Bombed Out

Sunday anti-terrorism officers ordered the evacuation of Jacksonville’s downtown core because a gentleman from Morocco threatened to blow up the city with a car bomb.

He parked his car, with loud Arabic music blaring from it, in the area between City Hall and the Jacksonville Landing, a popular local strip mall on the river. Then he paraded in the streets near the main library shouting Arabic slogans and saying his car bomb would destroy the city.

This came on the heels of two massive car bombs filled with gasoline, explosives and nails had been defused in London on Friday; and a car exploded when rammed by two Asian men into the terminal at the Glasgow airport on Saturday.

There proved to be no bomb in the car here in Jacksonville, but the threat closed the city core and the Main Street Bridge while police arrested Yossef Bouchlarhem, age 34, then searched his car and home for explosives.

Full news coverage of the incident can be found at the Times-Union website at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/070207/met_181501414.shtml

Except for hearing snippets of radio news, Ginny and I were hardly aware of the excitement downtown as we peacefully dabbled in our garden and finished our pool cleaning project.

My main concern as we worked and relaxed was how to handle the impatience which has overshadowed my life and thoughts this past week. I’ve been thinking about my impatience and planning to write about it in my journal today…

That has to wait.

Last night a major emotional bomb exploded in our family.

Our youngest daughter has been sick with a parasitic infection. One sister took her to the hospital emergency room for treatment; another bought her prescriptions. We have all called and visited to see she had everything she needed. We have all tried to be supportive emotionally, financially, and physically…

Last night her sister and my daughter-in-law went over to do her dishes, clean house, cook her dinner, and nurse her.

Like that time back around Christmas, they again found more evidence of her drug use.

She asked them to leave her house.

A flurry of phone calls among family members followed.

Believing her when she said she was drug-free, we have exhausted ourselves and our resources trying to help her. We helped her move from Gainesville, gave her places to stay while she searched for a house to rent, bought her groceries and gas, gave her job tips, cut her grass, opened our homes, did what ever we could to help.

We want to help her get established without being enablers to drug use.

We truly love her. We value her. We see great potential in her beauty, charm, character and intelligence. It makes us sick to see her undervalue herself, to see her wasted.

It pains us to see her circling the drain.

We grieve.

None of us knows what to do next.

At our wits end.

Later this morning I plan to go over to her house. I’m at a loss. I have no idea what I’ll say. I’m walking on eggs here. How to help without enabling?

Drugs contributed to her dropping out of college, to job losses, to family tensions, to financial hardship…

Yet I can’t tell if the drug use is a cause or a symptom of her pain.

We all want to at least see her through the physical part of this parasite thing (at the hospital she ran a 103 degree fever) but the drug use… That’s another matter and I don’t know how to deal with it.

Ginny and I (and the others) went through years of horror and depression and anguish when she was a teenager involved in drugs. I don’t think we can face that sort of thing again now that she’s an adult.

The whole situation scares me.

Like the guy who brought his possessed son to Jesus, I can only say, “Lord, I believe; Help Thou my unbelief”.