We talked about it for awhile and realized that what he really wanted to do was martial arts training. If he joined the police force, he would have to start at the bottom and work his way up to the position of office training. As we talked we developed a plan wherein he could train under a local master for a year and a half, and after that time, he could open his own martial arts school.

That night I had another dream. In it our entire family was at the Grand Canyon. We jumped off the edge and were paragliding across it. What a wonderful feeling! I took that to mean we had made good decisions and were on our way to where we should be. Also, I realized I had squelched my husband’s spirituality and made the decision to go to church with him, maybe not every Sunday, but enough to get him back on track.

After not hearing from her for several months, I called her. She was at her husband’s office balancing his bank statement, something he had put off so long it had become an almost impossible task. His procrastination had long been one of her complaints. My friend was usually the kindest, most caring person I’d ever met, but that day she was very short toward me as we talked. I wondered what I had done.

It was not a conversation I cared to linger in, so I hung up quickly. I thought about the conversation for several days, and the way she had treated me. Finally, I thought, “If it’s that bad, why don’t you just leave”? That kind of surprised me as I’ve never been an advocate of divorce. But what was really weird was that after seventeen years of marriage, within just a few weeks she did!!!

There are no such things as accidents, only setups. Our enemy, Satan, sets us up. It takes him awhile, he can’t just outright kill us, or he already would have. So he has to wait until we get careless, preoccupied, busy. Then he lays the trap, and we step right into it because we are careless, preoccupied, busy, so much so that we don’t hear that still small voice of God. We look for the spectacular from God, when it’s the little things He uses to warn and direct our paths. It’s in the quiet time he speaks, and most of us have precious little of that.

My dad died from a fall. He was careless, preoccupied, busy, got on a roof on a very windy day taking sheets of tin off. Somehow, no one was around, he fell. The sheet of tin was wrapped around him. Several weeks before, I dreamed something, I didn’t remember the details when I awoke, but I did remember these words, “Did she fall or was she pushed?” After he died, I remembered this and wondered if the two were related. A hurricane had ripped through our part of the country and caused massive damage to his rental properties. He was frantic to get things fixed as quickly as possible. So when it happened, I wondered: Did he fall? Or was he pushed? Was it really an accident or was it a setup? Had he let his carelessness, preoccupation, busyness get him pushed by unseen forces to his death? That was two years ago, and I continued to ponder: fall or pushed? Or did he just make a stupid mistake and die for his error?

Recently I attended the funeral of a young man. He mixed alcohol and pain meds one night and never woke up. At his funeral, I added the third category – jumped. You have to wonder, why do people do this to themselves? Why do they take these chances? His parents were divorced. He spent many years estranged from his mother. Had he just had enough? Enough pain? Enough rejection? Enough of trying? Enough of looking for the answer? But he couldn’t commit suicide, that would be a sin, right? So he did the next best thing, he jumped. Jumped into the oblivion of drugs and allowed them to take their predetermined course. It didn’t take much effort at all on his part, just follow the path of least resistance, and let that river take him where many drug users end up.

And so I returned to my dad’s death and wondered: Did he fall? Was he pushed? Or did he jump? Did he jump because he didn’t want to fool with all the work that lay before him? Did he jump because he didn’t want to make some decisions that needed to be made? Like who to leave his estate to? His first family or his second? Should he leave a sizable chunk to his biological children because he neglected them to earn all this wealth? Or should he leave it to his second family because they were nice to him when we couldn’t be? No decision is a decision.

So now the battle rages over that money. And still I wonder: Did he fall? Was he pushed? Or did he jump?

I attended the funeral recently of a young man who died of a combination of alcohol and pain meds. Family and friends said God was in control, God knew what he was doing and this was all part of His divine plan. But I have a different take on it – he wandered into the enemy’s camp and became a casualty of war.

Did God want him to die? No! Did God warn him? He probably tried, but you see, Neil was tuned to a different frequency. Drugs and alcohol are at Depression 90.3. God’s signal is way over there at Life & Peace 107.7. Think about it: Can you hear a radio station you’re not tuned to?

Maybe in the beginning Neil’s radio dial was tuned to Life & Peace 107.7 but something happened, something lured him away. So he started drinking, and perhaps God tried to warn him. And maybe he was warned by that inner voice when he started to use drugs, and again when he began mixing the two for that higher high. And then several more times along the way and so many times until he got so far off the dial from where God’s signal was broadcasting there was no way he could hear it because he’d ceased to think much about Him anymore.

Did he go to hell? It’s not my place to decide, and I’m glad. I wouldn’t want that responsibility. What I see is the devastation left behind, a trail of broken hearts strewn along the ground. A culmination (or a new chapter?) of years of hearts cracking: a broken home, a broken marriage, children choosing sides, families siding with ex’s over their own flesh and blood, parents alienated from their children until those hearts crumble into so many grains of sand. He was a good person. There were those who loved him. Where is the line between good and good enough and who decides?

And the faces, dead faces, mouths not speaking. The faces that gave him the drugs, witnessed his death struggle, and now must live with his loss, and their role in it. It was the quietest funeral I’ve ever been to. No one spoke. Faces without hope or expression. And their answer to all this? After the funeral a lot of the people got drunk/bombed. When alcohol or drugs is the problem, why do we go there for the answer? It isn’t going to happen.

Afterward I was asked, “Why do people take pain meds? Mix drugs and alcohol?” My answer reflected my years in the drug culture: They need that next higher high to numb the pain, emotional pain, to shut up the voices in their head telling them they’re no good, and nothing will ever change. They have no hope, no vision for their future and where there is no hope or vision the people perish.

The fact is, a battle rages. Each of us is engaged in battle, not the helpless pawn we’d sometimes like to think. And whether we want to or not, we are on a side. Our actions align us. If we consume alcohol and drugs, we lead others the wrong way; we open the wrong doors. Buying liquor and drugs causes the wrong people to prosper. They become powerful and influential, propagating all the heartache associated with the many tragedies that go hand in hand with this lifestyle. People envy them their affluence and influence, want what they have, and sometimes get it and more.

So with our money and our actions we make a choice. People are watching us. Are we our brother’s keeper? Yes, we are.

I “saw” Satan standing in front of me with a large net. And he was laughing. And waiting, waiting for me to make a mistake. I had been baited to get out of love, to strike out in anger at that other person. And Satan knew that when I did, I was entering his territory, and he had me. I had almost taken the bait.

I had been asking God to let me see the spiritual world as clearly as I see the natural world, and I certainly got a clear picture that day. I knew what I had to do, and I did it immediately. I turned off that emotion called anger, and I responded with kindness and understanding toward that person.

That trap didn’t work. I’ll be on the lookout for the next one because as long as I live in this world, I know they’ll keep coming.