A one elephant zoo

( Updated and reposted 3/07. I originally posted this and then saved it as a draft three hours later. Now a full year later I have decided to re post it and let it stand because chances are no one will go back and look at this except me. If you know me and know who this is, you know a year later things are really crazy! But the good news is the kids are safe for now. They are all three with a very sweet relative who wants nothing more than to give them security and love while helping them work past the tragic life they have lived for the last four years. I praise God everyday that those kids are away from their parents...for now anyway! )

For many weeks there have been some things weighing heavy on my mind, heart, and prayers. Things I can't exactly blog about or even talk about much. Giant invisible elephants I call them. Secrets or at least semi-secrets that should not be aired. I hate secrets. Today I have decided to let one out of it's cage. Maybe it is my new URL and distancing my name from my blog that is allowing me to do this. Or maybe I'm just a zookeeper who can only take care of one elephant at a time, but here it goes. (Besides it's Friday. No one reads these blogs over the weekend...right?)

Over Spring Break there was a drug raid on my street. I'm talking undercover cop cars lining the street and men in jeans and black flack jackets with their guns strapped to their thighs and waist prowling through the bushes and waiting to run in the house and search.... My sleepy little neighborhood does not see this type action. Ever. There are 24 kids on our street ages 6 months to 12 years. We are mostly young families with stay home moms and retired people. Until last Thursday, the biggest excitement on our block was when a teenager stopped for speeding down the street smelled of alcohol and the police called a patty wagon. That was two years ago.

Then there was last Thursday. It was scary, sad, and adrenaline pumping all at the same time. I watched former friends of mine be taken away in hand cuffs while neighbors kept their kids down the street. They found meth. I didn't know it was meth by name before last week, but I have watched something ruin a family over the last two or three years. Since I learned that something's name, I have been talking to people who deal with meth addicts trying to research and learn about the drug that has come to reside so close to my home. What I have found is terrifying!

Meth is not anything you just try once. It can be injected, ingested, smoked or snorted. It is highly addictive, fairly cheap compared to other drugs, and the high can last 6 to 8 hours (as compared to 30 to 60 minutes with heroine or cocaine). It ravages the brain with a dophamine overload. The body of a user "ages" one year for every two to three months of use. In one year the average meth user ages 5-6 years. Meth is an annorexiate meaning it kills the bodies desire to eat. Dramatic weight loss and a gaunt, malnourished, pale look are one of the first signs of meth abuse. Many users end up with a classic "meth mouth" as their teeth rot and fall out over the span of five years, sometimes faster.

Users experience the highest highs, and the lowest lows. Meth alters sleep patterns. In the beginning stages of abuse users can function for days on end requiring little or no sleep. After a few months users experience days and days of crashing where they can not stay awake and can sleep literally for days on end. In the beginning Meth increases one's sex drive in an unbelievable way. Eventually it depletes and completely kills ones sex drive all together. It alters and "burns out"nerve endings and receptors in the brain. Over time Meth use literally creates craters of dead brain cells that are visible in brain scans and are evident in autopsy's.

Read enough? It gets worse. Most rehab counselors paint a very dark picture when talking about recovery from meth addiction. In fact full recovery is almost unheard of. One counselor quoted in a Newsweek article said in 15 years of treating meth addicts he could not name more than five that were able to return to normal productive lives for more than a year without relapsing into a habbit or succumbing to the physical degeneration caused by years of meth abuse. Many meth users die young. AND what makes it worse is that Meth use is up to almost epidemic proportions in almost every age bracket from 12 years to 50! I won't even get into how easy and dangerous it is to make home made meth, except to say that it is highly explosive and the bi-products are lethal. Truly the information available with just a simple Google search is shocking.

Here is perhaps the saddest part of all this for me... Now that I know what has been going on with this family, I can't say I am too shocked. As weird as it was to see cops crawling all over my street and arresting people I know (that was a lifetime first for me), we have been expecting something like this to happen for a very long time. In fact I was afraid it would be something worse. There are kids involved in this situation. Kids who I have watched grow since they were babies. Kids whose lives have been turned up side down so many times in the last two or three years that they are almost unrecognizable. I have cried my self to sleep praying for them many times. I have butt in, confronted, drawn a line in the sand and tried to intervene every way I could think of. But, I gave up about a year ago. Nothing I said or did made any difference and in some ways it just made things worse.

I was a ball a nerves and so upset over this situation that for my own health and sanity (not to mention the health and safety of my family) Rob and I cut all ties with this family. We are pleasant, as we would be to any stranger, when we see them, but we have had to draw the line at that. It has been hard on my kids because these were their friends. It puts a damper on outdoor/ neighborhood play. But what it does to us is insignificant compared to what I fear has happened and is happening in that family.

Never before had I felt forced to say to someone that I could not be part of their lives or let my kids be part of their kids lives because they had made decisions and choices that put themselves, their children, and anyone who comes in contact with them in serious danger. It was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. It is still hard when I look at the kids. Will those kids ever understand why I turned away from them? I constantly wonder if I did and am doing the right thing. My brain says yes, I have to protect my children and myself if I am to be of any use to anyone. But, my heart is never sure.

As a child of God, I know all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We all need him and we all need forgiveness. I never want to put myself above another sinner. Loving people is hard, and messy, and sometimes dangerous. We are called to love the unlovable. As a Christian I struggle with the compassionate, loving but firm and not enabling response to this.

I don't know what all goes on with this family, but even from a distance, with only casual contact for the last year, I can see that whatever is going on is not good. I feel guilty for turning my back on these kids. I didn't want to. I tried not to. But I have to protect my kids. I am afraid of these people. Yet I still can't help but want to do something for those kids.

Luckily, I am not alone. I have several neighbors in the same boat. We have prayed about it, cried about it, and talked about it countless times. It helps to have community. My neighbor shared a devotional she was reading the other day about being God's person in the world. In it the author used a garden analogy saying when you work in the Garden, you don't get the mud glovey, you get your gloves muddy. After you work the soil and plant the seed you have to take the gloves out of the mud and cleanse them so that some day they can be used to plant again. You can't leave the gloves out in the mud. The gloves protect your hands and keep them clean. If you allow them to become saturated with mud and don't clean them, they can not do what they are intended to do.

This was helpful, but I find myself with so many questions. How many seeds do we plant before we cleanse? How long can the gloves stay in the mud before they become worthless to the gardener? Is it the gloves fault if the seeds don't grow? As Christians how long can we stay in the mud before we get so mucked up that we are no good to the Father? How many times should we try to sow seed in soil that is not fertile and does not want to be sown? When does God say it is OK for a Christian to walk away from another, even if they do so in hope that somehow God will reach that person, even if it isn't through them? Is it enough that we give a situation to God, and walk off? What if to the innocents left behind it looks like we are just walking off? How do you show you care and still remain separated? How do I shelter and protect my children without abandoning theirs? These are the questions that again fill my heart this morning.

One thing I keep coming back to is how very much we need God in our lives. All of us. I tend to get sidetracked from my walk with Christ and at times feel like Christianity is a badge I wear more than it is a honor I have been given and a way of life I practice. When I see how easy it is for someone to be led astray and how the actions of one person and ruin the lives of so many, I thank God that he is there for us all. He truly is the one pure love and the one true hope for this world.

My prayer is that God will find a way to rescue these children from the path set before them by their parent's choices. I pray that God will send just one person to them that is strong enough and stable enough to give them security, hope, discipline and above all, the self-sacrificing love they need. I pray that the Lord of all children will wrap his arms around anything innocent and loving left in that house and help it to grow and conquer the darkness that looms all around it. I pray that I do what HE wills me to do and that he gives me the vision to see his plan. I would love you to join me in those prayers if you feel so directed.

Prayers sent up of the back of an invisible elephant....
Thanks for letting me share. Thanks for being my community. Must go tend to the zoo now!