September 2011 Newsletter

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Finding Completeness

 

Annie had a good job and a place to live, but she was alone. She had a natural need for companionship, even a spouse. What attracts one person to another is a story as old as humanity and filled with all kinds of romantic tales and consequences. She was at a car cruise watching all the entries pass by.

There stood Rick in all his scruffy charm. She asked about the bottle of window cleaner hanging on his backpack. His response of cleaning car windows and panhandling for a living did nothing to break the attraction. Annie said, “It was love at first sight.”

Rick was homeless and dependent on alcohol. She was searching for completeness. She admits, they had a codependent relationship from the beginning. They shared each other’s worlds.

Over the many years together, he would get jobs that he would keep for a year or more at a time; she became his drinking companion. They would split up over legal issues or alcohol problems, but go back together to fill the void that it left. Her need for him was greater than anyone’s ability to get him to stop drinking.

This was to be a tragic tale; perhaps, it had already begun before they met with his service connected disability. He tried the veteran’s recovery programs, but to no avail. Sadly, Rick died on the streets of Roseburg, alone.

Annie was a widow, living at the Mission’s Samaritan Inn. She was comforted here. She was incomplete. She had already begun to face her dependency on alcohol at Samaritan Inn, now she needed to deal with the loss of her codependent relationship with her husband. She needed to build on her dependent relationship with her Creator and Savior. She had accepted the Lord years before meeting Rick, but the issues of her marriage totally distracted her from her spiritual marriage to the Lord. When her vertical relationship with the Lord was not right, her horizontal relationships with other people were not right, nor was her personal identity right.

Today, she is able to quote a favorite verse, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts” Psalm 139:23. Annie had found her completeness begins in the Lord, not the bolstering of a friend or even one’s spouse. Her sense of self begins with the image of the Lord in her, not the reflection of herself given from other people.

She is in recovery, building on a new foundation. She has successfully moved out of the Mission and transitioned into a local church family, even their women’s discipleship program. She is a student at UCC. Annie now has a new completeness for today and eternity. Developing relationships will now be based on her identity and relationship with the Lord.