{"id":21012,"date":"2026-03-11T10:21:50","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T10:21:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/uncategorized\/a-father-reconciles-with-his-son-facing-drug-addiction\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T06:11:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T06:11:16","slug":"a-father-reconciles-with-his-son-facing-drug-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpbookstore.org\/articles\/positive-living\/health-and-wellness\/addiction-and-recovery\/a-father-reconciles-with-his-son-facing-drug-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"A Father Reconciles with His Son Facing Drug Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someday he would hit bottom, come to himself, and come back home. Dad, he would say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d And\u00a0before he could say another word, I\u2019d go to him, throw my arms around him and say, \u201cDavid, I forgive you.\u00a0Welcome back!\u201d Then I would kill the fatted calf and the celebration would begin.<\/p>\n

I must have replayed that scene scores of times through the agonizing years of David\u2019s drug addiction<\/a> in\u00a0the 1970s, and it never failed to give me hope. But it didn\u2019t happen quite that way.<\/p>\n

Two weeks before his high school graduation David announced, \u201cI\u2019m dropping out of school\u00a0and moving\u00a0back to Oklahoma.\u201d Since his junior-high years my wife, Sally, and I had known he was drinking and using\u00a0drugs. We had gone to counselor after counselor, but nothing seemed to help. We had endured the pain of\u00a0watching him play varsity basketbal\u00a0l while high. We had lived through the long nights when he stayed out all\u00a0night only to return drunk or stoned. I had stood in our carport doorway raging, \u201cDavid, why are you doing\u00a0this to us? Why are you doing this to yourself?\u201d And I had seen him cling to the side of his orange Dodge\u00a0van to keep from falling, unable even to comprehend my questions. I don\u2019t know how many times I had to\u00a0take him inside and put him to bed, where he would sleep all day and all night, and sometimes all the next\u00a0day. Still, his\u00a0announcement shocked us.<\/p>\n

Sally and I went to our counselor. \u201cYou have no choice but to let him go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And so, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, I let him go. In the years that followed, I tried to live\u00a0out the role of the loving father. Sally and I never let ourselves be embarrassed that our son was a drug\u00a0user. We did our best to let him know that even though we didn\u2019t approve of what he was doing, we\u00a0accepted him. Although David often lied to us even when the truth would have been to his advantage, we\u00a0kept communication open.<\/p>\n

He left in May, returning to Oklahoma City, where we had formerly lived and where he could be with his\u00a0drug buddies. Sally and I agreed we would not intervene until he asked for help. From time to time he\u00a0phoned, and when he did, our hopes shot up. But all he ever called for was to ask for money, and we\u00a0always said no. We told him he needed to get a job and support himself.<\/p>\n

He found work all right, but went through one job after another. He sold his van and spent the money.\u00a0Unable to pay rent, David broke into our former home, which we were still trying to sell, and lived there with\u00a0no furniture, no water, no electricity. To buy drugs, he sold his blood. Several times he passed out from\u00a0hunger. Like the prodigal, our son was living with the swine.<\/p>\n

Finally in November David called and said, \u201cI\u2019m sick. Can you come get me?\u201d\u00a0I dropped my work, and Sally and I flew to Oklahoma City. The scene of what was about to happen had\u00a0never been more vivid. \u201cDad, I\u2019ve been wrong,\u201d my son would say. \u201cWill you forgive me?\u201d The day we\u2019d\u00a0been waiting for had finally arrived!<\/p>\n

The David we found was an emaciated shadow of the son we had known, weak from giving too much\u00a0blood, and starving. That first day he ate five meals. But it didn\u2019t take long for us to realize that however\u00a0desperate David may have been, he wasn\u2019t sorry, and the day wasn\u2019t going to end the way we\u2019d expected.<\/p>\n

Disappointed yet hopeful, we took David to Idaho and sobered him up enough for him to finish high school.\u00a0We\u00a0were making progress. Next David returned to Oklahoma to attend a Christian college. Though drugs\u00a0had often kept him from playing his best, he was still a strong-enough basketball player<\/a> to win a full athletic\u00a0scholarship. More progress. Back in Oklahoma,\u00a0though, David fell in with his old buddies again and lost his\u00a0scholarship because of drug use.<\/p>\n

Through these years, Sally and I often became discouraged. Where did we go wrong? The question was\u00a0never far from our minds. David had grown up in the same loving home as his older brother and sister, who\u00a0were outstanding students at a Christian college. Why had he chosen an opposite path? We had raised him\u00a0in a church where he was surrounded by people who cared for him. Why did he prefer his drug buddies?\u00a0We had\u00a0always made time for family\u2014skiing in\u00a0Colorado, bowling, driving the four-wheel drive up the\u00a0mountainside just for fun. Sally and I had gone to every one of David\u2019s basketball games, no matter how far\u00a0away, no matter how bad the weather. What had we done\u00a0to cause David to choose this lifestyle rather\u00a0than the one we had tried to teach him? When our first two children were giving us so much joy, why did\u00a0David have to bring us so much pain? It was when these questions refused to go away that the picture of\u00a0the prodigal son\u2019s return would keep me going. Yes, I kept telling myself, he will come home.<\/p>\n

Where did we go wrong? The question was never far from our minds.<\/p>\n

David moved on to Kansas City, where he lived with our daughter and her husband. We kept\u00a0communicating, but David\u2019s actions gave us little basis for hope.\u00a0One day Sally and I were talking in our big country kitchen\u2014I sitting at the table, Sally working at the\u00a0counter. We had not been discussing David, but suddenly I was struck by such a forceful thought that it was\u00a0as though a third person had walked into the room and joined the conversation: You need to go to David\u00a0and ask his forgiveness because you have resentment<\/a> against him. For a moment I was speechless. I had\u00a0always pictured him coming to me, humbling himself, asking my forgiveness.<\/p>\n

I told Sally. She was surprised, but she agreed, \u201cYes, that\u2019s something you need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

No<\/em>, I thought, this can\u2019t be right<\/em>. I\u2019d seldom lost my temper with David. And though I had carried some\u00a0anger around inside me, I thought I had let go of it. I thought it was all in the past. \u201cAm I really angry and\u00a0resentful?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Sally said. \u201cYou have been for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took a while for the thought to sink in. \u201cMaybe I could call or write,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

But again it was as if a third person said, No, that\u2019s not right. It has to be in person. I\u2019ll provide the time.<\/p>\n

A few months later we were visiting our daughter\u2019s family and David in Kansas City. Feeling the time was\u00a0right, I asked David if we could go upstairs to his tiny bedroom to talk. David sat on the bed, the only place\u00a0to sit, and I stood. \u201cDavid,\u201d I said, \u201cthe Lord has shown me that I\u00a0need to ask for your forgiveness because\u00a0of my bitterness and resentment about all the problems we\u2019ve had.\u201d Then I waited.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d he finally said, \u201cit was partly my fault.\u201d That\u2019s all he said. But I understood what he was really saying;\u00a0he understood, and\u00a0the Lord understood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He stood up and we hugged each other. \u201cDavid,\u201d I said, \u201cwe\u2019re going to put the past behind us.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we walked out of the room David said, \u201cI feel better.\u201d So did I.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later David called and told Sally, \u201cI just thought you might like to know that I accepted Jesus\u00a0into my life last night.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he\u2019d been watching television with a girl he had been dating, a friend from college. \u201cI told her, \u2018You\u00a0know, I really need to make some changes in my life.\u2019 Then she asked, \u2018When are you going to?\u2019 When I\u00a0said I didn\u2019t know, she said, \u2018Why don\u2019t we pray together right now?\u2019 I said okay and we prayed, and I asked\u00a0God to forgive me<\/a> and come into my life. It\u2019s still hard to believe it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that night David never used drugs again. He came back to Idaho, and about a year later he married a\u00a0fine Christian woman. Today he participates enthusiastically in his church, holds a highly responsible job as\u00a0dispatcher for a major trucking company, and is a wonderful father to his three children.<\/p>\n

David\u2019s story didn\u2019t follow my script. He never asked my forgiveness in so many words, and there never\u00a0was a fatted calf. But more important, I had to depart from the role I had imagined for myself. Had I merely\u00a0stood at the door, waiting for David to come to me and say, \u201cDad, I\u2019m sorry,\u201d I might still be waiting. But\u00a0because God sent me to ask David\u2019s forgiveness, our son has come home.<\/p>\n

This story first appeared in the July 1991 issue of\u00a0<\/em>Guideposts<\/strong><\/a> magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someday he would hit bottom, come to himself, and come back home. Dad, he would say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d And\u00a0before he could say another word, I\u2019d go to him, throw my arms around him and say, \u201cDavid, I forgive you.\u00a0Welcome back!\u201d Then I would kill the fatted calf and the celebration would begin. I must have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[193],"tags":[194,195,196,213],"ppma_author":[1215],"class_list":["post-21012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-addiction-and-recovery","tag-addiction","tag-drugs","tag-recovery","tag-son"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Father Reconciles with His Son Facing Drug Addiction - Guideposts Articles<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Father Reconciles with His Son Facing Drug Addiction\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Someday he would hit bottom, come to himself, and come back home. 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