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“God fixes everything” is kind of a child-like phrase, but there is truth there. I think I become about six years old in faith sometimes, which is fine, which is a vast improvement over being a two year old. Two yr olds tend to just throw themselves on the floor kicking and screaming when their world falls apart.

Several years back I was working in healthcare and just became completely overwhelmed by this kind of unholy confluence between Obamacare, opioids, and addiction. I was watching us make people sicker. Kill them, even. People needed the Lord, they needed soul care, they needed love, and they were turning to Western medicine instead. So if your life has become unmanageable, we got a pill for that.

Opioids are kind of interesting, some people do quite well with them, they manage pain, they work as they are intended, but others become addicted quite quickly. Addiction is kind of complicated, but one thing for sure, if there are spiritual issues in your world, if you are missing out on any soul-care, you become far more vulnerable to developing an addiction and a dependency.

Obamacare gave us this influx of people who suddenly had insurance and when you are faced with this endless parade of backaches, knee pain, and emotionally hurting people because life, well, we got a pill for that. I’m not pointing fingers at doctors and nurses, many of them are kind and well-intentioned, it is just that Western medicine is so not designed to care for your soul.

The world of addiction is dark, ugly, and painful, especially if you are on the outside looking in. Addiction is a thief that comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. So, grief, violence, suicide, abandoned kids, destroyed lives, jail, the hospital, garbage, mental illness, hoarding, homelessness, and thievery. I was watching heroin march through my community from one side and opioids march in from the other. Add in some meth because meth loves a bad economy, and it was just total chaos.

The kids just crushed me. When you have an addicted parent you are just emotionally abandoned, totally neglected, and it really begins to take its toll. I just saw so many kids robbed of their childhoods, robbed of the soul care they needed so desperately.  And if everyone around you is addicted,  your escape from the world, your peer group…..is going to lead you right into addiction, too.

I got nothing, just empty hands, completely powerless to do anything about it all, so prayer, lots and lots of prayer. In the midst of some of those prayers, accusing prayers, angry prayers even, God simply said, okay, I’ll fix it. Just like that. I was of course flabbergasted, and quite skeptical. He said quite clearly, “watch me,” and He reminded me of when I was a child and I had that child-like faith that totally received it and trusted in Him. Yep, God fixes everything. He did too, quite often when I was young. He rescued me from some desperate situations that really seemed to have no solution. No solution, but God.

I have been watching. I have taken note of so many changes going on. Some people don’t like our President but he and the First Lady have taken on the opioid epidemic head on, and they are making progress, there is change afoot. The Justice Dept has broken up some major crime rings, lots and lots of drugs have been seized, some healthcare policies have changed. We are now seeing testimonies from former addicts, and public awareness campaigns…and memorials. The economy has started to improve, joblessness has declined, and this administration has taken up the cause of faith, they seem to understand that freedom of religion is not freedom from religion.

Sometimes people have a hard time with “religion,” it’s left a bad taste in their mouth. They don’t understand that people still need soul care, they need hope, they need somewhere to place their eyes when life starts swirling the drain.

God said He’d fix it and He is fixing it. Perhaps unknown to some, but that is actually the result of hundreds of thousands of desperate prayers coming from all over the country, heartbroken parents, grieving children, and cops too, just drowning in this sea of hopelessness, feeling overwhelmed and powerless to do anything to make it better.

Prayer works, prayer matters, prayer changes things. “God fixes everything.”

I can’t make anyone “like” this President, I can’t heal the divisions within our country, but I sure can tell you some of us were already living in the midst of the “worst that can happen,” watching kids die, enduring suicides, losing everything and everyone we cared about, and coming up against this brick wall that just left us helpless, completely powerless, and devoid of all hope.

I’m grateful for answered prayers and for a God who fixes everything.