100530 John Baillie pp. 108-114

I too cannot help but worry about my children.  They are really men now, but to me of course, they are my children.  One thing I can share is that when one of my sons was dealing with an addiction issue I found myself in the worst position I can envision a mother ever having to be in. I had to ask him to leave our home, at 17 yrs old, knowing he had no place to go.  I knew in my heart that I could either show him he could stay in this lifestyle, while we, his parents supported it through our implied acceptance, or we could tell him that we would not aid and abet him in his quest to destroy himself.  We knew making him leave was a huge risk. He was suffering from drug induced psychosis, a serious mental health concern. We also knew that he could not recover from this unless he got clean.  It's a catch-22, and I could write much about this. He counted on our fear of losing him, of his coming to harm out there, and all the horrible nightmarish aspects to a teen on drugs being out on the street.  We anguished over how to handle the situation as we watched him growing more and more entrenched in the whole drug culture.  [We learned very quickly that we were on our own, that the law essentially ties our hands in these cases. Once a child is over 16, a parent literally has no rights] He began taking more and more risks with his life, in terms of what he was willing to ingest to numb himself. We had, in effect, all ready lost him. To make a long story short, I eventually felt myself let go. I asked God to take care of him, and with what I felt was the Lord's presence I asked my son to leave.  He was gone 10 agonizing days. We went out every day to search for him, and when we caught glimpses of him it felt like being shot. Every chance we had to speak with him we used to convey our hopes that he would come home, while very strictly laying out the ground rules. [Drug counseling, which included a tapering down of drug use with the hope of eventual abstainance] What I learned was the importance of being willing to let go so your child CAN make his own choices. You can't enforce choice. It only happens within  a certain atmosphere.  Since then he has done very well, although it was a slow often frightening process for all of us. I pray for him.  I thought I would have to wait until he was much much older before he would ever forgive me for pushing him out the door, but one night I got up in the middle of the night and he was on his computer trying to talk another young person out of drug use. He said, "you did the right thing Mom. There was no other way." and I wanted to thank God  somehow, but knew there was never a way to repay that debt. The long and the short of this, is that I could not help my son until I was willing to let him go.  It was a bit of a paradox. All parents of young people in this position eventually face the decision between holding on to them in the attempts to keep them safe, or letting them go in the attempt to make them strong. In the end, whether or not your children keep themselves safe isn't your decision.