How Not To Bug The Hell Out When Everything Around You Is Falling Apart

I said that one day I would write a book about that title above this text in an effort to help those who feel like all of life's situations are a little too much sometimes because when it rains, it pours.

I've been at the hospital for the past two days trying to be regular in a very irregular situation. The regular part is a put on for my mother who has been thrusted into a very odd, life-altering place by my step dad. He almost died Monday morning. She waited until it was good and damn dark before she called me.

And when it came time to call somebody, she called me specifically. I am not surprised. I never told her what I told friends, the long-ass book title I typed up there but she knows her son. Her mother's intuition told her that I have some sort of otherworldly knowledge in how to remain calm, assess things and use said calm to both handle a situation and quickly come up with a solution without bugging the hell out.

Yeah, I can do that.

But not right now.

But I gotta reach way deep and pull this one out of my ass somehow.

I saw her name on the caller ID and handed my wife the phone. They like to talk and carry on with that girlie-girl mish/mash. Wifey answered it and my mother calmly and coldly asked for her son. And by the time I put the receiver to my ear she was telling me shit that I did not want to hear but what I had to know.

The incident happened Monday morning, but it's now like 8 o'clock in the PM. She's been up all day at his bedside and his vitals aren't improving. She needs sleep and knowing her, she ain't gonna get it. I asked her if she wanted me there and she said no but meant yes. My wife was already getting dressed.

An hour later we were at the ER and was told that the situation was way more complicated than what Mom's was telling. We have a situation that might be greater than it seems on the surface and I need to find someplace to put it along with the cancer trials of an aunt, my up and down relationships with folks, a recent death and getting settled back in Chicago in a non-existent residence. Oh, there is more shit on top of that... But I'm telling you stuff you already know, this is what I know:

I was supposed to come back to Chicago

I am needed more than I (and they) have let on to folks

I now have to take the lead in this family because our matriarch is beyond sick and my mother has been hit hard with the revelation that the situation with her husband is greater than it seems. This and all of my sibs having their own shit to deal with (mortgages, children, work, work related stress, time management, distance, finances) and me not having any of what they have to deal with puts me center stage whether I want it to or not, and I cannot bug the fuck out right now.

I know there's a lot of cussing in these paragraphs but I have to mention God right here..

God has called me to be an intercessor.

When you realize that, you cannot complain, make excuses or run and hide. My family's balance is contingent on me holding steady to do the things and make decisions I've thought about but never wanted to really be a part of executing, but if I don't who will? When I called my little brother and thought that he already knew he was asking ME why he wasn't filled in earlier in the day and spazzed the hell out after getting completely filled in. After he learned the facts, he told me that it was too much information to add to his work-related stress as well as him just walking in the door having not taken the time to asses his own family's status...

No answer at lil sis's home or cell...
Overworking older brother cannot be found.

And now you know why Mother Dear waited twelve hours after working on stabilizing step dad, thought on it and called my ass. She figured out that I somehow is her intercessor. After staring in her eyes last night in a realization that even when her husband gets checked out and goes home that she has to prep herself for what could be the most improbable and unexpected moments in her life... I see that I cannot absolutely without fail bug the fuck out.

The stakes are so high right now.

When you see, feel, understand and acknowledge that right there... You already know how to act and what to say and do.

Realization that you are not in control makes you want to control yourself the best ways possible in order to lead by example is chapter one in: 'How Not To Bug The Hell Out When Everything Around You Is Falling Apart'...

I never knew that living this life would be the text for something greater. Take my words and process them. Learn exactly what an intercessor is so if need be you or someone can follow suit. Also, don't fuck with me right now because there is one hell of a delicate balance gwans' on over here. To upset that will probably revert me back to twenty years ago which was my first week of Army basic training things are that raw right now.

But I love you. Remember that as well.

I must have one...

June 2007, Apple iPhone

And now, back to your life.