Okay, so it wasn't Monday.

Well, I said I would write yesterday but frankly, there were no words in me. There were tears in me. There was anxiety in me. There was exhaustion in me. But no words.

My oldest son moved far away from home yesterday. Far, far away. As in Wuhan, Hubei, China far away. Oh me. Oh my. Remember how hard it was when this happened? I mourned for weeks. I should have known the Lord was preparing me for a greater sacrifice. I should have known. But I'm slow.

It seems like just yesterday he was this boy:
Oh, the journey we've been on to get to Wuhan, China. Matt was 11 years old when his dad left us. He knew that his daddy had preached against divorce from the pulpit. He even knew right where to turn in his Bible to find Jesus' teachings against divorce. He had been used to being the son of an adored preacher - all of a sudden he was the son of the most gossiped about affair in the tri-state area. His dad had just been name "Citizen of the Year" in that little town of 3500. Now to leave the family, the pulpit, indeed, the church for another man's wife? Homes that had been welcoming became detached - where we'd once been the "big cheese" we were suddenly an embarrassment. I mean what do you do with an ex preacher's wife? She can't just go with the parsonage for the next guy, you know! Matt's perceptions of those times caused a seed of bitterness to take root. I am sure I failed him in ways - I was barely holding it together, so much in shock was I. I needed to figure out how to make a living - I hadn't ever done that before. I had to be a single parent of a 11 year old, a 5 year old and a 3 year old. We muddled along - found a new normal - made a new life and met a wonderful man who wanted not only a wife but a family! We married and moved to the metroplex.

And all hell broke loose. The happy, motivated leader turned into an angry teen who began living a lie. He still got good grades. He still went to church every time the doors were opened. His friends were good - his attitude was respectful. But he discovered something that made him feel better about life - he discovered drugs. He managed well all through high school. Looking back, I know there were signs but I didn't know then - it was the last thing I would have dreamed of. We were good people! We didn't use drugs. Matt went to a christian college, having received a very generous academic scholarship. At the end of his freshman year he was a bona fide addict. We had to ask him to leave our home and so began five years of horror. Weeks of not knowing where he was, knowing he was on the street, knowing he was so much more naive than he wanted to believe. Phone calls from jail. Possession charges. Probation. Only to repeat the cycle. Finally he turned 21 and switched to a legal drug - alcohol. The periods of having it all together became fewer and farther between - his life was unraveling and everyone but he knew it. In 2003 a series of events transpired to bring it all to a head - an uninsured motorist pulled out in front of him and he had no where to go but into the side of his truck. Matt ended up with a car loan bigger than the totaled car was worth. He had to move back home to catch up financially. Then he got a ticket for driving under the influence and he lost his license which led to losing his job. Finally the scales were pulled from my eyes and I had to face that my son was killing himself slowly but surely and the problem was not going to go away. It was real. It was ugly. It was enough. I simply told him "This is enough! You are going to rehab!" Almost, but not quite that blunt. Because he was still the sweet, compliant, people pleasing boy he had always been there was no argument - he just said okay and he went.

Of course, he was just going to keep me happy - he was going to do his 30 days - play the game and get out and go right back to his life. Of course, he had discounted the army of prayer warriors his momma had mustered. About 3 weeks in we casually mentioned to him that he was free to spend the entire 90 days there if he wanted. He was mad! But he didn't tell me that - he just went away and thought about it. And the people prayed. And God spoke loud enough Matt could hear him. And he stayed. He quit playing the game and began working the program. He left the facility on January 15, 2004.

Well, this is too long. I'll have to write the rest of the story later this week. I just checked -- his plane has landed in Wuhan. He was to be met at the airport by the school officials. So his new life begins.

Almost to the end.......

There is a quote from Charles Spurgeon that spoke to me when I first heard it:

God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you cannot trace his hand
Trust his heart.

So I trusted God to show up and I asked him to hold me up. For four years we lived through the highs and lows of a family that loves an addict. I went to places I never dreamed I would go…both literally and figuratively. I never ever expected to see my child in an orange jumpsuit behind bars. I would never have imagined a day when I would say ‘thank God he is choosing alcohol now instead of pot…at least it’s legal”. Long periods of time would go by where he was almost the happy funny kid I gave birth to, followed by periods where he gave into Satan’s lies and slide into the cesspool of lies that the enemy filled his mind with and he would attempt yet again to drown out those voices of insecurity and inadequacy with drugs and alcohol. I prayed for him to get sober. I prayed that God would somehow make him hate alcohol. I didn’t see it happening. But it began to matter less to me. Not that I quit caring….not by a long shot. Not that I began accepting his life style choices. Never did I or would I do that. But I began experiencing the sweet serenity of knowing God was in charge. God loved my son more than I did…hard to imagine but I knew it was true. I still cried. I still mourned the loss of dreams I had for the kid. I still panicked from time to time. But over all I knew that he was one of God’s sheep and God doesn’t lose his sheep. [As an aside, he chose to get well on October 14, 2004 and as today has been sober nearly three years. Recovery works. He will never be cured from this dreadful disease that he has but he has chosen to live in recovery and I praise God for the deliverance. I am deeply grateful to all those who own a part of that recovery because of the battle you waged on your knees for his soul. You’ve loved him, accepted him as your own and that’s a debt a mother can never repay.]

More and more.......

This next storm was nothing I could anticipate, expect or be prepared for. This storm involved my first-born. I have a connection to him that defies my explanation…I deeply love and adore all three of my children but there is some sort of psychological, spiritual bond that I can’t explain that exists between myself and my eldest. I have always been able to sense when things weren’t right in his life. When his daddy left he was almost 11, he was old beyond his years and totally devastated by his dad’s actions. He would pour over his Bible in his room and copy verses that he would then write to his dad and ask him to explain how he could do what he had done if he preached the opposite. He grew angry and angrier.

When I remarried and moved here we brought along a little boy who had been a very big fish in a very small pond and put him in an elementary school that itself was larger than the entire K-12 population of the school he had moved from. He made his very best friends in the youth group; he was in the Gifted/Talented program in middle school and high school. He had a sweet girlfriend. He also began taking drugs. I knew something was wrong with Matt…but never in my wildest dreams would I have come up with the answer of drugs. That was foreign to me. I wasn’t stupid – I read all the signs a parent is supposed to watch for….change in friends…nope. Falling grades….nope. Disruptive, defiant behavior….nope. He went to every youth group party, devotional, mission trip, road trip….he maintained an A average, scored a 1300 on his first attempt at his SAT without preparing at all. So of course my son wasn’t doing drugs. He got a very generous academic scholarship to a Christian college and in the fall of 1999 he moved to West Texas. There, away from the confines of home he became a bona fide addict. I would venture to guess he was high nearly every day of his freshman year. Having a 2.3 grade point average doesn’t impress the scholarship folks and at the end of that first year I think he had 13 total credits. We were in debt….and furious. But still ignorant. Still with no clue as to what he had been doing out there….other than not his class work to be sure.

Shortly after he got back home that May we discovered what the problem was and I was completely shocked, heartbroken, and terrified. We told him he could not expect to smoke pot and live in our home – he had to make a choice. For the first time in his life he yelled at me and walked out. Out of his home, with the clothes on his back, a contact case and his car. I didn’t see him or hear from again for over two weeks. That was when I really learned about crying out to God. I became aware slowly that the panic I expected to feel was usually at bay….amazingly enough I could sleep. For two weeks I didn’t know if he was alive or dead, where he slept, if he had anything to eat….he didn’t have clean clothes. But God provided me with the strength for the moment. There is no other explanation because this girl could not/would not have survived the ensuing years. After a couple of weeks he called and asked if he could get his clothes. He rented an apartment near our house and so began a period that lasted four long years.

For this child I prayed...

Sunday morning I had one of those bittersweet moments and I got all choked up for a couple of minutes. There I was, sitting between my husband and my oldest son. I told you in an earlier post that my son was one of my heroes. I think anyone who battles the demon of addiction and comes out on top deserves our applause. But there I sat Sunday morning and for a minute I flashed back to how seemingly short a time it was that Matt, the little boy, was sitting beside me in church. It seems as though it were just last week that I was handing him a book or a He-Man toy to keep him quiet and now, here he is -- a grown man building a life for himself. I also mentioned in this post that Matt had gently let me know he was considering spending some time in Rwanda teaching.

Totally AGAINST my personal, selfish will, I did a big girl thing. I'm sure God was in the details. Of all people in our 750+ member church, we walked in right behind the female half of the couple that is going to Rwanda. Okay, Lord, I get this. So I introduced Matt to her. And she is so excited about the work and that they are going and she has to take Matt over to her husband so she can tell this man who is going to be the principal of the school that here is this young man who wants to teach. I didn't much like being a big girl at that moment. If it were up to me I would have kept those 3 apart for ever.

This morning when I was driving to work a verse popped into my mind. Unbidden. And again, I didn't much like it. I wanted it to pop right back out of my mind to be honest. But it didn't. It didn't go away, it just kept echoing. So when I got to where I could, I pulled out my Bible and read the story of Samuel and the verse that God reminded me of this morning. Hannah has taken Samuel to the temple and stands before Eli and says "I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord." (1 Samuel 1:26ff) A little twist of the original meaning came to my mind - most certainly I prayed Matt into existence. But God reminded me today of the hours of prayer that had stormed the gates of heaven on Matt's behalf when he was lost in the world of drugs and alcohol. The Lord certainly granted what we asked of him in Matt's life. And now Matt is preparing to give himself to others through his career choice. A mother couldn't be more proud. Who knows what the next year will bring? Matt may well go to Rwanda or the Lord may open other doors that He guides Matt through. It's enough to know that Matt is daily turning his life over to the Lord's care and guidance. It's enough to know that if God is leading Matt to Rwanda then He will give me the strength and peace to watch him go.

At least, I know intellectually that it's enough. I have a year to get my heart to catch up to my head.