Rusty Benson
AFA Journal associate editor
August 2001 – On a weekend in July, 1997, past, present, and future collided in the lives of John and Susan Vawter. The couple celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary on the same weekend John had preached his first sermon as full-time pastor of Bethany Community Church of Tempe, Arizona. Then on Sunday night a phone call came that would claim their future in ways they could never have imagined.
“Mom and Dad, are you sitting down?” their son said. “Stephanie is using heroin.” An emotional tidal wave slammed into the Vawters – guilt, disbelief and most of all, fear.
“I could not breathe,” the former seminary president says. “All my theological systems flew out the window. All I could do was hold Susan. Finally, I prayed, ‘God, can you help us?’ That was as profound as my prayer could be.”
In the coming long hours John would learn that their 25-year-old daughter, who was living in Denver at the time, was somewhere in Juarez, Mexico. Was she alive? Was she in prison? Was she prostituting herself to earn drug money?
Through a lot of detective work, the Vawters learned that Stephanie was returning to Denver on the following Monday night. Stephanie recalls, “I had been driving back alone from Juarez. I had sold the stereo out of the car to buy drugs and had barely enough heroin to keep me from getting sick. I remember thinking, ‘I can’t go on like this.’ It’s like someone said: ‘You don’t want to live, but you’re too much of a coward to kill yourself.’”
Exhausted, Stephanie arrived at her Denver apartment and went directly to bed. Within a few minutes her parents, who had driven from Phoenix, let themselves into the apartment and walked into the bedroom. They sat down, one on each side of the bed, and told Stephanie that they knew about her drug abuse. Then her parents asked her if they could take her to detox and treatment. She was ready.
Later that week after detox, Stephanie was admitted for drug treatment in a hospital in Phoenix.
Today she has been sober for over four years. She works two jobs, has returned to college, talks about sobriety to inmates at a nearby women’s prison and attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings five times a week. (She says recovery principles are the same for alcoholics or drug addicts.) But the story of Stephanie Vawter’s drug addiction is far from over – for her or for her family.
“One day at a time” is not a cliché for Stephanie, but a principle to live by. “I am an alcoholic (a word she uses interchangeably with drug addict),” she says, “and my disease won’t go away. It’s like a diabetic who has to take insulin every day. My insulin is the 12-steps of AA, and even though I’m not drinking or doing drugs, my brain gets crazy if I don’t get my insulin, because it starts to think like an addict again. I have to be vigilant every day.”
For John and Susan, Stephanie’s ordeal opened a door for new ministry, both as recipients and givers. “The recovering addicts in the church came out of the woodwork to help Susan and me. There has been an overflow of love and support,” John says.
From that overflow, John and Susan are now reaching out to other parents in the ministry whose children are struggling with drugs and alcohol abuse. The Vawters sponsor and host “You’re Not Alone” conferences across the nation to help parents in ministry answer questions such as “How do I deal with the pain? Where is God in this? What do I do about the guilt I feel?”
“Our confidential conference is to remind these parents that they are not alone,” John says. “We are here to comfort them in their trouble, just as God comforted us in our troubles.”
Our child?
The Vawter family all agree that theirs was a happy home during Stephanie’s childhood. Susan was a stay-at-home mom. John was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ.
But unknown to her parents, trouble was brewing below the surface of Stephanie’s life.
“She is very strong-willed and keeps things to herself,” John says. Even in recent weeks John says he learned from his daughter that she often felt ostracized as early as kindergarten because she was very tall for her age and overweight. In addition, Stephanie and her brother say they could never escape the “pastor’s kid” label.
“I just always felt different from my peers, like I didn’t fit in,” Stephanie says. “The first time I took drugs was the first time I didn’t feel different. I didn’t feel anything, and that’s why most people take drugs. They don’t want to feel the pain and heartache.” Stephanie says the feelings of being isolated and different are very common among addicts.
John says he has not fully sorted out in his own mind the significance of such childhood experiences, but suggests they may be more important in some children than adults realize. “I have a friend who is a pastor in an African American/Hispanic community in Los Angeles,” he says. “My friend says many addicts were sexually abused as boys. They say, ‘If you take away my drugs, I don’t know how to deal with the pain from my past.’”
The Vawter’s first skirmish with Stephanie’s drug use came in the ninth grade when John found out that she had been using marijuana. They took their daughter for a drug assessment. The counselor said she was only “experimenting,” not “abusing” or “using.” So John and Susan, trusting the wisdom and experience of the counselor, didn’t worry much about it. That was a mistake.
Stephanie admits that pot served as a doorway for even more serious use of alcohol, speed, LSD, and finally heroin. To hide her drug use from her parents, she became a skilled liar. Once, when a friend died of a heroin overdose, she feigned outrage. She later admitted it was a ruse to throw her parents off her trail.
Dealing with the guilt
When dealing with a rebellious child, parents often ask: “What did I do wrong?” Feelings of failure and guilt are almost unavoidable. And when the parents are Christian workers, prideful emotions can be especially difficult. “But that is just our ego,” John says, “and we have to surmount it for the sake of our child’s welfare. When our daughter checked into treatment at the hospital… it was embarrassing for a while until I realized her health was important, not what other people thought.”
John advises parents to ask their child’s forgiveness – as well as God’s – when they identify areas in which they have failed. Beyond that, leave the situation in God’s hands and realize that parents cannot be responsible for their child’s choices.
At the same time parents must be vigilant, and even tough, if they suspect their child is abusing drugs or alcohol. Although there may be many factors to consider in dealing with a particular child, such as age and personality, John is a firm believer in exercising parental authority and demanding that children uphold family standards.
Prodigal daughter
“Stephanie was our prodigal daughter,” John says, alluding to Jesus’ parable of the son who “came to himself” after a season of rebellious living (Luke 15:11ff). “I don’t ask her what she did, but wait for her to reveal what she wants us to know.”
John’s model of forgiveness is the lost son’s father, who, when he saw his repentant son approaching, “ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.”
For her part, Stephanie is making good on the Alcoholics Anonymous recovery steps that pledge to make amends to those who have been harmed by their addiction. “Her integrity is evident in her life,” her father says.
Through the whole ordeal, John says he has learned that God’s love and grace are much deeper than he had previously known. Both dad and daughter testify not only to God’s protection, but to His redeeming plan. “He didn’t save me for nothing,” Stephanie confesses. 
Recommended reading: Come Back, Barbara
by C. John Miller and Barbara Miller-Juliani, P&R Publishing.
Order by calling World Harvest Books & Tapes, toll-free 877-255-9907.
For Christian parents few things could be more devastating than a child who openly rejects Christ and embraces a life of immorality. Although it is a familiar story lived out countless times in countless homes, it was no less heartbreaking when John and Rose Marie Miller heard their 18-year-old daughter’s shout, “I don’t want your rules and morals. I don’t want to act like a Christian anymore! And I’m not going to!”
With that declaration of rebellion Barbara Miller began a bold eight-year attempt to make life work without God. Come Back, Barbara chronicles the journey of this wayward daughter who looked for contentment in hedonism, affluence, self-help, and education before finally being won to Christ through the enduring love of her parents.
But the most incredible part of this true story is how God used Barbara’s rebellion to do an amazing work of grace in her parents – a work that has encouraged thousands of Christians through the years to rediscover what it means to live as a son of the Living God, rather than an orphan.
Originally published in 1988, Come Back, Barbara is presented in a unique format: C. John Miller writes a chapter recounting the events, then Barbara responds with her own perspective.
Come Back, Barbara is instructional for Christian parents, but it offers no quick-fix formulas. Rather it is a vivid illustration of the life-changing power of the gospel of grace.
