives and takes. It is living and breathing. For some time now, I could hardly breathe. Not knowing was the foundation for much of the paralysis. The stories just never added up.

Texting, calling, coming to see you were ways of trying to let you know you were truly loved. Like a life-line embedded into the side of a mountain, it became one way to hang on. It was the only survival technique I had while trying to grasp for reassurance.

As you became more distant from even yourself, my stomach burned. As the light in your eyes began to dim, I wanted to jump in and beat the crap out of the sadness that had caused it. I wanted to reach into the very depths of the sadness and rekindle a fire within your heart. I wanted to put blinders on the side of your eyes so you would not look to the right or to the left but only into the face of Christ.

In this world we will have troubles wasn’t very comforting because when evil lays a hand on my kid…all bets are off; I want to fight the battle that belongs to the Lord.

Like a teeter-totter the household became. When you were up we were up, and when you were down we were down. One minute everything seemed fine, and the next minute the bottom would drop out. The word co-dependent was foreign to us at that time, and through much of this we flat out didn’t know how to let go.

When the lies got to be so out of hand that they began to jumble on top of the other, I thought I would lose my mind. Like Forest Gump, I wanted to run and run and run and never stop. When you operated covertly in a world in which you thought only you were in, the truth was, you were not alone. You took every single one of us with you. That’s how love works. You hurt, we hurt. Anything and everything that pierced your heart pierced ours.

Running off to start a new life and telling the world to just go to hell seemed like a good idea at times. But, when we choose love, it means we build, and I guess being honest is part of that building. Here is more honesty…more building if you will.

When you kept secrets, I felt shut out. Sometimes I wondered if you did it on purpose to hurt me. It felt like death at times. Then, I remembered the resurrection and that therein lies our hope. I believe in the resurrection and the life. I believe that He is resurrecting that which He has gifted from birth. “Before you were placed in your mother’s womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5).

We love you deeply. You were made in His image and He has never left you nor has He forsaken you (Heb. 13:5). Neither will we forsake you.

However, for this season, we must let go. For this season we will allow Him to do His good work in you and in that, He needs no help from us. We will pray. We will support in healthy ways, but we will not enable unhealthy.

We give you over to Him in trust.

Amen and Amen.

Anonymous