Sometimes you eat the bar, sometimes the bar eats you...

My cell phone rang around 10 P.M. two nights ago, and though the ring wasn’t enough to stir my exhausted self from sleep, the little message-waiting bleep did. I listened to the voice mail and it was my mother. She’d been drinking. She wanted me to pray for her because she’d been fired from her job of the past seven years or so. Mean people at work were telling lies about her, people who don’t know as much as she does, but she was sure God would take care of her...somehow. I didn’t call her back because you can’t really get anywhere talking with slobbering, hysterical, wasted folks.

Same tired old bullshit, though. Loop to laughter, fade to black.

God will take care of her. Oy. This from a woman who’s gone bankrupt twice.

I called my sister to see if she knew the real deal, because I know people don’t get fired by social services agencies without committing a crime, or not meeting expectations for a very long time. Teresa thinks it was the latter. She said Mom’s been dropping out of life a little bit at a time, letting her house go, letting her job go, letting herself go. The same way our father did.

At 56, she’s the same age as Dad when he died. I can’t imagine how she is going to find employment in a similar pay range to her old job. She’s already not paying her bills. How will she make her mortgage?

Teresa said she doesn’t think Mom cares anymore.

The thing with my mother: no matter how much trouble and pain she's in, she can never say “I was wrong.” My mother is a perpetual victim, everything bad that happens is because someone doesn’t like her, is picking on her, or not treating her right.

The whole thing has me thinking about how uncommon it is for people to grow up. Maybe that’s what the last post was about, because truth’s been on my mind. Everyone has problems, everyone makes mistakes. But not everyone learns from those mistakes. Some people (and families and churches) just keep riding the same creaking old carousel. Doesn’t matter how sick they get, they’re more afraid of solid ground, so they won’t get off.

A book I enjoyed reading last year was The Glass House, by Jeannette Walls. She captured so beautifully what it’s like to be a child in an alcoholic’s house, the strange contradiction of her mother’s artistic side and her father’s seemingly endless intelligence, wit, and knowledge of the world, while at the same time living in squalor, starving most of the time, moving constantly, being abused, feeling ashamed about things that weren’t her fault, trying to bear the weight of the world, exerting massive energy--even as a little girl--trying to save her folks and make them happy, lying about everything. And thinking, This is the way the world is, this is normal.

* * *

Ten years ago this morning, I watched my first baby come into the world. There is a supernatural aura in delivery rooms. I felt weak-kneed when I saw Beck for the first time; it was overwhelming. I wept. I couldn't stop looking at her little pink frame through my tears.

I've felt the same with all of our kids, but it was most memorable with Beck because she was the first. Jess and I had talked for nine months with anticipation and wonder of "the baby," and how our lives would be when the baby came, and then I could see her on the other side of the delivery room crying as she was being wiped off, a nurse standing over her with a clipboard, recording her APGAR score. She was no longer an unknown, intangible person.

In small form, it makes me think of what it will be like when at last I depart the womb of this world to cast my eyes on the One I have hoped in, and anticipated, and trusted.

"Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed." ~ John 20:29