Let me be real. I haven’t blogged for several weeks. Time was scarce and slipped away a minute at a time with work, charting, laundry, dishes, and more laundry. I was relieved when my birthday and the extra day off I had requested finally rolled around. I had made plans for cooking, shopping, and holiday time with my niece Meagan. Then she left me.
Just like that. She was gone. All the years of birthday parties and little girl dreams sat a heap of ashes in a small white box. All the prayers I had prayed and worry I had carried were just gone. I am still trying to wrap my head around never getting another text or phone call from her. There was so much that she still needed to do. Her children needed her. I needed her.
You see, my niece was an addict. We had learned years ago that if we told her what she should do, she was more likely than not to run the other direction. She chose circumstances that were hard sometimes because she felt that it would teach us a lesson. My mother told me to stop worrying, that Meagan would eventually give up and turn to us. Instead, she found a new love and an easier way. First it was something she could roll into a joint and let the stress roll away, then the pill that she could crush and get high. Finally she found the ultimate lover that fit in a syringe and took the world away.
This last year was so bad. She was caught using drugs in my mother’s kitchen, and I told her it was rehab and us or the people who were supplying her addiction. We lost. She grew so thin. I fed her many times, often looking for her on my way home to give her a ride and buy her something hot. She slept on people’s couches and in their backrooms. She stole food and dug donated clothing out of a dumpster. I wept, but anything I bought her was opened so it could not be returned for money to buy more meth.
I kept pounding the message that rehab was the way out of her mess. I prayed for her. I took her to church at times, and never stopped telling her I believed in her and loved her. She sat beside me and reached for Jesus and wept soft tears, then turned from her praying to find her next fix. Then, I got the call that I had dreaded for so long. A police officer had knocked on my mother’s door and told her that Meagan had been found with a syringe beside her. The little girl I had long called my ladybug was gone.
If love could have saved her, she had so much more of that than she realized. If worry could have changed the situation, I have done that far more than anyone knows. I will miss her voice and the flash of her brown eyes. I will miss having birthday parties and holiday dinners where her only request was some of my macaroni salad. I will always question, could I have done more? Was there a place in this downward spiral where I could have placed a road block? Was my tough love really love of my own comfort?
I am grieving, but I have this one hope. You see, I believe in a God Who loves His children with a God-sized love and responds to them with pity that has no measure. I was there when Meagan prayed a sinner’s prayer as a teenager. I drove far out of my way to take her to church over the years where I saw her stand with tears rolling down her cheeks during worship. I saw her reach for the Lord—and I know my God enough to understand that He sees our frailty and reaches much farther than we can.
The Jesus Who looked on the multitudes standing on the hillside and had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd also looked on this little lamb of mine. I am grateful for the words He spoke, that He would not cast out any who came to Him. What I could not do in my weakness, He has done now in His strength. That little sheep could not free herself from the snare into which she had fallen, but she was His sheep nonetheless. I feel the assurance in my soul that Meagan is healed, whole, happy at last in His arms. I will see her again. That is my hope.
So please forgive me for my silence lately, and overlook the tear in my eye. I am just missing my ladybug.
Ladybug, Ladybug
Fly away home
Jesus is waiting
In heaven’s open door
Ladybug, Ladybug
Fly away home
All that was lost
Will now be restored
Ladybug, Ladybug
I wish you could stay
You had so much to do
And I had so much to say
Ladybug, Ladybug
Fly away home
The bright Sun is shining
No night on that shore
Ladybug, Ladybug
Fly away home
So much laughter and love
Are waiting in store
Ladybug, Ladybug
The Lord made you a way
I will follow behind
And come see you someday ?
