When everything seems to fall apart, only God is the truly lasting Anchor of our souls.
On January 30th, 2016, Mike and Deborah Bailey received the news that no parent wants to hear. Their daughter, Ashlynn, had died of a drug overdose.
Her drug addiction started in the 9th grade with weed—to prove she was big and tough enough to hang with the other students—and over time progressed to pills, ending with a heroin addiction.
Addiction has a way of ripping open families and leaving wreckage that takes a lifetime of steps toward recovery. Like the Baileys, when you love someone who has an addiction, there’s a sobering identification that you can’t fix the problem. There’s also the pain of watching someone you love experience the depths of hurt and bondage to something that seemed fun but is actually destructive.
Deborah Bailey wrote God Our Anchor: Held Fast Through A Loved One’s Addiction for the struggler, the faith doubter, the relationship questioner, and for those who have tried everything else on their own but now knows they need to lay everything at the feet of God. It’s the book Deborah wishes she had as she walked through the addiction of her daughter.
She says, “During this time, we just really found out who God was. Prior to this we were Christians, thought we had it all together, thought we had the perfect family, and thought that nothing like this would ever happen to us—ever. I questioned my faith, who God is, who I am, and who we are as a couple. The journey that my daughter was going on was between her and God, but I needed God to show up for me, and He did in a big way. The baggage I was carrying—I was able to dump at His feet.
“I wrote God Our Anchor because I needed help with the battle that I was in with my daughter’s addiction. I needed something life giving, something that was practical. It’s not something that would fix my daughter’s addiction, but it was something that would fix me and would help within our relationships in our family.
“God walked with us through such an emotional time of turmoil and distress, and He met us right where we were. He showed up in a big way, and I want each of you to experience the journey that I had with God. I hope that He’ll walk with you just as He did with me, as you love your loved one through addiction.”
Are you feeling the weight of addiction in your family? In your neighborhood? Are you fervently praying God would remove the oppression of addiction from someone you love? This devotional is for you.
For those moments when you feel like you can’t keep going.
For the moments you feel so desperate as you seek to fight the battle for the one you love.
For those seeking peace in the rough sea of this experience.
For those who just need to be reminded that God is in control and can be trusted.
God is our Anchor. He will hold in the roughest of seas.
Written by the B&H Publishing Team