DRUG AND ALCOHOL RECOVERY

It was about 11 pm when the life-changing event occurred. It happened in Boston, a northeastern inner city, one that looked eerie and sinister. I saw a flickering light in the distance and drove to see if it was an ambulance. I went up to the EMT in the parking lot and asked if the building a few hundred yards away was a hospital ER.
“That is a shelter,” she replied.
I told my son Ryan and his friend Tyler to keep the car doors locked as I gathered my angel pins and stuffed them into a bag. I walked over to a young woman sitting outside on a gritty looking step. With my heart thumping loudly. I smiled and said, “Do you want an angel pin? Do you need hope?”
Her eyes opened wide.
She was so pretty, dark hair, fair skin, about twenty-four years old…her outer appearance was beautiful. What was she doing here? The shelter was a detox facility and she was there for heroin addiction, she told me. She started out doing “percs” and the addiction progressed. I looked into her eyes. She could have been one of my daughters, I thought; how did this girl end up here. I stared into her eyes and imagined her as a sixth grade child, wearing flashy sneakers with neon laces. I pictured a happy, loving, outgoing girl. That inner self seemed hidden behind anxiety and shame. Her parents had her “sectioned” a few times and she had been in counseling. They had tried to help her, free her.
As I traveled from city to city, I met lots of people hurting and suffering from addictions. Often people gathered around, people from “the other side of the tracks,” those with many teeth missing, disheveled, a few looking wild and crazy from partying, and a lost-looking older ladies grumbling. They were people no different than you and me – just weathering their problems alone and with the burden of addiction. They needed a miracle – could my small team of angel pin be a symbol of compassion and support?
I passed out thousands of pins and rosaries to folks with bandannas tied around their heads, body piercings and lots of tattoos.
A staff member from this shelter came over and sorted through my plastic bags of pins. He said he would like to pass them to out-of-state relatives and patients at the support meetings, people desperately needing encouragement..
Back to the young girl - I told her I believed in her and that she was going to be okay.
“I’ll be praying for you, keep in touch, Lisa,” I said. She stood up to walk away. She could have been a runway model.
“I will call you,” she promised.
I talked to her about my young adult children and how I worried about them, experimenting with things I, as a fifty-something mother, didn’t approve of. I told her of my tirades, how I took it personally when my kids put their lives in jeopardy. I shared the sadness I felt when I couldn’t bridge the emotional gap between us and communication was excruciatingly painful.
“I used to yell terrible things at my mom but I didn’t really mean them. I just felt so badly about myself,” she told me.
As she turned to walk toward the nurse, she said softly “Don’t give up on your kids.” She came back and hugged me. I hope the choices that took her down this traumatic road are behind her. It broke my heart and made me feel desperately sad.
She is worth saving, God. Please help her. In unlikely places, from a stranger, close to midnight in a sweltering Massachusetts city, I learned new insights about being a mother. I am not in control.
As Lisa reminded me; Let go and Let God.
The gift wasn’t mine (the angel pin) to Lisa, it was she to me.