The Residue of Addiction…
She was born in late August 1927. She was the third of four girls with a much older brother. Her name was Valera Christina Bailey, born to second generation Canadians whose people had emigrated from Scotland. And Scottish they were, tight fisted and miserly with their money.
Her father, Abner, was a happy man, the life of the party, quick to joke, quick to laugh, and quick to drink – way too quick to drink. Although he had a powerful conversion when Valera was 16, his addicted years and their subsequent poverty affected her very deeply, and sadly very permanently.
Although her daddy was changed in a moment, Valera always bore the scars of his alcoholism. She was fearful of things she didn’t fully understand. She was always fearful when her family drove, flew, or did anything she wasn’t in direct control of. If her children were more than ten minutes late for their curfew, she would begin to panic, at twenty minutes past she was calling the police and local emergency rooms.
See Abner drank daily. He would close the bars in Port Huron nearly every night. He would stumble home at 2 am with a little bag of food and a small amount of coal for the furnace. He would often find his daughters sleeping around the stove in the kitchen, their only source of heat.
Valera’s mom would wake the little ones to feed them dinner, and then scoot them off to bed once the house began to warm. This was normal living for the Bailey girls. The older brother had long since joined the military so he missed most of the family drama of the ‘30’s.
One night while at his favorite haunt, the German Gardens on 11th street, Abner met a very strange visitor sitting next to him at the bar. He was preacher-man from a neighboring farm community who had come to the city to do his regular bar ministry. In that darkly lit environment he described to my grandfather his need for a Savior and his family’s need for stability. That night, right there, right then, Abner opened up his life to a new possibility of life without guilt, a life without the wreckage of drink.
The very next night that preacher-man came to Valera’s home, as requested by her father, and introduced the rest of the family to the same opportunity - a different life. That night, right there, right then, momma knelt at the couch and asked Jesus into her life. That was the day the Bailey family started over.
Poverty was replaced by property investment, cold nights without heat were replaced by the warmth of laughter, the daily bar ritual was replaced by weekly church attendance and daily family alter.
What a change, what a revolution, what a transition…
Even though, their lives were now changed eternally, the memories of an alcoholic father never really left her. I wish I would have known years before what I know now. Because today, I understand the power we have over soul ties and generational curses. I used to love hearing the story of my grandfather’s radical transformation, but I wish I could have effectively ministered to mom the radical transformation of a life without fear, a life without residue…
