Several weeks ago, over a delicious “catching-up” meal with a lovely friend, I shared a part of my life, my testimony, that I hadn’t previously shared with her.  As I spoke to her about this, the most horrific night of my life, I realized some of the events of the night had faded.  I could still recall the details but I had to dig deep and take a pause to check my facts. In my mind, the images were blurry, not vivid and harsh with reality.

As I spoke and attempted to place the happenings in their original order, it just wasn’t there like it once was.  Neither was the sting.  I quickly realized that my emotions didn’t swell, fear didn’t enter my heart, and anxiety didn’t consume me.  I didn’t FEEL the catastrophe like I had so many times over the last eight years.

Here is the thing that DID hit me hard and that I was actually unaware of prior to talking to her. What I CAN still feel, what does evoke a powerful physical response, is God’s presence that was there then and still remains with me.

As I processed through this, I said to her, “this seems like a life time ago and it has  been eight years this month.”  I felt a sense of shock as I realized it seemed so far gone that it didn’t feel like a part of my life.  Yet it is.  She simply said the words, “this is redemption, restoration.”

In 2010, after almost fifteen years living with cancer, my dad began a long, difficult battle.  His body had given all it could to this ugly disease.  Lengthy hospital stays, surgeries, treatments, and many other things I’ve chosen to forget only landed him in hospice care.  In May of 2011, he lost his battle.

During this same time, my beautiful, tender-hearted, only son began a descent into a life that I never saw coming.  There were drugs, rebellion, friends that made no sense, irrational behavior, and then worse drugs.

The speed of his fall into darkness, coupled with my father’s worsening condition, left me struggling to understand and keep up with what was going on.  Each time I thought I had caught up with what was happening, things seemed to take a deeper dive into the pits of despair.

It’s important to note that I tried EVERYTHING that I thought I should or was told I should.  I prayed and prayed and prayed some more. I listened to one encouraging sermon someone sent me about handling young adults countless times, looking for the answer to this problem that I was determined to solve.  I offered help.  I let him come home.  I made him stay away.  I sought counseling for him and myself.  I cried and wondered where I went wrong.  I got mad and bold.  I got sad and weak.  I took middle of the night calls and made middle of the night pickups in sketchy places, just hoping this was “the” time when things would turn around. I kept trying and trying and trying.  The glimmers of hope I would see that things were getting better would quickly fade into the darkness.  Our home, our first “real” home and one that we had once been so thrilled to have, turned into a battle ground.  More ugly, angry, painful times happened during those few years than I care to ever again speak about.

At the end, I was holding my resolve that he could not live with me under these circumstances.  I was attempting to hold my job in the medical field seeing many patients each day, while falling apart on the inside.  The anxiety and stress had taken their toll on me.  I was having panic attacks and ringing in my ears and insomnia and was cleaning and organizing deep into sleepless nights just trying to control SOMETHING in my life and and and.  I felt like me and my life were falling apart and I just couldn’t do it any more.

Then THAT Saturday happened and God spoke to my heart and said it’s time.  I’m saying this in retrospect because at the time, that Saturday, I only knew that I needed to find my son.  I hadn’t heard from him in several days and I was staying strong.  This day was different, however.  I was strong, not in my resolve to keep him out of our home, but more like mama-bear-protecting-her-cub strong.

I was in full PI mode, making calls, Facebook stalking and messaging, talking to people, asking questions.  After hours of relentless attempts, I got in touch with someone who was able to tell me where he was and she let me know things were not good.  I was somewhat hysterical by this point and only remember one small stretch of the drive to go get him, where I spoke to my niece.  The rest is a blur.

It was true, things were not good.  The only thing I will say here is that he had overdosed.  There is SO MUCH about all that happened over the next however many hours but it is long, deep and really a post in and of itself.  I haven’t yet felt any calling to recount all the ugly that is the time period prior to him ending up in ICU on Saturday, March 24, 2012.  I honestly don’t think I ever will because it is not the important part of this story and quite frankly, I don’t want to dig it up.

Here is the important part.

There is a prayer garden out the door of the hospital ICU.  One of the days after my son entered the ICU, I went into this garden.  There is a brick wall surround, concrete benches, greenery, I seem to remember a water feature of some sort, statues of Mary, things like that.

I sat down on a concrete bench, and began speaking to God.  Then I began crying and speaking.  Then sobbing and speaking.  Through a million tears I told Him that I had tried everything, that I didn’t know what else to do, that I was a broken single mama who had given every single thing she could and I had not one more thing to give to this.  I prayed and asked and begged Him to take this situation from me, to heal and care for my son.

See, here is the thing. Everything I was doing, I was doing.  Yes, I prayed about the situation over and over.  I tried hard to give it to God and maybe even thought I had.  The truth is, however, that even while praying, I kept a tight hold on the situation.  This was my one and only son who I treasured more than I can explain. How could I fully let him go?  To be honest, I, sinfully, worshipped him.  I know this, I admit this, and I know it was wrong.

Back to the garden and back to where the only vivid and emotion-filled part of this story remains in me.  With my eyes closed, tears streaming down my face, and a heart so broken I didn’t know if it could ever be repaired, I stepped into the presence of God and asked with full humbleness for Him to take this situation, take my son,  that I could do no more.

Right there, in that garden outside the door of the ICU where my son lay incoherent, I saw, yes SAW, God open His arms and take my son from me.  God didn’t take my son as a 21 year old young man, He took him as a baby.  God did not speak, He just acted.  He outstretched His loving arms and took him to care for and protect better than I ever could begin to.

In my own thoughts I would question why it took me so long to get to this place where I fully submitted this to God.  I would wonder if I had let go sooner, would things have gotten as bad as they were.  I would beat myself up for all of the mistakes I made.  Over and over I would question and doubt myself.

The TRUTH however, is that God was there, He SAW ME (read John 1:43-50).  He knew that I would get to this astonishingly fragile place where there was no other way but to  FULLY and COMPLETELY rely on Him.  He knew how it would all play out from the beginning of that Saturday when He gave me the instinct to find my son.  He knew it was time to REALLY shake up what was, to me, already so shattered, I didn’t think it could be restored.

Still in awe and to be frank, asking myself if what just happened actually did happen, I stepped back into the ICU and my son and I went on a journey where we have each been redeemed and restored.  His sins were no greater than mine.  They looked greater to humans because our nature is to judge others and look for ways to be superior.  The truth is, I had been worshipping my son for years under the cover of being a good mother.  We both needed redemption and restoration.

Every detail past the encounter with God in that garden was so perfectly executed  that there is no other explanation than He had, indeed, taken my son from me.  I can assure you that the tired, overwhelmed, broken mama that was planning things could have NEVER worked them out so well.  She couldn’t have, in the most vulnerable time, told her son “no” when he said he would just come home and “be fine.”

We found a place in an excellent rehab facility that began the life-saving restoration of my son.  He is now, in only eight short years, a fully functioning man with a wife and four children, a job, and a relationship with The God that saved his life.

In the last eight years, the trauma of all that happened has slowly and progressively been removed from my thoughts.   I continuously see God’s restoration, piece by piece.  I can pass sheriffs vehicles and not panic, thinking they are coming to find me and give me terrible news.  A phone can ring, with any number, day or night, and I won’t freeze with fear.  I can sit down to a meal and not wonder, while breaking into sobs, whether my child has been able to eat.  On and on the list goes of things that have been restored, to now, eight years later, sitting and having dinner with a friend and realizing with awe that I can scarcely remember details, and what I do remember does not cause me to FEEL . . . anything really.

Except what happened in the prayer garden.

God has allowed me to forget so much of this time, He has wiped the slate clean.  He didn’t, however, wipe away the good, important parts where He was there, He saw me, He heard me, He answered my prayer in a much more extravagent way than I ever dreamed possible.

One final thing. When we were in the ER that terrible night, the sweetest nurse pulled me aside and gave me a set of small prayer beads with a tiny cross on the end and a little prayer card in a small zip lock package.  I put these in my purse and held them for years.  The package became so worn that the beads would slide out the bottom but I would just fold it up and place it back into the side pocket of whatever purse I was carrying.  They were a representation of where we had been, how far we had come.  

One day, about a year ago, I realized that I had lost the entire package – it apparently slipped out of my purse.  My first instinct was to be upset and then I realized that it was time to let those go as part of healing, and I like to think that someone found those beads and they were some part of some other story that had a beautiful ending.

. . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus          Romans 3:23-24