When Boulders Fall Like Rain Drops

I've never been one much for secrets or for facades, usually what you see is what you get with me. But my family, like all the others in the world I suppose, has some things it doesn't want to broadcast.

I'm well aware of how fast news can travel through churches, how prayer chains often work more like gossip networks, and I also know the sting and ache of judgment which more often than not comes with others knowing that your family (surprise surprise) isn't perfect. So this post is going to be in some places deliberately vague, to protect the privacy and sanity of those directly involved in the current crisis. I do want to share some things because I know that my real friends, the ones that genuinely care, deserve better than to have silence gnaw on their hearts and let the Enemy stretch their minds with all kinds of dark and dire fantasies.

Last Sunday, or July 6th, my family got a call that one of our own had a psychotic episode where he quietly threatened to kill himself if he didn't receive what he demanded. This person's immediate family rallied around them, and took them to the hospital where the attending physician wisely made the decision to admit the person having the episode into the psychiatric wing of the hospital for stabilization and evaluation.

Remember the scene in the movie The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe when Peter signals to the gryphons to start out and they fly in formation, carrying the great chunks of stone in their paws and then they let them go effectively doing to the White Witch's army what Germany was doing to London at the beginning of the movie? Down on the evil hoard came great chunks of stone that couldn't be deflected or reasoned with or persuaded to fall elsewhere. It is still one of my favorite scenes, and I cheer every time I watch it.

This week has felt like we've been on the receiving end of that bombardment. Every day there have been phone calls, sometimes it's nothing but the other half of the family out there, really going through the meat grinder wanting just to be encouraged by the rest of us, and more often than not it's one of them calling in to report on what's going on with the family member in the ward.

Everyone feels responsible, everyone is second guessing themselves from the person's siblings to their parents. On top of this stress comes the stress about paying for their stay, and for the MRI that needs to be done to determine some things. Thankfully the one doctor who is in charge of the others assigned to the individual is working to get the cost lowered, because the insurance won't pay for it.

It's been a long week, and it's really not over yet.

Interestingly enough, the past couple of weeks, close on a month have been pointing in this direction so while the incident came as a shock, the fact that things have changed with this individual that we all love so much, wasn't.

Tomorrow, I'll try and share some of the ways that Christ has been showing up in the midst of the boulders.

I apologize again for the vagueness, but I don't want to hurt my family, just like I don't want to leave my friends in ignorance.

For now,

Scribe.

If only it were true

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal

For those that have been so kind as to make certain that I haven't fallen off the face of the world (kinda hard considering its' round and not flat) I offer my thanks. I'm working on a post that will hopefully be a musing and coherently telling of what has been going on with me though for privacy's sake I can't go into everything. If I were the main character, the primary mover, well then I would let the gates flash open and the whole of the story gush out, tears and blood and puss all mixing. Fortunately and unfortunately I am a bit player in the drama that has taken my family by the scruff of our collective necks and shaken them. Can you have collective necks? Hmm.

I can say that my writing is going well, I'm really enjoying outlining/storyboarding and those closest to me that know as much of the plot as I do have been wonderful in goading me on and making sure I work on it and don't allow myself to be lulled into Summer complacency.

This past week has been especially hard as several vague problems in my family have hardened into darker reality and I find myself in the unenviable position of throwing the boulder sized problem back to Christ. Otherwise, they would crush me. I keep reminding myself that while this world and its' problems are much larger than myself, I serve a Powerful, Tender, Mighty Warrior who is much larger than this world.

My thanks to everyone who has prayed for strength for me and for my family. Even just tucking me in to the tail of your own prayers and asking Christ to bless me with the blessings you ask for your own family, as some have shared they do, means the world to me.

Really more later. Really really. I promise. Scribe's honor ;)