This past week I met with a community fraught with challenges. Specifically I trudged through the marsh of mental illness, offering hands and weathered shoulders to hold and lean upon. My ears strained in the shadows for a familiar comforting voice. I watched from a shelf on the wall to get a bird’s eye view of it all, holding my tongue and wringing my heart.
One by one I met the soldiers standing at their gates. Each one equipped with a different shade of red tape. Soft tones, methodical words, plastic masks, yet no direction.
“We haven’t always been here” I told myself. It has taken a thousand years or more for the callouses to form, and the politically correct lingo to roll off our lips.
The marsh is too thick now, too deep, too ‘muck and mire’ for freedom to ever reign again. We treat the symptoms, but not the sickness. We make a list, we dial, we write, and go home to bed, to start all over in the morning.
One prayer at a time, one day at a time, one heart at a time, the children of the living God can move, can heal, can love one another to wholeness, in His name. O the precious name.
“Dedicated to my family, friends and neighbours who struggle in their spirit and their soul”. There is hope.
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