She is my cousin, but that word alone does not explain why her story matters so much to me. I have known her for most of my life, and because she is the oldest of her siblings, I had the opportunity to watch her grow up before I watched many of them begin finding their own way in the world.
I knew her before addiction became part of her story, before anyone could define her by the things she struggled with. I remember the person she was long before the struggle began to shape the way others saw her.
That is why I have never been able to look at her life and see only addiction. I know there is so much more to her than the struggle that became part of her story.
I have also watched some of her siblings enter places that look much like the ones she once struggled to leave. Some are still there, while others may not yet realize that they have begun walking a similar road.
That makes her story even more meaningful to me. I have seen enough within our family to understand that addiction does not always announce itself when it arrives. Sometimes it becomes part of a person’s life gradually, until they can no longer see how much control it has taken.
Before the struggle
There was a person here before there was a problem.
She was raised in the Baptist faith, and that was the faith she knew. She believed what she had been taught, attended church, and had experiences where people worshipped, prayed, cried out, and sought after God.
She was always something of a free spirit, with a longing that seemed to reach beyond what she could explain.
She wanted to feel God.
She wanted to know that He was real.
There were times when she cried out in church, sometimes from fear and sometimes from desperation. Looking back, I wonder whether those cries came from a place deep inside her that already knew she needed something more than she had found.
She was searching for relief, although she probably could not have explained exactly what she was searching for.
The heart beneath the struggle
She was capable of surrender.
When she believed in something, she could give herself to it.
When something captured her attention, she could become deeply invested in it.
She did not know it then, but her capacity for wholehearted surrender would eventually become central to her story. The same heart that could become deeply invested in something harmful would one day learn to surrender fully to the One worthy of her worship.
What I understand now
She had the heart of a worshipper.
She simply had not yet discovered the One who was worthy of the surrender and worship she carried within her.