You Are Loved | Jan lost her son to addiction

Welcome to the series You Are Loved. My goal is to share people's incredible stories in the hopes of encouraging you to keep going no matter how hard it is and to show you how loved you are by your Heavenly Father. This week I have the honor of sharing with you Jan's story. Jan thought she had an ordinary family. They ate dinner together, went on vacation, and attended church. Her life was thrown upside down when she lost one of her sons to addiction. She was angry, broken, and felt abandoned by God. She could barely get through each day but was determined not to let the enemy take anything else from her. Jan slowly began to turn her grief into purpose and she has dedicated her life to showing others how. Watch now. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Well I'm Jan McCoy and my husband Dan and I have two boys, Cody and Dane, and we lost Dane to his addiction. Okay. It was about ten years ago. We were just an ordinary family and we ate dinners together and went on vacations. We have family traditions. We were in church, involved in church. My boys did well in school. They played sports. I think we did everything that we thought we should to raise good, well-rounded, emotionally and spiritually young men and despite all of that, Dane became addicted to pain pills and then from there it went to heroin and it eventually took his life. He was 22 when he passed away. Now I know that he didn't set out to become an addict because he told me that and I'm sure he didn't believe it'd take his life. Right. The night that Dane died, I remember standing in that little waiting room, I guess you call it, at the hospital with my fist clenched and just saying, God this isn't the answer that I wanted to my prayer and I just walked out of there and from then my life was turned upside down and trying to struggle to find out what God wanted me to do now. Talk to me a little bit about that journey that you went on after your son passed. The first year especially I was really, grief can be paralyzing and exhausting and I was disoriented, disillusioned, really I felt abandoned by God. One thing that I didn't know is that I wasn't gonna let Satan do anything else to my family. I mean I had people telling me you know the divorce rates really high after the death of a child and I had people say things to me

about that and I said I am not gonna let Satan interfere any more than what he has but you know my goal was to ask God for guidance. Dane died in May and in June my pastors were leaving, they were retiring and I was thankful that they were there for the service because they knew me and they knew Dane really well and they made the service very personal. The new pastors came in and one of the pastors came up to me and he said, Celebrate Recovery is very near and dear to my heart and Celebrate Recovery and Church on Sunday were the only two places that I can go where I felt peace. So I felt wow, I'm so grateful to hear that because I know they're not going to stop doing Celebrate Recovery, I can continue doing that. Well a church newspaper or newsletter did an article on this particular pastor and it said that his mother and grandmother lived in Fairfield Glade, Tennessee. Well we lived in Fairfield Glade for seven years and the pastor of the church that I went to, his last name was the same as this pastor. So I got a picture of Dane when he was baptized by Pastor Benson and I took it in to Celebrate Recovery and I went up to Parker Benson and I said, Are you any relation to this man? And he looked at it and he said, That's my dad. And we both started crying and I said, Your dad baptized my son that just passed away. The peace that I felt from God at that moment It was like he knew I needed some kind of sign that it was going to be OK. And that was when I needed it. At that moment, I knew that he hadn't abandoned me, that he was going to be with me. He knew I needed something. And the fact that Parker was a recovering alcoholic for 20-some years and was so excited about taking over that ministry, and then his father baptized my son, I just knew I was going to be OK. It didn't mean it was easy. It just meant that God knew I needed some sign down here,

and I got it. And so that's how I knew that I was going to be all right. I'm sure there were a lot of questions, a lot of anger, a lot of confusion. Oh, absolutely. I really thought because of Dane's foundation that he was going to get through it. I've seen recovery in other people, and I was told that he has a good foundation. He's got a good support system. He's going to get through it. So I always knew that he was playing with fire, that it could happen. But I never really thought it would. I didn't think it was that powerful. And when it did happen, I was like, wow. I mean, like I said, I stood in that little room like, no. This wasn't supposed to happen this way. And what do you do? What do you do when it's something that you love and you put all that time and energy and love into? How do you deal with that? And I had to learn, but I couldn't do it alone. And at first, I mean, I did ask God to guide me just to help me get out of bed and get through the day. For the first time in my life, I understood what it meant one day at a time, because I couldn't think about the future. I would start getting panic attacks. I couldn't think about the past without Dan,

because I would get so distraught. So I just had to focus on today. And what am I going to do today? And at night, I would thank him. Thank you for getting me through today. And as I see, it's been 10 years, and I don't have to do that anymore. He's given me that strength. He's helped me get through. It doesn't mean I don't miss Dan. But I still had that strength now to get through a day, a week, a month without begging for help. It took a lot. It took a lot. And I'd read a lot of books. I would have been terrible in a book club, because all I read about was death and drugs. I wanted to know. I didn't understand how addiction could be so powerful. So I kept reading everything I could about addiction and drugs. In fact, Dan told me one time, he said, mom, I think you need to learn a little bit more about addiction. And he was right. You know, I fought 30 days in rehab, and he was cured. I had no idea how long it took the brain to heal. So I started reading that. And then I started reading all these books on parents that have lost children to see if what I was feeling

was normal. And it helped me. One of the books, a counselor told a mother that she was going to receive a gift. And I was, like, appalled. I thought, a gift? God knows that a mother does not want to lose their child. They want them here on Earth. We don't want any gift from this. I always remembered that, because in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, where is this gift? Where is this gift? And the gift came in the form of a newspaper article about a ministry that was being evicted, because they didn't want those kind of people living near them. Well, this ministry, my son, Dan, tried to get into. And they couldn't accept him, because they didn't know how long they were going to be there. And I don't know. Something just compelled me to want to learn more about true purpose ministries. And so my husband told me, when we bought this farm, that I would be able to, his aunt was leaving him some money. And if she did this inheritance, I could use to redo the kitchen, because I had all these pink cabinets. So I told my husband, I said, when the time comes, I want to have White Oaks Construction do the work on the renovations on my kitchen. So it wasn't even, I don't know, it's less than a year

after Dan died. It was less than a year after Dan died that we got this. inheritance and so I said I'm calling White Oak and so Gil Heinzen came over and I was telling him why I picked him I didn't even interview anybody else I just said I want you to do this because of what you did for true purpose and he said you need to go meet Jeremy you need to go see it I was scared to death so I asked Parker Benson the pastor and I asked a girlfriend to go with me to this men's ministry and when I left there I knew I had to do something for Jeremy I mean I said you are the son that I would have loved to have had this is what I would have hoped for my son is to take what he went through and do something like this so I got it on when I said to my husband I said I've got to do something I don't know what it is we got to do something so when we got the inheritance I wrote a check for 10% of what it was to Jeremy and Jeremy at that point there was not even 20 guys in the ministry that was they just had that marvel and so what I gave him was huge at that time and he sent me a letter and said you know there's a piece of the puzzle that's missing and he said we need a graduate house and because of your donation we're gonna name it Dane's House yeah another God sign so then I said I had ownership of something I had a place to put this love this energy that I had for Dane into something and then in the meantime I'm meeting all these other moms that have lost you know people call you would you go talk to someone so just because you're both going through the same thing so you meet these women that are loving mothers same thing they're just grieving and I asked them I said look we're gonna be building this house and there are eight bedrooms in it I said we can name a room after your son so then we got together and we were able to pick out colors of the comforters and they picked out Bible verses and they picked out one word two words and one of the guys in the ministry made those headboards with the Bible verse with that word in it and then there's a Bible verse in the bathrooms that all the moms picked out and then we went and cleaned up all of the construction dirt and decorated the rooms in the house for the grand

opening it was just a wonderful healing time for all of us but I'm still very involved with true purpose I mean I try to be I love that ministry I love seeing people grow you know finding their worth in God geez that's just so wonderful and you know that's Dan's legacy is that house in those rooms every single room on that campus is named after a young man in this area we're not naming offices and we're starting to name rooms at the girls house all the rooms and mom are named after girls and some of the rooms and but just to know that our child's legacy lives on by helping people find recovery through Jesus and that is so rewarding to me it's rewarding it's dangling be proud of me then would be really proud of me I tell the girls and they left because I'm hanging out with the kind of people how to him he couldn't hang out with him but no he would be proud because they had this huge heart he wanted people to love him as much as he loved them and I think a lot of times it caused him to make some decisions that he should have you know that was his personality he's very anxious and insecure I think you know I I'm not Dane so I can't tell you that's exactly why but as a mom I saw a lot of anxieties when he was growing up and clinging to people that he shouldn't cling to you know he thought were cool and I'm like no that's a bad influence but he saw the good in them the guy that he was with the night that he died he reached out to me twice and both times I was like at that point I want to speak to anybody I didn't want to hear what Dane was doing with him and finally I said all right you're welcome to come over but bring your mom when he came with this mom what a nice kid in my mind I had judged him that he was this low life you know and he wasn't and I'm so sorry that I even did that but you know we're human Man sees the outward appearance and we judge, and I shouldn't have, and I don't anymore, especially when it comes to that. I mean, I see people that are broken. So I wish I would have had one. Dane was an addictionist I work with.

Steve Wildsmith, who used to write for the Daily Times, he's a recovering addict, that wrote a newspaper column called Just for Today. He was my lifeline when Dane was an addiction because he wrote what I needed to hear, that my son isn't, you know, immoral. He's not a bad person. He's sick. I needed to hear that. So I went to him with my idea. I said, you know, I didn't know enough about addiction. And they said, and from what I understand, doctors didn't know anything about addiction. I said, I'd like to do this seminar. And Hijacked is what it's called, Hijacked, How Addiction Rewires the Brain and Poisons the Spirit. It was, we did it in 2019, and I prayed that 50 people would come and over 200 came. And every year, it's been that many. We now have it at Maryville College. And I think people need to know, and it's not, and it's, now the ministry comes, True Purpose comes, and they want to hear that there, there's nothing wrong immorally with them, immorally with them, that their brain is hijacked, that they're sick. And it's been a blessing to be able to give that to the community. I think a lot of times in, when someone's in addiction, we focus a lot on that person. And I think everything that you're doing is such a good picture of, that person's not suffering alone, right? There's a family behind them and around them that's going through issues too. And I think sometimes we forget that, you know, because we get so focused on trying to find healing for this person. And we miss the people who are trying to know, did I, did I cause this? Did I do something? Did I, did I not pray right? Was I not faithful enough?

Did I, you know, could I have done something different? And they're asking all those questions and it sounds like at one time you've asked all those questions. Oh, absolutely. And so I love everything that you're doing to try to support those people just understanding addiction and understanding what happened. But I do want to know if you have any, anything you can say now to those people that are either have a child or a family member, a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, either in addiction or maybe they've lost them to addiction. What could you say to them that would help them? Well, first of all, it's not their fault and their child is sick. The best advice that I could give for somebody like that is to attend Celebrate Recovery. You learn so much about the 12 steps and you see people in recovery. You could ask questions there and join a support group. At first I was leery about support groups because I'm very private, but when I went in there and I saw people in my community that were going through the same thing that I was going through, it was like a burden was lifted. It's like, I'm not alone. There are other people that are suffering too that have got the struggle. I'm not a bad parent. This happened to me, happened to them. What can we do? What does God want us to do to help that child? Again, I read books and one of the books that I read is a Christian book called Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children. That's the group that I'm doing now because it helped me. I read it twice when my son was in active addiction because emotion takes over. As a mom, you want to, you've always helped your child when they're sick, so you want to help them when they're in their addiction. But it's a different ballgame that you're fighting.

You're fighting the enemy and the enemy has control over your child or your loved one's life. And so you have to step back and know how to let God. They say let go and let God, but you're hanging on tight because God gave you this child. He was my gift and I wanted to take care of him. Advice is you're not alone. Seek help. Learn as much. much as you can about the addiction so that you know what you're up against. There are three, what I've learned with these families, there are three behavior characteristics. Lying, stealing, and manipulation. Those are the behavior characteristics of somebody in addiction. And my son did all three. I couldn't believe it. He was lying. He would lie to me like he did. He would steal from me, and he would manipulate. He knew what buttons to push for both. So when you know that, you can set different boundaries. The boundaries that we had when they were growing up, like you do this, this is the consequence, didn't work. I could take away my son's car, I could take away his phone, it didn't matter. He found a way to find his drugs. And that just blew my mind. I even told him one time, if you worked as hard on your recovery as you do on finding new drugs, we wouldn't have these problems. So my advice is just learn, pray, ask God for guidance, and we all know that. Get involved, and Celebrate Recovery is a wonderful ministry. And when you go, I went to Celebrate Recovery because I wanted to learn the 12 steps. I wanted to help my son with the 12 steps, because I knew that they were for just alcoholics

and addicts. And as I was reciting those every week, I thought, no, these are for me. They're for us. So you learn a lot about yourself and how we respond to these things by going to Celebrate Recovery. And then you start talking to people that are in recovery, and you learn things from them that you can take home. And the same thing in the support group. We can't fix each other, because if we could, then we wouldn't have any problems. But by sharing our burdens, not only does that lift the burden off of us, but by sharing our burdens and how we cope, we give other people ideas of how to cope. We're supporting each other. It's wonderful. So I have one more question I want to ask you. We always end our interviews talking about love. And your journey and your story is a little bit different than the typical story that we interview, but it's so important, I think. So my question is about love, but you said you knew the Lord and that God was always a part of your life. But when you went through grief and you had the anger, I'm sure how the Lord loved you through that was very differently than the love you had experienced before that. So I just wondered if you could just talk for a minute about how did, in your anger and in your grief, how did you feel God's love? I know he gave you a sign, but was it like peace? Was it joy? Was it purpose? How did he show his love to you in your darkest times? In my darkest times, it was just getting me through the day, one day at a time. In my darkest time, because I hope I never have to go through that again. I know I'll go through grief again, but the death of my child was so different than any

other grief that I've experienced. And I mean, you're a mom. You know that mother love is different. But I just remember feeling like scared, lost, unsure, unsettled, disoriented. I like that word because it's so true. I knew I needed inner strength. And I knew the only way I was going to get that inner strength is through God because that's the Holy Spirit. And so even though I was angry with him, and it doesn't mean that I don't still get upset with him because of it. It just means that I know he's big enough to handle it. He helped me get through each day. He helped me get up. He helped me set goals for myself. That first year, it was like, okay, I'll do one social event a week. And it had to be with my Bible study friends. I wasn't going to go to ball games. I just didn't want to deal with people. I was just too low. I didn't have the energy to do it. And that's how he helped me get through it. Easter, Good Friday. Everybody focuses on Jesus, of course. For some reason, the first Easter, I focused on Mary. And I thought, oh God, if Mary can watch what her son has gone through, then God, I can do this. And that was also another healing moment, sign if you will, that I needed. You look for it. You look for something to give you that reassurance that you're gonna be okay. So God did have to help me get through it. He really, when people tell you that when something like this happens, they rely on their faith, it's not cliche. It is, you are reaching for something to give you that strength and that energy to get you through the day, to get you through the first year of all the birthdays,

anniversary of the death, holidays. You've got to have something inside of you that's gonna give you that strength. And I can only tell you that it comes from God, because it did. And that part of it, I can tell the girls that are in recovery, you know, you don't, they're not blowing smoke at you here. They're telling you something that's going to help you get through this. And that's what I can offer. And that's how I know he was with me, even if I was angry with him, because he knew it. Well, and I think that even just you admitting that you were angry is something because, again, there's a lot of people that are right where you are, and they don't know if it's okay to be angry, and they don't know how to feel, and they don't know how to overcome. And so I think that having you on here and sharing your story and just opening up about the emotions that you went through, but then how you turned that into good, and God gets the glory for it, and all the ways that you're seeing recovery because of something horrible that happened. God was able to take that and turn that into something purposeful. This is because of your son. I mean, that's just beautiful. And so I know, I know this was not an easy, easy interview to come in and talk about your feelings and bring that story up again, but it's going to be healing for so many people that are watching to see that you've overcome, and that the Lord has used you, and that there's hope for them, and encouragement for them, and the advice that you gave for someone with a family member in active addiction. I mean, that's just all amazing and wonderful, and I just want to tell you how grateful we are that you were willing to come and share. I appreciate you asking me. I was honored you asked me. Because I do want to show the power of having a strong faith, because it will waver. We're human, and so this is a sinful world, and if you don't have that foundation. So I appreciate you letting me. That's the reason why I do this, because no, it's not easy. It's not easy at all talking. I mean, you could see, I mean, ten years later, and I still tear up. I mean, you still miss him, but God has helped me, and I know, and I want people to know that, and so that's why I

do this, and I thank you for letting me do that, because that's what you want to do. You're giving help by doing. You are loved to more than just people in recovery. Parents need to know that there is hope. Recovery is possible, that their child's not going to be in this. It's years. It's not just 30 days, and you're done, like I thought. It's not that. It's years of working at it, but it can be done. You just got to let him. You've got to be open to it, so thank you for what you're doing. Thank you so much for watching. Don't you greatly appreciate Jan willing to open up and share her journey? If someone you love is living in addiction, or you have lost a loved one, please remember that you do not need to suffer alone. As Jan said, there are many people who want to love you and walk with you. Get involved and celebrate recovery. This incredible program is not just for those struggling with drugs and alcohol. The people you meet will become your support group, and that is one of the keys to recovering yourself. Also, if you are angry with God, like Jan said, just admit it to him. He's a big God. He can handle your emotions. Also, if you would like to learn more about True Purpose, which is the faith-based recovery program Jan supports, please check out their website. Join us next week to hear another encouraging story, and be sure to subscribe or follow so you never miss an episode. Most importantly, I pray that you know that no matter how far you or someone you love have run from God, it is never too late. There is always hope, because you are loved.