A
female
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:My alcohol history started in my teens and I remember being interested in alcohol, cigarettes, bikers, punks, gay people. drugs, sex, masturbation as soon as I heard of them. I thought God, Jesus, Mary, all the saints and apostles and angels were watching me.I was interested in herbs, stones dreams and symbols so much they had me confess in front of a bishop once a year. I ran away after graduation and ended up near Mexico where i spent a bleary three days in a hospital unidentified. I bounced from shelter to shelter state to state for the next five years. I emailed my family and random old friends from different addresses or messages from a payphone when i knew no one was there. I learned the Bible KJV and Catholic and NIV and affected a denomination when it suited me. I grew herbs as i learned about them and then stones and then I got into astrological counseling, numerology, tarot and so on. I was a new person in a new place. I worked mostly as a self employed person. I had a child and small business and gave both to an employee as i moved on. Titus is his name. That was 2002.I sobered up in the midwest two states away from my birth state. I applied for college and word slowly got around that i was in the Windy City. I bounced through apartments and couches and jobs but finally got the two room apartment above a corner store. By the end of a year I had a well decorated and stocked place of business and stayed sober. I thought i was OK but i got pregnant again and bwgan drinking heavily. I prayed to St Catherine on behalf of the child and asked her to find her a loving family. She was given to a couple who was a police officer and a kindergarten teacher. Priscilla. 2007.I was completely blown from then to 2012 when I went to a detox and a halfway house in Kentucky near some distant ancestors home. Apparently there were several Civil War ghosts nearby and i got interested to know if i could contact them. I moved in to a trailer park run by a Baptist Church where we slept four to a single wide and spent all day doing Bible Study. Community Outreach, gardening, housekeeping, canning, cooking, sewing, some "park leaders" worked as daycare workers and "teachers". There was a mens side and a womans side. We were separated and all had crazy pasts. I shared a trailer with a lesbian, a girl raised in a Apocalypse Church, a wiccan, and me. All drug addicted. I tried crack and meth and we moved to Alabama. Ive been through three halfway houses and have never told the whole story.Ive been sober two years and I attend non denominational bible study and work at a health food store. Im about to major in Nutrition and also a massage therapist. I want to do well for five years before trying to at least find Titus or point him to my immediate family. Same with priscilla's parents. But its so late! This is a weird time to ask for advice but where do i begin?
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (29 December 2020): Having five years sober is not going to prove anything to anyone! You mentioned several churches, several bibles and a bible based rehab of some sort. What you did not mention is whether or not you were saved! My guess is that you were not! My guess is that you are drawn to religion because that is what you know well enough to fake until certain people get off your back. Then you go right back to what uou want to do and your life spirals out of control again.When do you plan to wake up? Ever? Or do you plan to keep doing what you are doing, being convinced you will get away with it? You are not a person who could get away with anything growing up so what makes you think you are entitled to do so as an adult? The early interest in everything your upbringing forbade should have been a huge red flag that you were nowhere ready for freedom and independence!How do you regain enough trust back to GET to contact your children? By showing them you are mature enough! This means offering full disclosure anytime you are asked for as long as everyone sees fit even the rest of your life! Do not expect anyone to ever trust or respect you. Why should they? You knew that certain behaviors were wrong so they should have been off the table from the beginning.Show you are an adult by moving to a shelter in your hometown IF and ONLY if they are as strict as your parents and the elders you had growing up were. Get a job, maybe for a place like Salvation Army and volunteer for Church. Talk to a priest about your non belief and pray! Tell everyone you can't be trusted with any decision on your own and always assume they are right and you are wrong. Don't demand explanations! If you pay attention you will figure out why that rule is in place! Most of the time a rule is there to make it hard to step out of line or for someone else to hurt you. If you have to think of a way out of a rule, that is a sign you need to take extra care to follow that rule.If a male invites you somewhere make it clear that it will only be a short public thing and that you prefer groups. When he tries to get you alone make it clear that it is not going to happen and that you will not be around controlled substances. Kind of hard to have sex or be raped that way! Get your act together by not smoking, drinking, or doing drugs and by staying away from situations where they might be atound. Learn to call the police or security on people! Be open! If you are tempted to look into witchcraft then start studying the church teachings you were raised with and look for the truth! Titus may have been raised wiccan so coming at him with Christianity might not be wise. Write a letter to the man you gave him to. Leave Priscilla alone for now, her parents sound like good people. Just keep giving contact information and let them initiate from there.Good luck to you.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (27 December 2020): Hello! Thank you for writing in! I am going to focus on the ADDICTION part of your post since WiseOwlE covered the religious end. I MAY write another SPIRITUAL (not religious) answer in the future after I read what others have to say.Your first sentence showed an early interest in people ("bikers", "punks", "gay people"), and things (alcohol, drugs, sex, masturbation) that your religious upbringing told you were wrong. Me too! It sounds like you were raised Catholic while I was raised Fundamental Independent Baptist (Other readers: imagine the Duggar family with Jim Bob, Michelle and all the J children). What I mean is that we have something in common; a strict, religious,sheltered upbringing. An upbringing that made us "clueless" to the rest of the world an incredibly easy to get taken advantage of. I thought as a child (and as a teen and early college student) that this was unfair and wrong and entirely my PARENTS and PREACHERS fault when bad things happened to me. They (in my mind) left me "unprepared". They DID prepare me though! It was simple: if you can't see saying/doing/witnessing/being involved in something in front of a virtuous woman you know STEER CLEAR! I was also told "silence is consent". So, if I was in the third grade (I am 51) and I walked into an alcove of the newly built gym and witnessed several girls writing dirty words on the walls, it was not enough that I turned around and walked away. Because my father was the church/school music director I WAS being watched more closely than others. My mere presence there said "something is wrong". I was not supposed to turn into the alcove but I was supposed to continue forward until I hit the locker room. Back then, our tiny Baptist school had less than 50 people and ALL girls pre-school through eighth took gym together every other day. The boys took gym separately on the other days. There was no reason for me to turn into that alcove! Truthfully? I was probably daydreaming and not paying attention. The second I turned away, Miss Nancy, our gym teacher asked what was going on. I lied and said I didn't know. The girls had to "pay" by cleaning for a week while I had to pay by doing the same AND take my lunches and recess with Pastor Ed's wife for the rest of the semester. Why? Because not telling made me WORSE than the actual offense! Imagine a child that sheltered entering the alcohol, drug, and sex world!Anyway, onto the addiction part! I am sure you have heard of 12 step programs and probably Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the founders. Bill W. rode a motorcycle too! Not all bikers are long-haired tattooed guys who do drugs! There are MANY sober bikers, many Christian bikers! The GOOD point of ALL 12-step programs is this: Step One tells ALL of us that WE are powerless over our addiction (alcohol, drugs, sex, gambling, over-eating, anorexia etc.) and that our lives are unmanageable. Step Two tells ALL of us that A HIGHER POWER can restore us to sanity (wasn't our behavior under addiction insane?). Step Three tells us we can MAKE A DECISION to turn our WILL and OUR LIVES over to the care of a God of our understanding.I am going to go the Christian route real quick: Romans 7:18 "For I know that nothing in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is to present with me; but how to perform which is good I find not." Paul wrote that to the Romans. As you know, before he was saved he was basically a bounty hunter for Christians! He found Christians and got them tortured and killed ( he was a Greek Jew I believe) and became saved himself. If HE can be saved, who cannot? Doesn't his struggle still ring true today? That is Step One. Back in the book of Daniel, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was so powerful that he thought he WAS a god! Daniel told him that he would be driven from society and live like the animals until he learned WHO was the Most High Hod. That's what happened! "And at the end of days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up my eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most high, and I praissd and honored him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion and his dominion is from generation to generation" That is Step Two! Try Romans 12:1 next. " I beseech you, therefore, brethern, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this worldl: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, but that ye may prove what that is good, and that is acceptable, and perfect, will of God." That would be Step Three.Back to the 12-step stuff: pretty sure this comes from the 12X12 but it states tha AA does not demand you believe anything! I know women with 30+ years sober who use the universe as their higher power. I know a man, sober since the blizzard of 78 ( same year I got in trouble over the writing on a new gym wall) who considers himself an athiest but uses "Group Of Drunks" as his higher power. I happen to use Jesus Christ as my higher power. That is why it is so hard for me after 12 years if uninterrupted sobriety (yes, I used weed too) to NOT talk about God because Spirituality ( your relationship sith your higher power) IS the solution just like the second chapter in Alcoholics Anonymous/The Big Book says! We (addicts to alcohol, drugs etc.) have a physical allergy coupled with a mental obsession. In other words, not only do we have no "off switch" we also have a brain that says "this is fun! I want more!" A non-addict might take some blood pressure medicine that has a side effect of being loopy and think "uh oh I should call the doctor". An addict might say "Whee! This is fun!" That part is not our fault! The part where it IS our fault is where we don't stop "when there is yet time" (Not a direct quote but I THINK that was the Big Book). The point (according to 12 Steps) is that our mental obsession/physical allergy has ONE solution: a DEPENDENCE ON A POWER GREATER THAN OURSELVES. This means WE (not just you not just me) must be in constant communication with our Higher Power throughout the day for ALL things. Even a simple, "I plan to catch the #19 bus to work today, please allow me to get there safely and let all thoughts and decisions be from You." Even a simple, "OK Higher Power, alarm just went off, HELP ME today." And then, "It is time to go to bed. Thank You for getting me through today".How do you begin talking to Titus and Priscilla? They are 18 and 13 maybe? I do not know. I understand you want 5 years of sobriety but then what? It sounds like you have had several years of sobriety before telling yourself that you were cured and "no longer had to" do what HELPED you get sober! It sounds like you said to yourself, "cool. I kept my head down and followed all the rules for 18 years so now I CAN spend the night at my boyfriend's house and SPONTANEOUSLY jump into some girl classmate's car to go to the mall!" I personally did BOTH when I was 18 and that boyfriend? He planned to have sex with me. I did get out of it fully dressed and completely unscathed (No cell phones then so I walked a mile and a hlaf to a gas station to call a lady from church collect), but when her husband confronted him he said, "Yeah I invited her over to cuddle and talk but considering she always used the excuse that we were in public what did she THINK I was inviting her over for? I wanted to make sure she wasnt wasting my time". That classmate who invited me to the mall was not going to the mall. First, we had to pick up eight other people (station wagon), pass around a joint while driving, go to McDonald's (which I was expected to pay for) and then onto a party. I took (thank God) a bus downtown, then transfered to a bus to campus, and finally to the dorms. Even THEN I did not learn! I went on a 1987-1997 "trip" through addiction where I kept getting beat up by alcohol, weed, a DUI, a possession charge, a Failure to appear charge, a weekend in jail, a rape, an abusive marriage, a divorce, and twins before I surrendered and let my Higher Power take the reins.I am no better or worse than you are! I cannot judge but I CAN say that I have seen women come and go and those who go back to addiction are those who think that the 12 step way (and therefore the Spiritual life) is just "temporary" or "until they get better". Then they wonder why they relapse! It is not just a theory, you have to live it! (That is a paraphrase from either the Big Book or the 12X12). Whatever one does to GET sober, one has to do to STAY sober! I'm a dental hygienist and I see people from ALL walks of life. I ride in "the dental van" all through the co-vid crisis to show up in the "trashiest" trailer parks in the "scariest" end of town to help people. I never judge how a persons mouth looks! All I want to do is stop the pain/infection! Educate people! Ive been told I am an angel (nowhere close, ask Mathieu and Ashleigh, they are 9 now and will tell you!) I have been told I am the best (ask my husband Tyrone, he is a prison guard and recovering addict), I am told I am some "pale ass freckled half white b**ch a** h** who don't know nothing". (OK?) Or, I think of my clinicals in the wealthy suburbs where a state senator's wife had acid erosion that just screamed "bulimia" and I was told to ignore it. (I still pray for her every day).I am a NOBODY. I spend Tuesday through Saturday working 9:30-6:00, I send Mathieu and Ashleigh to their STEM school, keep them in hockey and Bible study and try to limit their media. They take karate and BOTH can cook simple meals with supervision. Mathieu likes things that go "boom" and plans to join the Marines (scares me to death). Ashleigh likes germs and has been studying how antibiotics work. Tyrone is a champion bowler and a deacon in our church. We had plans to travel to Honduras on a mission but we don't know what God has in store for us.Anything can happen when you follow your Higher Power's lead and stay sober! I will pray for you, Titus and Priscilla! I pray I meet you on the road to happy destiny!
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (26 December 2020): First, part from numerology, tarot cards, astrology, and all forms of witchcraft and divination. These open doors of darkness; and are an abomination to your Lord God, and Jesus Christ. If you know the Bible as you claim, you never would have associated yourself with such things; nor put drugs in your body to expose yourself to things beyond our control and understanding.
You still have things to workout lingering from your past; and your journey with God has to be sincere, not just going through the motions. God is not a hobby or a fad. He is our Divine Creator, not a joke.
You seem to be drawn to the outrageous; and you mix unusual philosophical beliefs and dark practices with the service of God, as if they're all one in the same. God is highly offended by such practices; and you can't bounce back and forth between Him and practices of darkness. For now, make up your mind which master you serve. The darkness, or the Light. You don't get to dabble back and forth. It's dangerous to blaspheme or test the Lord your God. God is good, but He also has wrath and the right to impose His righteous justice. His ways are complex, divine, and always perfect. He's God, He can't make mistakes. Human beings try to question His judgement or test His will, He's merciful all the same.
Your children are safe, and they will find you someday; but if you still delve in dark practices, maybe now isn't the time to search for them.
You are definitely on the right track at the moment. Prayer and true belief in God will definitely reunite you with your children; if it be the will of the Lord. First, your faith has to be real; and not just another practice you're experimenting with; until you decide to try something else. God is not the Holy One to play and trifle with. Your soul is precious to Him. He paid an enormous price for you as His beloved child, as you know. He gave His only begotten Son to save us from sin; so not to destroy us for our wickedness and disobedience. Jesus took it all to the cross and shed His precious blood. We are saved by His grace. He is kind and loving, as you know; and He has plans for you. You've found your way back, but He never left you; He kept an eye on you, so you wouldn't kill yourself. Kept a barrier around you, so you'd only go just so far. Oh, from what you've described, you've gone very very far!
Not farther than He could reach!
Those who are unbelievers toss God and Jesus into the pile with all that other mythical and religious nonsense you've exposed yourself to. Until they know Him, they will not understand why Jesus sacrificed Himself for us; or any of that business. It's all make-believe and silly. Unscientific! They scoff and laugh at our beliefs, and write it off as fantasy and nonsense. If you love and know God, you know that isn't so. You are proof! You could be dead, or could have completely lost your mind! I am proof!
Let unbelievers deal with what they think; but if you have truly chosen to love, worship, and serve our Lord God, you had best take His every Word seriously. If you want anything from Him, He has to know you truly love Him back...you must have faith; because the fact you have survived the life you've lived means He loves you to a fault. He forgives you, and you always seem to find your way back to Him. He will forgive you for your past; and put it all in the sea of forgetfulness.
People find it so hard to believe God can forgive us for such terrible things we do. He loves us so much. His power, love, and mercy is boundless; and His divine intellect is infinite. He is omnipotent, so there is nothing He can't do. He is omniscient, everywhere at the same time! He can and will reunite you with your children, but in His time. Life is a series of tests and blessings. He teaches us, chastises us when we need it; and blesses us with mercy and grace when we don't deserve it. He lets it rain on the good and the evil. He loves all of us, even when we don't believe in Him, defy him, or deny Him. There will be a consequence for unbelief; and in the end, everyone will be believers. It will just be too late for some.
If you know Him and believe in Him, and you want to find your children. All you have to do is pray. He hears every prayer. He acts and answers in His own timing. He is not a genie, ATM, or Santa Claus.
Here's the difficult part we all have to understand. God is sovereign. He is God all by Himself. He moves when and as He pleases. He does not always do things as we puny little flesh-puppets arrogantly think He should. He created both good and evil. He controls everything. His divine timing places everything in proper order and sequence; and He does things, and thinks, far beyond our human understanding. You may have prayed to see your children many times already; but it seems He isn't listening. He is. In fact, He is caring for them and protecting them. He is a God of restoration, and He says so. If you pray and believe He will reunite you with your children. Trust that He will.
Your children do not know you; if you have not kept in touch all these years. You will be a stranger to them. They will not instantly feel love for you; and your sudden appearance in their lives will be very confusing. You don't know what they've been told about you; or how deeply they've bonded with those who have given them love and care over the years. Just realize, that when you find them (and God willing you will) you will have to slowly gain their trust, understanding, and forgiveness; for giving them up, and not contacting them for all this time. If God does not feel it's yet the time, or they will not be safe with you, He will keep you apart. He will reveal His reasons to you. He is not cruel.
You were the prodigal-mother who lived an impetuous life; and let-go of your responsibility for your children for several years. God easily forgives; but humans don't.
Backtrack to where you gave-up the children, and trace the names and whereabouts of the people you gave them to. They will leave public record and paper trails behind. If you know their names. People who have kids to take care of don't move as much, or move within a reasonably close distance of their last habitat; unless they are military families, or decide to up and leave the country to start a new life elsewhere. Even then, there's someone, a friend or family, they've left behind. If God wants you to find those children, you will. If He doesn't, and He doesn't believe you're sincere; your search will be delayed until you are. He gave them to you, and if you truly have love for the Lord, He will see that you find them. I will even say a prayer that you will. You were in darkness back then, but not now...I hope for your sake!
God bless, and guide you. This was long, but the subject matter deserves a serious well-though response. You are a child of God; and as a Christian, I felt compelled to respond to this post.
My beliefs and opinions are not necessarily that of this site; however, if you search for comfort and peace through Christ Jesus, somehow you will find it. You never know when, where, or how!
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (26 December 2020): I think you're telling a story rather than asking for advice.It's terrible that you parted with two children but clearly you did this so that they wouldn't get affected by your life as a crack addict.Possibly both of those little ones had to be withdrawn from crack after their births and this could have affected their development badly.It's unlikely that you can create a bond with these children at this late stage.It's good that you have changed your life and got off one of the most addictive drugs available to humankind.Probably your best bet would be to continue with your five year plan and achieve as much as you like.If you find yourself in a better place in five years time then you can review your situation.I find it a bit off that as a child or youngster you were forced to confess to a bishop.That sounds like the start of your notoriety and I think you just obliged people by dipping your feet in as much murky water as possible.But it doesn't mean you are a bad person.It just means that you fell under some very negative influences and it is remarkable that you have managed to create positives out of such a negative history.And I hope you learn to trust yourself as you continue you pathway in life avoiding as many negative influences as possible.
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