What if this was my last post on THN, what would I want to say to those who would be left behind?

WHY am I writing something like this now?

Why NOT?

No one knows their own expiration date.

Family first . . . was that the luck of the draw . . .

or the Will of God . . .

or both?

Rich Mullins had a simple family. When he left the family farm for college, he never went back, and he never started a biological family of his own, but he did have a spiritual family of sorts that he and my possibly imaginary Friend formed with a few close friends and also with millions or, maybe even, billions of people around the world . . . but for the rest of his brief time on earth, “Wayne,” the name his family called him, longed to get back “home” to be with his first family, and he never did . . . not in this life, which ended for Mullins when he fell asleep behind the wheel of his jeep while driving late at night to a youth concert where he was supposed to be the main act the next day, rolled his vehicle on the freeway, got thrown out because he never wore seat belts, momentarily survived his crash, stood up, and got hit by a truck.

“So what?” you say. “That’s too bad about Rich Mullins, but some people have families who make life hell on earth.”

I know that’s true. I’ve seen some of those. I’m in a career that tries to protect children from neglectful and, sometimes, abusive families, sometimes even, horribly abusive, abusive to a degree that my mind won’t let me think the thoughts, let alone write here the words.

Let me say this, if you have a family that’s more like what Rich Mullins sings about in the song that started this post, consider yourself BLESSED by fate . . . or by my possibly imaginary Friend . . . beyond all measure because whatever else you might gain in this old world, it will NEVER be worth more than that first blessing.

And also, if you were cursed to be born into a hell on earth group of people that don’t deserve to be called “family,” please know that my possibly imaginary Friend can help you get out and find love and acceptance and hope and healing and to, even, become those things too.

I know, because I’ve seen this miracle many, many times in my life. I’ve even been this miracle.

By that I mean that I was born into and raised in a family like the one Richard Wayne Mullins had and sang about, but I let myself become bent before I was twenty years old, and my possibly imaginary Friend straightened me out and let me form a family that had far more love in it than neglect or abuse.

And by the way, in case you didn’t know, every family has some degree of neglect or abuse, and every body gets hurt sometimes.

But I DO know a Guy who can help, who can heal, who can straighten out what gets bent and crooked and needs to be made straight.

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t.