This from a friend...
Hey Everyone…I am calling on everyone I know who is a believer to pray for me, my family, and my friends right now. We have had a couple of awful ironic things happen over the past 5 days.
On Saturday night (a week ago tonight), a very close friend of mine, L, and her husband, J, went to a party. J is an alcoholic along with some other mental issues. He does not see himself as an alcoholic. L’s marriage is pretty miserable, as J does not see any need to change, and L keeps trying to “guilt” him into changing. Of course, this will not work, so the cycle continues. L stays in the marriage because she wants the “perfect” life—nice house in an affluent neighborhood, good looking husband, and beautiful children. She stays in a marriage rotting from within because she so badly wants this image intact. Despite her shortcomings, she is a dear friend of mine, although one who can be emotionally draining due to her neediness.
Anyway, they attend the party, and J gets very, very drunk. L drives them home. When they get home, they have a fight over his drinking, and she tells him to sleep on the couch. She goes upstairs to brush her teeth, and hears the garage door open. J left in his car. She drove around looking for him at convenience stores and the local bar. When she can’t find him, she calls the police to report a missing drunk person.
When the cop arrives, he takes the report and leaves. In a matter of minutes, the cop comes back to her door to tell her that he has been involved in an accident. He was driving southbound on the northbound lanes of a 4-lane divided highway without headlights. He hit another car head on, killing one person in the other car on impact. J, despite immediate appearances to the contrary, was alive and will recover from a broken hip and ruptured spleen. He will recover well enough to spend a minimum of 5 years in prison for vehicular homicide and assault by auto, and that’s with the high priced defense attorney his and L’s family’s are hiring. I have been dealing with this since L’s panicked phone call Sunday morning, trying to be a supportive friend. This can be very difficult when she vacillates between making excuses for him and being angry. So far, J is unrepentant and has even gone so far as to blame L for not stopping him from driving away.
Today (Friday) was the second day of school. I was in the middle of going over the rules with my 1st period class when my boss comes to my classroom door. My mom is on the phone. She tells me that my dad’s youngest sister has been killed by a drunk driver in a head on collision. The drunk driver was going northbound on the southbound lanes of a 4-lane divided highway. She was killed on impact. She was an on-call hospice nurse, and was returning from a late night call from a patient. My aunt had been a job drifter and an excuse maker until she recently found happiness and her niche in hospice nursing. She was very highly respected by her co-workers and boss, as my mom has found out from speaking with her boss. Now she’s gone. She was 45.
My dad has now had to mourn 3 siblings in the past 7 years. All were lost at a young age: one at 62 to breast cancer, one at 61 to heart disease, and now T at 45.
I am reeling from having to live the same tragedy and identical accident scenario from both sides in one week: as the victim’s family and as a friend of the perpetrator’s family. Nobody wins. Nobody.
Please be praying for me and my family and the families of both drunk drivers. This is a lot to handle. I am trying to figure out what the Lord is trying to tell me through these circumstances. I, as yet, do not understand. This makes panic disorder look like a piece of cake. Love, _____
*UPDATE*
Hi…To add to your prayer list, the drunk driver, a 20-year-old, who killed my aunt, died last night at the hospital where he was taken after the accident. There are a lot of people hurting! Thank you for your support and love and prayers.
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