Crystal Lies - Melody Carlson [107]
After an hour of such questions, I couldn’t take it anymore and got up and began pacing around the darkened apartment. I kept looking out the window, wishing that Jacob would come back. Wishing that I had handled things differently. So what if I’d been scared? Which was more scary—my son high on drugs sleeping it off in this apartment or my son lying dead in a gutter? And perhaps none of this would’ve happened, I considered, if I hadn’t had Marcus over here. What was I thinking to invite him anyway? I should’ve known this could present a problem for Jacob. In his eyes, it probably seemed I was linking myself with the enemy and subsequently making myself into the enemy. That’s how I’d felt tonight—as if I’d suddenly become Jacob’s enemy. Poor Jacob. In his twisted, drug-inflicted mind it must’ve felt like the final blow. His very own mother consorting with someone from Hope’s Wings. What had I been thinking?
By now I had myself so agitated that I knew I would never go to sleep. I continued pacing and fretting until I felt my sanity was in serious peril. Was I completely losing my mind? And how had I wound up in this unstable condition after enjoying a relatively nice evening? What was wrong with me?
I paused in front of my refrigerator and read all the notes I’d posted there. While the words were of some comfort, I knew that something was missing. In front of my shabby slipcovered sofa, I got back down on my knees again. And this time I didn’t cry out for Jacob as much as I cried out for myself. It seemed that my own soul was hanging precariously by a thread. How could I possibly ask God to help someone else when I was floundering like this?
“Help me, God,” I prayed out loud. “I am such a complete mess, and I don’t even know what to do about anything anymore. Please, I’m begging you, help me to survive this. Help me to trust you more. To believe what your Word says and to have the faith to function without having these meltdowns all the time. Please, God, I need you.” Then I went back to bed and lay down again. To my surprise, I did feel a little better, a little calmer. And as I lay there, still thinking about Jacob but trying very hard not to imagine the worst-case scenario, I began to see something I’d never seen before.
With crystal-clear clarity, I began to see Jacob as God’s child. Not that he wasn’t my child, because I knew that indeed he was and always would be, but I began to understand that if God had truly been the one to create my son—and I think I believed this—then God must bear some responsibility for the way Jacob’s life seemed to be heading. Not only that, but if God was the loving God I had once believed him to be—even if I had questioned this lately—then wouldn’t he want to take care of Jacob, his own child?
And so I imagined myself handing my only son over to God and saying,“Here he is, God, the child that you created. I trust you to take care of him now. I know that I cannot. I give him over to you, God. Please watch over him and protect him, for he is, after all, your son.” And then believing that God was far more able to handle this heavy responsibility than I was, I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
I wish I could say it was that easy. That simple. That I handed Jacob over to God that Thanksgiving night and that, once and for all, I quit worrying about my wayward son and resumed life as normal. Good grief, I didn’t even know what normal was anymore. Perhaps there is no such thing as normal. But like a toddler learning to walk, I continued moving through my new life one hesitant step at a time. And like a toddler I still fell down.
The AA prayer became my mantra. I prayed it at least a dozen times a day. During the next couple of weeks, I continued going to Dr. Abrams and to the codependency meetings, and I tried to imagine that life was getting better and that