Sometimes, when I see this person walking bent over her top half almost touching the ground because the weight of the upper body is too heavy for the spine to support my heart breaks with compassion.
Finding out more I discover that this individual is not only handicapped in body but the mind is swimming in very powerful drugs for what I am told is for constant pain. One day this person was actually weeding the plants in our shattered yard. These plants are taken care of by a professional gardener. At the time I was not aware that she was under the influence of drugs which causes her not to make good decisions. Apparently she was bitten by something while weeding and it was bad enough to send her to the hospital.
While there I visited her and was brought up to speed about her condition. Osteoarthritis caused by the steroids which turned her legs black. She asked me to care for her animals while she was away. I cared for her little medically fragile dog, and also her cats, one that stands by the back screen door looking out most of the day. Being an animal lover that strikes me as very sad.
Her excessive and self undulant life continues downhill.
She used to drive and one day the manager of the place where we live found her asleep at the wheel in the drive apparently what happens when she comes home from a weekly methadone clinic she goes to. I had thought such a drug was only for heroine addicts.
Shortly, after that she came home in a taxi, we all heard her chewing out the taxi driver in the parking lot waving her cane at him yelling. Later, her car with all the windows in the back broken, was driven home by her caregiver/roommate. The gossip was she had fallen asleep in parking lot on her way home from the clinic, and a passerby thought she was in danger and they called 911. The sheriff and the fire dept. came and broke out the window in the back to get to her. She stormed and argued about how unfair it all was yet, we all knew it was for the best.
Her roommate/caregiver commented that she would not longer be driving per request and warning of the sheriff. Well, at least they did not get her controlled substances she remarked loudly to her dog and caregiver in the backyard. The caregiver remarked,"yes and if they did I'd have had to come get you in jail not the hospital."
My mom took her to the clinic today and while she was waiting she told me that a man drove up and let a woman out and parked to wait for her. He then suddenly leaned out of the window and threw up. I think it dawned on her that moment where she was.
She shared that even pregnant women come to this Methadone clinic and take the drug even when they are pregnant. The baby is addicted when it is born. Putting some thought into this I felt a sense of disgust come over me. Such a selfish thing.
I listened to the Presidents address last night. By the end I was clapping for the young Army Ranger who had been injured and almost killed in Afghanistan on his 10th tour to the middle east. An amazing story of courage and determination unfolded. The clapping went on for over 2 minutes, unprecedented as appreciation applause goes.
Afterwards I turned off the TV and went out on the porch that overlooks the shared yard. I saw the neighbor woman in the dark talking on her cell,I realized she was talking on the phone to no-one for what seemed to be 30 minutes. I listened for a minute. Nothing made sense as she conversed on and on in a drugged up stupor to an obviously empty connection.
I wondered what kind of a reality she was having? I felt at that moment, being the type of person who doesn't alter my consciousness much, that this must be what a magical mystery tour is like.
Then I was suddenly convicted that it was not funny but a terrible shame I was witnessing Here is a lost person.
Further why is it that people give up? Do we help them to with our attempts to try to heal them? Or is it something deeper. Is it nature or nurture?
Perhaps, it is that some do not understand the importance of life. I have contemplated this situation over and over again. I have allowed myself to think at some length that perhaps they are right, the evolutionists and the Godless orators. I allowed myself to imagine what life might be like to live without hope or faith or to know God and his son Jesus my savior? The sense of hopelessness is so overwhelming to think that this life ends and it has all been for naught.
Quickly, I come back from that brink and remind myself that just because God hasn't answered my latest prayers, and my problems are so seemingly insurmountable, that I should act like a child and forget his loving kindness to me all of these years.
How could I forget being touched by him and falling back into my seat at church being unable to stand as a supernatural feeling of joy overwhelmed me? Or all the answered prayers? Of all the things he has done for me? Perhaps, I was allowed to go there because I might gain a better understanding of those who do not believe in eternity with Jesus and his father God who would have wiped us out had it not been for that sacrifice. I know all of this and have a living testimony that proves to me beyond any doubt that God is real and lives. That I am as we say, a pilgrim and stranger passing through. That this life is a merely a speck of sand in all of eternity.
This language I have come to know is the reality of God that clashes against the reality of this physical life everyday. The problems that arise when what I want, is not what is.
I remind myself that being human limits my sight into the unseen world of the future. That is the world of faith.
I must walk by faith and not by sight. Hard as that may be I ask God to give me understanding of this stunted person I have come to live with and for the compassion to continue to be kind and loving despite the ugliness I see. ~
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