Senator George

Senator George McGovern is best known for his life as a United States Senator, and Presidential Candidate. But there was a much more personal side to him; a side that might bring tears to your eyes.

     For Senator Mc Govern had a grown daughter who was both mentally-ill, and a drug addict. Now Mary, (I believe her name was Mary) had struggled with “voices,” delusions, hallucinations and paranoia for quite some time. And she preferred street drugs to prescription drugs.

    Of course, the Senator was concerned, since his love for his daughter was not the least diminished by the lifestyle she led. And he did everything he could for her.

 

    Mary attended therapy sessions, she "ran through" more rehab centers than you can count, she sat with eminent psychiatrists, she was prescribed for...seemingly to no avail. Only to go back, again and again, "like a dog to its vomit."

    Then one cold and snowy winters morning, Mary was found dead in the snow, just outside a bar. It seems she’d stumbled out of the establishment in a drunken stupor, and died where she fell.

     Of course, the Senator was shocked to the core, and his pain was unbearable. There were all the “if only’s,” and a tendency for self-recrimination. But none of this could bring his Mary back.

     I was watching a TV documentary about a heart surgeon yesterday, and though drug use was only a very small side topic, he mentioned a laminated picture he wore around his neck. We see a pretty teenage girl, standing next to a palm tree. And the doctor mournfully describes his relationship to her. She was his only daughter, and it seems she over-dosed on cocaine at the age of 17.

     And as he speaks to a reporter, he opinionates:

    “I consider myself a failure. Surely I could have done something to save her.”

     The comment took me aback, since this wonderfully-skilled heart surgeon considered himself a failure. And I know that feeling myself. For all three of my children “dabbled” with drugs. But thankfully, found a way to lay them down when they became adults.

     But there is that lingering guilt, I think, in regard to my own Mary. For my daughter is Schizophrenic; mentally-ill. And like Senator McGovern, I wonder how street drugs may have complicated my daughter’s already fragile health.

 

     Our children are our destiny and legacy. They are the only biological part of us that remains when we are gone. But more than this, they are our heart. They are "not supposed" to proceed us in death. Nor are they supposed to have problems which we can't solve.

     But they will and they do.

     Somehow, we must find a way to relinquish something that will never serve us, help us or bring us any relief;… GUILT. That pervasive, never-ending drip, drip, drip of guilt.

    I think Christ is compassionate, and longs to relieve us of that hideous emotion. I think He yearns to whisper soothing words to us, and assure us that He really does know what he’s doing, and that in the dispensation of things, it will be okay.

By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "Unconventional Devotions" Copyright 2005

 **I ask that if you copy and paste my blogs, share or download them to your hard drive that you include my name and source line which I always include at the bottom of each blog