And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, “Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.” Judges 13:3
Back when I first began learning addiction medicine, I took several online courses, during which the instructors made it sound like all their patients enjoyed success. Looking back, I realize that they were inherently biased to share the success stories, because that’s what we all want to hear. We all want our patients to find recovery and so, we celebrate those who do. What those instructors didn’t communicate, but which anyone working in addiction medicine knows, is that failure, relapse, and calamity are all regular features in our patient’s lives. Yes, we see some success and we celebrate those victories, but working in addiction medicine, like working with cancer patients, means accepting that bad outcomes happen regularly.
Growing up hearing miraculous Bible stories, I’ve made this same mistake of assuming perpetual success in life. Today’s passage, for instance, tells about Manoah and his wife who’d been barren, when an angel visited, informing them that they were going to have a son. Now if my wife and I had struggled to get pregnant, I think we’d have been tempted to read that story and extrapolate some divine promise from it. This is how God works. He’s going to bless us with a child, just like in the Bible story. When I read about God’s miracles, I’m tempted to think that’s how he must always work.
I see this often now in the lives of those close to the addicted. They’ve seen others whose lives have radically changed, and they want that for their loved one. So, they pray, asking God for the miracle. When it doesn’t come, their faith is wounded. Why God? Why won’t you save my child? Faced with persistent failure, they question their faith, God’s love for them, or even God’s existence.
Confronted with the reality of my patient’s failures, it’s easy to throw my hands up, becoming cynical. No one ever gets better. This is hopeless. I’m tempted to rely on results to motivate my behavior and if I don’t see the desired results, I want to give up. I’m responsible however, only for my own behavior. As much as a burden I may feel for those struggling with addiction, I’m not responsible to make them change. I’m simply responsible to do what I can to help, leaving the results up to God.
In my own life, it took me 15 long years to find recovery. I know that during that time, there were those who prayed for me, wondering why God didn’t answer their prayers. They, however, weren’t responsible for my recovery. They were simply responsible to be obedient to God, doing what they could to point me in the right direction, leaving the results up to him.