"The Lord cares deeply when His loved ones die." Psalm 116:15
There have been two people lost in our little community to the toxic drug supply in the last month. Yesterday, the life of a young woman, all of 24, ended. She held a life in her womb. Before her, a young man in his early thirties went missing for weeks before his earthly remains were discovered. How he was found will haunt me for a long time.
They have mothers and brothers who will never be able to make sense of why this happened. I don't suppose there is any sense at all.
There's a dark world out there, beyond the happy campers across the road; beyond the jars of salsa sitting in my cupboard and times spent at the beach or the cottage with family and friends.
It's one of violence and violation. It's a place where hope is a thing for others to have. It's a place where the god, drug, consumes the mind, soul and body. It calls their names in ceaseless demands and extracts their humanity until they are a shadow of who they were created to be.
No child dreams of living with such a god when they grow up. No doctor or lawyer or student or pastor incorporated such a thing into their five year plans. Yet, doctors still prescribe meds that lead directly to the slippery slope of addiction. Smoking pot unknowingly laced with lethal and highly addictive additives turns an experiment, a rebellion, a teenage party into a life of doing the unthinkable to feed the god, drug.
It's not what it was when we were young and foolish.
And those who deal in the devil's medicine don't care because the cash keeps coming in. One death is nothing to them because there are ten more lined up for their wares. They have made sure of that.
Lord, help me not hate them. They may be just as ensnared by the corrupted power of the devil's medicine as those who come to them for more.
Sometimes it is generational, a family business so to speak. How could a child know such a normal is so wrong?
All I know is that underneath the mask of getting high is a whole lot of pain and trauma and suffering.
It's enough to make you cry.
And yesterday, as I sat with a weeping woman who felt the pain of losing a young friend, all I had to offer was a hug. With permission of course. You have to ask first because hugs aren't necessarily a good thing to someone who has only known unimaginable abuse and violence.
I don't know if she had ever had such a hug before, one that simply said, "I see you, I grieve with you and you are not alone."
I wish there was more that I could have done.
Lord, hear my cry for the lost, the broken, the abandoned, the violated and the violators. Hear my cry for all Your children. AMEN.
