The Torah says Haggar put Yishmael under a tree, walked two bow shots away so as not to see him die from thirst and sat down to cry. The malach opened her eyes and she saw a well. The pasuk says: "She walked, she filled up her water skin, and gave the boy to drink." Where was the well? I always thought it was in the middle somewhere between them, but the pasuk only says "she walked" once, before she filled the skin. After that it says right away that the boy drank. So where was the well? RIGHT NEXT TO YISHMAEL. SHE JUST DIDN'T SEE IT.
This realization floored me:
"She thought she was running away from The Problem, but she was really running away from The Solution."
I take the lesson, the message from this to be: When we have problems and challenges, they are given to us by Hashem to face and figure out how He would want us to deal with them, and act accordingly. If we do that, then we are fulfilling, through this baby step, the current part of His plan of growth for us, and we become ready for the next one. It's part of our personal Tikkun, hence, our personal Solution, in this lifetime.
However, if we run away from the challenge out of fear, and out of not accepting Hashem's Plan for us, even going as far as hiding in our addiction, we may think we are running away from a problem.
The reality is we are running away from our own Solution. We just don't see it. We need our Higher Power to reveal this to us. And that comes from accepting His Will, His Circumstances and Outcomes, and praying that He reveal to us what He wants us to do.
And then, being man enough to listen and do the tough thing.