DRENCHED | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: DRENCHED | Previous Challenge Entry
By Nancy Kaye
03/19/09
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DRENCHED

I put the scrap of paper in my pocket and leave for my 5th and last day of work with the Family Program. Going in early to prepare, I pass by a meeting room with its door open. I see a woman and go in and ask what kind of meeting is there. She tells me Sex Anonymous has just finished and shares part of her recovery story. I take her name and number as we have 4 women with relationship addictions in our chemical dependency hospital treatment program. I read to her from my scrap of paper.

Returning to the Family Program room there are several people who said they would attend, and a father with his 8-year-old son who I’m not expecting. It’s an adult program and not a visiting time. Going up to the Treatment unit I make arrangements with staff who bend the rules. They will take the 8 yr. old, whose mother is in treatment, on a walk and outing to a nearby park. Returning to get the son, I bring him upstairs and there is a special moment as mother and son are reunited. Again I feel drenched.

Working with several families during the morning I realize I know Kevin, the father, as we have treated him several times. I also know his former wife who we treated during two pregnancies years ago. I know his mother who raised the children who are now teenagers. This family is low on success yet I hear how Kevin has almost two years clean and sober, he’s employed with two jobs and working an active recovery program since getting out of prison. At one point I ask Kevin if there is anything between us that needs amends. He takes a long pause looking at me and says, “No, I think I didn’t like you very much years back.” I tell him I think I didn’t like him very much back then either and honor and affirm his life today. At the end of the morning I read them my paper and we are all drenched.

The last person I spend time with is Joan a patient who I had worked with the previous day. She had been taking a sleeping medication and having night terrors and felt like she couldn’t wake up and “get out of them”. She fears going to sleep and is feeling sleep deprived. In her nightmare she is in a crack house and in each room she goes to there is a dead baby in the middle of the room. Some are cold, some are warm and there are people in the background not caring, more intent on shooting up. She sees the babies as representing parts of herself that have been abused and abandoned. I ask about a Higher Power for her. She tells me she believes in God but hasn’t been to church since childhood when her father abused someone and the church kicked the whole family out. She does believe she has a Guardian Angel who has protected her in many instances. From her stories I would say this Guardian Angel has been working overtime for a long time. We work on honoring and empowering her with her Guardian Angel to give messages to the baby and the uncaring onlookers. I end by reading her my slip of paper. It is a saying from the mystics. “Just honor fully what you meet each day and you will find it drenched with Grace and Divinity.” I give her the slip of paper and feel blessed that we all have been so drenched. Such is the everyday, ordinary kingdom of God. It is that place where God’s grace and divinity drench our lives as we journey in the kingdom

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