The Healing Journey

Dan’s father had a collection of inspirational sayings taped to his workbench, like “A job worth doing is worth doing right” and “Believe it can be done.” One that particularly annoyed him was a postcard with a yellow smiley face and the words, “Smile, God loves you!”

Back then, they didn’t do too much smiling because his father suffered from alcoholism and their home was anything but a smile-inducing place. Sometimes he just wanted the old man to die to end their misery.

“Smile, God loves you!” He always found that saying troubling, probably because he never really felt loved. Many adult children of alcoholics suffer from the feeling of being “unlovable.” It’s a sadness they carry around all their life. They don’t believe they deserve to be loved, and that feeling of inadequacy can haunt them.

However, God can change any situation, often when we least expect it. At 50, after a lifetime of destructive drinking, his father got into Alcoholics Anonymous and lived the last 25 years of his life sober. He was an entirely different person. The change was nothing short of miraculous. He went from miserable to happy. He helped other people. He smiled and joked.

At his father’s funeral, Dan was amazed at the number of people, whom he had never met before, who came up to him and told him how his father had helped them overcome their addiction to booze. Could it possibly have been the same man? Grace can do amazing things.

As Dan stood over his father’s grave at the cemetery, he realized that God’s love can heal even the deepest wounds, hurts and resentments. After decades of drinking, his father had lived the last 25 years of his life sober, praying, smiling, laughing … and loving. In that moment, Dan realized God had been at work when he wasn’t watching, and that was a cause for smiling.

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