From An early age I learned the hymn penned by Barbara Fowler Gaultney, "My Lord is Near Me All the Time." Each stanza builds on the motif of a summer storm rolling in with flashes of lightning, thunder, and refreshing showers. The hymnwriter knows that even in the storms that come our way, God's presence is near.

Lightning flashed across the skies of my life and thunder shook the hills of my heart in 2012. It had happened before, and I knew that it would happen again, but I confess, I wasn't ready for it. Without going into unnecessary detail I will tell you that I learned something new about the God of all creation in the process of walking through a personal experience that tested everything I thought I believed.

As is so often the case, it started with a phone call. My child was hurt, and there was nothing I could do about it. Over the next 12 months, the realization that alcohol and drug addiction had affected my family became a painful reality. I was introduced to the criminal justice system and now have a bail bonds company on speed dial. I had to stand before my church and help them understand that our family was hurting and engaging in a personal battle that would probably affect my attention as their pastor in the coming months. You can't be this honest in every church.

Questions Without Answers

There were lots of tears, many sleepless nights, and the constant companionship of the enemy's whisper that I was a failure as a parent. For someone who usually has all the answers, I felt tied, blindfolded, and left to my own with thousands of unanswerable questions. The expenses associated with a personal crisis drain your bank account and your emotional reserves. The feeling of grief that had sidelined me when my younger brother died in a car accident years before returned in this experience as I found myself mourning the death of hopes and dreams that I had held for a child since her birth. My wife skipped over the grief and was simply angry. Very angry. She wanted everything fixed and she wanted me to fix it, but I couldn't.

About the time all this drama began to take place in my life, Let's Worship magazine carried the last "From the Pastor's Heart" article (spring 2012 issue) I wrote where I offered the encouragement to find a good hymn text for the hard times we face. Little did I know how much I was going to need my own advice. I write today to affirm that it is true. I know a God so great and strong! He has harbored us in the midst of this storm. He is faithful! In the past 12 to 14 months, I have learned many things. Here are some of the lessons that might help you or someone you know going through a similar crisis.

Share Your Troubles

It is important to share your hurts with others, especially others who will pray for you. When our daughter gave us permission to tell the church what we were going through, it did something phenomenal. I was preaching from the story of Jesus and legion, the man possessed by many demons, and discovered that our word "sobriety" comes from the word "sophreno" in the original languages which we translate "in his right mind." It was at this point I took a deep breath and said that our daughter had been struggling with depression for many years and had started self-medicating while in college. Her problem was more severe than anyone knew, and in her struggle she had become an alcoholic. I told them that she was in a safe place where she was getting the help she needed, but that she needed their prayers and support.

The response was amazing. Before I could finish the sermon, people began walking toward me to put their arms around me and pray for me. I didn't expect that to happen on a sunday morning, but it did. The following week, my daughter began receiving mail from people in our church. Sunday school teachers and deacons wrote her. People who didn't know her wrote her. A part of her recovery was no doubt strengthened because God's people were now praying for her. They prayed for me and my wife too. They wrote us more letters and cards than I can begin to remember. What had been a painful and shameful secret to us suddenly became a place where the people of faith put the gospel into practice. We found a new depth to the love that a church can have for her pastor and his family.

A Fallen World

I learned (or was reminded) that we live in a fallen world where there are many people who are hurting. My Tuesday nights became times for me to attend a support group with other parents whose children were addicts or alcoholics. Then there was the Saturday meeting I attended where hundreds of people, more than I preach to in a week, were gathered, trying to find the tools to cope with the pain, hurts, resentments, and frustrations of having a child struggling with, or in some cases rejecting entirely, a life of sobriety.

Everywhere we turned we met people who had a loved one in recovery. Some were at different points in the journey, but all had similar stories. Alcohol is killing our nation one family at a time. It is a deceptive destroyer. With no discrimination among the demographic profiles of society, alcohol will entice the young and the old. It will taste equally as good to the homeless man who lives on the downtown streets as it does to the affluent man who lives securely in the suburbs. There is no racial prejudice among the distillers nor the distributors.

Alcohol will steal the sons and daughters of the preacher as easily as it will imprison the child of a non-believer. It cares not one bit for the tears of a mother whose child's life was taken too soon by the drunk driver. It impairs the ability to make wise and pure decisions, and while it is the socially acceptable marinade for social gatherings and private unwindings, alcohol lubricates the disease of alcoholism. This disease is affecting more families in our communities than any of us can imagine.

Broadening the Horizons

I learned that churches can provide a better ministry to the community by embracing the recovery model of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-anon, and/or Celebrate Recovery. My daughter is home and enjoying her sobriety today, but not without the help of about a half-dozen congregations in my neighborhood who are willing to let AA groups and others use their buildings for meetings. She will need places like this for the rest of her life. These churches are modeling the hospitality of Christ by taking in the stranger in their midst. After 25 years of pastoral ministry in the local church, I'm ashamed that I rarely offered my facilities to similar groups, or allowed the church Pharisees among us to dissuade me from doing so because they wanted to argue the finer points of the program's language.

Lean on the Everlasting God

And a final lesson here is that I learned the value of holding on to hope in the midst of my daughter's recovery. Through hope, I discovered the ever-nearness of our Creator-sustainer. He was "near me all the time" this year. He was near my daughter too. He put caring individuals around our family who prayed for us, loved us, and withheld judgment. On the days I didn't want to preach (and there were many) He assisted me to proclaim His Word with power and conviction. I ministered from a new place, threatened by life's hurts but bolstered by a hope that does not disappoint.

Life with an alcoholic is lived one day at a time, and each day is filled with hope. As she continues in her sobriety, we celebrate God's nearness. A deacon in our church sat with me and my wife early in our journey and helped us sort through legal issues, health and recovery issues, and personal issues. He told us that there was hope for a better day. There were many times in our first six months of this journey when my troubled mind left me reeling in pain and hurt, but his encouragement to hope moved me to the fresh discovery of God's nearness. No matter where you're hurting today, the God of hope can and will keep you!

This article is courtesy of Let's Worship Magazine.