Hit By A Ton Of Bricks: You're Not Alone When Your Child's On Drugs by Dr. John Vawter

Author:Dr. John Vawter [Dr. John Vawter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mead Publishing
Published: 2014-07-16T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13 – Dealing with Chemical Dependency in Our Family

By Gregory and Rita Iverson

Having been in the ministry for more than 26 years, I tend to look for the deeper theological or spiritual meanings in almost everything. Chalk it up to a seminary education, maybe more significantly to the years I’ve spent in the ministry, perhaps more significantly yet to just experiencing the ups and downs and ins and outs of life. Whatever the reason, it seems pretty clear that the things that really matter rarely just happen. Life has meaning, theological meaning.

Not everything that happens demands theological explanation, of course. Things like my team winning a big game or overcooking the evening meal or running out of gas on the freeway probably have causes apart from God. Not that God isn’t involved in the details of life. It’s just that He has given us considerable latitude – freewill, most theologians would call it – over much of our lives. Some things happen because we planned them that way, or because we didn’t plan at all, or because we planned poorly.

However, other things, some of life’s major events, seem to call for a theological explanation – or at least an attempt at theological or spiritual understandings. Matters of life and death, human suffering and otherwise mysterious or miraculous events need a deeper theological exploration. When some event happens that has an impact upon my life and my family’s life for this time and for some time to come, I seek to understand that event in theological context. What follows is my attempt to share some sort of theological perspective on something that profoundly changed my family and me as we became aware of it a couple of years ago .

The Slings and Arrows of Misfortune

Life seemed pretty normal for us until the spring of 2000. Rita and I were in our 26th year of marriage. We had two children: Emily, 22 years old, graduating from college and Brad, 16 years old, a sophomore in high school. Emily had gone away to college and so there were now just three in our household. To be sure, we had already faced some of life’s difficulties. Our first child was stillborn. My parents divorced after 35 years of marriage. My father then died in 1996. My job as a pastor moved us from place to place, which stressed our family from time to time. The demands of ministry had occasionally made life less than completely comfortable for us. Besides that, Rita’s work as a registered nurse specializing in oncology, seemingly always a matter of life and death, has not been easy. Our remaining three parents were aging and dealing with various sicknesses, including cancer. But, on balance, nothing was terribly out of the ordinary in our lives. We handled life like most people handle life. The celebrations and pains came in roughly equal numbers. Our faith in God gave us strength for the present and hope for the future. In other words, life seemed pretty normal.

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