Whitney Houston and the Heart of Addiction
The world is stunned by yet
another star whose light has gone out early and tragically in life. Raised in nearby Newark in a Christian home,
Whitney Houston is dead at age 48. Authorities
told her family that Whitney may have suffered a fatal reaction from mixing drugs and alcohol,
possibly leading to a heart attack. Whitney’s body was found in her hotel bath-tub in Los
Angeles, just two days after she sang an impromptu version of "Jesus Loves Me”
at a nightclub.
J. Lee Grady, writes about Whitney’s rise and fall in
CharismaNews:
Anyone who has
listened to Whitney Houston’s rendition of "I Love the Lord”—or
who saw her perform with CeCe Winans and Shirley Caesar at the 1996 Grammy Awards—knows
she had an incomparable voice best suited for gospel music.”
But Whitney
chose a broader path: When the doors opened for her to make a pop album in the
1980s, it became the all-time best-selling debut album by a female artist. She
became America’s diva.
But all her
worldly success didn’t help her overcome her personal demons.
Her stormy marriage was marred by domestic violence. She admitted in the 1990s
that she took cocaine every day. She tried rehab three times over the course of
eight years. Her voice was so damaged by her drug habit that people walked out
of her comeback concert in London in 2010. She became a pathetic shell of her
former self...
The woman
who knew Whitney Houston best—her mother, gospel singer
Cissy Houston—has been deeply concerned about her daughter’s choices for years.
During a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Whitney recalls her mother’s words:
"I am not losing you to the world. I’m not losing you to Satan. I want my daugh-ter
back. I want to see the child I raised, and you weren’t raised like this.”
Christians
in the music industry reached out to Whitney and prayed with her during her
up-and-down battle with addictions. But the drugs had a powerful pull. In 2006,
a photo was released of her bathroom sink in Atlanta filled with crack pipes,
drug paraphernalia, cigarettes and beer cans. Even after she divorced Bobby
Brown in 2007, the downward spiral continued.
Mark E. Shaw, a
professional counselor and pastor writes an explanation of our eventual slavery
to any compulsion in his book, The Heart
of Addiction. "Physical addiction occurs when you repeatedly satisfy a
natural appetite and desire with a temporary pleasure until you become the
servant of the temporary object of pleasure rather than its master.” Sadly, that describes
Whitney Houston and anyone else who is driven by an insatiable addiction in
their lives.
There
are reasons why we do what we do. We need to discover the hurts and pains that we
may be trying to self-medicate and seek to have them healed. Find out what you
are lacking inside and begin to reach out and receive the love and
strengthening that you need from accountability and support from others who are
qualified to help you. Stop ignoring the monster of addiction that may ruin your
life!
Remember: Jesus has a message for anyone
struggling with drugs: "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I
will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Worth thinking about!
Pastor Brian