Mental Health Month
May is Mental Health Month. It’s when we bring awareness to a topic many shy away from.
I’m here to tell you that dealing with someone who has a mental illness is not for the faint of heart. It takes a LOT of prayers, and it takes a very strong person to NOT let the mental illness of another affect YOU!
I’ve dealt with it for way too long with people in my life. From trying to “save” people in my childhood right on up to my adult life. It will wreak havoc on your life if you are near someone with a mental illness.
They blame you. No matter how much you try to help them. They turn it around to where you are the problem. If you help them seek help, they blame you for causing them to need any help to begin with. Medicine – they don’t want to take it because they don’t think they need it, when in reality THEY DO! It helps them function and it helps those around them be able to BE around them!
They will not let YOU have any feelings you express. NONE. Everything will be turned around to be about them. Everything is about them.
YOU don’t matter. Only them. AND THEY SHOW YOU THIS OVER AND OVER AGAIN! In the things they say and do … it’s glaring you in the face, and yet you don’t want to accept the little they care for you or the little your feelings or YOU matter to them.
I have never been one to want to give up on anyone with a mental illness. I have stayed right by their side and taken the stomach punches and the kicks in the teeth they give.
Mental illness will bring you to your KNEES!
That’s where God meets you.
Charleston Sweatshirt & Memories
My dear friend posted a picture yesterday of a worn grayish sweatshirt displaying Charleston, South Carolina on the front. I took one look at the faded and ripped shirt and the memories flooded my mind. While we cannot pinpoint the exact year, we are speculating that it was around the year 2000 or 2001. In other words, this shirt is well over 20+ years old. With that, so, too, is our friendship!
Having met in the same online forum we wrote about previously during the “Write 28 Days” series, we took our friendship beyond the make-believe walls of the lounge and into the real world. My friend traveled via rail from Arizona to South Carolina just to meet me! While we only had a short weekend together, the time we shared was beyond measure.
It was an absolute honor and privilege to open my home to host her during her visit. We shared so many great and wonderful things together that weekend, and quiet time at home was extra special having her with me. She was my first house guest, and I could not believe she was really there! Live and in person, there she stood in my doorway smiling at me.
We ventured out for a little sightseeing in one of the most beautiful cities – Charleston! We walked the cobblestone streets during a ghost tour which was lead by a great storyteller dressed in period clothing carrying a lantern. This was one of the highlights of her trip along with seeing the horse-drawn carriages at The Battery in downtown Charleston. The evening grew colder as the tour went on, thus prompting the purchase of this sweatshirt at the downtown market area. Alas, no evening in Charleston is complete without fine dining on fresh seafood! As we exchanged stories of our own and sampled the best seafood Charleston had to offer, the bond between us grew stronger. Memories were made that will last a lifetime, as I’m sure our friendship will as well.
Twenty-plus years of friendship, and in those 20+ years we have shared the good, the bad, and the ugly life threw at us both. My friend is a great conqueror, though. When mental illness thought it had a grip on her, she fought the stigma associated with it and made a great life for herself and her son. She raised him as a single parent, which is no easy task! She was both mother and father, and while she beats herself up over different periods with him growing up, I know she did the absolute best she could for him! Just when things were looking up, my friend was facing gamma knife surgery due to a brain tumor. Thankfully, it was NOT cancerous, but the procedure was frightening in and of itself. The tumor was wrapped around her optic nerve, if memory serves me correctly. This warrior woman came out of the surgery fighting like a mad woman to reclaim her life.
And she did!
I’ll fast forward through other things in her life she has conquered and focus on the gentleman who completely blindsided her and then swept her off of her feet! When she first showed me his picture, I could not believe how much he resembled Willie Nelson! It’s funny thinking back on this now, but my heart was completely thrilled and delighted for my friend to have found love again. She has smiled more than I have EVER seen her smile, and her heart is truly happy now! She and this gentleman moved from Arizona to Missouri! They found a little piece of Heaven in each other and in a little home on the range! Now my friend’s days are spent harvesting from her garden and canning! She has chickens and seems giddy as a schoolgirl over Hummingbirds that visit her feeders during the spring, and she seems ecstatic over snow flurries during the winter months. She seems to absolutely love her ranch life now, affectionately referring to their new home as Leaning Cedar Ranch.
Ah, my dear, sweet, beautiful, strong-willed friend, it has been so incredible for me to watch ALL of your dreams come true. A lump forms in my throat and tears sting my eyes as I write these words. I remember the struggles, and I’m so thankful to have been on the sidelines of your life ALL of these years cheering you on. And now, oh sweet victory, how GOD has shown His love, grace, mercy, and favor in your life. I’m so proud of you and proud to be by your side even still all these years later.
Trial
Our days have been filled with the Alex Murdaugh Trial. My husband and I did not follow it from the beginning. It was only when both of us got COVID that we turned on the television for entertainment. Plastered on the screen was live footage of the double murder trial. We were only looking for a movie to watch but soon found ourselves glued to the trial instead. We first watched only to observe Mr. Murdaugh on the stand. Then it became a daily part of our recovery to tune in as witnesses took the stand.
Can you even begin to imagine being a part of this jury? We heard shocking testimony as we sat on our couch with fever, sniffles, coughs, and Covid-induced misery. At times there was extreme graphic testimony by experts. While we did not see the pictures shown to the jury, the descriptions from the experts were what you would expect from the most horrific nightmares or the most horrifying movies. It was hard to imagine the fair-skinned, redheaded defendant could possibly have taken the life of not only his wife but also his son! It’s just extremely hard to fathom!
Is he guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
We learned of a Snapchat video his son, Paul, posted prior to his death. This placed Mr. Murdaugh at the scene, although he denied being at the “kennels” for such a long time. What happened to the clothes he was wearing in the Snapchat video? When he was seen on the police footage later that night, he was wearing something completely different. Then there was testimony about him carrying a tarp-like article when at his mother’s house that night.
Mr. Murdaugh was adamant when on the stand that he did NOT shoot his wife or son at any time. Ever. He admitted to lying and then having to lie some more to cover the first set of lies. He admitted to stealing money. But was he a murderer?
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. But the question is WHY would he kill not only his wife but also his beloved son? From what we understand, he didn’t have a large life insurance policy on either of them so there goes that theory. The argument now is he was trying to distract from the large amounts of money he had stolen, but to the extreme that he would kill his family members? And if he would kill his wife and one son, why not the other one, too? Why stop there?
It’s just so hard to comprehend!
Now, we know his son was involved in the tragic death of sweet Mallory a few short years ago. Was someone out to get Paul and “make him pay” for Mallory’s death? Was his mom just at the wrong place at the wrong time? Or was she lored there to face such horror that would come?
Even with all the questions swirling around in our minds, it’s hard not to feel compassion for Mr. Murdaugh as you watch him sobbing on the witness stand. With tears and other fluids running down his red face, he looks distraught while listening to the graphic description of how his wife and son died and were found.
If he didn’t commit these murders, he will still require a lifetime of counseling for all he’s endured throughout this trial. He did horrible things by stealing money, but was he capable of murdering his family members?
We realize he had an opioid addiction, and addicts become someone else entirely when they are under the influence of drugs. Did the drugs turn him into a killer?
As my husband and I prepare to return to the office tomorrow after a week, we will leave the daily courtroom drama behind. While we won’t have the time to follow this trial as we did on sick leave, we will still be interested in the verdict when it comes.
There’s such sadness and tragedy here with so many lost lives. The ending of beautiful lives. No matter what a person has done in their lifetime, they don’t deserve to face death like this.
Then there are the lost lives of people living in sin worshipping money and drugs. Some want to see him “pay.” I believe he will for all eternity if he committed these murders. If he didn’t kill his wife and son but stole money, he will still “pay” in that regard with jail time but also the testimony from experts that will forever haunt him.
My heart is just sad for the families involved. From Mallory’s family and friends, the housekeeper, the gentleman found on the roadside, to Paul and Maggie, and others like the uncle cleaning up after their bodies were removed. With tears in his eyes, the uncle talked of how he did this for Paul. How could you bring yourself to visit the crime scene but then to clean it on top of that? How would you not be tormented by that image engrained in your mind from that point on? When you lay down to sleep, how would you get that movie in your mind to stop?
And so we will pray for them … ALL of them! We ask God to help the lost souls, the hurting family and friends, and even those law enforcement officers who responded to the scene to find all they did that night. We pray for the jurors and all in the courtroom hearing the testimony and having the images in their minds now of what the crime scene looked like.
There is such evil in the world today, and we need God now more than ever before.
****
This was written before the verdict was handed down. Guilty.
We gathered around the computer at work watching as the judge sentenced Alex Murdaugh to life in prison for the murders of his son and his wife.
Do you feel he had a fair trial? The trail of lies he told and the money he stole from innocent people paved the way for no one to believe him despite how he cried on the witness stand. Did the jury just get fed up in that situation and automatically deem him guilty?
Alex stood in the courtroom in an orange jumpsuit with socks and sandals before the judge. He spoke of his innocence mere moments before handcuffs were placed on him. Although he said HE would never hurt his wife and his son, does he know who did? If he wasn’t the one to pull the trigger, was he there when it was taking place? It seems he was there mere moments before they both lost their lives, so he had to hear and possibly see the shooter – if it wasn’t him!
These are thoughts that will forever linger in our minds.
The judge was very calm, cool, and collected as he spoke to Alex regarding the death of his son and wife. The judge just lost his own son, so you can imagine the feelings he was dealing with as well. The judge spoke of how Maggie and Paul must visit Alex, and Alex acknowledged the nightly visits. It’s hard to imagine how sleep would ever come with the visions in his head of the crime scene.
Buster is the only remaining immediate member of the family left on this earth to fin for himself in the outside world. Some speculate that even he had something to do with the death of his own mother and brother.
What a wicked world we live in for something like this to have occurred.
This cements in my mind that we need GOD now more than ever before!
