The long way home

The long way home...

Tonight my dear husband told me a story that led to a conversation we've had many times – especially as of late. Let me lead you down the path...

Last week a man - just a few years younger than me - died. I knew him as a child though I hadn't seen him in over twenty years. In many ways I never really knew him – what he loved, what made him cry or laugh, or what his favorite food was. But I spent time with him, played with him, and was around him throughout the years until we were young adults. That's the last time I remember seeing him. I heard several years ago that he had gotten into a relationship with a woman that was really bad for him and then he disappeared. No one heard from him – not his momma or his sister or even his dad.

Then he showed up two weeks ago – dropped off at the hospital – dying. No one knew he was dying. I'm not sure that he knew. Turns out he had a rare genetic disease his whole life and it was just discovered. He died within the week.

As long as I knew him, he couldn't speak clearly. I don't mean a lisp or a thick southern accent; as he grew older, it got more difficult to understand to the point of being uninterpretable for most people. 

Turns out this disease impacted his muscles and his ability to speak. Had he gotten help when he was a kid, well, the ending would be different for sure, and I imagine the story in the middle wouldn't be so damn tragic.

This young man lived in shame, horrible shame. I think that perhaps I hadn't seen him in so long because he stopped coming around because of it. I would. I'd want to hide too. Shit, I get a blemish on my face and I want to cover it up with something. Imagine not being able to speak so that others can understand you, though you know what you're trying to say...though by this point, you believe you're stupid and no good. I never heard him say that – but do I really have to? Without someone fighting for you, helping you become all you can be, loving you, supporting you, telling you the truth, comforting you and not stopping until there are answers...what are you left to believe but that you are worthless? That's what we humans do.  

Get this - No one ever took him to a speech therapist. No one. Ever. He was in his thirties when he died. Neglect? Contemptible. Denial by his parents that anything was wrong. You could cut it with a steak knife it's so thick. Do I fault them. Yes.

Do I fault the generations before them. Hell yes.

The denial has been so thick for generations. There's alcoholism, narcissism, lack of mothering and fathering, violence, passivity, sexual perversion...the list goes on.

This young man was the victim of the unwillingness of the generation before him to face reality and grieve all that had been lost in their lives, and then to take responsibility for the ways they failed the current generation.

Did he have choices?  Yes.  Yet he never had a fighting chance as my husband would say. He came into this world into a family without parents who would live in reality and fight for him. How could he could believe that he was anything but worthless when that's how he was treated?  The fact that no one was ever brave enough to take him to a specialist - well, the proof is in the pudding.  

His death highlights the sins of this particular family – the whole family has the same way of living – denial. Denial that has left quite a legacy. There's debilitating anxiety, depression, sexual abuse, rape and that's just scratching the surface. The rest of the family is still alive – I suppose you could say that – they're not dead physically. But one has experienced such great loss that shame keeps her in a vicious cycle of addiction, another works non stop while fighting bouts of depression, still another still has flashbacks from being assaulted by a family member. There's more. And there's a lot more that I don't know.

And still that generation (and some of those in the current one) isn't talking about reality. They'd rather act like victims than find their courage, face their failures and seek forgiveness.

I'm really pissed about it. Why do I care? The young man that died is my cousin. 

Part of me says, how can I be so hard on these people? But then I stay in reality and I face my own grievous failures and I remember. 

I wept again tonight as my littlest one said that when I yell at her she's afraid and wants to go away from me and as my eldest said that she liked being a baby because she wasn't yelled at then.

I prayed, we prayed that God would end the sins of the generations with me – that they wouldn't pass to the next generation. But every time the pain of my past comes shooting out of my mouth like daggers into the hearts of my children, I see it passing like poison to the next generation.  

Mercy.  

You see, I've been so deeply wounded by the failures of these people that I'm still working it all out and now my children are hurt by my own failures. I hope that the sin is less this generation (my children) than the last (me).

Still, more mercy.  

Where is God in all this?  Why doesn't He come quickly?  Why did He not intervene for my cousin? Why didn't He intervene for me?   Perhaps He did and I cannot see. For me, part of the pain of walking with God is being in a relationship with someone who waits for someone/something to die so that He can bring about resurrection. Yowzas!!!

Tonight my husband and I just held each other and cried over the sorrow of this world and the longing for Yahweh to finally make things right.  He seems to sit on His hands and wait, to take the long route when there's urgency and a much shorter way.  He doesn't seem to mind the long way home.

For me, for my husband, for my children, we're following the Rabbi, taking the long way home (Bebo Norman)...not by choice as much as by design; this is the path laid before us if we choose to live in reality, and we do. And I pray that my children do too.

And so we climb and take the switchback, fail, fall in our sorrow, seek to make things right, get up again, climb, stop and take in the view before heading round the next bend.  We cry for mercy, and find it in the views we never would've had on a shorter route.  

As for my cousin, well, I imagine that he is having conversations with the saints - expressing all that has been in his heart but he couldn't say - as they sit around a feast that delights their senses and fill their hearts to overflowing.  

Amen. May it be so. Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus.