I am in the middle of a little blog hiatus.  A little pause in the routine for some self-reflection and time with the boys.  I have had a lot going on, but it seemed fitting to take a little break the week of the anniversary of my Mom’s death.  It was just about this time last year that I received the phone call from Lawman that changed the world as I knew it.

Our battle with the monster of addiction was over….but, now I realize it is never over.  The battle scars lie deep in the souls of all of us who love and care for her.  Relationships have changed some for the better, others for the worse.   For those of you who read this who do not know what it is like to love someone with an addiction, here is a scene from Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott.  I cried as I read this….on the elliptical at the Y…..tears.  But it is so accurate.

“Addiction is like dancing with an eight-hundred-pound gorilla: you were done dancing when the gorilla was done.  Wow, the drinker thinks at first, the music is great, and what a wonderful dance!  But then when you get tired and you want to sit, the gorilla wants to do the merengue, and you have to keep going.  You feel sick, you hate yourself, you want to stop, but now the gorilla wants to waltz.”

What do those of us who love and care for the one dancing?

“You stay out of the gorilla cage.  You don’t even go in to clean it.”

“What about when it needs it?  Like when she gets very down?”

“You don’t clean it, just for today.  Because after you freshened it up, if she was still sad, you’d think it made sense to get between her and the gorilla.”

“But what’s the worse that could happen?”

“Well.  It could tear your arms off.”

“Sometimes I want to push her down the stairs for starting to drink again.”

“Just for today, you don’t push anyone down the stairs.  Okay?  Maybe tomorrow.”

A later scene in the same book….

“People make decisions that have horrific consequences,” he intoned.

“Sometimes these are political decisions, and we get to rise up and fight them.  Sometimes terrible things happen to the most innocent people, and we come together as one wounded body, as Christ crucified.  The psalmist, in Psalm Fifty-six, says, ‘You have put my tears in your flask,’ and that means that God is paying attention to the pain of God’s people.  And we may not get what we want, but we will get what is needed.  God is struggling in this with us, in all the sadness of our lives,…and God is the answer.  Our tears are in God’s flask, and if what is needed is going to get done, it’s going to be through divine love working through us.  So we acknowledge as a community that what is going on sucks – if you’ll forgive my French.”

“There was a large glass bowl on the communion table, filled with water, and (a woman) stood beside it with her container of salt.  The minister asked everyone to come forward, take a pinch of salt and drop it into the common bowl, twice. ‘A pinch for each sorrow and one for each joy, to express the bittersweet aspect of our paradoxical faith.’”

I don’t think the it matters in what vain the decisions are made….what matters is that our choices most often effect those we love the most.  What is done is done and the only comfort is the assurance that our tears and those who love us are intermingled in God’s flask.  For God’s safekeeping and comfort.

So, as I tell the boys….”Make good choices!” 

I leave for New Mexico on Tuesday.  I am not sure if I will be blogging before or during, but I know I will have a lot going on when I return.  Until then….

Blessings!