Wednesday's Woe - Weighted Down By the If-Only's...

Wednesday's Woe

Weighted Down By the If-Only's...

or

How do you call yourself bargaining with

"If Only's," when you really

STILL don't know the SOLUTION

(that would have changed everything),

and wouldn't recognize it if it

were STARING you in the face?

On Saturday before "Father's Day," as we were facing yet another holiday without our precious Merry Katherine, when I saw the tears on the crushed face of Tommy, I found myself immediately wracking my brain,

What could I have done to stop her from her self-destructive path so her daddy wouldn't have to feel this pain?!

When I later told Tommy what my thinking had digressed to, he observed,

You think if you could find a way to fix it, IF you could have just done something differently, you think you THEN could control the outcome and wouldn't feel so helpless...

I guess this is my bargaining still going on... I was thinking,

If I somehow could have nipped her first drug-taking in the bud, or made her change her friends, maybe this wouldn't have happened...!

Get Real.

Nip the drug-taking in the bud?

I certainly hope I did not under-react; we tried to establish the importance of having very clear boundaries - Stay away from drugs!

But in looking back, do I really think I could

"Nip the drug-taking in the bud?"

Better think again, as initial over-reaction by overly-controlling behavior could possibly push a teenager right into doing something just TO rebel (e.g., just for the sake of individuation from mommy, for one!).

Make her change her friends?

At the time, I could understand her choice of friends - they certainly didn't seem to be out-and-out criminals: They were risk-takers like her; they were physically-active, vivacious, fun people!

The people I had thought were "nice" people turned out to be stuck-up twits, in love with their own self-righteousness. She could smell that pretension miles away (and if that's who they really were, I'm glad for her discernment). And now, after her dabbling into m.a.r.i.j.u.a.n.a? They would certainly think they were "better" than her...

I can just hear a little self-righteous, pompous twit, with a hidden sin like say, an addictive eating disorder (i.e., NONE of us is perfect!), justifying herself to herself:

Marijuana?! Why, that's unacceptable! But my hidden eating disorder... No one knows, so it doesn't count. I can still hang with the self-righteous. I might even have a chance of being a LEADER of the self-righteous since I don't have a shadow-side to speak of...

...justifies the addicted, eating-disordered Pharisee to herself...

If that's who they really were...unloving Pharisees (Or was this the rationalization of a child already headed toward addictive, "stinking" thinking?),

I wouldn't have wanted to be friends with them either...

So really, we couldn't win...

Real kids with real problems OR "so-called" Christians who thought they had no problems (i.e., Pharisees who'd say,"Lord, thank you that I am not like that despicable sinner over there...") —

Even Jesus was disgusted with the latter and sought out the former.

He made it clear that living by the "letter of the law" within our own power is deadly. Legalism kills... (It certainly does, spiritually-speaking, which, in my opinion, is THE most important aspect of our lives, more important to our Savior than earthly life itself...)

And yet, it was a No-Win situation.

She was repulsed by the

unloving-folks-who-"called"-themselves-Christians, but-who-detested-the-very-people-she-cared-about, her "Jesus-on-the-street."

And yet, her choice to hang out with this other kind of friend was what ultimately...killed her...

Picture - http://twitpic.com/url2z thanks to Lilly Ann

Wednesday's Woe - Picking Up Pieces

Wednesday's Woe

Picking Up Pieces

In the middle of "tough love"

With my rambunctious baby girl,

Raising the bottom, not enabling,

So she could be safe in this world...

Now we're left picking up pieces

As the bottom fell out,

Our baby snatched away,

Without e'en a mommy's shout.

How are we to "go on"

When our hearts have dropped out?

Our baby girl's not here,

So what's our life about?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't,

Nothing we did seemed to help.

And yet Lord, she's with you

Though I whimper and yelp.

"Speak to her soul," You said that night.

I knew "her flesh" could not hear.

I spoke out of love; she did respond,

And now her spirit draws near...

***

My sincere condolences to grieving mother Katie Allison Granju whose 18-year-old son Henry died on May 31, 2010 from an apparent drug overdose and assault during a "drug deal gone bad." Evidently, this poor family is suffering repercussions even beyond their child's death as they feel the local authorities are not investigating thoroughly the death of their loved one...

Although the following fellow-blogger (http://mamapundit.com) lives in the vicinity of my own home of Knoxville, Tennessee, I did not know her and did not know about her son's death until I read about it in The New York Times' article yesterday, where there were subsequent comments by some of the Times' readers regarding Ms. Granju's public self-disclosure (on her blog) of her struggles with her son's addiction process, a harrowing process which ultimately led to his recent emergency hospitalization in which it was discovered he had severe brain damage.

When I read these New York Times comments regarding this mother's heart-breaking trauma, I was absolutely appalled. Many of these folks were downright denigrating in their view of her efforts to love her child in what is often a no-win parental nightmare of a child's drug abuse. In response to their many judgmental remarks (which were all over the map regarding what they felt she should have done), I flashed back to our own no-win dilemma in loving our baby girl amidst her own battles, and then wrote the above poem. You can read more about Ms. Granju's story in the Times article, http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/parenting-an-addicted-child/

Here is a June 2 post describing the events leading to Henry Granju's death from KnoxNews.com (the online version of the Knoxville newspaper, Knoxville News Sentinel) in their news post of June 2nd, 2010:

The Knox County Sheriff's Office is investigating the drug-related death of a Knoxville blogger's 18-year-old son, who died Monday.

In an online blog entry, Katie Allison Granju confirmed the death of her son, Henry Louis Granju, who had been in intensive care at the University of Tennessee Medical Center following an assault and subsequent drug overdose he suffered in April.

Katie Allison Granju is the director of digital and social media for Ackermann Public Relations. He also is the son of Chris Granju, Knox County's Director of Stormwater Management.

According to the Sheriff's Office, as well as a family member's account, Henry Granju was beaten and robbed by three assailants during an attempted drug buy in the parking lot of the Bi-Lo market, 2230 W. Governor John Sevier Highway, on April 26. Family members say a tire iron was used in the assault.

The attack left the victim bleeding from his ears, with a broken jaw, broken ribs and brain injury, said Robert Allison, Granju's uncle.

Allison claims Granju's injuries were complicated by a dose of methadone he was given later the same night by acquaintances, who didn't call E-911 on his behalf until the next morning.

Our prayers go with this grieving family,

Picture: "Being Taken Apart" by Charlie Lucas thanks to Joanna Cravey Hutt at http://spittingrits.blogspot.com/

Poem - Picking Up Pieces - Angie Bennett Prince - 6/8/10

http://mamapundit.com - blog of Katie Allison Granju

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/parenting-an-addicted-child/

http://www.knoxnews.com/