We had an interesting Thanksgiving with people we hardly knew, the caretakers and other residents at the residence where my grandmother lives. The only other family we have nearby are Jehovah’s Witnesses so we usually try to get together with them during the next few days after Thanksgiving.

We’ve had a short exchange of email and phone communication with some family members, we were reminded of our Pastor and Counselor during these exchanges of “crazy-making”. He gave us that term to use to describe some of the family pathology we wade through. It is a very deep and destructive pathology, in some cases tipping over into serious thought disorder.

That said, it was very good. Not that the situation is good, one of our family members is at great risk because of her risky behavior, we would not be surprised to learn of her death, nobody is even certain of her whereabouts. The part that is very good in all this divisiveness is that we’ve been able to forge a couple of re-connections with family members that have grown (not gotten “better”) in their understanding of, and patience with, the working out of God’s plan in our loved-one’s life.

For all the import we place on this life, we need to remember that it is but a vapor…