Praise for
Crystal Lies
“Raw, real, and provocative, Crystal Lies thrusts us into a world inhabited by more people than we may realize on the surface. This account of one mother’s struggle for the healing of her drug-addicted son speaks to all who have ever loved anyone else. Melody Carlson never fails to drag us out of our Christian easy chairs and right into the coals of the confusing culture in which we find ourselves. She never fails to reveal that place of compassion within each of us. Excellent.”
—LISA SAMSON, author of The Church Ladies and Tiger Lillie
“As an addiction specialist, I was moved by Crystal Lies. With great confidence, I can say that Melody Carlson’s story will enlighten, encourage, and empower you. Read this book; walk through its pages toward healthy, God-directed relationships.”
—GREGORY L. JANTZ, PH.D., founder and executive director of The Center for Counseling & Health Resources, Inc.
“An honest, doesn’t-pull-any-punches look at the reality of addiction and codependency in Christian families. Told in Carlson’s adept style, this novel will lead readers into the light of a powerful God, who stands firm and loves beyond all measure and who delights in meeting his children inside the worlds most impenetrable, convoluted issues. I found myself praying Carlson’s prayers over my own children as I lay in bed. Read, enjoy, and—most important—pass this along to everyone you know who is struggling with addiction.”
—DEBORAH BEDFORD, author of If I Had You, Just Between Us and When You Believe
“Crystal Lies creates a permanent image of a family in pain and the various ways they choose to sugarcoat their lives rather than face it. We are this family, whether touched by methamphetamine use, alcohol addiction, super-perfection and adultery or not. We are this family because we avoid, separate, pretend blindness, live inside fogs of drugs or denial because to face the pain alone is just too great. What Melody reveals through her crisp yet tender words is that we are not alone even when we separate ourselves. God has chosen to bring each of us closer. We are given the gift of hope and Gods love to take us through the lies, pain, and disappointment into a steadied peace. Melody’s Crystal Lies is brilliant Her best.”
—JANE KIRKPATRICK, award-winning author of The Tender Ties series
“Melody Carlson knows addiction is an issue that affects not only addicts but their families, their friends, their associates. And she shows that when the addict is a believer, addiction affects the body of Christ. Crystal Lies is a wonderful lesson, taught the way Jesus taught—in story. I recommend it especially to those of us who have believed we were being charitable when we looked at those marginalized by addiction and thought, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ Carlson’s highly personable prose puts that viewpoint on its ear and teaches us to see it as, ‘Here we are together, in need of God’s grace.’ Crystal Lies is clearly truth—revealed in fiction.”
—TOM MORRISEY, author of Yucatan Deep and Turn Four
“Crystal Lies pulls no punches about the emotional devastation caused by addictions, and yet it offers beautiful, accessible hope. Having been through the turmoil of addictive behavior in my own family, I wept with both the agony and the joy of what I read. Don’t miss this book!”
—JANELLE BURNHAM SCHNEIDER, author of “From Carriage to Marriage” in the Brides for a Bit anthology and “A Distant Love” in the Christmas Duty anthology.
Other Books by Carlson
NOVELS
Finding Alice
Armando’s Treasure
Looking for Cassandra Jane
Angels in the Snow
The Gift of Christmas Present
TEEN NOVELS
Diary of a Teenage Girl series, 1-12
TrueColors series, 1-9
NONFICTION
Lost Boys and the Moms Who Love Them
Take Time
Women Are Sisters at Heart
Letters from God
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
The Estherville Miracle
When the Creepy Things Come Out
’Twas the Night
Bitsy’s Harvest Party
To Lucas Andrew
Your strength is inspiring!
Thank you for sharing your life and experience with me.
Preface
Addiction messes with your mind. And I don’t mean just the addicts mind. Unfortunately, an addict’s life affects everyone around him, mostly the ones who really love him. As the mother of a son who has gone through, has been treated for, and is recovering from addiction, I understand from a closeup perspective how devastating addiction can be. When I wrote the first draft of Crystal Lies, I tossed out the chronological time line, and like a Ping-Pong ball, I jumped back and forth between seasons and events—one chapter was summer, the next was winter. I did this purposely to show how life doesn’t travel in a neat, smooth line for the family of an addict. Sometimes you go down the same road over and over, and other times you feel as if you’re going in circles. And too often you wind up on a dead-end street.
Of course, my wise editor quickly realized that this style of writing, although it might artistically portray the frustration and confusion of a codependent parent, would probably just bewilder the reader. And so I straightened it out. Well, mostly. I still allow the story to hop around in a couple of places, but I hope and pray that you’ll bear with me and that you’ll try to get inside the skin of another person—a person whose life has been turned upside down and inside out by drug addiction, codependency, and recovery.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank all of my publishing friends at WaterBrook Press. You guys are such pros! I really appreciate the quality of attention that each of you gives, and I always know I’m in good hands through every step of the process. Thanks so much!
Late fall
I haven’t seen my son in nearly a week now. Always a bad sign. But I’m trying not to think about that at the moment. Unfortunately, that’s a bit like trying not to think about purple elephants—as soon as you tell yourself not to, it’s all you can imagine. The mind is funny that way.
I saw a public-service ad on TV this morning. “Parents, the antidrug,” is the theme, and it shows a tough-love mom grounding her teenage son after she discovers him smoking pot. This woman is quite impressive, solid as a rock, and almost believable. But what the ad fails to show is what happens later. What does she do when her son totally ignores his “grounding” and sneaks out after everyone’s asleep? What then?
Really, I’d like to know what in life prepares a parent for something as invasive as drugs? Where is the How to Prevent Your Son from Becoming an Addict handbook when you need it? Or is this simply the kind of thing you must sort out after the fact? Is this just one of those painful lessons that just goes on and on?
And some days, like today, I don’t even have the energy to consider these questions. All I can do is put one foot in front of the other and try to remember how to breathe. I honestly don’t know where I’ll go from here. Maybe I don’t even care. Or maybe it makes no difference.
When I think of what my life used to be—all that’s been lost this past year—I feel as if I’ve been filleted with a dull and rusty knife and my insides are now spilled out across the dirty pier for curious onlookers to view and to judge. But my therapist says I must face all this if I want to get better. In order to recover, I must allow myself to grieve. And in order to grieve, I must acknowledge what’s been lost. It feels like a vicious cycle of pain to me, a spiraling hopelessness without end. But I promised her I’d try.
I’ve only seen Dr. Abrams for a couple of months now, but she appears to be a sensible person, reasonable and caring, and I want to trust her. But it’s been my trusting nature that’s betrayed me in the pa
st. Or so it seems. Although I have learned at least one thing through all this, and it has become my number-one rule in dealing with my son, Jacob, especially lately, and that is to never trust an addict. It felt harsh and unloving at first, especially since I’m talking about my only son, but I have come to believe it is necessary and, more important, true. Because the fact is, drugs are liars. They convince the user that their chemical highs will make him happy, but all they do is destroy him. Even so, the user falls for it again and again. Oh sure, he may end up facedown in the gutter, locked up in jail, or even nearly dead from an overdose, but he still believes the drugs. Jacob’s drug of choice, crystal meth, is one of the worst liars. And I’m sure that’s what’s occupying my son right now, but as usual, I am digressing. My goal is to focus on my own life today. Why is that so difficult?
My promise to Dr. Abrams was to ask myself how I got to this place. I know she wasn’t referring to this physical place, but as I sit here in this shabby, two-bedroom apartment that still smells faintly of pets I have never owned, I have to wonder. Day after day I look out at the busy street below and watch others. I study those people who have places to go and people to see as I make a feeble attempt to chart the series of events that have dragged me to what seems an almost certain dead end. Still I am determined to try to make some sense of what feels completely absurd and almost random at times. Or perhaps I will simply follow my best friend’s lead and take up smoking to cope with the losses in life.
It’s hard to believe that less than three years ago I was actually living out the American dream. A spacious and beautiful home on the hill, in-ground pool in the backyard, a Porsche and a Range Rover in the garage, a dog and a cat, and neighbors who not only knew our first names but had celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, and various milestone events with us over the years. It seemed so, well, perfect. There’s no other word for it really, and that’s what makes it all so ironic.
During our last year of “normal,” Jacob was sixteen and quite handsome. My brown-eyed, blond boy, a reflection of his father, lived and breathed basketball, soccer, and baseball. Academics were another thing, but that had more to do with his lack of motivation than IQ—or so the academic counselor assured us. Sarah, on the other hand, had just been named valedictorian of her senior class and consequently was offered several impressive scholarships. My husband, Geoffrey, was a senior partner in his law firm. And life was oh so good. Or so I made myself believe by skating on the thin surface of it all.
How quickly things change when you’re not looking. How easily we can be blindsided just when everything seems to be going well. And the harsh reality trickles down into every decision I make. Now when I set down my pen and go back for another cup of coffee, it’s the kind that comes in a tin can and smells vaguely like tuna fish. I can no longer afford the good stuff I never realized that grinding whole beans costs about five times as much as this generic brand in the big blue can. So many important things I’ve been learning lately. Still, I assure myself that I will forget those little luxuries in time. I will move on.
I sip the acidic coffee and absently glance out the window to see two young children playing on the sidewalk next to the busy street. I know their names now, but I still remember the first time I saw them down there, a girl about four and her little brother, who’s still in diapers. It was shortly after Jacob and I moved into this place, about three months ago.
Naturally, I went dashing down the cement stairs like a maniac, afraid that the small children had slipped out of their apartment unnoticed and would now wander into the street and be hit by a passing car. I’m sure I thought I was going to save their little necks. But when I got down there, breathless and on what felt like the verge of a heart attack, I noticed a young woman with bleached-out hair just sitting on the steps and complacently painting her toenails an iridescent shade of electric blue.
“Are those your children?” I gasped as I clung to the wobbly metal stair railing, attempting to steady my shaking knees.
“Uh-huh,” she muttered without even looking up.
“Aren’t you worried about all that—that traffic?” I pointed to the busy thoroughfare, four lanes of nonstop vehicles moving at forty-five miles per hour. “What if your children go out into the street?”
Then she squinted up at me and scowled, and I could tell that she wanted to tell me to mind my own stinking business, but she simply shrugged and said,“Yeah, well, they know better than that.”
“But how can you be so—”
“Look, lady, are you from children’s services or something?” She stood up now. Narrowing her eyes, she twisted the lid on her bottle of fingernail polish, then stuffed it into the back pocket of her low-cut and tight-fitting jeans as she peered at me accusingly.
“No, I’m just a neighbor who—”
“Then, butt out? She glanced over at her children, who I felt were playing precariously close to the street just then. “Avery! Warren!” she screeched. “You two get over here right this minute!” Then tossing an angry look my way, she grabbed her children by their scrawny little arms and yanked them, crying and complaining, back into the apartment just below mine.
As I trudged back upstairs, I felt as much like a spoiler as a busybody.
And I had to ask myself, just who am I to tell another mother how to raise her children?
But I suppose I relate to this arrogant young mom in some ways. I remember when I thought I knew it all too, back when I was about her age or slightly older. After all, I’d taught kindergarten for five years before I decided to take time off to start our own family. I felt certain I knew everything there was to know about raising good kids, and what I didn’t know I figured I could easily learn from one of the many parenting books that were already beginning to stack up on my bedside table. Naturally, Geoffrey, pleasantly distracted with his still fledgling law practice, wholeheartedly agreed with me on this. After all, we were intelligent and educated people. We were Christians. How hard could raising children be?
And certainly we’d fare better than our parents. Geoffrey’s biological father had been an abusive alcoholic, abandoning his wife and child while Geoffrey was quite young. Not that Geoffrey ever spoke about this era of his life. What little I knew about it had been learned from his grandmother. And even she rarely spoke of such things. “Some stones are better left unturned,” was her polite way of changing the subject. To be honest, I didn’t really care back then. I suppose I thought what we didn’t know would never hurt us. And I wasn’t particularly proud of my own family, although my parents had managed to keep their marriage intact until I was grown. I later discovered this was mostly “for the sake of the children and church friends,” but by the time the last of us left the nest, my dad, tired of the charade and experiencing what I’m sure must’ve been a midlife crisis, called it quits. My mother, a very religious and somewhat oblivious woman, still tries to act as if this never happened. I suppose it helped her case that my dad died shortly thereafter. I think she considers herself more of a widow than anything. But we don’t talk about that. I suppose both Geoffrey and I come from a long line of denial. We were both experts at concealing anything that made us uncomfortable. As a result we displayed this lovely veneer of comfort and ease while underneath it all we were slowly dying.
Wouldn’t Dr. Abrams be proud of me, I think as I jot down these profound thoughts and observations. I am making real progress. Then the phone rings, and I come completely unglued. It must be Jacob, I think as I strain to listen for the second ring so I can hopefully locate where it is coming from. Like most things in my life, the phone is not where it should be at the moment. I finally realize that the cordless receiver is in my bedroom. I had it with me last night, just hoping my son would call.
I trip over a running shoe that’s in the doorway as I dive onto the bed and grab for the phone. I’m sure my heart rate and blood pressure have risen again.
“Hello?” I say breathlessly, hearing the desperation in my own voice. How
I long to hear the voice of my son, to be reassured, once again, that he is still alive.
“Mom?”
“Jacob, is that you? Where are you?”
“Mom, I need some… some help.” His voice chokes.
“What’s wrong?”
“Can you come get me? Right now?” “Sure, honey. Where are you?” “Just outside of the city.”
“But where exactly?” I demand. Of course I imagine some of the worst areas outside of Seattle. Trailer parks. Crackhouses. One of those places I would never have seen if not for my son.
“I’ll meet you at Ambrose Park,” he says,“in the west parking lot.”
“Okay,” I tell him in a firm voice although my hands are shaking. “I’ll be right there.”
And, of course, I feel relieved. Just to hear his voice on the phone reassures me that he’s not lying dead in a Dumpster somewhere, the result of an overdose or a disgruntled drug supplier who hasn’t been paid on time. Despite my departure from what used to be my life, I still read the paper and watch the news, and I know for a fact that these things do happen. And while I realize I should be thankful this isn’t the case with Jacob right now, times like today always unnerve me. I never quite know what to think or do. I wish I had someone like Geoffrey to lean on right now. But that, too, is over. And I need to move on, to stand on my own two feet.
The problem is, I’m always second-guessing myself when it comes to Jacob. I’m never sure whether I’m doing the right thing. As I hang up the phone where it belongs by the breakfast bar, words like codependent or enabler or just plain fool roll through my brain like those metal balls in a pinball machine that go around and around but never find a place to rest.
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