My 26-year-old son, Adam, has struggled with drug addiction for the past 5 or 6 years, and has been homeless for the last two. Witnessing these choices and developments have been heart-breaking, to say the least.  

As parents, my husband and I have tried many things over the years to get him the help he needs, but to no avail.

Prayer was all I could do.

I prayed persistently every day, feeling like there was never any answer, but yet, I continued to trust God through it. I knew it was all in God’s timing, not mine. My prayer was, “Lord, I give Adam to you and you alone. You know his heart, and how best to reach him. Jesus, I trust in you.”Jesus would sometimes speak to me through music, and one song in particular became my mantra of sort – “Make A Way” by One Sonic Society.

“Where there is no way, you make a way. Where no one else can reach us, you find us.”

I would listen to this every morning while driving to work (at the time, I lived in Seattle). This was the way God comforted me and reminded me He was still in control.

At the beginning of 2020, my husband and I had the opportunity to move to California. I did not want to move. We had lived in the Seattle area for over 30 years, but this was something my husband really wanted (we had family in Southern California, so that helped). I decided to trust God in this big life change.  

I did not know at the time, but which I am sure of now, is that this move was all part of God’s plan for Adam, even though he was still homeless in Seattle when we left. My mama heart was still breaking, but maybe this was the right thing. I continued with patient trust that God had him.

In early 2021, God brought me to Hillside, hired to be the accounting director. Working for Hillside was the second part of God’s awesome plan for Adam.In June 2021, I learned about The River’s Edge Ranch, one of Hillside’s ministry partners.  The River’s Edge Ranch is a faith-based, donor-funded program that serves men seeking to recover from substance abuse. I met a few of the ranchers who were serving at Hillside’s Family Field Day.

I heard their stories of transformed lives, and saw how happy they were to be free of their addictions and the stronghold that had gripped them. This seemed like the perfect place for Adam! I so badly wanted him to be there. How could God ever make this happen? I wrote Adam a letter inviting him to say yes to something like this, but got no response. 

Again, I put this in God’s hands, praying, “God, where there seems to be no way, would you make a way?” repeatedly. “Jesus, I trust in you! I give Adam to you!”

I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to be vulnerable and to ask for prayer from the Hillside staff and prayer team, so I submitted a prayer request for Adam. To open up and be vulnerable in this way was extremely hard. I had always kept the fact that I had a drug addict for a son to myself. I worried about judgement from others and the shame that often goes with it.

Another year went by, still praying, trusting, and hoping. God was still at work.  

This past July, we had a family wedding in Boise, ID. Adam called me saying he really wanted to go, but needed help with new tires and gas to get there. Normally, I would have dismissed this request as another ploy to get money for drugs, but this time I felt a huge pull from the Holy Spirit, saying, “Get him there.” So I trusted and helped Adam.  

The day after the wedding, God acted. That afternoon, Adam and his girlfriend were pulled over, arrested for possession of a controlled substance, and put in jail. When Adam called me, I made the hardest decision ever to decline bailing him out. We both cried, and I told him he was in the safest place he could be, and I reminded him that God was with him.

Adam was in jail for almost a month, and during that time of waiting, I contacted The River’s Edge Ranch, and made a plan for Adam. I presented it to him and amazingly, he agreed and called Tyler at the ranch. He was in – they had room! Thank you, Jesus!

The judge for Adam’s case agreed to release him to California and allowed him to complete his court hearings via Zoom. Another “thank you, Jesus” moment. Adam has now completed 90 days at the ranch and is doing well! Our relationship is being restored and I get to visit him frequently. He still has a long way to go, but God is definitely working in his life.

The waiting over the last five years has been so hard. I wanted to give up so many times, but I never stopped having hope and trusting Jesus in this. Releasing Adam to Him has made all of the difference. God was clearly at work, even when it did not appear so.

I want to close by sharing one of my favorite reflective poems, called “Patient Trust,” by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ.  

PATIENT TRUST

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.

And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

*Excerpted from Hearts on Fire

By: Peggy Jones

Peggy Jones

Peggy is the Accounting Director for Hillside. She loves spending time with family, enjoys taking long walks, and never turns down a taco.