Redstone Together: Lenten Devotional

Friday, March 24, 2017

Lenten Devotional - Day 21

Scripture: Psalm 130:1-8

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;” (Ps. 130:1, 5)

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” These words of King David lamenting the death of his son echo the laments that have been expressed by my family when the scourge of addiction claimed one of our own members on November 6, 2016. Noah was 27 when he died of a heroin overdose, leaving behind a mother, father, brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, coworkers and many others who knew and loved him. Losing a loved one to a drug overdose is difficult to publicly acknowledge, but doing so and putting a name and face to this terrible disease of addiction may, just may, save a life.

Noah’s mother reflected on what it means to be an addict in a recent newspaper article written about his struggles:

“When you know the highs of addiction, you forget the lows. You forget that you’ve used your last $40 on your drug of choice and you don’t have money for food, or you blew your last paycheck on drugs and can’t pay your rent. You can’t afford a bus ticket home, because you wanted to get high last night and now you’re getting the shakes, and your stomach is sick and you need to get high…”

The grief felt by those of us who loved Noah often seems too difficult to bear. As his mother wrote:

“There are days when I don’t want to move, to get out of bed. I wake up crying, I cry all day, I cry myself to sleep at night, I wake up in the middle of the night with tears on my cheeks, only to start the cycle all over again the next day. His name, his face, his smile race through my head all day long. I’m not handling it well, and sometimes, I don’t want to handle it at all. The loss is just simply overwhelming.”